Larry Chen: Full Carbon HGK C6 Corvette by Drift Games In Ireland Video

Larry Chen Video Transcript

This is [Applause] This is the view right here yeah this is incredible I’m not saying we built this whole area just for this car to look good but we kind of built this whole area for the see because it’s so dark you need somewhere really bright because there’s

A lot of detail on it so it’s not like you can put it in the corner and it looks menacing in the dark but I think when it’s out in the open it looks really nice it looks so good so what is a Corvette to you you know you’re from

Ireland you’re not wearing New Balances you’re not wearing a bun bag yeah yeah and uh jean shorts to be honest it’s it’s like we never got to Corvette obviously and American Imports are super rare and if they are imported to Ireland it’s usually a middle-aged guy with a

You know really reserved taste in cars and I love the shape of the Corvette but I’ve got to say that the inspiration for it came very much from the 24 hour Le Mans yellow and black Corvettes and Matt Fields Corvette because when I saw my field score that I went that’s a sports

Car like a proper sports car not a coupe to look like a sports car not it was before even the A90 it was a proper sports car that looked drifting looked cool to me so he showed a lot of us the way with his with his YouTube series and I was

Like okay let’s see if we can get a C6 so there was none for sale in Ireland there was six for sale in the UK and this one was a stock automatic blue Corvette with chrome wheels and the guy had it fully valeted plastic on the steering wheel plastic on the seats his

Daily driver with his wife low mileage at S3 so the LS3 was why I bought it and then he was like oh I bought it sight unseen because I didn’t care and we brought it I never drove the car one kilometer on the road I said if I drive

It I’ll never strip it so we just got in the same day stripped the whole car and what’s really funny about this car is that we knew we were going to do a kid on it so another guy from the UK bought the entire body of the car the blue body

Oh in 24 hours he had a silver car to a blue car because it all Clips off you know I’m really surprised that this chassis didn’t take off in drifting earlier I think you know it took someone I think Daigo is a good example as well

So when I went to Japan Diego had one in his uh reception area and I just liked the aggressive nature of it I like the Sleek Body Lines I think it it looks a lot more aggressive and then obviously when we built this car hdk which is in

Lafayette who make all of the Euro Fighters carbon body kits they had a Corvette kit they built just for Daigo so that was the first one so they had the molds and started pricing everything up this was supposed to be a much simpler build for me and then it turned

It turned out yeah in Europe strangely we had much more access to good parts for a Corvette in America because hdk did carbon everything that was in Lafayette so we had no import Duty or big shipping cost and then samsonus is in Europe as well so the sequential actually turned out cheaper

Than a manual conversion because I can’t go to a scrap yard get a Corvette and strip it for parts there is none so I’ve got to ship everything you know from the states then we decided to go okay we’re going to fire it up a bit like a drift

Car we did some things differently than Matt did but the cage is very much inspired by what he did the rear structure and that was version one so we had this Corvette in all carbon it was really cool everyone liked it and it’s funny that you mentioned that though

Because when you put this on paper and you tell somebody that it has a Samsung’s transmission it has all hdk uh carbon yeah and a winters to French and in Winter’s Quick Change yep on paper it sounds like you spent so much money on this one but it’s actually I’m not

Going to say I didn’t but it didn’t cost more than if I was trying to build it like someone was building a Pro-Am car in the US because the import Duty for example the four fenders just fiberglass fenders for a Corvette like wide body that’s no problem if you’re in the US it

Costs a thousand dollars but it was fifteen hundred dollars to ship it here because they’re such big awkward parts so a lot of the stuff being in Europe I mean one company which was hdk could send me one crate with everything I needed and obviously it escalated quite

A bit from there we did a little bit like we built the engine we completely built it top to bottom these race manifolds are actually from the 24-hour uh Le Mans car so the company that makes those in California we actually got those equal length headers from them and

