Got an e-mail from Toda Racing USA that my surge tank came in. Picked it up today!

Just need money for a standalone and retune!

Yep, you heard it: Falken R-Compounds.  Unfortunately, they’re not for sale.

And Falken’s Miss Randyl Dawn.

This past weekend, I drove up to San Jose (Santa Clara, to be specific) to visit a friend.  It was a 5 hours, 340 miles drive.  Overall, it was a pretty awesome drive.  I took the Interstate 5 to the State Route 152 to US Route 101.  The 152 was an amazing scenic drive, especially next to the San Luis Reservoir State Recreation Area.  On the 5, I opened up the throttle quite a bit.  Of course, I slowed down anywhere the California Highway Patrol would possibly camp out behind.  With the Toda camshafts, individual throttle bodies, and short gearing, it’s just a pleasure to drive.  For a naturally aspirated Honda, it’s a lot of power to play with on the open highway.  In Central California, I hit moderate amounts of rain.  My Falken RT-615Ks held up great in the rain; I was driving and passing people at 80+ MPH without any wheel spin or hydroplaning.  Oh, and I got 23 MPG on the highway.

For those curious how I dealt with exposed ITBs and hydrolocking, Kelvin and Charles hooked up some Tracwrap.  The best way to describe Tracwrap is that it’s a easy-to-apply and removable clearbra that comes in a roll.  I applied it over my C-West hood vents.  After 700 miles of highway driving, speeds excess of triple digits, and couple hours of rain, my Tracwrap was still 100% adhesive to my hood, kept my engine bay 100% waterproof, and was easily removed without lifting clearcoat.  I know the point of Tracwrap isn’t to cover hood vents but to prevent rock chips on the racetrack.  If Tracwrap can cover a vent under these extreme conditions, it can protect your bumper from rock chips.

Here’s a few pictures of my car, Thadya’s Integra, and David’s Prelude.  A big thank you for their hospitality!  For those curious why the photos were taken in a storage facility, it’s because I rented one to park my car for the weekend.

If you look closely in this picture, I really need an oil catch can.  I have blow-by spewing everywhere.  Right before this picture was taken, I actually wiped some of it off.

My friend took me to Santana Row in San Jose.  The ghetto/hood is the first thing that comes to mind when I hear Santana Row.  In reality, it’s an upscale outdoor mall.  Snapped a few pictures of Tesla and their store there.

On Saturday, we went up to San Francisco and explored.  We decided to try out the House of Prime Rib.  Since we didn’t have any reservation, it was 2-3 hour wait.  We found a highly rated coffee shop, Contraband, around the corner and killed time there.

After a 2.5 hour wait, we came back to this.

It was a pretty epic dinner.  Danced it all off at Ruby Skye, left the club at 3am, and got back home at 4am.  Awesome trip to NorCal!  Can’t wait for round #2!

Dat and I have been pretty crazy busy with life and haven’t updated the blog much.  Anyways, I went to SEMA this year and snapped a handful of pictures of Rauh Welt’s Porsche at the Falken Tire booth.

When a buddy mentioned to me that Rauh Welt was bringing a Porsche, I assumed they were bringing one over from Japan.  I didn’t realize that Rauh Welt actually set up a shop in the States.  I’ve always dreamed of sending a Porsche back to Japan to be worked on by Rauh Welt.  Of course, because of the logistics, it would be financially impossible for me.  At least with Rauh Welt USA, I can just drive my future Porsche, which I don’t have, up to Northern California and drop it off, along with couple bags of cash, which I don’t have.

Ok, these looks like a creeper shot but I swear I was already sitting on the ground trying to take these photos before a Falken model got into the picture.

Nakai-san himself did all the body work on this first US Rauh Welt Porsche, including painting of these accents.

My buddy, Robert from Falken, said I could sleep in this car.  Broke my heart when he told me he was kidding. :\

I needed to meet up with Ali at Toda Racing USA and decided to also make a Cars and Coffee trip. Was pretty stoked to see our imports get a lot of love from the crowd throughout the entire morning.

