Getting Acquainted with an Altezza

2 years ago, I made a new friend with a guy that drives an Altezza that so happens to be a big fan of drifting as well.  Needless to say, we met up a couple times and exchanged some usual chit chats on the topic of drift.

His Altezza comes totally bone stock with automatic transmission, I’ve drifted his Altezza before, it was easy to control but hard to maintain a drift due to the automatic transmission.  We had fun back then, after a while, he started travelling a lot and spent most of his time at West Malaysia due to his business requirement.  The Altezza is still in Sibu though, only to be driven by his wife.

So last week, he took a week off from his work and came back to Sibu, called me up and next thing we know, we’re already at the usual drift playground, getting ready for some action.

Toyota Altezza

Our first session started at a rainy afternoon on Saturday, after I unloaded all my gears and tires, I made a few warm up runs, after that, it was his time to show off.

Friend getting ready to drift!

My friend started out performing donuts, but he was struggling to maintain the drift, he would either spin out or understeered after half or at most 1 full cycle.  I gave him a few tips and even drove his car to demonstrate how it should be done, and then it was back to him driving again.  Here’s a video of some of his attempts:

The weather was great, the rain was stopping soon with small drizzles, it was cool and refreshing, coupling up with the sound of my 4AGE and the 3SGE engine roars, what a great way to start the weekend!

After some non stop donut training, my friend decided to take a break, and it was time for me to crank up my Charmant and have some fun as well!

Grass Cutter?

As you can see from the picture above, I got a bit too close with the grass along side the runway, since this is my only playground in Sibu, I tend to push more nowadays, after all, there’s no wall to hit, no pressure!

Another view of the 'incident'... LOL!

Before we arrive the place, I did called up some old friends, while most of them were no show, one familiar face did show up…

Mitsubishi Lancer Evo II with Evo III kit

This is the same guy that let me drift his Lancer quite a while back, which I did featured it in an old post.  Unfortunately, this same car was crashed after lending it to a friend of his who was drunk driving, not only was the front part of the car totalled, both the driver and the passenger were also injured, lucky for them it was nothing serious as there’s only few cuts and bruises.  The culprit obviously had to pay for everything, so the owner decided to have everything fixed, bodywork re-done, new black paint and also a new 4G63T engine as well.

However, after the car was rebuilt, the owner had lost interest in drift, I can’t really blame him since 4WD was never an ideal platform for drifting anyways.  After the usual get along conversation, the Evo friend left early as he had some personal business to attend to.  Our session soon ended as well, and it’s time to head back home and continue the fun the next day!

My gear and tires

On the following Sunday, it was another drizzly afternoon and I arrived early.  As usual, I unloaded all my stuff and got myself warmed up first.  Soon after my friend arrived, its back to the usual plan again.

Altezza ready to go out for another round

The Altezza owner did better on this day, managing to hold some pretty smooth donuts but still wasn’t that much consistent, I’ve recorded a short video though:

From the video it’s obvious that the driver needs more work on throttle control, but it’s definitely tougher for him since the car is in wacky auto, if only the car comes in manual transmission and a clutch pedal, things would be a whole lot better, or probably easier too!

The sun re-appeared sooner on this day and the road got dry a lot sooner than we expected, and that means the Altezza would be struggling hard to maintain wheelspin.  From that time on, it was all on me and my Charmant.  Here’s a video that my friend took while he was in my car, check out the messy steering work:

Managed to rip some Avanza tires

Rubber tied onto the wheel hub

I killed all 4 of the Avanza tires that Sia gave me for free, and also made quite a mess to my engine bay again as I forgot to check my oil catch bottle… it was full!  I had to cut off the cable ties and pour all the oil back into my 4AGE, re-tie the bottle back to the location with more cable ties… After that, it was time to go home.  One thing for sure though, I’ll need to service my 4AGE very, very soon!