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Teambattles, bad luck and another podium finish. That is how Tijs described the 6th and final round of the D1:10 RC drift competition of 2011, and that sort of summarizes the day for Team Wreck it Sideways. With 32 entries and over 10 different scenario’s about who was going to be in the final top 5 of 2011, we knew we were in for a long and interesting day!

Read more after the jump…

The location was Beachclub Y-land(like in island), a discotheque located in Spijkenisse near Rotterdam. Due to poor lighting the pictures aren’t very spectacular. TWS would eventually win 2 prizes this round…

The day started, as usual, with the qualifications.

Let’s start at the bottom; I qualified second to last with 0 points, due to mechanical issues during my qualifying run. Reinier qualified 18th with 39 points, and Tijs(above) qualified 11th place with 45 points.

Edo and Ricardo both run a pretty solid run, and both got 53 points. But because Ricardo’s second run was better, he qualified above Edo(6th, 7th)!

This time, Edwin wasn’t top qualifier, nor any of the TWS members. It was Robin from Team-D(oh) who qualified best with 64 points!

Then it was time for the battles. Since I qualified 31st I started in the D-poule. My first battle went well, but in the D-poule final my car just quit. Game over. I would be playing guest judge the rest of the day.

Reinier managed to get into the B-poule final, and thus progressed into the Top 16. Here he met TQ Robin, and after some pretty close runs Robin proved to be the better driver.

Tijs met Ricardo in the Top 16 again, but this time it was Tijs who eventually got the win and progressed into the Top 8. There Tijs met Maurice, a person he has come across a couple of times, but Tijs proved to be the better driver. He progressed into the final four.t

Here he met Jim, but after driving a rerun, the judges decided that Jim was the better driver. Jim progressed to the finals, and Tijs would be battling for 3rd place

Edo won his battles in the Top 16 and 8 and progressed to the final four. Here he met Edwin, and after 4 close runs Edwin was given the win. Since Tijs lost against Jim, which meant that Tijs and Edo would be battling for the 3rd spot on the podium. They were both driving pretty solid runs, but Tijs proved to be just a little bit better. This meant that Tijs would climb the podium for the first time this year!!

The final would be between Edwin and Jim, and what a final it was! The judges needed 3 re-runs in order to decide a winner. And the winner is…

Edwin! This not only meant his 4th win this year, but also that he now was the 2011 Drift King… What a happy man Edwin was when he heard he had won! He and Jim were both so intrigued by the moment that they decided to do 4 more runs!

The Concours d’ Elegance was won by Joost and his BWM E30M3 convertible.

And then the moment where we all waited for… the awards ceremony!

Here we can see Tijs in his Touge Automotive “Boso” sweater receiving his 3rd prize. I think it’s fair to say that he deserved it!

And then there was a little surprise for me… I got the “bad-luck award” :p

I think it’s fair to say that Team Wreck it Sideways has come a long way. From just a bunch of friends we’ve grown to a bunch of friends who all finished within the Top 18, who have a personal sponsor , an official “partner-in-crime” DoriGazo.nl and even their own livery and website!

This being the End Quote of 2011, we would like to thank all of you who like us, it really means a lot to us to hear that people read and enjoy what we write here and on our Facebook page! Thanks to everyone in and outside of The Netherlands with which we have drifted the last year, and hopefully meet you all next season!

End Stats:

Edo – 4th place overall, highest score 1st place, 1 Concours nomination
Ricardo – 5th place overall, highest score 2nd place
Tijs – 6th overall, highes score 3rd place, 1 concours win, 1 concours nomination
Reinier – 16th overall, highest score 9th place
Bop – 17th overall, highest score 4th place, 2 concours nominations

And that wraps up the coverage of the last round of the D1:10 2011, next year there will be so much awesome things I don’t know where to begin. So let’s just say: Roll on 2012!

- Bop

Check the full article here

Teambattles, bad luck and another podium finish. It basicly sums up the day for TWS at the 6th and final round of the 2011 D1:10 championship.