They were super pumped to work with this because it was like that they were such an overkill for this that is so cool yeah we got heat wrapped everything and then we have Holly intake which is obviously standard with these the high rise this the fabric education was all

Done and everything else bar that was done in Ireland which is a strange thing because everyone I went to with this car to build it had never even seen one before so they had to figure out the fiberglass panels the bulkheads and what we really find funny about this car in

Ireland it fools everybody that because we painted the chassis silver everybody assumes this is all metal but it’s all plastic everything in a Corvette is plastic the bulkhead’s plastic all this is plastic so it was a weird car to work on but in Ireland and Europe at the time

There was no other one and then obviously tons of Corvettes came along and everybody was drifting them and then we got to a point where maybe Form and Function started to mix a little with the car because I’m not the best drifter in the world and it is easier to make

The car more competitive but I wanted to just look cool so some of the things we did were just for the sake of it looking very good it just it looks so insane and it’s got to be so lightweight now you know what’s funny about the Corvette they’re already lightweight so when you

Build like we’ve built s14s Miatas jzxes and the minute you start ripping all the interior at ripping all the stuff out you go we’re saving 500 kilos blah blah the Corvette is made out of plastic and like aluminum so even though you put all this stuff on it all these panels that

Were now carbon were plastic so they’re not really saving much so you don’t see the dramatic weight loss that you would in a normal drift car when it’s like really heavy sound systems really heavy I’m sure the interior does it but in the body you still have these

Really two heavy chassis legs that run through the car and everything else is plastic and aluminum and that’s the problem when you’re trying to weld to it because you can’t weld to the floor in this car because the floor is fiberglass wood and fiberglass we didn’t know any

Of this so when we would drill the lights for a seat rail wood chippings would come out and we were like what’s happening here so we’d have to mount it if the mount under the car a lot of funny funky stuff to figure out as we

Went along and but it was all once we did the carbon a lot of people were saying why do you do Kevlar it’s so much stronger I just if you think about it from a cost-effective point of view if you buy a fiberglass panel you got to

Paint it or wrap it if you buy Kevlar you got to paint it a wrap it but you buy carbon you can just leave a carbon and it looks full of black no it looks great so black was the whole theme with the car for me originally

Then when we had it looking like a normal Corvette that was in carbon a friend of ours in the UK very good friend of mine Axel he builds a Kevlar one with a three rotor in it so all of a sudden he had the coolest Corvette friendly competition I rang up the iron

At Group D and said look the car works great it’s a great drift car but everyone has Corvettes now they’re not really hitting like they’re used to I need this thing to look like something from Pike’s Peak craziness and he’d already built the Quattro he’d already

Built his own ps13 so we knew we had an imagination I said go as wild as you want so I didn’t even see the design until it was done and he spent three months in the evenings just measuring cutting trying to get stuff together and

This is the the creation of him and then we did delivery very subtle because when I saw it I said this kind of looks like it like a jet fighter right it looks kind of like a something military spec so we did a this kind of military theme

I love it yeah it looks so cool you have drift games Japan Ireland amazing we always say it’s funny because this is one of our logos Japan to Ireland in an American car but it make it makes sense but all our sponsors they’ve had a lot

Of input that all the wiring is link ECU suspension’s all BC I just love this so much because this like rubber skirt makes it look lower than it is it’s very inspired by uh Ralph Welch because if you look at all their Porsches they look

Super low but if you watch them go over a speed bump it’s just a rubber lip so we said well that at least would protect the car if it goes over a curb or something yeah and it looks so good I love all the just this the simple design

Aspect of it it’s just so I don’t know it’s just so different and the fenders are the most like it or hated part of the car but that’s why Darren did them he said nobody’s ever going to talk as much about fenders as they will in this

Car because there is none and he liked the idea that because he saw it was a double McPherson strut he’s like it’s like a single-seater race car so because we have so many suspension sponsors he goes but nobody can see them now you can

