Exclusive Content: Bisimoto’s 1004HP 2012 Civic from Total Honda Magazine…
I got together with Bisi Ezerioha a couple months back to shoot these shots of his 2012 Civic Si for a U.K.-based Honda publication. They had contacted me about possibly doing this for their magazine in early February and since Bisi is a buddy of mine, I didn’t hesitate to do it. I am very familiar with the car since I was there when he was putting it together for SEMA of last year and I also later wrote the story for it for Super Street magazine. Since we don’t get Total Honda here stateside on our newstands, I’m just going to post up the shots I did here on the site. It’s a bi-monthly publication and this issue has come and gone so you’ll have to contact them if you want to get a hard copy of it. I recently shot DPK David’s coupe for them as well and when a month or so goes by, I’ll go ahead and post those up too. I was pretty happy with how these shots came out because I didn’t have a whole lot of time to work with. Bisi’s Civic was down at Extreme Dimensions getting various things done to it so I shot the car outside of their facility. It was dusty and they literally pushed the car outside since it had been there for awhile and there was no race gas left in the tank. Bisi met up with me down there and when I got to Extreme Dimensions, I found out that they were closing shop at like 6:30pm or so, which meant that I had less than two hours to knock out the shoot. As I stated earlier, I’m pretty familiar with the car so I knew all the little intricacies that had to be captured for the feature. This shoot also marked my first official magazine cover too, so I wanted to really make sure that I did a good job on the photos. The magazine has a completely different audience as well so the people flipping through it probably have no idea who Stickydiljoe is or what The Chronicles is all about. To them it was just another guy shooting for a magazine so I wanted to make a good first impression. The photos, I feel, are some of my best to date and I am very happy to present them to you today…
I apologize for the lack of an update yesterday as I was going through over 500 photos from the recent USDM Jam 9.0 event. I’ll start on the first part of that coverage tomorrow but today, it’s a Bisimoto Tuesday. There are also a stack of online orders that I have to get out tomorrow morning so my time as been occupied with that as well. Same rules apply as usual…click on the links below for larger versions. At the end, I’ve attached a 1080P-sized desktop wallpaper for you guys…
Oh I should also mention that in the past, I’ve noticed that a lot of people who repost my images of Bisimoto stuff tend to crop out my watermark. If you are going to post these images up elsewhere, DO NOT FUCK WITH MY WATERMARK. These images are my copyright property. Despite what you may think about them being on the web, they are not “free game” for you to do whatever you want with them. I don’t care if you save them and post it on Facebook or whatever the fuck, but seriously, leave my watermark on there and don’t alter the image in any way…
Thanks for looking…
Back tomorrow with part 1 of the USDM Jam 9.0 Coverage!
Exclusive Content: Unpublished Photos of Brian Arias’ Civic from Import Tuner Nov. ’11…
These batch of photos are actually pretty old considering the amount of work that has come through my desk already. I usually post up the unpublished photos of various shoots I did a month after they have appeared in print. Somehow this had slipped through the cracks and I noticed I hadn’t posted these up when going through my computer last night. I’ve known about Brian Arias and his Civic for quite a while now but never really considered it for a magazine feature. Okay, that sounds bad, but it’s not. You have to sort of look at the wide spectrum of the Honda community these days and there are just so many builds out there that are way more intricate and just full of parts and custom fabrication. There is just so much competition these days and it’s rare to see a Civic as simple as Brian’s in a magazine. Charles Trieu, the head honcho over at Import Tuner, requested that I find this car and do a story on it for his magazine. I already knew Brian so it was pretty easy to get a hold of him. Charles is more of an old school Honda head. He’s built Hondas in his time as well and his EF was pretty well known from back in the early 2000s. Charles has a bit of a unique eye and likes more simplified builds such as this one so it made sense that he wanted this car. You can almost think of this feature as a “throwback” of sorts in comparison to the Hondas you more commonly see today. It’s remarkably clean and very straight to the point. There isn’t anything over the top on the car and almost has a bit of a timeless feel to it because the parts you see on it would be relevant in any era. I personally love the color on this car and it really shows how clean the paint is in the photos…
I normally don’t like shooting in the valley (818 area), but it’s cool to shoot in other locations that aren’t downtown LA. I had to get this shoot finished during the middle of the week too to meet a deadline so it was just easier to shoot it up in a spot where there wasn’t much traffic and cars passing through. The spot I chose to shoot at is a regular spot of mine, though I don’t know why I shoot there because I am never happy with how the photos come out, haha. It’s just a really cramped area and I don’t like shooting in places where it is very compact. Especially for a darker car such as Brian’s where reflections become a huge factor in the outcome of the photos. All in all, I think these photos came out decent in print. It was my first time shooting for Import Tuner and it was a big deal for me to try to make it look good so that I could continue to get work from Charles. These were published back in November of 2011 but if I remember correctly, it was such much earlier than that, possibly around the middle of 2011.
Same rules apply as usual. You know the routine, click the links below each photo for a larger version. I’ve also taken the liberty of including the other photos that were actually published as well since the ones on the IT site are pretty small in size….
Click here for the original story in Import Tuner…
Thanks for looking…
Weekend Warriors…
While the last couple weeks have been a total snoozer, this past weekend proved to be quite an eventful one for all of us… I really didn’t have that many things planned because I was busy organizing a surprise birthday party, but everything sort of came together and produced a pretty memorable weekend. The weather here has been pretty strange lately but the sun was out long enough on Saturday where I actually had the opportunity to get some work done… As for the site itself, I apologize if there has been a lack of heavy consistent updates lately, but there just isn’t that much going on. In terms of automotive events, this month as well as the next will be few and far between. Everything will pick up in the summer time so I guess we can just chalk up this time as the proverbial “calm before the storm”. There are meets here and there and I will try to get out to cover some of them but I don’t always know about them until a day or so before and there are times when I already have regular life events planned but trust me, I will try my best to get out there… Now, onto what happened over the weekend….
It was May’s birthday this week so I really wanted to throw a surprise party for her. She’s thrown a couple for me in the past so I thought it would be cool to try to surprise her. I didn’t go in with high hopes because she tends to ask a high volume of questions for everything but I just decided to do what I could to surprise her. I just needed a couple of distractions here and there. She took a couple days off from work for her birthday as well which made things more difficult to organize but luckily I have some great friends who were willing to lend a helping hand. We went out to dinner a couple times on the nights leading up to the weekend, which we all hoped would lead her astray from thinking we had anything planned. I also had to take care of some stuff for work so it was good timing that the girls had to get together in the morning to go do their thing…
I woke up early in the morning to meet up with DPK David to shoot his EJ1 Civic coupe for a U.K.-based magazine (Total Honda) that I recently started to do work for. Many of you who are familiar with his coupe know that it’s been featured twice here in the states within the last 6 years or so, but I thought it would make a good feature vehicle for an overseas magazine. It’s a popular build here in the states but I feel that it is still mostly unknown outside of our borders. We’ve always talked about me doing the story on his build in the past, but things just never came together for that to happen. When his car was featured back in ’06 for Honda Tuning, I wasn’t even working in the industry yet and when it appeared in Import Tuner mag a couple years ago, I hadn’t started doing work for IT yet. I don’t feel that the U.K. has very many well-known K-swapped Hondas yet, especially coupes, so I thought that it would be cool to get David in there. I think a lot of people sleep on his build too because of the fact that it’s a coupe and not the more popular hatchback. In any case, the opportunity came up for me to finally man the feature for his build and I seized it. It’s cool of Total Honda U.K. to put their trust in my abilities to pick a good car and that’s why I like doing work for them. Hopefully their target audience enjoys the story. If not, it’s all good though because I would have shot the car just for fun anyways. He’s recently added a couple new things here and there and this current look is probably the best yet….
We got to the shoot location around 7am and the sun had just risen. Rodrez from Honda Tuning was also shooting at the same location not too far away from us as well so he stopped by to hang out for a bit after he finished. The weather was surprisingly pleasant compared to the last couple weekends I had shot out in L.A. so I wasn’t interrupted with constantly having to blow my runny nose… It took a couple hours but I was pretty happy with the overall results. After Rodrez took off to go home and take care of his baby, my buddy Jae Bueno randomly cruised by to say what’s up. Jae runs his own blog as well (www.jaebueno.com) where he does something similar to what I do here, but for the ever-popular Socal Lowrider community. Jae has been a fan of this site for quite some time, even though he isn’t a Honda head himself, and has always been very kind to me whenever we have run into each other at events. He also shoots for Lowrider magazine and he was down in L.A. that morning to shoot a car. He set-up down the way from us and after I finished shooting David’s coupe, we cruised over there to check it out…
We loaded-up my camera gear and drove a couple feet down to where Jae was. His wife was busy shooting the model alongside the Chevy pick-up and I chatted with Jae for a quick minute before he was called over to help. I asked if it was cool if I could grab some shots for the site and he obliged. The location was a perfect spot, I think, for the shoot but I don’t envy him having to shoot a build that had dark paint which mirrored everything around it. The curves of the truck also looked like it would be challenging since it would reflect everything around that area. On Saturdays it also tends to be busy because the adjacent businesses are still open, unlike Sundays when it’s a ghost town in the early mornings…. Click here if you want to see a larger version of the above photo….
I only stayed for a couple of minutes because I didn’t want to intrude but I remember Jae Bueno telling us that this model drove all the way out from New Mexico just for this shoot… With the way gas prices are, I would imagine it would have been better to fly but she didn’t want to miss out on the chance to be in Lowrider magazine so she hopped in her car and made the trek out to the mean streets of L.A. in her bikini, haha… Click here for a larger version of the above photo…
After saying bye to Jae Bueno and his wife, we decided to get out of the area and head back home. Rodrez had mentioned that there was an event going on that afternoon at one of the Source Interlink offices so I hopped on Facebook for some details. It wasn’t a heavily advertised event but it wasn’t too far away so I went. It was a small meet that Super Street and Import Tuner put together to coincide with the Formula D tech day that was going on down at the Irvine offices. There was an interesting mix of cars but it was a pretty small turn-out in comparison to most meets. They didn’t expect much from it anyway since there wasn’t much promotion behind it….
