2012 Wrap Up – Part VII

Before you read on – you may or may not have noticed that my blog is starting to lag real bad. And it’s because of all the pics loaded onto one post and I had the blog show 5 posts at a time. That means over 100 pics at a time. Some pics didn’t work, things would just not show, etc… So I’ve cut it down a bit to help.
Once this wrap up is over, then it’ll go back to normal again. lol

About 3/4 into summer and enjoying every minute of it. I’ve seem to cause a wave of depression among some readers by looking back at the good times and weather. I’ll admit, I’m also pretty depressed about it too haha. I can’t wait to start working on the LS for next year. It’s so difficult going to work every morning and seeing it in the garage… I’ve been thinking of insuring it in the new year, but at the same time – I need to wait. It’ll make it that much better haha

Anyways – let’s continue with August.

The highlight of August was illmotion’s Sunday School Show & Shine. This was the second annual show and it turned out to be just as good, if not better than the first. The main reason the show was created was because we didn’t have a Driven/DTP show that year. It ended up being such a great show because the cars you wouldn’t normally see at a formal event, ended up coming out. There’s a lot of support when it comes to Sunday School and it’s awesome to see. Guys from Edmonton and all over come down to hang.

Diana and I started the month off by getting our cars ready for the show. Take note – Diana washes her fit a total of 3 times a year if it’s lucky. By that I mean, I wash it 3 times a year because if I didn’t – it would be 0 times a year.

I made Diana clean hers outside lol. I was in the sun all day and it hurt to even have heat on my skin.

Not impressed… haha she was moaning and groaning the whole time. LOL

Look at how white those wheels are. I hate how it only lasts 20km before they’re dirty again.

yum

I even did my best to clean the barrels for tomorrow.

Again – I stated this in the original post… Those aren’t her crocs LOL. If I didn’t clear that up, she’d probably kill me.

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Some highlights from the show. I never really did post much of the cars on my own blog because they were up on illmotion. I think I’ll have to do redo the pics and post them again.

Scott’s Honda Fit. I’ve been a fan of this ever since I saw him cruising in Edmonton when we were down there for the season opener. The style is out there and it’s definitely different but I enjoy how it’s put together.

Jeevs’ S13 and his Cars sun shade.

Devon and his matching combo. Looks so good with the perfectly matching paint. Probably the cleanest in the city

Ricky and his bagged and JDM-inspired GTI. Still sick.

My beater.

Corey’s Civic on Meisters. Still sweet.

Autodream’s clean S14 also on Meisters. My favourite wheel ever.

Tommy’s newly acquired rootbeer EG. Also a fan of this look. Nice and clean.

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Corey and Ryan finally had some time to meet up with me to shoot video of my car. We got some good footage that day and it was pretty chill. The video also turned out awesome cause he put it to Jay-Z and Kanye West’s – Otis. LOL gangster.

Look at the trucks in this pic. If I turned around, the whole lot was full of just more trucks haha

GoPro on the front and on the back.

Video gear

Corey doing his thing…

Corey and Ryan discussing other angles to shoot. It was a nice location for what it was.

I told him not to forget the wing lol.

One of my favourite shots. The hill in the background was where all the BMX riders were riding and occasionally you’d see one pop up on the jump and I was trying to wait for one but it took forever and there was nothing that came up.

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We also got a chance to shoot Urban X’s M3 this summer. Super clean and they had been working on it all winter and just got it ready. Luckily for me – I was given the opportunity to get at it first. Fitment, paint, interior – everything was on point. Other than the shoot – my intercooler elbow was slipping and resulted in me driving an NA Impreza all day LOL.

Nice and quiet downtown. You can see the M3 in the background. That’s all you get for now!

Right after the cop left and everybody is still laughing about what just happened.

Had to pull the intercooler off. The red hose in the middle of the picture is what came off. Upon closer inspection, the hose itself is pretty worn and eaten down on one side so no matter how much we tighten it with a clamp, it just slips right off. I can’t even find Samco hoses or anything to replace it. If anyone knows of anything, let me know! Thank god it was only that and nothing else.

Nice and quiet downtown. You can see the M3 in the background.

Right after the cop left and everybody is still laughing about what just happened.

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Rich, JC and I decided to head to the Japanese Festival that was going on near downtown. JC’s dad and his buddies were all asked to put their OG cars in the show which was a cool touch so we went to check it out.

First pic where the 10-20 messed up. It’s not actually focused – I’m just lucky I had the aperture stopped down enough to capture SOME detail. We ended up parking in some neighborhood area that said we weren’t allowed to enter. Entered anyway haha

The festival setup. It wasn’t huge or anything, just a little small get together it seemed – it was pretty cool. On the left, Country Hills Toyota came and brought a bunch of their cars – you can see their Hello Kitty Scion in pink.

The other pic that really pissed me off. I was bummed cause I only took one pic of JC’s dads car and it turned out shitty.

Classic. We were all discussing after looking at it for a while how you can see where the S2000 got its lines.

The Japanese drum we all wanted to play with haha

The peeps soaking up the sun. So hot…

A bunch of Japanese goods were on sale. The masks were pretty cool.. hahaha

Lots of games for the kids too. And a bunch of them were dressed up in their kimonos too haha

The line up for food that they eventually ran out of too early into the event.

This was the coolest display there. A bunch of handcrafted knives for sale ranging from $50 all the way up to $200. They looked pretty bad ass too with their engravings and little details.

I was given the chance to try the $50 knife and it was so smooth. Then she handed me the $150 knife and it’s hard to believe it could be even better. The two pieces of ginger in the middle were cut by yours truly. It’s amazing that it cut the ginger like butter and ginger isn’t easy to cut with a shitty knife.

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August was really slowing down with all the cool shit we could do. I spent some time looking back at my Civic and going through it’s stages. I’m going to repost the whole thing cause I still feel the same about the whole fake parts shit.

“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.”

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We also made some new friends out in Toronto over the summer. The guys of Level One are super chill guys that have a crew of nothing but sick cars. They lay low, but they are legit. When JC and everyone went down to Toronto for the car show there, they met up with all the Level One peeps and they gave us some stickers to rock. Still love it and I’m going to rock it on the LS too.

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Was also getting FRS fever at the time. Mainly because of the Rocket Bunny kit. I was at the point where I was so ready to get rid of the STI and just move on. I just didn’t want to go through the trouble of parting it and selling it, etc. Richard just got one and let me test drive his and check it out which was awesome. It’s a nice car, but it’s not for me. It’s one of those cars that I’d take for free, but I probably wouldn’t pay for it.