See the FDF and the BC you can see it all moving is it a good practical solution absolutely not because when you go into the burnout box and you pick up all the rubber it just fires it straight back up on the windscreen along with all

The water so from a practical point of view it doesn’t work great but from a fun like from a cool looking different point of view I think this angular look kind of matches the hole because the car is quite smooth in terms of lines now it’s quite angular and it’s this crazy

Limp going on too in the front well you’ve got the bumper you’ve got a lip you’ve got another lip and then you’ve got another lips so there’s basically four lips on the front I heard you like lips so we put a lip on your lip on your

Lip yeah so yeah because then sits quite high on these and then the the hardest part is when you buy fresh carbon fiber panels from hdk that are so beautifully made and then Darren hands You Back 40 of them on the floor because he’s cut so many holes and bits into

Them but it worked really really well um again it’s it’s a wild looking car that isn’t over engineered in terms of drifting it drifts really well tell me about the wheels so this is an interesting story so this is one of our sponsors strong wheels and we actually

Designed this wheel so we had a partner that they sold at the wheels and some of them weren’t to my taste you know and I said Hey what if we gave you some ideas for some wheels so we went with something that was like a Blitzle

Three like an AC Schnitzer but all kind of mixed together and we created these and these are the reason these wheels exist is to try and be a cost effective cool wheel for your car because not everyone can afford three-piece Wheels especially Drifters if they’re buying 10

16 wheels so these are like a thousand Euro thousand dollars for four wheels low offsets the back are like ET 10 10.5 so like it looks good on everything the amazing thing about the Corvette is that it runs the same PCD as a BMW so which is really unusual and we have adapters

To run them to Nissan fitment so the same wheels on all our drift cars fit all our drift cars so it’s quite easy to put them together man this thing is so crazy yeah powder coated everything um we’ve done a mix of different colors to kind of give it that military theme

It’s got operated fuel system it’s got the you know it’s all all the stuff you’d expect in a drift car um but not like over the top I think the look is far more over the top than the functionality and for me I’m not a FD Pro I drive at a pro level

But my big thing is I have such a busy schedule I don’t want to go to the track and spend three hours troubleshooting everything on the car simple car what I love about V8 is that it’s either a coil pack or it’s blown up they’re the two

Things you’re looking for when in the VA so you don’t have so much and even if it loses a coil pack you can still drift on seven cylinders we’re in the turbo cars they misfire they break down there’s so many little vacuum leaks or whatever this was just simple So the plan with

This car is now an upgrade so we have a mass Motorsport V8 which is a LS3 stroke to seven liter and the plan is to put that in it with itb’s on electronic throttle with the link ECU and run at 750 na which is the plan I’d have it rev

To nine and a half thousand so that the engine matches the looks because you don’t actually have any other n a cars huh or you don’t you’re not a big n a guy this is the only a car that you have I mean you have this pickup truck and

This is a very different a day this is very slow so is the Datsun but to me American cars should have a V8 I know that sounds like we’re all being very stereotypical but I’m not a huge like I wouldn’t put an LSA in an S14 I like the

Whole JDM style but when I build in America I think that’s what I like about American cars like grunt that that Idol that choppy Cam that stuff I think suits these cars really well and I had an RTR Mustang before this so I got used to the

VA power and and the whole thing and honestly from a sponsorship point of view and that kind of stuff this is such an unusual car that it attracts attention and obviously all of our partners want attention for their products so it’s not about being I’ve realized a long time ago and I’m very

Good friends with James Dean that I can look at him in the yardstick and say that ship has sailed I’m not going to be as good as him but if I do something different it gives me an opportunity to have fun not worry about the wins and

Losses but then when you see kids smile when they see the car or people take photos that’s what it’s all about it’s unusual for Europe all of Europe yeah well I think we’re unusual in the fact that we like being different maybe more than winning because we’re doing it our

Own way so that’s why we built a Corvette which there’s probably three c6s in the whole country and we also built the first SR20 NC Miata because we were like we’ll just be different and even if we’re really bad we’re doing it our way we’re doing it