I’ll be perfectly honest, I don’t follow drifting much these days and I didn’t even know when Formula D was taking place, but it was interesting to see all the new drift builds popping-up. I am not even involved enough to know if drifting is even remotely as popular as it once was but apparently there is still a pretty strong following… I didn’t recognize any of the cars besides the Garage Boso S15 so I used that day as sort of a re-introduction into the drifting scene…
We stayed for maybe an hour or two and I managed to get a pretty solid batch of photos. I’ll post them up tomorrow when I finally get a chance to go through all of them but this is all you guys will see from that event today. The SC430 drift car is supposed to be a pretty big deal and from what I saw while I was there, this thing is pretty intense. Just the custom fabrication alone was impressive. It didn’t matter that the car wasn’t finished and without a colorful graphical livery. We chatted with some people that were more familiar with the car and they said it was Achilles Tires newly-sponsored drift vehicle. I got more pics, but again, I’ll post them up tomorrow…
The girls coincidentally were in the same area as us so they drove by and met up. Rodrez and Tes also came by with baby Maddox…
This little guy is growing up so fast and will be the first Chronicles regular before he’s even spoken his first word, haha….
Most of us had woken up early in the morning so we parted ways to rest-up before the night’s festivities. Everything had come together pretty easily for May’s surprise birthday party so it was just a matter of getting to the restaurant that evening….
This photo was taken this past weekend but the owner of this Civic, Sam Ip-Nguyen, is the owner of the restaurant that we’d be having May’s party at. Sam is a great guy and was more than happy to host the surprise party for us. His girlfriend Linh also helped out and prepared everything from the food to the decorations for us so I basically had nothing to worry about. For those wondering, Sam’s restaurant is called Hoy’s Wok and it’s on Sunset Blvd. It’s a Chinese food spot and the food is great. He’s there 7 days a week as the main chef so I highly recommend going there if you like Chinese food. The guy knows how to cook and has great taste in cars. Support your fellow enthusiast and stop by when you guys get the chance. Peep the website for his restaurant here….
As usual, we got there a little late but it worked out since a couple others were also stuck in traffic on Sunset Blvd….When we got there, May was greeted with our usual car-friends as well as her old friends from high school. It’s rare to have everyone in the same place at the same time since both are completely different groups of friends but I was really happy to see everyone together…I don’t always throw surprise birthday parties, but when I do, apparently they are pretty successful, haha….
The birthday girl was all smiles as she cut her cake…
Random but May’s cake isn’t your traditional birthday cake because these cakes from “Nothing Bundt Cakes” are one of May’s favorites. I figured people aren’t always down to eat regular birthday cake anyway so why not just get something that May would eat even if it wasn’t her birthday. Nothing Bundt Cakes isn’t really close to my area but Rodrez and Tes came through in the end and picked it up for the party….
Hoy’s Wok isn’t that big but Sam reserved half of his restaurant just for us…There was probably about 25 of us when it was all said and done….Kind of hard to see everyone but guys like Ejay, Rywire Ryan, Supertwinz John, Parnell Navarro, Rodrez, Big Mike, Downstar Frank, and PG+K Jay where all there to celebrate….You can also see Rodrez sitting all the way in the back with Tes and the baby while DPK David was chillin’ against the wall…
Big thanks to everyone that came out…I really wanted to get a group shot of everyone that was there but there were a couple that had to leave a little early due to prior engagements… Here is most of the party outside of Sam’s restaurant….
After we departed from Hoy’s Wok, a couple of us met up down at Diddy Riese in Westwood to grab some of their famous ice cream sandwiches. It was pretty cold but the girls sure love their ice cream… Sunday was pretty uneventful for us since we knew there was a huge storm coming. We stayed in and just watched TV all day…but….
Meanwhile, at the DUB Show in Anaheim…
Holy shit…haha… Jae Bueno mentioned that there was a DUB event this weekend but I had no idea it was on Sunday. I jacked these photos from my FB buddy Jose Romo, who apparently decided to go check it out….When you think of the DUB show, you imagine seeing stuff like this…
I am unsure of what this is, but it was taken hours before the storm hit Anaheim, CA….
You would also expect to see stuff like this…which also actually happened at the DUB show that day…dogs standing on girls asses? Sure, why not, it’s the DUB show. There was probably a couple of fights that went on as well as a concert…but torrential downpour? Nooo…..
Shout-out to all the people that stuck around but fuuuuck, that shit looks horrible! Haha…I can’t even imagine standing in that and attempting to have a good time. Take a look at the pic two photos above again, that pile of blue mess was once a fold-up canopy! What a mess….
At least these guys looked like they were having a good time…Shit is coming down hard…You can even see the Chrysler 300C with the Camaro front-end I posted from Hot Import Nights not too long ago in the background, haha…. I was curious so I looked at some coverage online of the DUB event and they were dry for most of the day but damn, when that rain came down, it wiped out the whole show….Props to those that got through it…I’m all for rain or shine events but a lot of those builds that regularly attend DUB events aren’t ever meant to see water or spend a lot of time outdoors. I don’t know what steps they took to prevent their cars from getting hit with all this rain…Imagine Lowriders with 10K+ paint jobs with no tops and custom interiors…plus a rainstorm…yikes….
That’s a wrap for today. Life is good, I can’t complain…
Throwback Thursday…
Since things have been going at a snail’s pace in present time, I figured today would be as good a time as any to take a look back at some of the great builds of our past. A lot of these guys have moved on to do bigger and better things while some have just left the Honda community altogether. While I would love to give you guys a life update as to what each person is doing nowadays, I don’t really know that many of them personally so I wouldn’t want to act like I knew anything about them. We are just going to take a quick glimpse into the past at some of the great Hondas that helped paved the way into what we see today. Back then, there was no Hellaflush/stanced-out cars, people didn’t want to put unused bike racks on their cars, and sticker-bombing was relegated to only doing an angled roll call on one side of your windshield. Things have certainly changed since those days but that’s just how it is…it’s the natural progression of things and though many fads exist that we may not be particularly fond of, you always have the past to look back to for inspiration…I don’t have a huge collection of photos, just shots I have found over time. DPK David has thousands upon thousands of photos he’s collected throughout the years and if time ever permits, I will raid his hard drive to dig up more photos for you guys. For now, enjoy these blasts from the past….. #throwbackthursday…. Enjoy…
Eddie Hahm’s EG was definitely one of the builds that almost everyone looked up to back in the day. This car went on to see many more different upgrades but this was what almost everyone wanted back when Mike Shin shot this for the famed JTuned.com site back in early 2000….
Donut’s Civic was one of the more recent hits in the past couple years…His build was utterly timeless and built with both style and function in mind, as he regularly took this car out on the track and beat the living hell out of it. He’s since sold the car and is now messing around with a DC2 Integra….
You can’t take a look back at the great builds of the past without mentioning Rodrez’s Civic… He, as you all should know, is the head editor now over at Honda Tuning magazine. This photo was taken back in 2005 during a Nisei Showoff car show….
Top Fuel liveries were all the rage back in early 2000 and they were often one of the most replicated looks for Integras….here is one decked out looking almost spot on with a Japanese Top Fuel Type R with Top Fuel lip and all, sporting some Advan RGs…
Kevin Mayuga’s EK was and is still one of my favorite Civic builds of all-time. His Civic is the reason why I love seeing Chargespeed front lips on EKs and also why I later bought a set of Advan RGs for myself….This photo represents one of its later incarnations after it was K-swapped. Unfortunately, it was stolen a couple years ago and stripped….
If you attended or saw photos from last year’s Nisei Showoff event, then you’ll probably recognize this DA Integra. Parnell Navarro built this car almost a decade ago and it still looks identical to what you see in this photograph from 2005-06. It was a little lower back in the day but he was more down to drive the car like that then and now it just sits in his garage….In terms of Integra builds, this one is one of the best of all-time, just because of how it transcends time and fads….
Roy Barba’s EK is another Civic that caught my eye back when Chinatown Showoff events were huge…It’s another car that would still be very relevant if it were around today and his Joustmeister wheels were rare even for that time…I can’t even recall seeing a set of these in the last couple years….
There’s just no way you can take a look back at great builds of yesteryear without mentioning Lee Randle and “Spanky” from 2000. He was years (8-10) ahead of his time and this Civic was cool before people started overusing the word “JDM”… Lee has an Integra now and attends track events regularly….Jonathan Wong, the head editor of Super Street magazine now, was probably like 23-24 at the time this photo was taken in May 2000. He still wears those pants everyday…
Another EG that you have to mention from back then was Randy’s from PlusOne….though he wasn’t the first guy to rock a White Crow front bumper, his car was the most widely recognized in the early days of Honda forums with people following up every photo of his car with a “what front bumper is that?”… That title was later given to Yee Vang and his J*Blood front bumper….Today, people are asking “What the hell is a Yee Vang?”…
Speaking of notable front bumpers, the Honda community was in awe when Leonard Yee aka Lenthrax debuted his K-swapped EK with ITBs back in 2006. The Rando aero was and still isn’t very common but back then, the combination of the kit and the bright magenta paint was a killer….
Here’s a shot from a feature back in 2008 when it appeared in Auto Salon magazine….
Can’t mention “throwback Hondas” without mentioning Jay Smith and his Laguna Seca Blue RHD Integra…
…and you also can’t forget about Charles Trieu and his EF hatchback… This guy is spending his days partying and running Import Tuner magazine these days…
Another great build from PlusOne that appeared in HCI magazine back when that book was still around. You’ll recognize this location as it is still being used often whenever a car is shot in San Francisco today….
This EG in my opinion, and probably many others, is perhaps one of the greatest Civic builds of ALL-TIME. Everything about it was just perfect and years ahead of it’s time. I wish I had more photos of it to really explain to you guys what this build was all about. I think maybe SuperTwinz John or someone might have more photos. I just gotta dig them up from him… I hear this Civic is still around these days as well but hidden in a garage…..
Closing out Throwback Thursday with a couple shots of Hugh’s EK from the early half of 2000. This car rocked the Top Fuel look so well that many people often confused photos of it later with the actual Top Fuel turbo EK9….
He later re-did the car though and eventually sold it for around 20grand or something… This car had everything, looks, great parts, and it was functional as well. The motor made over 600hp and was a consistent low-10 second Honda on the dragstrip….
A shot of the engine bay…
In action….
I even managed to find a video of it from about 4 years ago when it made 675hp on the dyno….
That’s all for tody…hope you enjoyed the flashbacks….
