Happy Birthday to Benson from Brian McKnight (and me)

me on the radio dedicating a song to B for his Birthday.  Happy Birthday love of my life.

May is Drifting Month
My day job is being an accountant.  At my desk, the wall is covered with drift cars, DP flyers, DP class photos, a model of Danica’s indy car …I think about drifting all day!  What is cool at work is that they started “Idealab University” which is Idealab’s version of the TED talks.  So once a month, someone from Idealab or one of our operating companies is invited to come give an inspirational talk about something.  Its cool…this guy last month was sharing his experiences building & flying experimental aircraft.  What’s next month?  Its drifting month!  Being the resident racer, I’m going to share my experiences in drifting.

I’ve been going through 10 years worth of my racing photos and videos.  There is so much to share during my talk, but only 20-30 minutes to do so.  There are so many different directions to go too…do I set the mood to inspire?  Or teach people how to get into drifting?  Or just show endless car pics?  I have some time but the pics alone have taken me hours to go through!!

1998

2003

2004

2005

While I’ve been prepping for the university talk, I’ve also been trying to piece together this website.  My old site is still up, but I’m taking it down very soon.  Istill have like 4 years of blog/diary entries to copy over before I can retire Nadine180.com.

Drifting Pretty field trip!
DP just met for our first field trip of the year, to Temple City Auto Repair.  There, the owner of the shop, Henry, gave a 2-hour lecture on everything you need to know about alignments.  From camber to thrust angle…the DP gals are now certified alignment gurus.

At the end of the workshop the girls battled it out in an alignment quiz and won free alignments.  Big thank you to Henry & John for sharing their wisdom and time with the girls.  The field trip was a raving success.  The DP ladies partnered up and are now piecing together their alignment 101 presentations to teach the ladies who didn’t make it out to the field trip.  I love it!

Big thank you to Scott Oshiro for photographing the field trip.  For more pics, please visit our photo gallery

Grueling Commute
On my 12 mile bumper-to-bumper commute to work my ears started ringing.  The G35’s breaks don’t shut-up.  We checked them and they have plenty of meat left.  Shut-up brakes.  Shut-up.

Till next time!

This lawyer worked for Toyota for 4 years and resigned. He is exposing them and its pretty scary. I don’t feel bad for Toyota anymore…maybe not all of the sudden unintended acceleration stories are true, but this sounds pretty disturbing!!

I’m home sick in bed and I just found my favorite TV Show up on Hulu.  David Bromstad is my favorite interior designer guy on TV.  He’s taught me everything I know.  My bathroom turned out so awesome because of him. 

In every episode he features a different style of interior design.  Check it out!

Welcome to NadineHsu.com 2010.  Stay tuned for updates!

(more…)

XX,XXX miles. I got the cover of LA Weekly! Thank you Gendi (the author of my article), you’re an exceptional writer. I’d never think an outsider, a writer, could get it all right! You found me out and cracked the crazy terminologies of the drifting world. Thank you Gendi, I’ll never forget this article or the cover, for as long as I live.

TV shows are emailing me, ladies from all over Cali are emailing me, I couldn’t be more happier about the support I’ve been receiving since the article was released. If you happen to be one of those people who took the time to read the article and send me an email, THANK YOU, I very much appreciate and cherish your comments and support. I don’t think I could go on without people like you all. These past few days have been so great, not because of the attention I’ve been getting, but because of the continous “pats” on my back for “doing good” for women in the motorsports scene. I really love how my Drifting Pretty Program is turning out. All the ladies make me proud, and so optimistic about the future of women in drifting, thank you DP ladies for coming forward to make a difference in the world. And of course, thank you LA Weekly for letting me share my life, thoughts, and dreams with everyone.

Dyno Drama
I just arrived home from my dyno session at XS Engineering. I’m doing another power page for Import Tuner magazine. This time, we’re installing and testing an array of goodies, nice goodies, that I want to thank Scott Tsuneishi for helping me get.

Today we installed an Apexi Power FC & AVC-R and some Blitz 550cc injectors. My car ran a baseline dyno of 180 hp to the wheels, 10 less than my previous dyno sessino last year. I saw that since that last dyno session I swapped the larger Greddy downpipe to a smaller 5Zigen downpipe to clear my crazy driveway, and of course, there’s lotso tire dust in my air filter.

After boosting .7 bar, the car put out 204 hp to the wheels. After that, Scott and my sweeties at XS, Koji & Eric, installed the power FC and injectors. My TPS sensor was shot AND my o2 sensor was shot, so we couldn’t continue with the session. In addition, since I’m planning to run over 230hp, it was recommended that I purchase a Z32 airflow meter, so off to Superior Nissan I go tomorrow :). I hope to get all the broken/needed parts squaredaway tomorrow so I can get back on the dyno and see what the 180SXxy mobile can run.