Aside from my ITBs and Baldy’s turbo, a lot of people were very interested in our wheels/tires/brakes setup.

Pretty proud to see our imports to get a lot of positive attention in a meet catered towards classics, exotics, and rare cars.  The reason I say that is because there’s always a handful of stock imports (or poorly modified) at Cars and Coffee; they shouldn’t be parked in the exhibitors’ lot because they don’t get any attention at all.

Modified Magazine finally released an online copy of my feature. For awhile, I couldn’t repost any of the original JPEG (opposed to scanned images) because of the usual exclusivity agreement. Anyways, here they are!

This picture wasn’t part of the Modified shoot but was taken by my buddy, William, of Night-Import.  Figured some of the guys would appreciate this. :)

Our Jason MacGill made Rev Speed’s MOD (Mitsubishi Owners Day) coverage with all 3 of his cars: Greddy Eclipse and Tomei Powered Ralliart and Evo.  For those who don’t know what Rev Speed is, it’s a pretty well known and popular Japanese monthly car magazine.  You can find them at your local Japanese bookstore (Kinokuniya).  Very special you to Tomei Powered in organizing this for Jason.

It’s kinda scary how similar our builds are.  For example, we’re both gold wheels on black cars.  My old wheels were Volk LE37s; Kelvin’s old wheels were Advan RG2s.  We both have C-West hoods, ARC cooling, OMP steering wheels, Bride seats, and giant wings.  The main difference is that he’s boosted and I’m all motor.

Well, this is more of a “few shots of my car and the Falken Tire booth” than a “Part 1″.  You’ll have to excuse the sub-par picture quality of my Motion coverage.  My Canon XTi has a max ISO of 1600, which isn’t sufficient for the indoor lighting and also results in extremely grainy pictures.  Some of the pictures were shot with a 24-70mm f/2.8 L lens but the XTi’s limitation resulted in grain and motion blur.  For the non-photographers, it basically means my camera sucks and I need a better one, LOL!  Moving on…

Here’s my obligatory few paragraphs on Double D Garage and friends’ awards at Motion.  For Motion’s “inaugural” (and seemingly very successful) show, I was very honored in taking 2nd place Acura.  When I say “inaugural”, it’s because the original Spocom staff split from their original management, Pro-Motion Distributing.  The original Spocom staff continued Spocom with their Anaheim venue couple weeks ago.  The original management, Pro-Mo, continued the venue as the Motion Auto Show.  Anyways, here’s a list of Double D Garage’s winners and friends.

2nd Place Acura: Falken Tire’s (me) DC5
Best Mitsubishi: Kelvin’s DoLuck Evo
Best JDM: Kelvin’s DoLuck Evo
3rd Place Nissan: Peter and Theresa’s LS1 S14
Best VIP: JonJon’s IS350

A big congratulations to Autofashion and Peter’s new “team”, 1Up, for a successful sweep of many trophies.  I’m a tad bit surprised 1Up didn’t take a team trophy because it was pretty clear (even to the MC) that they took home a ton of trophies.

Carrying on and at last year’s Spocom, you guys might remember I was a booth car for Falken.  A week ago or so, Falken invited me again to be a booth car for Motion.  I felt pretty honored and stoked about this opportunity because I imagined vendors, in general, would want a “new and fresh” booth car.

Here’s a picture of my car and the Falken booth.  I think the Falken booth had the best spot of the show.  Between having the best spot, models, and critically acclaimed Hondas, I got a ton of exposure and attention that would have been impossible anywhere else in the show.  A big thank you to Bakari and Brian for making this happen for me!

Before I forget, I also want to thank Pro-Mo’s Paul Nguyen for taking care of Double D Garage’s press passes.  For someone that was running around and probably stressed, I really appreciated his effort in insuring everything went according to plan with my car and maintaining exemplary customer service.  Paul, I know you probably won’t read this but just wanted to put it out there!