M&M Honda Collection…
I’ve been on a real M&M Honda kick lately on Facebook and since I remembered that many of you aren’t on Facebook, I figured today would be as good of a day as any to just unload a bunch of photos from their Facebook page. I posted up a photo of the M&M FD2 over the weekend and I didn’t even know they followed The Chronicles. To be perfectly honest, I didn’t even know they had a Facebook page for their company so I was surprised when I clicked over and saw so many great shots of their cars on their page. They were full-size too so I took the liberty of downloading them and re-sizing them to fit the format of this page. If you are a member of Facebook and want to “Like” or follow them, I will include a link below of their page. Today, we are going to take a moment to check out their collection of builds produced in-house from their facilities. A lot of their aero components are from various other tuners but they do manufacture their own parts, be it performance or aero-related. I’ve been familiar with their shop for a couple of years now but they aren’t all that well-known worldwide compared to say, Mugen or Spoon Sports so some of you may very well have not heard of them before this. You’ve probably seen some photos of their cars here and there, but didn’t know that they came from this shop. The Japanese Honda scene is very different from our own. The majority of the more “built” Hondas over there are built with track or circuit racing in mind and aren’t driven very much on the streets or taken to local meets. Some of them are just pure-bred race vehicles so the only time you will ever see photos of them are on the track. In any case, check out the pics below. As for specs, I wish I had more information on the cars but I don’t. I am not all that familiar with their stable of cars and some of them I too am seeing for the first time. Many of the photos are also dated as well and pretty old. They are just an assortment of shots that they posted up and range from the early-mid 2000s to now…
This DC2 is probably a build that you have seen once or twice before if you regularly peruse Integra photo threads on your favorite Honda forums…
It’s one of my personal favorite Integras of all-time and I was pretty happy when I stumbled upon more photos of it…
I love how the front fenders are done as well as the rear fender flare. The C-West kit usually looks so bulky but with flares like this, it actually makes the car look more complete…
This thing is just all business…Cool to see Regamaster Evos being utilized too…
A couple shots of a more streetable version of their DC2…
M&M Honda EK9…
C-West aero just like the Integra…
Rocking some Altezza-style Civic taillights, haha….We will let it slide since the rest of the car looks on point…
M&M Honda CL7 is another one of my favorites…
Wish I had a better shot of the bay but it seems these guys have no problems mixing Spoon Sports and Mugen products on their race cars…
AP Racing brakes…
An older shot of it before the graphics and other additions….
Best shot of the bay that I could muster….
Another CL7, not sure if this is one of their customers or one of their other personal demo cars….this one sits on BBS LMs…
M&M DC5R….
Mugen front bumper with custom ventilation…
Some bigger photos, these are like HDR style or something…I didn’t do any of it so if you don’t like it, don’t blame me, haha…
Interior of the DC5R….
Weird how it has individual throttle bodies but the air box is still in place…maybe this was an unfinished shot…
Cool shot of the canards and the SSR Type-C wheels…there is also a glimpse of the AP Racing brakes as well…
Really liked this shot of the brakes and how you can see the wear and battle scars from abuse inside the wheel wells…
One more shot…Notice the front staggered set-up of the wheels…
M&M Honda Beat….
Sitting on Watanabe wheels… Notice the center exhaust even though it’s barely visible…
Drive in comfort with the fuel cell sitting next to you….haha…I like the over fender action too…
M&M FD2 Civic R…I think this one is their flagship vehicle now….Not a huge fan of the front bumper but it seems to flow pretty well with everything else…
One of my favorite parts on this FD2 is the front fenders….
The rear is pretty wild but it all comes together nicely. It’s good that they have these naked shots of it so you can see all the lines of the kit before all the graphics they put on it…
An overhead shot…
Here it is with the M&M graphical livery….
In the two shots above you can see the rear bumper and how the diffuser ties into it….Interesting that each end is vented….
Side profile shot in front of some Mayan temple, haha….
This is a pretty crazy shot…would have been perfect without the Toyota Corolla in the background….
A pair of M&M Honda S2000s…both wearing Spoon front bumpers….
Prodrive wheels…
You can get a sense of how small their shop is in this photo….
Pretty cool stuff right?… If you guys want to check out their official Facebook page for more photos, click on the link below. “Like” their page too….
The Official M&M Honda Facebook Page…
Oh before you go, they also have a collection of some really good videos of their cars in action. It’s mainly of the CL7 and the FD2 but it’s cool to see these things in action…
That’s a wrap…have a good one….
New York state of mind…
Okay, not really…the state of mind I’m in right now is that I’m hungry so I am going to drive to the market to buy some string cheese but I thought it’d be cool to post this up. Their are great builds everywhere throughout the country, no matter the east, west, mid-west, south, Mars, wherever….so I thought this video was good to post up because it would be cool to give some shine to the guys from VRaceworks in New York. This Civic was one of the more memorable cars for me from last year’s Import Alliance Summer Meet, and I’m happy to see it in action. The video speaks for itself so I will not drag this on any longer with words. All I have to say is…nice job, cool build, well-played. Shout-out to the guys out east for building some heaters…. Good day…
Photos of said-build when I saw it out in Nashville, TN at Import Alliance 2011…
Now, for the video… Thanks to the Honda Tuning Facebook page for this, otherwise I would not have known about it. It’s hosted on Vimeo so I suggest you click the video so that it takes you over to their page so that you can enjoy it in stunning HD. Unless you are a cyclops with a monocle that magnifies things into high definition, the video will probably appear somewhat small when sized to fit the format of this page….Anyways, however you want to watch it, just watch it…
Exclusive Content…Tactical Art EG6 Civic Gets Some New Shoes…
One of the many questions I often get asked when I post up photos of the Tactical Art cars is why one of them rolls around on XXR wheels. I too wondered the same thing so I asked Shimomukai-san, the owner, the reasoning behind using the wheel. If he liked them, then that was all good with me. I am not particularly a fan of the brand but to each their own. I enjoy all of the cars from Tactical Art because they are built with style and function in mind. These guys enjoy their cars by cruising around the streets in them, regularly attending small meets, as well as participating in track/circuit racing. I like what these guys are about so I can look past what wheels are on their car. Seeing the XXR wheel on his car was interesting though, considering how the other two cars you’ve come to know as “The Tactical Art Civics” are running SSR and Work wheels. Shimomukai-san’s explanation for his wheel choice was simple; he is a big fan of the American import automotive scene and wanted to bring that style over to Japan. While there are many who have the same idea as him, the sub-culture for USDM style is still rather small in that country. He also told me that he wanted to bring to Japan a more realistic view of the American style of Hondas. Shimo-san also wanted to run American-branded products on his Civic to use them on the track. He felt like it would be a good test to see how the parts held up. I can totally understand that and I have tons of respect for the guy for taking that route…
He asked me awhile back what was a good American-brand of wheel to run. I explained to him that there were a couple wheels that haven’t really been seen yet over in Japan like 949Racing wheels. He said that Japanese wheels are getting really expensive in Japan these days so he wanted to have a wheel from over here that people weren’t accustomed to seeing yet on a Honda in Japan. Shimomukai explained that brands like CCW and Rotiform are starting to appear in Japan now, but they are mostly used for show and haven’t really been used on the track yet. He then went on to tell me that he recently ordered a set of 15-inch Rotiform ROC wheels. While I am unsure if he plans to actually use these when he races, I was delighted to hear that he was going to have a new look that didn’t include anything from a company like XXR. Rotiform, as you all should probably know by now, is a pretty popular wheel company these days that is based out of Westminster, California. Their wheels are starting to show up everywhere in the U.S. so it makes sense that the Japanese enthusiasts have taken a liking to them. Their wheels are custom built out here in the U.S. and represents the latest in American import styling so it was a good choice for Shimomukai. It took a while for them to finally be built and shipped over to Japan but when the wheels arrived, Yasutaka was quick to grab the process on camera for us…
I’m sure he was like a kid on Christmas when these were dropped off at the shop…
Unpacking his gold-faced Rotiform Race ROC wheels…These are a vast improvement over his old wheels because these are actually forged multi-piece wheels and not wheels that are cast-molded to look like they are….
I am not sure on the specs because I forgot to ask Shimomukai-san, but you can clearly see that they are very aggressive…no stagger either, they are the same specs all the way around. When he had his car painted, fender modification was done to be able to house wheels of these sizes and specs….
They have their own tire-mounting machine as well so there is no need to wait around at a tire shop or risk some dim-witted employee damaging the massive lips of those wheels…Look at the stack of R-compounds on the side!…
Getting ready to stretch some 15-inch tires!…
A couple days after he mounted the tires and had them fitted on his EG6, Yasutaka headed out to meet up with his friends from Team Madame to get some new photos…
Here’s a shot finally of the ROCs on his EG6…changes the whole look of the car and while it may be a little over the top, fitment-wise, for many, I think it accomplishes the look that he was going for… Click here for a larger version (1400×933) ….
Shot of the rear-quarter…. Click here for a larger version (1400×933)….
A couple close-ups of the rear…
Here are some photos that they took that night of some of the Team Madame cars…
Beeyan Hamada’s Toyota Wish mini-van on Work Meister S1R…
Kazuya Kawashima’s Honda StepWGN, also on S1Rs…
I am unsure of this gentleman’s name, but he is a regular over at Tactical Art as well… This photo doesn’t really do this Ej1 coupe any justice so click here for a daytime photo… you kind of have to dislocate your neck to get a good look at it though, haha…
Masashi Kameoka’s Toyota Mark X with newly-installed HKS coilovers and Work Meister S1….
Here are a couple shots of Shimomukai’s EG6 during the day so you can see how the Rotiform wheels look…
Posted up in front of Tactical Art… Click here for a larger version (1400×933)….