Another new venue added to the list for 2011. This time it was at Beachclub Y-land in Spijkenisse, NL, using the concrete part of the dancefloor for the track and the podium as a driversstand.

Bop had a bad day with mechanical gremlins keeping him from setting a qualifying score and also costing him his first battle of the day. All this bad luck didn’t go unnoticed though and it landed him the bad-luck trophy. I managed to score another podium finish for TWS, but unfortunatly that meant kicking both Edo and Ricardo out of the competition.

The scores:
Tijs – 3rd place
Edo – 4th place
Ricardo – Top16
Reinier – Top16
Bop – Somewhere at the bottom

Full report coming soon!

Here’s the video, enjoy!

See the whole review after the jump

First Impression

R2hobbies has put these on the market a few weeks ago. They sell them for about 13 to 15$US (depending on being logged in or not) ex. shipping in 5 different colours; Red, purple, blue, black and silver. You can order it here. At first glance the mounts seem very nice with basicly all the settings you need for mounting any body, except for maybe vans or wagons. The description however is a bit vague with measurements that don’t say much and no stating of compatibility with the different chassis’. Looking at the pictures though it seems like it should fit on most chassis that have carbon shocktowers and bumper mounted front bodyposts. Compared to the 80$US of the original Waru mounts this one is very cheap and I just took the risk and ordered one.

Packaging and Contents

As always, R2hobbies packaging isn’t pretty. They have switched to another type of bag AGAIN, but this time its a ziplock so that’s good. I personally don’t care much about the looks of the packaging just as long as its strong enough so the contents don’t get damaged during shipping.

Inside we find all the mounts, a bag of screws and shims, some velcro and a manual. R2hobbies kits are sometimes missing some parts, but with mine everything was there. You even get some spare screws and a lot of shims in different sizes to adapt the mounts to your type of chassis.

The Install

Obviously the first thing you do when you are going to install the kit is check the manual. Well.. its not much help here. The manual is printed in very bad quality, and from what I’ve heard this is with all the sets they’ve sold so far so its not just an empty ink cardridge. The pictures don’t tell you anything that you didn’t already know and on top of that the only bit of text on the manual is miss-spelled.

So I just started off without the manual. I mounted the rear half in the same position as my original bodyposts on the shocktower, and immediatly ran in to a problem; The mountingplate is way to small. This is with the largest of the two mountingplates but the gap is way to big to fill with shims.

Next I’ve tried mounting them in the holes for the shocks. This is the way R2hobbies mounted their set in the product description, but it didn’t work for me. This time the mountingplate was way to big, and even when I tried the smaller mountingplate it didn’t fit. Now what?

I’ve decided to just make my own mountingplate so I can use the bodypost holes in the shocktower. Since I have the silver version, I could easily make my own mountingplate from a piece of aluminum plate and no one would notice. Just one problem with that plan.. I don’t have any aluminum plate. For now I just went with a bit of thick lexan, but I will make one from aluminum in the future. Another advantage of making a new mountingplate is that you can make it bigger so you have more surface to put velcro on. This will make the bind between body and mount much stronger.

The front half was a lot easier to build, although not entirely without problems. The pictures and manual suggest you use the larger of the two mountingplates on the front. I tried that at first, but it was bending my front bodyposts as its too wide. Looking at the pictures on R2hobbies.com closely you can see that they have the same problem, but they just took the pictures from a smart angle so you won’t notice. I switched to the smaller of the two mountingplates and this was too small, surprise surprise.. I used 2 of the thick shims on either side of the mountingplate and it was a perfect fit.

One thing R2 doesn’t mention in the description is that the front mounts are made for 6mm diameter bodyposts. However most pro-chassis’, including my DRB, have 5mm bodyposts. It does work with the 5mm bodyposts, but I would advise to use a longer grubscrew (or some loctite) as there isn’t much thread left and I think the grubsrews would come out due to vibrations.