Next week, again I will return to XS to dyno my new S15 turbo (thank you Superior Nissan!), FMIC (muah to XS), and Sun hyper ground system (doomo). I’m estimating that my car will be putting out close to 300hp once all the parts are in. I don’t NEED all that power right now, so I’ll end up de-tuning to a comfortable range to drift with; probably in the mid 200’s. I’m so excited, and worried for my car hahaha, so much change in such a lil’ time, she must be so confused hahaha. After this, I don’t plan to do anything more to my engine except install my new radiator hahaa. Anyways, back to the dyno drama I go.

New Applicants for Drifting Pretty
In other news, I held a Drifting Pretty prospective members meeting this past Sunday. We met 7 new ladies who are interested in joining the program…again, that makes me so happy! And since the article, another 5 have emailed me! All you ladies, best of luck on your application! 🙂

Drifting at the Airport!?
I drove a private drifting event at Camarillo on Sat, and on Sun I drove DD16. All I have to say about those events is that I snapped my tie rod on Saturday and bent the same one on Sunday. Both as result of me being too agressive :X. Oops! I’ve since, upgraded to some harder aftermarket tie rods, sohopefully I won’t be killing anymore! I’m frustrated about the whole weekend, I’ve been improving so much on the track, but broken car drama got the best of me this weekend.

My car will be ready for this coming Saturday (5/22), I’ll be burning it up at the streets of Willow for a Speedtrial Road Race. See you at the track baby!

19,382 miles. Just came back from my photo shoot for the LA Weekly one of the largestly distributed lifestyle mags in LA.  Many thank yous to Gendi over there, I’m sure the story is going to be wonderful! Gendi is a writer for the LA Weekly and has been tagging along with me and the Drifting Pretty girls for a few weeks now, and boy she’s seen a lot!  She is an absolute trooper.

Behind the scenes of a chaotic life of a girl drifter. We had our last photo shoot last night at Crystal Cove (down by Laguna Beach). Thank you to Brian for letting me use your beatiful 350Z (pics are in my gallery). And thank you to Sarah for keeping me sane all day.  We took the shots at sundown.  The photographer had this film camera…not digital.  I’m really anxious to see how the shot comes out!

The magazine is coming out on 5/13, be sure to pick one up! If you’re from the SGV, Wahoo’s in Pasadena has them :).

Its been a crazy month. I’m going to break this entry up into a few, because somuch has happened.

I flew out to Georgia for FormulaD, to see my Grandma and to support my love Ben. Good job honey, you rocked :)…you really inspire me, I love you!

What a thought, flying out to Georgia to drift. I can’t wait till I can ship my car out and fly to Georgia to Drift. It was really exciting. Going to Georgia only fueled my determination to improve. People kept approaching me at FormulaD and asking me…”Why aren’t you competing?” I love the support out there for girl drifters. Thank you to all the drifting fans that were out there at Georgia, much love to Team HeavenZ for making the beautiful banner for Ben, and thanks to that guy who threw us a shirt, its fans like you that drive us to keep drifting!

I want to definitely compete, but when I’m ready, especially mentally. Being a woman, I read into things so much more than your typical man.  I’m taking my time to understand every part of drifting. I hope to acheive the end-result of being one of the top drifters in the USA, no not top GIRL driter, but top drifter period. I want to be out there head-to-head with my man Benson and my other boys like Ken, Andy, Alex and Ernie. I will compete when I’m confident and experienced enough.

People who fall out of the Road Race scene or rally racing or even the drag racing scene assume they immediately know what drifting is all about…sliding your car fast through a turn, that’s not it.  And I’m not going to tell you all either, experience drifting for yourself, live the life of a drifter and you’ll learn. So many people think its that easy to jump in and compete, but I believe in competing only when you’re truly experienced, mentally prepared, and have a full understanding of what drifting is all about. I’m moving into my 18th month of experience in drifting. I’ve learned so much; there is still so much to be learned.

Just came back from Drift Day Pro, a private event for staff and friends of Drift Association. The Drifting Pretty Ladies and I were out there gaining much needed hours of Drift Day track time. I was working on my feinting skills, e-brake, and clutch kicking. I got a lot of good pointers from my friends, Alex you were a great help :).

My tranny was leaking like fountain, but hey, gotta do what i gotta do! I need to change the rear seal for the tranny. At the end of the day I got really tired, but learned a lot. I’m so much more comfortable using mutliple initiation techniques on a single track. I’m getting better now at figuring out which initiation technique is best for certain entry speeds and corners.

Thank you to Drift Association for your continued support. We’ve come a long way, and we’re looking forward to having all-Girl drift days soon!