Thanks for looking… As the slogan reads.. “Enjoy car life”…
A Couple Quick Shots With Ip-Man…
I’ve been sitting on these shots for a couple weeks now debating if I should put them up or not. There are two reasons behind it…For one, I’m going to be re-shooting the car once again in it’s completed state for a feature in Honda Tuning magazine, and two, these shots are just not very good…haha. I wanted to get a couple shots in earlier on in the day when the sun was still out but Sam ran into quite a bit of traffic on the way to the location so it was dark by the time we started. Black/really dark toned cars are pretty hard to shoot because they are essentially like mirrors and when you shoot them in a tight space as I did, you’re bound to see some reflections. I would have taken the time to get rid of the wall reflection and what not but I’m pretty busy with work at this point and it’s terribly straining on the eyes to do so. This wasn’t really meant to be anything serious, Sam just wanted to get a couple current shots of his car and I had some free time, so I was down to do it. He’s got some new things planned and I think by the time these photos go up, the car should be right around 90%. He recently installed a supercharger on this thing as well so I really wanted to get some photos of it before he really gets on it on the way up to Norcal for Wekfest SF…
I absolutely love this car. It’s probably one of my favorite builds out right now and I was also a big fan of his previous white FA5 Civic before he wrecked it. I’m really excited about shooting it again in a more proper location for print but for now, all we can do is take a look at a couple crappy shots of it that I took on a random night. I apologize for them not being that great, but I think the car speaks for itself. When I get a chance to shoot it again, the quality will just be so much better, I swear. I took more than three shots that night but since the car is going to be featured in print soon, I don’t want to spoil it for everyone. I think it’ll mean that much more to Sam as well as Honda Tuning when it is finally revealed in print in all it’s glory. I believe he has some over fenders that he has yet to install as well so the car will have a completely different look. In any case, thanks to Sam for taking the time to drive out and thanks to all of you for looking… Larger versions are included in the links below each photo as usual on The Chronicles…
Oh, if you’re wondering why in the title I referred to Sam as “Ip-Man”, Ip is his last name and “IP-MAN” is going to be his new plate to replace the old “SPN FED” one he has on now from his old Spoon Sports-themed white FA5…Ip-Man is also a chinese movie, but I think that is probably irrelevant at this point…
Be on the look out for this thing at Wekfest SF 2/19/2012!…
Weekend Wrap-up…
For any of you who ever wondered what “NWP4LIFE” stood for, it started out as a small internet message board for a small group of Honda enthusiasts that hung out at a pizza place in Irvine, CA. That pizza spot was known as “Northwood Pizza”. When that group of individuals decided to come up with a name for their forum, they decided to name it after the spot that hung out at regularly, thus the name “NWP” aka NorthWood Pizza. It seemed like ages ago but now the forum is one of the most notable Honda enthusiasts forums in the entire world and has more than enough members to consider it the “small group” that it once was. Awhile back, I want to say maybe a two years ago or so, Northwood Pizza was bought out by the owners of the Yogurtland next door and while it remained a pizza place, numerous changes were made. The entire restaurant was re-modeled but what always stayed the same was the pizza…up until last year that is. For whatever reason, the new owners decided to shut down Northwood Pizza and turn it into a seafood/crawfish spot and NWP would be no more. The forum still stuck around of course, but the pizza was GONE. When we found out that it was closing down, we headed down there for one last slice before Northwood Pizza was no more. It was always an important spot to us because the food was great and the location was a landmark for a lot of great times that we had. We even took one last photo outside to commemorate the occasion…
This was back in May of 2011…
Everyone thought that Northwood was done for good until a couple months ago when we heard that the people that worked at Northwood so long would be bringing it back. They got the rights to re-use the name and would re-open Northwood Pizza in the same shopping center, just in another building. This location would be much smaller than in the past, but much easier to manage. It would serve more as a take-out pizza spot, but there was still enough room to accommodate a small gathering. What was best about bringing Northwood Pizza back was well, the great pizza…When we all caught wind that it was returning, we all decided to plan a get-together and have a small meet there like the old days…
Everyone seemed to have very different schedules, but it was finally decided that last weekend would be the weekend that we all went out there to eat Northwood Pizza. It was a bit of an impromptu gathering and wasn’t heavily advertised, so we expected it to be a small and poorly planned. It didn’t matter though and people didn’t even have to bring their cars. It was just more about getting together again and catching up with old friends…
The original sign and all, just in a different location…
Even though it was late notice, the turn-out was still pretty good…
One big difference since the original Northwood closed down is that we have a new addition to our stable of friends…Everybody seems to be getting a little older and progressing on in the journey through life…
Pie eating some yogurt from the Yogurtland next door…
Mike from PlanB Motorsports rolling through in his Evo X…
Larry Le’s pearl white Integra LS with ITR front conversion…
Andy Hope, who is an amazing driver and also previously the head editor of Sport Compact Car magazine, got a chance to enjoy some Northwood Pizza for the first time and brought out his clean EF Civic on Precedeo CST wheels…
Our old pal Jared from DPK, also enjoying some self-serve yogurt after devouring some pizza…
Many of us ordered a pile of meat with a side of pizza…
People made the trek out from all parts of Socal…
…including Bryant Nguyen from San Diego. His TSX on air was a little dirty but nobody cared…we were just happy to see him there…
Collin brought out his BB6 Prelude with a very rare Wisesports/Wisesquare front bumper…
Overall, it was just a nice chill day…no drama, no worries about people doing stupid ricer fly-bys and burn-outs. Just old friends, nice cars, and great food. A lot of guys also donned their NWP4LIFE gear to represent….
That pretty much summed up the weekend. On that Sunday, I woke up bright and early (actually it was still dark) to meet up with Mark Sutakajana and his 4-door DB Integra. As you know, he was the #5 spot on The Chronicles Top Ten Hondas of 2011 so it was just a matter of time until he got his chance to be featured in print on the pages of Honda Tuning magazine. We’ve had our eye on his Integra for quite some time now so it was good to finally be able to get the shoot done for HT. He injured his leg a couple weeks ago so he was unable to drive his car, but luckily for us, he’s got good friends and his buddy was willing to wake up early to drive his car out there with him…
I love being able to capture a moment when an owner stands by his creation, soaking in the moment and realizing that he’s built something great…Congrats to Mark and make sure to keep an eye out for his feature in an upcoming issue of Honda Tuning magazine….
I also had a chance to meet up with another favorite Honda of mine a couple days before that. Sam’s FA5 is coming along nicely and he wanted me to get some quick shots of it before he adds the final touches on his build. He’s got some big surprises in store so keep an eye out for his car. He is also Honda Tuning-bound as well but we all want Sam to be 100% content with his build before we put it in print…
That’s all for today, thanks for looking guys…
Exclusive Content…More Tactical Art Goodness…
Mr. Yasutaka Shimomukai sent me these awhile back when we first started communicating through email, but like I said last week, I’ve had a back log of stuff that I need to get posted. SEMA 2011 coverage really pushed us a couple weeks back, but luckily there are a few free weeks here and there between the upcoming events in December that allow me to get this stuff up before it’s too late. Youtube is being a real cow today so hopefully the videos I uploaded from them get up in time, otherwise this update would just be incomplete. For the photos, they are just random images that he sent me of his car and of Atuki’s EG6, which is the one with the crazy front diffuser set-up. I have full specs of the two cars that I’m posting up today, and Atuki’s should be the one you are familiar with. The other EG is Yasutaka’s but I didn’t post any last time because I didn’t know it was his car, and also because I was hesitant to post up shots of his car because he’s rolling on some Sportmax/XXR wheels. I haven’t figured out an appropriate way to tell him in English that I believe that XXR wheels are utter garbage because I think it would get lost in translation. I’m not particularly mad that he’s on these wheels, they are afterall, Honda enthusiasts like us with a special taste for American Honda-styling, which results in him being exposed to XXR wheels. We like what they have and they like what we have. Unfortunately, what we have is an over abundance of replica/knock-off wheels and it’s also unfortuante that it’s become attached to the image of what people outside of the U.S. see as “USDM style”. Sad right? In any case, I like Yasutaka and the Tactical Art crew and I really appreciate the fact that they made the effort to meet me and the other homies when they made the trip out to America for SEMA. I can’t hate on the fact that he has XXR wheels because I don’t expect him to know what we all know about XXR. I am happy however, to see that he beats on his car at track events and those wheels haven’t exploded into a thousand pieces yet…
Big up’s to the Tactical Art guys for being pure Honda guys that are willing to share their videos and photos with us… They recently attended a track event as well and I am hoping that he sends more videos and photos my way. Today, enjoy these random shots and the videos posted below…
Here are the specs for Atuki’s EG6, I don’t recall if I posted up the specs on this car last time so here they are again (if I posted them last time)…
B18C block
B16A head
0.25 overbore
Baffled oil pan
Ported cylinder head
Knife-edged processing
TODA Racing Spec B cams
TODA Racing timing belt
Nagai Electron twin-fire ignition system
Adjustable fuel pressure regulator
Larger throttle body
J’s Racing Tsuchinoko intake
Mugen 4-1 header
Tactical Art original exhaust system
Koyo radiator
Tuned on APEX’i Power FC
Exedy Hyper single clutch
ATS mechanical limited-slip differential
ATS 3, 4, 5 Cross Gear
ATS 4.929 Final Drive
CRUX suspension
Swift 22K front/18K rear springs
16×9 +13 SSR SP3R (front)
16×8 +42 Volk Racing TE37
Atuki welding-up his cage…
Atuki’s EG6 before the wild front canard and splitter set-up…
Note the cut-out headlight on the driver side that helps direct airflow into the engine bay…mesh insert installed on the headlight casing also…
His front diffuser set-up, front lip, and canards, all made of carbon fiber…
Chopped rear bumper…
A shot of his custom fiberglass dashboard…
Here’s a quick video of Atuki’s EG6 at Nakayama Circuit…
This next EG is the one that I was talking about earlier on XXR wheels. I wish I had the full specs on it like the EG above, but this one belongs to Yasutaka, who is the shop manager over at Tactical Art. He has been my main contact over there and has sent me some photos of his car even before it was painted. In all honesty, the car doesn’t even look bad on those crappy XXR wheels, but that’s probably due to the meaty Advan tires on them. I’m done talking about the wheels, haha, I’m just saying, it would look better on some other wheels because I love everything else about it…I just don’t want anything happening to his car because of the wheels…Anyways…
Here’s how the EG looked before it was repainted to it’s current olive tone…The car was already caged but everything on the outside looked basically stock. Shimomukai was also on some SSR Type-Xs back then…
You can see here how hard he drove his Civic. The bumpers are gone and even the front support has been bent a little, probably from seeing some off-road action…I believe the damage is what ultimately lead him to repair and repaint everything…
Another shot of it before it was bashed-up from track action…
Fresh out of paint here with new carbon fiber hood…These Tactical Art guys must have all kinds of wheels laying around. The front set here looks to be some old Volk GR-Ns…
You can tell that he’s a big fan of the U.S. “Hellaflush” movement…
Function7 subframe brace and rear lower control arms….
