Saturday May 7th, 2005

I have been really keen to go to another AAMS skid car day since the first one I went to at Quackers Hill in 2001. They FINALLY put on another one - this time at Eastern Creek on the skid pan.

I arranged with Mark "Wulos" to meet up at my place at 8am, and head out together. He was bringing his mighty ED XR6 out for the day. At 8:10am, with no Mark in sight, I give him a call. He is still home. Something about not wanting to get his car wet was his excuse.
So I head off by my lonesome.
After arriving, I helped Brad and Simone carry all there gear up stairs. When we were done, Brad let me move his XR6 Turbo round to the back of the car park area. (and yes - I behaved myself)
We did the usual driver training briefing, and then we headed out to the skid pan. We were split into 2 groups - Brad instructed the people with no previous advanced driver training experience, and Phil was in charge of those who had done some driver training before.

It wasn't long before we were out on the skid pan. Phil put us through a range of exercisers. During one setup, I was having trouble getting the car to step out sideways at the end to go around the witches hat. Phil Jumped in the car, and quickly realised the problem. The LSD had died. My Diff was now just single spinning. (not happy). Anyway - I persisted.

After lunch, I noticed a slight ticking noise coming from my engine bay. Thinking it must just be the oil getting a little hot, and thinning out, I topped up hoping it would go away. It didn't.
I kept going, and the more I went, the louder the ticking noise was. Popped the bonnet again - and had a few people have a quick look. Oh Great - the exhaust manifold gasket was blown. Well - at least its not lethal… so I kept on going (even though the noise was getting louder and louder. )

By 5:00pm, it was time to stop (and go to work), but I could have kept going for another few hours if I wanted to. I had an AWESOME time. I still having quite got the drifting down 100% yet, but when I get my diff fixed, that should help a little.

Video of me having fun on the skid pan. (13.3MB)