Our own funky way so it’s like a personality in the car because obviously I should just build a 2js 15 and then I would have a much better competitive car but there’s so many good drivers and I run those championships I’m not getting in the dog fight with them I’d rather be

In the corner looking cool having a fun time and it’s competitive I’ve done this car and I think I maybe done like eight pro events in this car it hasn’t qualified outside the top 10 in any of those events so it works really well but

Is it drift Masters FD level no so yeah that’s basically the emergency release for the trunk and the passenger seats because they are electronic door handles and you can’t have those for competition so a little bit of reworking there it’s very clean in here this is pretty cool

Drift games yeah so a friend of a young guy I think he’s only 19 years of age started doing carbon fiber stuff in Ireland he built us a full forged carbon dashboard for this with our 3D printed printed logo in there and the roof is

Stuck with just a carbon skin on it it’s because of the latches and stuff become an issue when you do the carbon and I like the fact you can take the roof off it it’s another novelty in Europe that most cars don’t have we went for the

Lightest of lightest seats which uh is not the most comfortable but it looks cool and matches the aesthetic of the car some of the interesting things are the fact that all of the controllers are on the steering wheel and we have this kind of cord which you think would be a

Nightmare but it actually works really well and then you’ve got ignition you’ve got your starter wipers all your lights on the steering wheel this is just to be different it doesn’t make it any more competitive in fact the first time I I was in a competition in this car

Um I wanted I was deciding on the start line where I should put my wipers on or not it was just kind of like drizzling down I went into the first corner and tried to put the wipers on but it was spinning the button was spinning around

And I turned the car off in the middle of the drift trying to find the wipers but I managed to turn it back on again without losing too much but um I realized make that decision at the start line so it’s got the whole Loom nothing from the original Corvette’s

Left it’s all rewired custom Loom uh we’ve got a Samsung’s four-speed sequential because I think they’re cheaper and in Europe there are now the same price roughly as a brand new or 154 which I was telling you guys because an r154 no matter where you get it is imported from Japan

Whereas if they’re making this in Europe it’s still a little bit cheaper on custom so samsungases aren’t so bad here we can get parts readily available for them and of course remember the Samsung is in the back of the car so the weirdest thing about the Corvette is

That the gearbox and the diff are joined together yeah so you have a winters onto a samsonus and then a cable runs up to here so the only downside of the Corvette which I’m sure anyone knows is that you have a problem you got to drop

The whole drivetrain out the back of the car so that’s kind of a bit of a pain and my mechanic had to figure all that out himself because he’s never seen a Corvette before so it’s been very reliable it has it was automatic as I mentioned we put in a pedal from a

Manual car but it still has the big brake pedal from the automatic which people knows and you know what I actually quite like it because when you get in a panic it’s easy to find because it’s the biggest battle and a Wilwood uh clutch pedal so

We put the link ECU full Dash in there um the Samsung’s display and then other than that it’s quite simple on the inside fire suppression system and yeah simple is the best I think it’s all just all the fuses and relays they were here but the tunnel got really hot so we put

Them a little bit higher but easy to work on nothing too crazy and like for an American car it’s quite tame in terms of its build in terms of its uh spec but for a European car everything is so unusual to people even the ls’s are kind of unusual so

We’ve learned a lot with it but it’s been super reliable very fun to drive and a lot of grip and like it has about 600 horsepower which is just enough kind of for the tracks we have in Ireland and the UK they’re not Mega huge trucks

Um in Europe you’d want another two or three or both turbo supercharger or whatever on it but I like the Simplicity and it runs on our Pump Fuel which is horrendous fuel here as well we only have one type of fuel so easy cheap I

Can do laps in it and it doesn’t break hey thanks for watching if you want to support us directly go to larrychanprints.com I print and sign every single one of these this is the perfect gift or it’s the perfect piece of art for your wall Happy Foreign [Applause]