Unlike the U.S., owning a Civic can still get you girls in Japan…haha…
A couple of recent exterior shots from the Hellaflush Japan event…I like the overall ride height of the EG as well as the canards, hood, and safety net on the window…
A couple rolling shots of Yasutaka’s EG6 on the expressway…
Interior shots…Note the gauge set-up, roll cage, and how the interior has been re-sprayed a grey tone, while the entire interior of Atuki’s EG6 is white…
I wish I had more details on the motor set-up, but I believe it has a very similar B18C set-up like Atuki’s. We can all say what we want about his wheel choice, and the fact that it’s “hellaflush” but what it comes down to is that this Civic is still functional and is tracked quite often. I couldn’t really tell you if he was fast or not but I don’t think they’re out to set and record-breaking lap times. They just do it for fun and from watching the videos, they’re pretty good at what they do…It’s Honda guys enjoying their Hondas, that transcends any borders and any language barrier…
Tactical Art headquarters…
…and the inside, back wall of Tactical Art…It’s filled with Hondas even though they are a high-end car audio install and fabrication shop…
Here is an 11-minute long video of Yasutaka Shimomukai on the track… In this video you’ll see him chasing down an EK9 Type R as well as almost hitting an FD3s RX-7 that had just spun out…
This one is a quick drive-by video of his Civic on the way to the Hellaflush Japan event…
Here is a bonus video that they sent me as well. This is Taku Kusugami, having some fun on the highway. If you guys aren’t familiar with Taku’s EK, please look at my previous Tactical Art post….
That’s pretty much it. I’m hoping I hear from them soon regarding their most recent track event. For now, I hope you guys enjoyed another look into Tactical Art and their Hondas…
Exclusive Content…The Bisimoto Engineering 2012 Honda Civic SEMA Build Revealed…
As you should all know by now, the annual SEMA show kicks off this week which will serve as the grand unveiling to many of the industry’s latest and greatest automotive projects. It’s probably one of the most anticipated of the year and many aftermarket tuning companies save their best work for this event. One of the companies that brings out their absolute best to Las Vegas every single year is Bisimoto Engineering. Last year, I had the pleasure of unveiling their 400+hp fully-functional hybrid Honda CR-Z project to the world and this year, or today rather, I have the esteemed honor of revealing their 2012 Honda Civic coupe build. This build, in my opinion, is possibly their best yet. During the build-up, I told Bisi Ezerioha that this has to be his best-looking car yet….I was a little premature in my praise of course, because while I still believe this is his best-looking build yet, I had not had a chance to see the dyno numbers and how much power the new K24z7 produced. This car is absolutely insane. I’ll leave you with a bit of suspense until you can see the horsepower numbers for yourself on the Dyna-Pak screenshot below. What he’s been able to squeeze out of this K-motor is pretty crazy…just hearing it start-up was intense enough…
I was lucky enough to be able to cover more of this build than last year’s Bisimoto CR-Z project. In fact, by the time I saw the CR-Z, it was probably at about 85-90% completion. This year, I was able to see the 2012 Civic from the point in which it was completely stripped down, all the way until the final moment of re-assembly and right when it was loaded on to the trailer and sent off to Honda of America. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to cover every single moment of it, but I’ll tell you this, I spent a couple sleepless nights over there snapping away with the camera while also lending a hand wherever I could to help Bisi and crew finish up the car. The time table was definitely tight on this one but I feel that this 2012 Civic will undoubtedly be a hit at the 2011 SEMA show. What I love about this year’s build is that Bisi also touched on the aesthetics of the car, something that isn’t always a focal point of his builds. Overall, it’s just a very aggressive looking build and it definitely has the guts to back it up….
I have to thank Bisimoto Engineering and Rywire.com for giving me the ability to be present during the build process. It’s a great feeling to be able to unveil such a huge project to the world today. For those of you who will be able to participate in the SEMA festivities, please stop by the Honda section in the main hall to check out this build for yourself. For those of you who aren’t able to go to SEMA, you guys are in for a real treat today. I am going to put up photos and video today from the point in which I first saw the car in raw form to the moment it went back to Honda for shipment to Las Vegas….
I would have liked to have been able to do a more traditional “shoot” like I did last year with the Bisimoto CR-Z but we just ran out of time this year. Luckily I was able to cover more of the intricacies of the build and you get a chance to see the process instead of just the final product. With that said, I would like to formally announce the first official photos of the 2012 Bisimoto Honda Civic coupe….enjoy and if you’re new here, I hope you stick around…
Note – There are quite a bit of photos so please allow them to load…I would have separated them into sections but since I am currently away in Las Vegas, I don’t know if I will have the ability to upload different parts throughout the week…
This is the state in which the 2012 Honda Civic was in at around 1am on October 20th, 2011…The only visually complete items on the car were the Stop-Tech big brakes, cut-out hood, and full roll cage…
Ryan Basseri from Rywire creating custom brake lines for the Civic…
Bisi Ezerioha, Supertwinz John from AEM, and Ryan Basseri going over some ideas for the engine bay…
I was thinking that Bisi would go with his signature Bisimoto Fighter Special wheel since a couple of them were either mounted on the car or around it, but that wasn’t the case because he had a new wheel to debut on the Civic…
At this point, the exterior was still basically stock, other than the cut-out on the hood…
A look at the cage that was built by Steen Chassis…
Stop-Tech big brake kit…a small wheel spacer was needed to clear the caliper…
Ryan doing work…
Supertwinz John holding up the Burns Stainless short muffler that will eventually go on the Civic…
Ryan under the car working on the custom lines for the rear brakes…
The lines running to a Wilwood proportioning valve…
Bisi and Ryan going over the brake lines….
Bisi swept a little…
This next batch of photos were captured 3 days later. By this point, the motor had gone back into the car, the vehicle wrap was complete, and re-assembly had begun…
First look at the K24Z7 since going back into the coupe…
One of the most noticeable additions that I spotted right away were the AEM High Output Ignition Coils….Definitely didn’t expect Bisi to go back to using a more conventional, external coil over the O.E. coil-over-plug set-up…
I did however, expect to see this massive Turbonetics turbo…
Custom relay and harness set-up built from scratch by Rywire…
Cool little addition that Bisi had found off of an airplane…I forget what it’s used for now but Ryan actually rewired this thing and made it functional…
Ryan working on the fuse box….
Your first look at the graphical livery and vinyl wrap layout. You can see here that the chute has been installed and the new wheels mounted…
How the engine bay looked before the radiator support and everything was reinstalled…
Your first look at the Bisimoto “Eins Gramm” wheel…
Ryan and Bisi working on the engine harness…
Ryan installing the Odyssey battery beneath the headlight…
The K24Z7 engine coming together…
I didn’t get a chance to stay very long that day… I just wanted to stop by for a bit and check out the progress… The next batch of photos came another 3 days later, on 10/26/2011, just 5 days before SEMA. The car had to go back to Honda of America for press photos and what not, so there was definitely a sense of urgency to finish. The 2012 Civic actually had to be delivered the next morning so Bisi and crew stayed up for a couple days to knock it out…I had pulled an all-nighter for work and other reasons, but I had to make the drive out to Ontario to see this build through to the end…
Random shot of one of Bisi’s Porsche projects sitting outside next to his trailer…
When I got there, Bisi was busy on his laptop configuring the Racepak dash display while two representatives from Extreme Dimensions were busy installing some carbon fiber pieces from their “Carbon Creations” line of products…
In the days that I was away, the car was actually sent out to Bisi’s fabricators for more stuff, including this custom rear wing…
Guys from Extreme Dimensions installing the carbon fiber half-splitter pieces/canards or whatever you call those things…
I forget the exact specs on the wheels right now, but I’m sure wheel fitment and “stance” guys will appreciate it. I think this had to be the first time where Bisi ever had to worry about wheel fitment. There are only so many suspension components out for the 2012 Civics at this point so messing with the camber adjustments and what not was definitely interesting…We eventually where able to get the wheels to fit without that little area of the rear bumper being pushed out slightly…
The “Eins Gramm” logo on the wheel which means, easily enough, “One Gram”…
The engine bay with the radiator, core support, and front mount intercooler re-installed…
At one point in the afternoon, we stopped to eat lunch since Bisi had ordered pizza, and it was great to see a photo of Misa Campo hanging inside the Bisimoto offices after staring at car parts and dudes all day…haha…
After we finished eating and chatting for a bit, it was back to work. I took the time to get some more detail shots of the Bisimoto Civic coupe…
A closer look at the custom vents on his drag wing…
Bisimoto-themed custom graphical livery…
Better look at the AEM High Voltage “Smart” ignition coils mounted to a plate on the Golden Eagle intake manifold…
The massive Turbonetics turbocharger…
Okay, so speaking of the giant turbo, Bisi had tuned the K24Z7 motor earlier on in the day and revealed to us the final numbers from his tune…
There were still some very minor issues that will need to be resolved once SEMA comes to a conclusion but your eyes aren’t deceiving you…the Bisimoto Engineering 2012 Honda Civic produced 1004 horsepower and 623LB-Ft of torque… One-thousand and four horsepower K24!…
A shot of the front bumper…
A shot of the rear of the Civic….
Bisi Ezerioha putting some of his vinyl decals on to support his many sponsors…
Big Mike helped with the rear window decals…
A shot of the cockpit with the custom airplane “launch” switches…
Almost complete…Below is a video of one of the start-ups so you guys can get a chance to hear the motor….
Corner of the front bumper featuring another batch of sponsors….
Vibrant Vanjen clamps…
Golden Eagle Pro Series fuel rail…
All hands on board to help!…
The Turbonetics unit in motion…
Ryan going over some last minute details in the bay…
A final look at the Bisimoto Eins Gramm wheel on Falken Azenis…
Bisi applying the “BISIMOTO.COM” banner to signify it’s completion…
Below is a video of the 2012 Civic making it’s way out of the facility for the first time and getting onto a trailer for SEMA…
See you at SEMA 2011!…
That’s a wrap…if you guys are going to be attending the SEMA 2011 show, make sure to stop by the Honda section and check out the 1000+ horsepower Bisimoto Engineering 2012 Honda Civic. Remember where you guys saw it first….www.stickydiljoe.com!!!
I apologize for not being able to get better shots of the Civic outside of the facility, there just wasn’t any time. Below is a link to a larger sized photo so you can have a better view of what the car looks like…
Thanks for looking, and thank you to Bisimoto Engineering for the opportunity!!