Product Test

Testing this thing isn’t that hard. Basicly it comes down to two things; Does it fit most shells and how well does it hold the body on.

For the fitment the answer is easy. Yes, it does fit most shells. The only problems I’ve found were with shells that have a vent in the bonnet right where the mount should go, like the Yokomo 180SX street, and with shells that have very little overhang behind the rear wheels like some hatchbacks. The first is also a problem with normal bodyposts and its an easy fix. The second is a bit more trouble, but you can always trim the rear half of the mounts so it would clear the shell. Not much to worry about there.

As for testing how well it holds the body on I’ve just mounted an old shell with the provided, very small, bits of velcro and started bashing the shell. At no point the shell came off or moved. I could even pick up the whole car by the shell and shake it. The bind of the velcro is amazing! Now I can’t tell you how well it will hold up over time, and offcourse the velcro will wear down at some point, but for now it works really well.

Don’t mind the archgap. I didn’t trim the bodyposts to length yet

Conclusion

There are a few things I would like to elaborate on.

The first is the build quality. The quality of the metals used is quite poor. I’ve already had to replace some of the grubscews as I’ve stripped the hex inside them. And before you ask, yes I am using proper tools. What I would suggest to anyone who bought or will buy this set is to replace all the grubscrews right away with some proper stainless steel or titanium screws. The aluminum also isn’t very strong and you will get a lot of dents in the posts on the rear half from adjusting and tightening the grubscrews. This would offcourse also scratch off the anodizing. So if you want the set to look nice after some time of use then I’d suggest you buy the silver one as it has no anodizing to be scratched off.

The next is the whole point of using these stealth mounts. Its nice to use on a shelfer or maybe a car you only do demo’s with. In competition however this isn’t a smart option. Adjusting the mounts takes a lot of time, time which you could also use to practice. And if you hit the wall or something else and the body moves only the slights bit you will have problems with the wheels rubbing on the shell when steering etc. and it could cost you your battle.

So in short this is an average product. Its cheap, but does need some work before you can really enjoy it. Its a lot better then some DIY project anyway. Also you have to remember that the fitment issues I’ve had are for the Yokomo DRB, and might be different for other chassis’. R2hobbies used the TEH-R31 to display the product and it seems its almost a direct fit for the TEH-R31. The lack of info from R2hobbies is confusing for inexperienced buyers and might scare some people off. But if you really want stealth mounts this is the best way to go.

I hope this review was of any use, and if you have suggestions or comments I’d like to hear them.

- Tijs

Sunday the 25th of September the 5th round of the D1:10 was held at the ERCE circuit in Eindhoven, The Netherlands. Since this was the first gathering of the Team Orange drivers since the D1RC World Championship, we deciced to all use our Worlds bodyshell.
Lot’s of orange, 39 entries and a lovely weather made for a great day full of drifting!

Read more after the jump!

It was great to meet my fellow Team Orange drivers again, we shared lot’s of great stories and had a lot of fun. But this day wasn’t all about the fun, this was the second to last D1:10 round and the top 5 was very close. Lot’s of things could happen.

Qualifying time!

Edo, who has been driving very good this year and still had a chance to win the chamionship, had a bad qualifying run and qualified in the B-poule. Due to an off track in his battle he lost and ended somewhere in the B-poule.

I ended up qualifying in the Top 16 for the first time this year! On 14th place to be precise. I had high expectations that day, and I hoped I could finally have a chance to climb the podium.

Reinier qualified 12th, and things were looking good for Team Wreck it Sideways!

Tijs qualified a very nice 4th place, after showing some massive angle in his Boso’d-out MKII. Edwin Pols, the worlds number 2 and 2 times Dutch champion qualified 3rd with 87 points, just below Jim, who qualified 2nd with 90 points.

The battles were rather.. o wait, did I forget someone? Ahh yes, I forgot to mention that Ricardo won Top Qualifier with a staggering 94 points! This meant that he would be up against the loser of the B-poule finale, which gave him a rather big chance win..

