Story
So a couple of seasons has passed with the CLK chassi and we felt that we had a quite competitive platform as we went through the 2018 season, this how ever is where it starts to get interesting. Now that we have figured out a base line for the car where it performs well and holds together, it’s time to take it to the next level step by step and that is what the 2019 season will be all about! This off season will be the most calm one we have had in many years when it comes to rebuilding the car, we have decided that we will only do a few but very important changes coming in to the season to make sure we don’t have to start from zero. One of our biggest challenges with the clk right now is the weight, so we are trying to focus on reducing the weight on every area that we are rebuilding.
Rebuild 1: One of the things we are doing this winter is rebuilding the fuel system, we are going from a traditional external surge tank setup to a Nuke Performance CFC Unit setup. This is a replacement lid for the 24 bolt patterned fuel cells that includes a built in surgetank and feeder pump setup that will be inside the fuelcell instead of the external version. This helps us save a couple o kilograms both in hoses, surgetank weight and brackets.
Rebuild 2. We are changing to a new set of KW Suspension competition coilovers that also saves us a couple of kilograms compared to our old coilover setup, this will also improve the handling of the car as well as gaining more grip that always is a important factor when it comes to competitive drifting.
Rebuild 3. After more than 5 years running our current ECU setup we are about to change to a new brand of ECU! We have been struggling with some problems back and forth with our current setup and we are very excited to announce that Autogruppen are helping us replace it with a Emtron KV8 Ecu. Emtron is a Australia based company which produces high quality Ecu’s and they are focusing on market between the standard ECU brands and top level brands that are extremely costly.
Rebuild 4. When running a unique chassi like the CLK it means that you can hardly buy anything of the shelf for the car, this means we produce a lot of the parts ourselves and this often means that we maybe don’t have the time to make spares. So this off season we are working hard on making sure we have spare control arms and all of the parts that are exposed to wear and tear in drifting. Our season kicks of at the traditional season starter Bilsport Performance & Custom Motorshow in Jönköping 19-20 of April, this is Scandinavias biggest car and bike show and they host a competition called Påsksladden (Easter Drift). This is a single event with a lot of spectators and media so it’s definitly one of the best events of the year! After that event we head up to Gatebil Vålerbanan were our first round of the Gatebil Drift Series takes place, this is a drift series where the best in Scandinavia competes during the awesome Gatebil festivals. So that means its always a good time no matter what, the 2019 championship features 4 rounds which includes Vålerbanan, Mantorp Park, Rudskogen and Mantorp Park again! This will be our main focus as a team and will be the only full championship we take part in during 2019. Besides the drift series we are going take part in the Gatebil main event at Rudskogen in July, this will host the Gatebil Super 3 competition where we will compete as well as the Breisladd. Outside of the Gatebil events we have some events we are planning/interested in but we are not going to release them quite yet! If you want to see more of Team Lovetap then we suggest you follow the following accounts:
https://www.youtube.com/user/stangbergWeekly Vlog episodes!
https://teamlovetap.com/shopMerch to support our drifting dreams!
Photos and editorial thankfully supplied by Pixeldesign, Digifi and Team Lovetap, Mårten Stångberg.
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