See me in Vegas, I’m outta here!!! I will definitely try to update whenever I get the chance!
Tactical Art Japan…
I absolutely love doing this type of stuff…Normally I would be providing you guys coverage from the latest event that I went to but with the Year.Three meet coming up, I just haven’t had much time to go out and shoot. Which reminds me, if you guys are here to see coverage from the last Formula D event, I apologize because I didn’t have a chance to make it out there. Another reason I decided not to go was because May was participating in the Long Beach Marathon and it was important that I be there to support her. I don’t do much marathon running because I tend to only run when something is chasing me, but May is really into it so I have to support her…
Anyways, when I say…”I absolutely love doing this type of stuff”, I mean I love going to other sites/blogs from different parts of the world to see what is going on in the automotive community outside of the one I am accustomed to being in. I particularly love going to sites in Japan because as long as I’ve been a car guy, I have always looked to Japan for inspiration. Anytime I can see something new and learn more about it, Honda/car-wise, I’m all for it. The Hellaflush Japan 2011 event really sparked my interest because of certain cars I saw there. I mean, I enjoyed the cars at the event so much that I went and asked someone in Japan if I could use his photos just so I could show you guys, you know? I noticed somebody mentioned one day that I must have been tired or whatever because some of the cars he saw me post up were “straight-up JDM rice” or something to that degree. And I think that reader missed the point. For the most part, I did post up builds that I really liked but I also just posted cars that I felt were interesting enough for you guys to see. Some of the tastes in mods may not be to everyone’s liking, including mine, but I really wanted to show you guys what their interpretation of our scene is, especially when it comes to Hondas. Some of those guys take that whole “hellaflush” thing way too far over there, just like the people here, and I wanted to show you guys that…
With that said, one of the Hondas that really did stand out to me was a Honda that I didn’t even see in anyone else’s coverage before I stumbled upon it on the DOHCresearch website. DOHCresearch has long been one of my favorite automotive websites EVER. I would go as far as to say that DOHCresearch was one of the sites that really opened my eyes to Hondas back in the late 90s to early 2000s. The cars that they had on there were, to me, absolutely stunning. I know there are many enthusiasts today who will also say proudly that they looked to DOHCresearch for inspiration, and that site was based on some Hondas from Hawaii. The site itself slowed down quite a bit the last couple years and updates weren’t as prevalent as they were in the early 2000s so I found it interesting that they had coverage of the Hellaflush event in Japan. Sometimes I’ll hop on that site just for nostalgic reasons and to stare at old Honda builds so I was pretty surprised to see they had photos from the event. Now the Honda that I was referring to, that I hadn’t seen on anyone else’s coverage was this EG6…
Photo courtesy of DOHCresearch.com of course…I think with all the hype of it being a “Hellaflush” event based solely on everything stance-related, this Civic track car was overlooked…
This is a photo, also courtesy of DOHCresearch.com, that I posted up on The Chronicles Facebook page the other night…
I tried to find more photos of it online but there just wasn’t much other than the photos above. I decided that I wasn’t satisfied with just those two photos so I used my journalistic detective skills to try to find more. I spent much of the night before trying to dig for more photos of this car but they were just few and far between. The only thing I really had on it was that it was a build from “Tactical Art”. I hopped on Yahoo! Japan and I was finally able to pull up Tactical Art’s website and blog. On a side note, I realized later on that all I really had to do was look at my own site stats because the guys from Tactical Art actually caught wind of my coverage online and they had already linked it on their blog. Crazy how the internet works these days…
The following photos are photos from Tactical Art’s blog….
I couldn’t really read through all the translations because most of it just didn’t make sense, but this is what I gathered from going through their entire web diary…
It turns out that Tactical Art is actually a shop in Japan that deals mainly with audio installations. From the photos, they do other stuff like parts installs and what not but their main foray is doing custom audio set-ups for high-end vehicles like Lambos, Benzs, etc….
From what I saw, their custom audio enclosures and entire automotive set-ups is very impressive. The Civic that you see at the top of this post, is one of the workers or owners at Tactical Art….You can see in the photo above how the Civic looked before it’s recent transformation to it’s current look from the Hellaflush Japan event….
Here’s a much older photo of it…
Shot of it here, also an older photo, at the starting grid at a track event…
The aggressive white wheels in the front are actually a 16×9 +13 pair of SSR SP3-Rs… I don’t know too much else about the car because the guys who take care of their blog tend to provide more photos of cars that belong to customers and that show off their audio work…
One interesting thing to point out however, is the custom FRP dashboard that they made…
Kinda hard to see it but in this photo, you can kind of make out the dashboard here….They kept the original color to almost make it unnoticeable that the dashboard is a custom made piece…photo again provided by DOHCresearch…
Another Civic that caught my eye at the Hellaflush Japan event was this EK4…
People have been saying that it looks just like ATS*VEE’s Civic and it is nowhere near the same car. I liken it more to Ryan Der’s EK but whatever…I totally overlooked the fact that it had a “Tactical Art” banner on its windshield and it turns out that Tactical Art was the shop that (re)built this EK…When I was looking for photos of the EG above, I started seeing photos of this Civic pop up on their blog…
There were a couple of photos of this Civic floating around on the web, but leave it to DOHCresearch.com once again for actually walking to the other side of the car and taking a rear shot of it so we can see what’s going on inside…
Here’s a shot of the interior of the EK4…Everybody was taking photos of just the front of the car and you couldn’t even tell that the inside was battleship grey…
Once I started going through the Tactical Art blog, I was hooked…It didn’t have THAT many photos but there was enough photos on there to show the process in which this Civic was put together. I called it a “rebuild” earlier because that’s exactly what it was…a rebuild…
This is what that Civic looked like before it was redone and repainted…It already had the cage and all but the Air Walker (style) front bumper was removed and he had some Shift Sports fenders added in place of his modified stock front fenders. The Work Meister S1s are the same as well. I saw Speedhunters’ story on Hellaflush Japan and they mentioned that they were Work S1Rs but they are actually just the old Work S1s that were redone in all black. I read on there that it was a staggered set-up too with the fronts being 17s and the rears being 16-inch…
With the fenders installed before paint…wheels still original finish…
The interior before the re-spray to grey…
…and after….
Through the translations, I could sort of make out what the owner’s goal was for this EK4….They said that he wanted a full street car that he could also take to the track. That’s why the car still retains all of it’s creature comforts like the OEM JDM climate control, power steering, etc… You can see in the upper left corner that there is a little indicator denoting that the car is equipped with an alarm system. Since Tactical Art is a audio/electronics install shop, they make it a point to always show their alarm installs in their blog. In the build-up photos of both this car and the EG, they have posts showing the installs….I guess they’re worried about getting jacked too…haha…
The wheels after they were refinished in black with original Work Wheels decals reapplied…I remember when I had my S1s polished I had to remember to apply the decal right where the valve stem was as well…
A late night shot of the car after they reassembled it after paint and with the wheels re-installed…
Here’s a shot of the car on the expressway…
This shot of the EK4 was at one of their local track events, from some of the other photos, it looks to be at the Suzuka Circuit….You can see here that there’s nothing really special about the engine bay. It’s still white in fact…
On the owner’s blog, which I also somehow managed to find, is a video of the car during a shakedown run before he ran the car at Suzuka… Hopefully the video displays here, if not click HERE….
Pretty cool…
Okay, so while I was trying to find more info on the car, I stumbled onto this other blog site which of course, I later realized was already linked back to me in my site stats. This blog belonged to a tire/wheel/alignment shop in Japan called “Craft” and was operated by the owner of the EK4 who works there. Originally when I was going through the Tactical Art site, I assumed that both Civics belonged to people that were from that shop but that wasn’t the case. The guy that owns the EK4 worked at Craft and was just a customer over at Tactical Art….
Here’s a photo of it posted up at Craft. I thought I was glued to the screen while looking at Tactical Art’s blog but when I started going through all the photos and info on the Craft blog, man, I was on that shit for hours…
Their whole thing was that they took photos of basically every car that they worked on. That sounds sort of boring but when you see the type of cars that roll through there, damn, it looks like a pretty cool spot to work at…They had a lot of VIP cars, Kei cars, Hondas, Nissans, everything…I’m telling you, I was on this site for HOURS….
Here’s some of the cars that they were working on. There’s a ton more but I include the link at the end of this post….
Here’s a Nissan Stagea on SSR Professor SP3s….
Here’s a shot of an alignment they were doing on a Toyota Crown with Leon Hardiritt Ordens…
Different car, same wheels, this one with a Mode Parfume kit and custom rear fender flares…
Honda S2000 with a Spoon front bumper, ASM fenders, and rear flares on Wedsport SA55M….
Liked this white Toyota Aristo that they posted up…
I don’t want to go too far off topic but yeah, they work on all kinds of cars at the shop…
Gonna close it out today with some track photos that I collected from both the Tactical Art and Craft blogs…
The brown EK4 in action…
White EG that’s totally unrelated to both the Civics I was speaking of…
An EG and an EK…I’m just throwing these in here because I figured you guys would enjoy them…
The Tactical Art EG…
I don’t know whose EK this is and the photo is pretty old, but I like the Manaray wheels on it…
That’s pretty much it…. If you really want to see more and be stuck on the computer for hours and hours staring at car photos, click the links below. It’s all in Japanese so it will be hard to understand and navigate through their sites so be forewarned…
…and of course special thanks to DOHCresearch for showing me the Tactical Art Civic in the first place…
Hope you guys enjoyed it, thanks for looking….
Year.Three is a little over a week away!!!
