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Been a while since I posted… April 2, 2013 at 12:03 am

Well its been over a year since I last posted, but with good reason. The 2012 drift season was great and terrible at the same time but I wouldn’t change it, we learned so much and managed to put down some solid podium finishes. Altho I missed my Pro License by mere points again I am not disappointed at all! I made some great friends and had some great times along the way.

To make a long story short things were crazy the last 2 months and I was driven to the brink of insanity. But in the end it was all worth it!

I will just leave you with this… AmDrift.com did a feature on my car during the first round of Just Drift’s TopDrift Pro Am. Here is the link http://www.amdrift.com/2013/03/robin-webbers-ls2-powered-s13-240sx/

Drift, drift and more drift!!! April 20, 2012 at 4:10 pm

It’s been a few months since I last updated… sorry but I have been busy with other things, hopefully this entry will more than make up for the lack of updates.

First off the Limitless GDS6 event went awesome! Thanks to Shane and Alex for always throwing laid back fun events! I used 8 different types of tires that day and was able to learn each set within a lap or two which is great, since in the past it usually took me almost a full practice session to learn new tires. Now that I have a good alignment, learning the car with new/changed setups is so much easier to do. lol I’m amazed I was able drift my car with the bunk alignment I had all of 2010 and 2011, little did I know that whole time I was rocking 10mm toe in the rear thanks to the old Nissan eccentric bolts I was running.

The new RUCA’s that Jon made and the new Baller Bolt eccentric lock out kits worked great and kept my car’s alignment in check all day. What a huge difference it was to drift in a car that had the right alignment settings from beginning to end.

I spent most of the day trying to do following tandem runs with other drivers. This was something I was lacking skill wise during most of my 2010-2011 competition seasons. So what better way to learn than at a full track day. LMAO this also made for a lot of “close calls” but that’s the name of the game, get close and try not to get f’ed up in the process.

This event gave me a renewed sense of why I love drifting, I was able to learn, improve and have fun all in the same day!

Alex and I transitioning between turns 10 and 11.

 

One of those “close calls”

 

Solo thru turn 3

 

 

It was nice not to have to worry about competition and just have fun. However at the same time there was a part of me that missed competing. I guess it’s just the nature of the beast, there are good competition days and bad.

 

That being said I decided to give the 2012 season a go and signed up for Just Drift’s TopDrift Pro Am series. It is a lot more money to run it than the Thunderdrift series I had previously competed in. Despite the extra money it has been a great experience and I have only been to one round of the series so far. I can’t wait for the next round!

 

 

It was great to be able to compete with actual Pro drivers as well as some of the best pro am drivers in the country! The event staff was really cool and the atmosphere/environment was really friendly and helpful. This is something that to me had been lacking from my previous Pro Am experience. All in all it has been a very positive change for me and my crew to go to the TopDrift series.

 

Andy Hately, Chris Licup and I at WSIR Balcony, TopDrift Round 1, 2012

 

Chris Licup and I

 

Some of you may know this driver from the Icon Motorsports “Bike vs car” drift video… “Officer” Dan Brockett and I

 

 

Also the amount of media coverage and drivers was staggering… 60 drivers showed to qualify for the top 16! As for the media there were tons of people shooting for several different groups. I managed to make it on to a few of them!

 

So hyped to be on this site!!! MotoIQ.com link ===> http://www.motoiq.com/magazine_articles/id/2465/top-drift-round-1.aspx

 

 

OhDamn.com Link ====> http://www.ohdamn.co/2012/04/01/just-drift-top-drift-round-1-part-2/

 

 

Following these events my outlook has changed, I have decided to make some big changes to the car this year and hopefully I will be able to make this a great season!

 

~Rob

Stealth Custom Fab S13 R.U.C.A. January 17, 2012 at 2:20 am

Well this weekend Jon decided it was time to make me a new RUCA for my S13. Somehow during Round 5 of the 2011 Formula D pro am I managed to break/bend my passenger side SPL RUCA. The SPL RUCA’s have been good to me for almost 4 years now, but at this point its time to get some beefier parts.

lol to say the least these new RUCA’s are beefy! They are made from 1.5″ .120 wall DOM tube… I don’t even want to know what kind of impact it would take to break/bend these and hopefully I never find out!

I’ll leave you with some pics to compare the difference.

Original Nissan S13 Ruca on the left and my brand new at the time SPL RUCA on the right.

Here is the bent SPL RUCA after almost 4 years of use.

Now my new Stealth Custom Fab S13/14/15 RUCA.

Michael Jackson Cirque Du Soleil January 10, 2012 at 4:46 pm

Hell yes… it’s going down tonight! Thanks to our boy Alex we got hooked up on tickets!

Woot!!!

DRIFT!!!!!!!!!!!!! January 8, 2012 at 6:00 pm

It’s going down! February 5th 2012 at Thunderhill!

Thanks to Jon of Stealth-Custom-Fab.com I am gonna be able to go to this event. This will be the first time in 2 years that I will be able to just drift for fun and not for a competition. I cannot wait!!!

