Sorry for the lack of any kind of update lately. Not much has been going on really. All the guys left to go to Toronto for Import Fest, I’ve been getting into Football so I’ve been pretty much outside most days and I’ve also been nursing thighs back to normal after pulling all of the muscles in them last Thursday from running for a touchdown. That’s what happens when you get old and when you don’t stretch. Things start to break on you just when you thought you were still on top of the world.

Not much has been going on in the car world here either. I’ve said it a few times before and I keep coming back to it – I’m bored of it all. I’m bored of my car and I don’t have much left I really want to do to it. I don’t have that itch anymore and I guess it’s kind of good, kind of bad. Good because now I can save my money and do other things with it, bad because it’s been my hobby for years and when you don’t want anything to do with it anymore, what else is there to do? Maybe it’s because I need to find new inspiration and once in a while, I’ll get the itch but not enough to scratch it, you know? I have been seeing the Greddy Rocket Bunny FR-S lately and I really just want to sell the STI as is and buy the FR-S just to start over again. But at the same time, I’m at that point in my life where I don’t have time to play with cars as much anymore and it ends up being a weekend thing. What a bummer.

The other thing that’s been really bothering me is all this talk about fake parts and real parts. Fake parts don’t make you a lame person and real parts don’t entitle you to have an attitude that you’re everything but lame. If it looks good, it looks good. That’s it. I don’t take sides when it comes to the real vs fake debate – if it has been executed nicely, there’s not much else to say. The dude with the real parts will almost always talk shit about the guy rocking fake ones which in turn leads to some sort of disconnect in the car community. Now the guy with the “fake” parts always needs to find some way to justify why he has them. Why? Who cares. People on the internet are just that – people on the internet. Keyboard warriors that like to get in your face, but at the end of the day, it’s still your car. I don’t waste my time hating on a car that I don’t drive because I don’t have to drive it. Why does everyone else?

Too many people trying to impress other people that don’t matter around here. Get over yourself.
ANYWAYS – anyone can beat that topic to hell and back and nothing will ever get accomplished. To redeem myself, I’ll just post some flashback pictures of my Civic and the transformation it went through when I still had it. I don’t really miss it – but I do wish I could have kept it to be my winter beater the way I had it in its final stages. That would be nuts.

This was when I got my first set of “real” wheels. Funny that it kind of relates to my rant above. When I was shopping around – I knew nothing about the real and fake debate going on. I didn’t know brands, I didn’t know size or offset… nothing. I was looking at Rota’s, Tenzo’s, ADR’s… the mainstream stuff that most car places have in stock or on their display room. When I called Andrew at Tunerworks (who no longer works there), I was asking him about some Rota’s and he mentioned that I should look into Work wheels. My main concern was the price and he said it was only a few hundred more to get the XT7’s over the Rota’s I wanted. At the time, the “few hundred more” was still a lot and after some going back and forth, he convinced me to get them and I ended up with 17×7 +45 XT7’s in bronze 3 months later. I appreciate the guidance towards them because I really did like them. At the time, I only had the HFP front and rear, Mugen sides and Function/Form Type II coilovers. That was it.

The next season came around, I was tired of the XT7’s mainly because they were a little narrower than I had liked. Again – I knew nothing about sizes back then. I sold them, totally forgetting about the turnaround time that these wheels have and was left running my winters on steelies for a month or two. Will at Speedtech helped me out and found a set of Gram Light 57 Maximum’s that were in stock. Not really my first choice of wheels – in fact, they weren’t my choice of wheels at all LOL. I just couldn’t stand rolling on steelies all summer so I just got them. They looked alright – really just a waste of money though haha. By this time, I added the Greddy Ti-C and a set of DC2 Recaros. Still simple.

The Gram Lights didn’t last very long. I didn’t even like them. I felt like I was just stuck with them, kind of like when your parents buy you things that you “have” to like and keep for a while until you “outplay” it and then have a reason to say that you don’t like them anymore. Will mentioned that he could get a great deal on a set of TE37’s – at the time, those were my dream wheels. White volk TE37’s? Hell yeah. I picked them up and they were staggered. 17×8.5 +40 and 17×7.5 +30. I ran a FWD stagger with 245’s up front (easily) and 225’s in the rear. The Civic’s wheel wells were massive up front, I could have fit 255’s if I wanted without rub. Funny because I’m only running 235’s on my STI haha. I also got rid of the coils prematurely thinking that I wasn’t able to go low with the wider front fitment. I went back to the Eibach sportline springs (WTF coilovers to springs, right?). I think this stage was the shittiest stage of the car. It was so high, the wheel fitment was kind of weak aside from the 245 up front and it just looked so bland and lame. I think this proves that “real” or “nice” wheels don’t always make the car. Execution is important.

The final stage of the car. I had to step it up. I now knew about fitment, offset, and everything I needed to know about being a total JDM ricer. I really didn’t care what anyone thought because the J’s wing and everything else I had done to it was bad ass as f***. When you go to the extremes, you get two things: a lot of attention and a lot of people that don’t understand why you did what you did. I moved onto aggressive 2PC Meisters 18×9 +26. I got new Buddy Club N+ coilovers, J’s Racing 1500mm GT wing, S2000 Carbon Spoon diffuser, and J’s lip and got lower. Crazy how a few things can change it from mild to aggressive. I wish I had known that the STI sucked at fitting wheels – unlike the EVO X which can fit massive wheels, otherwise I would have kept the Meisters and put them on. Like I said earlier, I wish I could have kept it as is just to use it in the winter or drive around when I didn’t feel like driving the STI. I still have it and guess what – it sits on Rota’s now and it still looks decent.

Moral of the story – who gives a hoo about what you do to your car.