Battle time!

As most of you probably know, the Top16 battles have the TQ against the no. 16, 2 vs. 15 etc. I did a quick calculation, and what I had feared came true…. I had to battle Edwin!

Edwin is a very consistent and professional driver, who can really stick to your door and has a lot of speed trough corners. I had to battle him at Coronel Kartracing in the semi finals, and after a rerun I went offtrack and he won. I didn’t want that to happen this time.

I managed to get a One More Time(6-4/4-6), but then, in my lead run, I got to nervous and went offtrack. Bollocks!

Reinier had to go up against Robin, and after 2 really close battles, Robin got the win with a 5-5/6-4.

Tijs had to battle Joost aka. “CS Master” in the Top 16. After a solid lead run and a very close chase Tijs got the win and proceeded tot the Top 8.

Here he met Jim, who was driving pretty good that day and even menaged to drive somewhat proper lines in stead of “Jim-lines”! After a OMT, Jim was given the win.

Ricardo won his Top 16 battle against Marijn, and proceeded to the top 8. In the top 8 he met Edwin, who had just beaten me. Ricardo had a very solid lead run, but one of the judges had seen something just before the finish. After a closer look at some HD slomo-footage it was revealed that Edwin had been off track with 3 wheels. This resulted in a 10-0 advantage for Ricardo. Ricardo managed to win with 10-0/4-6 and proceeded to the Semi Finals.

In the Semi Finals Ricardo won from Maurice and proceeded to the Finals! Here he met Jim, who had just won from Davey, and things were getting tense.

In the first battles, the scores were even, both were driving on the edge, which resulted in some spectacular runs! The judges couldn’t decide who did better and called for a OMT(5-5/5-5)

After two very close battles, and two drivers hoping that their batteries wouldnt die during the run, the score was as follows: 6-4/4-6… this meant that they would be going OMT, AGAIN!
They ran again, this time a lot slower since their batteries were almost dead, and this resulted in a winner…. After 6 runs, the winner was given a 5-5/6-4…. and the winner is:

Very well deserved, I think the only time i’ve seen closer battles was the D1RC World Championship finals! Ricardo won a much earned 2nd place.

The winner of the concours d’élegance was Arno with his V8-powered Vertex Team Orange Nissan Silvia.

And on that bombshell I’ll end this post. Well, almost. I would like to conclude with the final results of the day and what that means for the championship.

Top16
1 Jim
2 Ricardo
3 Maurice
4 Davey
5 Edwin
6 Tijs
7 Robin
8 Roy
9 Ronald
10 Lennaert
11 Roiheed
12 Reinier
13 Joost
14 Bop
15 Marijn
16 Ronny

Championship top 5
1-Edwin – 77
2-Jim – 62
3-Maurice – 60
4-Ricardo – 56
5-Edo – 53

TWS
4-Ricardo – 56
5-Edo – 53
8-Tijs – 41
15-Bop – 17
16-Reinier – 16

Lot’s of thing can happen at the final round, which will be held in Spijkenisse on the 13th of November!

- Bop

Pictures courtesy of Bart Stax from Dorigazo.nl

Last week we were in Rotterdam for the 100% Tuning show with RC Drift Events. On the second day of the event our team was complete again with all 5 drivers present. We had recieved the new livery from Touge Automotive a few days before, so this was the perfect moment to put the graphics on and make sure all cars looked the same. Very happy with the result we asked Bart from DoriGazo to do a quick photoshoot before we would scratch the brand new stickers on the track. Here are the pictures:

Reinier – Yokomo Nissan 180SX

Edo – Yokomo Nissan S14a

Ricardo – HPI Toyota AE86 Levin

Bop – Yokomo Mazda RX7 FC

Tijs – HPI Toyota Soarer

Big thanks to Touge Automotive for the awesome livery and to DoriGazo for the pictures!