April 25, 2009

Spring Cleaning 2009

NEPOC held is 4th year Spring Cleaning meet this sunday! This meets turn out was great, with right around 30 cars this time. All the usual suspects were there, along with plenty of car detailing. Not much to say, other then a big thanks to Mark for allowing us all to come together at his place, and big thanks to everyone for the great time. Below are a few links to the many pictures that people have taken.

Josh's Pictures
Joel's Pictures
Ashley's Pictures
Kim's Pictures
Mark's Pictures

April 19, 2009

1st Day Of The Season!

First day back on the course, and what a course they set out for us! All the usual suspects were there, with their cars ready to go. The course was much longer, with people getting roughly 10 seconds higher on their normal time they used to get on the courses before.

Got a good amount of cone rash to show I was pushing it out there, which is always a good thing. Best time of the day was 1'40! Pretty good, but I know I can get my car into the 1'37 range. Oleg managed to get a 1'35 clean with his Miata and new setup. We'll see next event how well I do. In the meantime, check out all the great pictures here. Big thanks to Oleg for the camera and pics, as well as Gavin for taking some of my pictures as well.

We had troubles with the batteries staying alive throughout the time of the event for the hero camera. But we managed at least 3 videos between me and Oleg's car.

Bob driving my car on the course here.
Oleg had the camera on his helmet for these two videos.
Video 1
Video 2

April 16, 2009

Matching Beauty

Was getting tired of having my LED driving lights be a 6000k type color and my HIDs be the OEM 4300k (which you can REALLY tell it's white since I did the project lens swap). Decided to try Apexcone 6000k HIDs, which I heard is great quality and used by BMW drivers. The results were spot on match, and look excellent. Thanks to Oleg for the help installing these puppies. Top picture is before, bottom is after installation.

April 9, 2009

Patch Work

Took some time to give the car some of the love and car that it deserves the other day. I wanted to remove the side skirts, buff out a scrape that a SUV had left me when I parked in ChinaTown, and remove my foglights. Thanks to the help of Josh, we got right on that.

Removing the side skirts was a bit tedious, as it had to be cleaned from the 3M tape and dust. Then we had to plug the holes with "hole plugs" from Home Depot, painted with touch up paint and clear coated, and then some slight super glue around the edge to make sure it is on against the body firmly. Will have more side shots soon.

Bumper was buffed out, again thanks to Josh. Looks brand new, except for the few rock chips, so looks like someone put white out here and there. Headlights needed a serious makeover as well as they were hazed and scratched from the baking we did. Much better with a much better output.

Lastly, the fogs were simple to remove, just 3 screws from the foglight assembly into the bumper and they're off. The PIAA's I had previously were blown, and I had slowly gotten out of the fog light phase, so I removed them.

More pictures can be seen here. Thanks a million to Josh for the help!

April 1, 2009

Chasing The Touge

Very sorry viewers for the late review! I got caught up getting ready for Autocross and everything else that this had to be pushed aside. That being said, I'll be reviewing the classic, "Chasing the Touge"

Chasing the Touge was pretty good, but not something I'd watch as frequently as a Best Motoring or Hot Version. Many segments within it were mostly informational videos on some teams out in California, and the popular racing events they have going on. Some good footage of what cars were hot back in 2003, and great to hear what some of the teams have to say about how they got started, but all in all it was a documentary and not necessarily a "race video" like Hot Version.

Usually when I watch race videos, I like to see and get ideas from other tuners with what they've done to their car and what they do with their car. With this, it was more of seeing how the teams started and have progressed through the years, and what they do for fun and practice. Decent to buy for your collection, but not on the top of the list.