Tires Don’t Last Long On LS3-powered S14 Drift Car
With 500 horsepower on tap, this S14 is in its natural habitat sliding around a heliport.
Tires are meant to be destroyed. At least that’s what we think here at LS1Tech. And aside from a burnout contest, your best bet to see a tire’s life significantly shortened will be when a drift car fires up into life. Zach Mitchamore has a vehicle for this kind of job, and he brought it to The Hoonigans to showcase. It’s a custom-built (they all are) S14 drift car outfitted with a Thompson built LS3. Fully forged, the LS3 runs 11:1 compression, and puts down about 500 wheel horsepower. Driven through a G-Force GSR dog box, it’s a precision tool for burning rubber with the crew at Lone Star Drift.
For Mitchamore, this car was also a learning process. Much of the front end has been cut away and re-built, tube-frame style. He and his father built it, with Mitchamore learning welding along the way. “After chopping off the front of the car, we just went at it,” he says. “You can kinda see the welds progress, too, so it’s not the prettiest but it definitely gets the job done,” he added.
This tubed front-end allowed some drift specific modifications to be made easier, like lower control arms extended by 25mm, and deeper wheel wells that allow 265-section width rubber up front. That same size tire is out back as well so when one set gets burnt out, they just get swapped back to front and more burnouts can commence. Handling wise, things are surprisingly soft with Function & Form coilovers, and, interestingly, a lot of toe-in at the rear, too.
Paint is unique for a drift car, incorporating a low rider look with a laced paint job on the roof. “It’s a paint base coat, and then you lay lace over it and do two coats of the same color you initially sprayed,” says Mitchamore. But we know the best look on the car is with some shredded rubber added to the rear bumper.
Join the LS1tech forums today!