The Top 10 Hondas of 2010…A retrospective…Part 2…
Back now with the second half of the Top 10 Hondas of 2010 retrospective…Yesterday we took a look back at spots 10-6 of the Top Ten and today we will be looking at the other 5 spots on the list. One interesting note to consider when I was putting yesterdays and today’s list is that there seems to be less change with the 2010 group in comparison to the Top Ten Hondas of year’s past. I don’t know what it is, maybe because these builds are in more of a completed state than the others but either way, as a whole, you don’t see very much of a difference. There are minor changes here and there but the guys on the 2010 list seem to be the types that hold onto their cars and aren’t in any rush to build something completely new. Of the guys from 2010, there’s just one person who has sold their car and moved on. You can maybe consider RC Chacon’s new project as him moving on, but he actually still has his white EG and I’m sure he’s planning on rebuilding it…
Moving on…
5. JDMYard/Yonas Liu’s “EGK24A”…
What he’s up to now: You’ll be very happier to hear that Yonas is still very active with his Civic build. While he probably has one of the most recognizable Civics in all of the world today, Yonas tends to keep to himself mostly and only posts occasionally on forums like NWP4Life. Thankfully, we have social media outlets that allow us to keep in contact with people like Yonas Liu who are on the other half of the world. I’ve been chatting with Yonas recently on Facebook and he’s been updating me on all the new things he’s been doing to his Civic. It’s good to know that after all these years of him owning his car and all the abuse that he puts it through that he is still excited to try new things with it and making his build better than ever…
He sent me a photo the other day actually of his latest major modification. It was a decent photo from his Blackberry or something and I was going to post it, but I promised him that I would hold off until next week to show everyone, since he’s planning on some major unveiling some time around the 10th of October. It’s a very drastic change from what he’s been running in the last couple years and I think you guys will be just as surprised as I am when you see it. For now, take a look at Speedhunters’ feature on Yonas’ EG which actually dropped today…
“GOLIATH, MEET DAVID” – via Speedhunters.com
4. Chris Sakai’s Civic/Angel Ramos’ S2000 (Tie)
What he’s up to now: Chris Sakai has taken a more subtle approach with the aesthetics of his Civic in 2011. After his cover feature in Honda Tuning and landing on the Top 10 Hondas list, he kicked off 2011 by ditching his wing, hood, and mirrors. OEM Civic Type R pieces make their way back onto Chris’ car now and he also went with a different set of wheels…
I wasn’t sure how the white Regas would look when I found out about the switch but when I saw it, I honestly felt that it was probably one of his Civic’s best looks yet. Other than those aesthetic changes, not much else has changed. Chris has continued to participate in all the major Cali car show events and picked up a couple new sponsors here and there… The car looks so good in it’s current state that there isn’t really any reason for him to have to do anything else to it…
What he’s up to now: In 2011, Angel Ramos has gone with the old adage; “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. Other than a new set of brakes and a different set of Volks, Angel’s S2000 has remained exactly the same. There isn’t a whole lot he can do to it without having to tear down and start over. His S2000 has a very unique look and continues to stand out in the deep S2000 community…
I spoke to him for a while at this year’s Nisei Showoff and he does have one more major overhaul coming for his S2000. 2010 was the debut of Angel’s build and there was so much going on that I think he’s taken a step back this year so that he could breathe and just enjoy the fruits of his labor. There are definitely some big things that he plans to do to this thing but the ideas are still very premature. It’ll be interesting to see what actually happens to Angel’s S2000 but all we can do now is wait until next year…
3. ATS*Anh’s Acura Integra Type R…
What he’s up to now: Anh Truong has probably been the most active in the top 5 in terms of adding new stuff to his build… His ITR probably hasn’t even been in his possession much in 2011 because it’s spent a chunk of it’s time either down here in Southern California for events or over at ASC Speed Metal for custom fabrication…
Anh’s car has been down at ASC because they have been hard at work on fabricating some new catch cans and misc. things for his engine bay. They also added a custom roll bar/half cage to the ITR. I think as a whole in 2011, I probably have seen Anh’s ITR more than I have seen Anh himself… The exterior of the ITR has remained basically the same, with the exception of some brand new Almighty Grey Regamaster EVOs…
2. Bisimoto’s Honda Civic Wagon and Honda CR-Z…
What he’s up to now: Bisi currently is hard at work on a brand new 2012 Honda Civic coupe for SEMA. The wagon is exactly the same as it was last year and for the most part, so is the turbo CR-Z. Bisi is a mad man so he’s constantly hard at work on either his own projects or tuning customer vehicles but the spare moments that he’s had, he’s spent it cruising around in the CR-Z. I was just over at the Bisimoto facility last week and he was talking about how often he drives the CR-Z. If you’re wondering, the answer is “yes”, he does drive it around with the chute in the rear and everything, haha…
There are some minor kinks electronically here and there with the hybrid motor but he has taken the car out for test runs at the track. I doubt he really has any major changes planned for this thing because he’ll be busy finishing his 2012 Civic and campaigning it for 2012. Another thing that might prevent him for doing anything else to this CR-Z is all the different Porsche projects he’s working on. I haven’t had a chance to see his Porsche SEMA project but he promises that it’ll be one-of-a-kind. I don’t know how he has enough hours in the day to do as much as he does but I’m very interested to see the debuts of his new projects when the SEMA show rolls around in November…
1. Ryan Der’s Honda Civic and Big Mike’s Honda Prelude (Tie)…
What he’s up to now: Ryan surprised a lot of people in 2011 when he decided to take off his complete C-West aero kit. He usually takes it off to track the Civic anyways and with so many track events to go to this year, I guess it just made sense for him to remove it permanently and go back to a Mugen front lip and splitter. At the Wekfest event that occurred in early 2011, Ryan also debuted a new set of custom refinished Work Meister S1s..
There aren’t any other major changes. Under the hood he’s switched over to a C.O.P. ignition system and different valve cover but that’s mostly it. He spent much of the year attending car shows as well as beating up his Civic on the track at events such as Super Street’s annual FF Battle….
What he’s up to now: Big Mike is always busy running around all over the place but his Prelude is pretty much the same as it was in 2010. There aren’t very many builds that are as in-depth or as detailed as his and it showed in 2011 when he consistently continued to take home awards at shows all over Cali. His Prelude even appeared on the cover of Banzai magazine, which is a U.K.-based publication. There are many that are starting to think that he needs to switch things up because it’s remained the same for the last two years and Big Mike definitely has some cool new things coming for his Prelude.
While he’s busy working and collecting new parts for his Prelude, Big Mike has started on a Honda Accord side-project to keep him occupied for the rest of the year. 2012 looks to be another big year for Big Mike, so stay tuned…
That rounds out the list. Hopefully this has given you some insight as to what these guys are up to these days. All are very much deserving of being on the 2010 list and continue to be a force within the Honda community in 2011…
The only question that remains now is… who is going to make this year’s list?….
Thanks for looking…
Productivity…
I normally don’t get more than one or two things done on an average day because I’m too busy doing absolutely nothing, but yesterday was a pretty decent day. I was sent out on assignment to Gearspeed in Rancho Cucamonga for work, spent the majority of the day there, and then I headed over to the Bisimoto facility to check out DPK David’s tune. Bisi was tuning David’s K20 Civic coupe and dropping by Bisimoto Engineering also meant that Bisi was going to give me a first look at some of his latest projects…
So I woke up early Thursday morning and drove an hour from the Orange County area to Rancho Cucamonga, which is in the Inland Empire. I really didn’t have any idea what I was supposed to do out there, as Rodrez only told me to go out there to cover a tech story for Honda Tuning. Big Mike happened to be off work that day and was good friends with James over at Gearspeed so I asked him to come by and hang out while I shot whatever was going down over there. When I arrived at Gearspeed, they gave Big Mike and I a tour of their facility and then we walked over to a work station where I was greet to a pleasant surprise. The tech story I was sent out there to cover that day was actually a tear down and reassembly of a legit Spoon Sports K-series transmission from Japan…
I can’t really get into full details of what actually went down, you’ll have to wait until a future issue of Honda Tuning magazine for that, but here’s a quick shot of the Spoon tranny, assembled by Spoon, straight from one of their race cars…
It’s crazy to see what goes down at a place like Gearspeed because these guys that work there take apart transmissions and rebuild them like it’s a very simple job, when in reality, it is everything but. I mean, these guys can tear down a tranny, throw every single removable piece into a bin, machine-wash it, and put it all back together in about 30 minutes time. Shit was wild man, I’m telling you… Just to think about how intricate each Honda transmission is and how these guys know them like the back of their hands is mind boggling… The Spoon transmission was way more than I expected it to be because I honestly don’t have that much of a favorable view of Spoon Sports stuff, but honestly, I was impressed. They actually did some work on this transmission and didn’t just like, throw a different final drive in there and plaster a Spoon badge on it like every one of their other products. That shit was definitely a learning experience, and I have a ton of respect for guys that work on transmissions on a daily basis. These guys are very systematic and almost robotic in terms of their ability to work on these transmissions. Big props goes out to the guys over at Gearspeed for not only their skill, but also their hospitality. The facility itself is a trip too because it’s a gigantic warehouse filled to the brim with Honda transmissions and parts. The craziest thing about that facility is that they have a full gym next to their lunch area, and one of the offices even has a tanning bed inside of it…haha…I’m serious, you can’t even make that shit up…
I definitely stayed there longer than I expected to though. I got there around 11am and didn’t get out of there until almost 4pm in the afternoon. The time spent there was a productive one, so I can’t really complain…
After that Big Mike and I hopped into our cars and made our way down to the Bisimoto Engineering facility. DPK David’s tuning appointment was at 2pm so they were almost done by the time we got there. Luckily they still had one more final pull left on the dyno and I was able to witness it…
Here’s what it looked like when we pulled up. The coupe was still hooked up to the dyno, but Bisi was taking a little break to have a nice cold drink…
Bisi taking a moment to chat with Big Mike…
As for the tune….the numbers at that point were pretty decent but Bisi felt that there was quite a bit of restriction coming from the intake area…
He recommended to David that they take his filter off and mount a velocity stack to it for the final pull. David removed the filter he had on, mounted the velocity stack and aimed it upward to get maximum air flow…
Here’s a crappy video of the final run…
The filter did prove to be the issue as the final run yielded some pretty good results…
Final horsepower numbers can be seen above…
Both Bisi and David seemed to be pretty happy with the results. 218HP on a internally stock K20 Type-S motor tuned on a AEM EMS Series 2 is not too shabby… There isn’t anything else done to the motor but the basic intake, header, exhaust combination…
By the time they finished taking the car off the Dynapak, it was time to close up shop. The photo above is Bisi and DPK David after they came back from a test drive. David was all smiles because his motor has never run better…
While David and Bisi were busy finalizing the details of David’s tune, Big Mike asked me to take a new photo of his side project, which is a 1996 Honda Accord wagon. He recently put some Work Leadsleds on so he wanted to get a decent photo of it…
Big Mike claims he’s not gonna do anything crazy with this car but we’re all waiting for the day when he let’s us know that he’s doing a full Mil-spec harness and ITBs for it…just wait, it’ll happen…. Overall, the wagon is mint, The interior is like new and everything seems to be working very well mechanically. He’s always wanted a wagon and the perfect opportunity came up to purchase one….