Goodbye 2011… you were not good to me! January 1, 2012 at 1:31 pm

Happy New year 2012!

To say the least 2011 kicked my ass… despite all indications at the end of 2010 that 2011 would be great and successful new year, it didn’t end up that way.

I know I gave it all I could but life is often not fair. Only thing to do is just keep going and make the best of it, which I believe Kelly and I have done very well.

I hoped that the chances I took in 2011 would pay off but at this point I have to look for some different opportunities to continue drifting and making money in 2012. The 2011 “way of life” has run its course and its time to move on to something that will be better for the future years to come.

I want to thank my friends and family that made this year bearable. Without the few of you this year would have gotten the best of me. So again thank you to my Dad, Jesse, Jason, Andrew, Wes, Jon Frazelle, Heather Frazelle, Samantha Frazelle and most importantly my girl Kelly.

The end of the 2011 Formula Drift Pro Am Season… October 20, 2011 at 8:23 pm

Sorry again for the lack of updates…

Round 5 in short went well, but ended the same discouraging way as every other round this year.

After consulting with Mike Kojima on my alignment settings, Jon and I decided to make a move to what Mike suggested. So for the 5th time this season I am on a new setup that I am forced to learn during the competition. Big thanks to Mike for his help!!!

 

 

With the new settings the car felt great and I was back in the groove for the first time this year, until about mid way through practice when my eccentric bolts on my RUCA and Toe rod started to come loose. I had no idea they had come loose until after the competition was over and had a chance to take a look at my car in the pits.

 

 

Once this happened my car started to act unpredictable, one run it would be great and the next run the car would be all over the place. Thinking that it was “just me” getting used to the new alignment and not an actively changing suspension I opted not to make any more changes to the car during the competition and just deal with it.

On one particular practice run I made an attempt at a backwards entry… it didn’t end well with the car’s suspension actively changing. I ended up going off course real hard, right where Ryan Kado flipped his Corolla last year. This put a hole about the size of a baseball right through my intercooler.

 

At this point my day was done since I didn’t have the money to repair it, but thanks to my girlfriend Kelly it was welded back together at the Thunderhill garage.

 

 

Now that my car was back in contention I headed back out on track to make qualifying, I made 2 good passes which qualified me in 6th place. This in turn gave me a bye run for my Top 16…

My bye run is where it all goes bad… the suspension at this point was done shifting around. The end result is my RUCA is bent and broken and my alignment is fully toe in and as well as cambered in on the passenger side.

 

 

When I went out for my Top 8 runs the car wouldn’t slow down after my initiation into the first turn due to the changed rear alignment, so I ended up off course both runs.

 

 

This left me with a 7th place finish in the point’s race, which isn’t high enough to earn my Formula D license this year.

 

 

I am pretty disappointed to say the least… but my crew, family/friends and I did everything we could to make it happen. This just wasn’t my year I guess.

At this point I do not know if there will be a 2012 season, I broke myself financially this year to make all the Pro Am events. That being said I don’t have the means right now to make a 2012 season happen without finding some more sponsors that are willing to help me pay for tires, entry fee and maintenance on my car.

 

I’ll leave you with a video I made of the 2011 season and some of the carnage pics from Round 5.


 

ANGER!!!! June 7, 2011 at 10:42 pm

I am really pissed off right now, but to remain a professional in this Pro Am series I am in I can’t vent my frustrations the way I would like to.

I will say this tho… this particular series seems to be making it very difficult for me and several others to keep coming back.

That is all for now.

-Rob

Round 1 Formula Drift Pro Am Update! March 30, 2011 at 5:01 pm

I had been working like mad on the car to get it ready for the March 16th Pro Am comp. I didn’t leave my house from the friday night before the event til tuesday the day before the event cuz I was working on the car the entire time. But its all good, everything got done, the car looks and drives fantastic!

My Pro Am results were decent and I am happy with what I got for driving basically a new setup and a new course. I qualified 8th and then ended up with 13th place in the championship points after spinning both times in my tandem runs. The spins ended up being my clutch finally going out on me. After 3 years of abuse on that clutch, im ok with that!

Basically what it was doing was slipping when I was hard on the throttle. So instead of getting full throttle like I wanted I was getting like half the power, this in turn caused me to spin because it was as if I was completely letting off the gas and catching traction at the wrong time. O well time for a new clutch.

Here are some pics of the car as she sits now…

Money, my drift car and my emotions… February 23, 2011 at 4:28 pm

So I need a decent amount of money to buy tires for my drift car… lol this is a never ending tire diet that my car has. I really need to get some more sponsors to help with this. So if anyone out there reading this happens to have some sort of a connect with a possible sponsor please let me know! Either way I am gonna make the 2011 season happen one way or another.

As for my emotions I am pretty beat up right now… i put a lot of work into something that didn’t end up how i had hoped it would end up. As with anything I do, I will just suck it up and deal with it. But I know one thing… I won’t ever put my self out there like that again. I know I did everything I could to make this right, so I guess that’s all that counts is I did my best.

Anyways that is all for now. I will leave you with some pics of the latest progress to my drift car.

-Rob