That’s all for today. Make sure you guys click above at the top of the screen to pick up your Year.Three Chronicles Anniversary spots if you haven’t done so already. Spots are moving quickly so it’s a good idea if you jump on them now…
PURCHASE YOUR YEAR.THREE CHRONICLES ANNIVERSARY MEET PARKING SPOT HERE
Japanese Treats…
Got an early update for you guys since I have to be up early in the AM to head out to cover a tech story for work. If you guys are interested in coming to the 3-year Chronicles Anniversary Meet and haven’t taken the time to reserve your parking spots yet, please do so as soon as possible. The post directly before this one as well as the link at the very top of this page will lead you to a link where you can purchase your parking spot at the event. A chunk of the spots have be claimed already so I really suggest you guys get on that if you want to be a part of it…
Anyways, one of the Supertwinz, James Nguyen aka OldManJames, passed this link onto me yesterday and I thought it would be cool to post it up and show you guys some pics. It’s actually from an event that took place in Japan over a year ago but it contains a lot of cool EF Civic builds that you probably have never seen before. If you love Hondas, then chances are very high that you are probably a big fan of the EF chassis. EFs are basically classics now within our community and any time you can find a really clean, cool-looking build, you should definitely take some time to check it out. These photos are from the 2010 East Japan CR-X Meeting that took place in the Tochigi Prefecture. I won’t post all the photos but at the bottom of this post, I have included a link to the site so that you can view their coverage as well as the rest of the content on their site, known as “From JPN”. I just posted some of the EFs that stood out the most to me but there are definitely a lot more photos to be seen. The only CR-X you will probably recognize is the white one from North Latitude 36°. I posted a couple shots of it from an old Japanese Option magazine about a year ago and if you were a viewer from back then, you should be able to remember it. If not then you get to see it today so now you’re just sitting here wasting your time reading this sentence. Let’s just get to the photos…
Really liked the front half of this CR-X, sitting on front-staggered Sprint Hart CP-Rs…notice in the last shot how the wheel weight is mounted on the outside of the lip. Definitely a little odd but I guess whatever works, right?…Taillights are ca-ca but the enthusiasts from this site are both JDM and USDM fans so we are actually to blame for those lights…
Here’s the CR-X that I mentioned early from North Latitude 36°…Very cool looking EF with green TE37s, a red two-tone bay and weird turbo manifold set-up. Its strange in that it has the manifold and intercooler, yet it still has a regular intake….There’s actually another shot of the bay at a different angle that you can see here where you can see the custom radiator hard-lines and it seems to run up top across to the side. I almost think that this car is all motor using the top half of a turbo manifold and the intercooler is some sort of make-shift custom radiator or something because it looks like the cooling lines run directly to it….is it turbo or not? I’m not 100% sure, but it’s definitely interesting to look at and wonder…
Pretty wild fuel set-up…
Cool shot of it with some other CR-Xs in the distance…
I’m not 100% sure if this is from the same CR-X but I like the custom Defi cluster…
Also liked these two CR-Xs…loving the slightly more aggressive 16-inch Wedsport wheels on the front of the white one and the blue one is rolling on what I’m pretty sure are Black Racing wheels, a wheel that you definitely don’t see too often nowadays…
The rear looks like it’s an SSR Competition wheel…
Check out these scale models… the Mugen CR-X Pro is sick…
The Mugen CR-X Pro.2 aero seems to be the kit of choice for CR-X owners over there…
I’m sure someone else can elaborate as to what kit this is because I don’t really know…Note also the vented front fenders…
This isn’t a CR-X but it was also present at this particular event. There’s a full profile of it on their page so you can see all the full specs but at a glance, I can tell you that those are 14-inch SSR MK2 wheels, and the front lip and rear wing are Chargespeed pieces…
If you want to see more from this event, click below and it will take you there to their gallery…
FROM JPN – 2010 EAST JAPAN CR-X MEETING GALLERY
Okay, this isn’t EF-related but I saw this on their site and it’s definitely something you don’t see everyday…
In the U.S., this was known as the first gen. Acura Vigor that nobody gave a shit about AT ALL, but in Japan, the CC2 Honda Inspire was a chassis that people in Japan actually took a chance on. I know that when I was researching parts in Japan for my CB Accord back in the day, I use to always run into CC2 Inspire parts. Companies like Chargespeed made front lips and other stuff for it that actually made them look pretty decent. You can peep more photos of it in the attach links below…
CC2 HONDA INSPIRE AS SEEN ON THE FROM JPN SITE
Interesting right? If you guys want to see more, make sure to visit their site. They have all kinds of interesting older Honda builds including stuff like this Honda Civic Wagon…
Crazy….really dig those Hayashi Racing Streets on there…
Anyways, peep the site here…. FROM JPN – “WE ARE JDM & USDM ‘OTAKU’…”
Thanks for looking!….
Summer days…
Got a couple new photos for you guys today…I had some spare time during the day after I finished up a story for Super Street magazine so I decided to head down to the Rywire facilities to see what was going on. Big Mike had also hit me up earlier on in the day and wanted to know if I wanted to hang out so we just met up at Rywire. There’s been a couple of ongoing projects at the shop so I picked up the camera and snapped some photos for you guys. These aren’t like customer cars or anything, just a couple of friends who asked Ryan if they could use his shop space to work on their cars since he had some extra room down there.
Supertwinz John from AEM has his red EA hatchback there while his other project, a white EA, is up in Norcal in preparation for paint. This red one is supposed to be a tad more tame than his white one and this one is supposed to be his weekend track car. He’s going all out on his white one and I’ll update you guys on that build once it comes back from Franklin Autobody. The other car currently there getting worked on is an EM1 coupe owned by DPK Darryl or D-Rail, who works over at JHPUSA. His car has been down for awhile and he’s torn it apart to get a K-swap and tuck…
Here’s a shot of John’s EA…As you can see, the B-series barely fits in there and clearance is at a minimum, especially since the half-radiator is going to have to sit off to the side…
A shot of John’s Kinsler individual throttle bodies…These will eventually go into his other white EA Civic. He just has these on this motor now to see how things look as far as fitment goes…
I thought this was pretty cool, it’s easier to see in the second photo but that anodized gold fitting is actually a fuel line quick disconnect. You don’t really see these used that often and it’s definitely a cool touch…
John’s 15×8 949 wheels just came in recently and are sitting at the shop in boxes. Those will probably go on as the car gets closer to completion but for now, he has a set of Mugen CF48 wheels on and lurking behind the hideous face are Wilwood brakes…I don’t care what you say, those wheels may be classics but they are ugly as fuck. They look like old fan clutches from like, a small block Chevy from the 80′s…
Ryan’s CR-X was sitting on some filthy ass Kosei K1 wheels because he participated in a small track event at Buttonwillow last weekend. The car is pretty dirty but at least you know it’s being used. It ran very well at the track too and did a 2:04.584 when it was driven by Ryan’s friend Charlie…
Ryan and Big Mike going over some details on Darryl’s Civic Si…At the rate this rebuild is going, it should be done right around 2015, and he will be the only Honda left on the road because cars will have the ability to fly by then if you follow the timeline from Back to the Future Part II…
You guys already know whose car this is…not much to report here, just some minor touch-ups that need to be completed…
Exclusive Content…Unpublished Photos of Kane Chan’s Civic Coupe from Super Street July ’11…
Today we will be taking a look at some shots that I took of Kane Chan’s Civic coupe that was recently featured in Super Street’s annual Honda Issue. Click here for the full story online…
I’m a huge fan of Kane’s and there really isn’t much I really have to say about his coupe that I haven’t already done in the Super Street story as well as here on The Chronicles. The car is a truly rare beast considering how builds these days are fly-by night projects assembled merely for online recognition and fame. Really though, how many people do you know have had their older Hondas since they were brand new from the dealership and still have them today? Fucking.Awesome. Anyways, check out the pics below. I was pretty happy with how this shoot went…it’s always easy to shoot in downtown L.A. because there are so many great backdrops to use when shooting. These were the ones that weren’t used in the Super Street Honda Issue, minus the first shot which ended up being the first page layout for the story. At the end I’ve included a 1920×1080-sized desktop image for you guys like usual…enjoy, and thanks for looking. Props to Kane for building such a timeless ride and go pick up the Super Street Honda Issue if you haven’t done so already. There should be a couple issues left on newstands before they switch over to the next issue, which should drop in the next few weeks. Once they’re gone, they’re gone, so swoop that up before it’s too late…
Widescreen 1080P desktop image for you guys below…
Exclusive Content…Ryan Der and Chris Sakai from Wekfest LA Weekend…
Damn, it’s almost perfect timing to post this up today because it coincides with the debut of the ATS Garage Facebook page… If you’re a Facebook head, go ahead and add them so you can check out more pics of the members in their crew as well as pics from the past that date back to the very early days of ATS. Anyways, I’ve been sitting on these pics for awhile now because I’ve just been having so much fun going through them. The set only contains exterior shots because we didn’t have much time that weekend but these cars have had enough exposure by now where you guys should all be very familiar with how the interior and engine bays look. Ryan Der of course, graced the cover with fellow ATS member Anh Truong in last year’s annual Super Street Honda Issue and Chris Sakai was on the cover of Honda Tuning magazine not too long ago. I met Ryan first when I did the story for his EK but I really got to know him better during last year’s Super Street FF Battle. Big Mike and I were hanging out during the dyno sessions and Ryan was there posted up by himself so we invited him to go eat with us. The rest as they say, is history and we’ve been chillin’ ever since. He even makes random trips down here to Socal sometimes just to BBQ with us or whatever. I met Chris Sakai awhile back, probably at one of the Norcal Wekfest events but it wasn’t until I went on a trip to Norcal with Rodrez that we actually started talking more. Rodrez was shooting Chris’ Civic for the Honda Tuning cover spread and I actually made another trip up there the very next weekend with DPK David just to hang out. Both very cool guys, both unique in their own ways, but both with equally amazing Honda builds. It probably sounds a little biased now because I know them and their cars so well but truthfully, these two Civics probably have to be one of the best EK-themed builds of all time. People can say it’s “cocky” or whatever they want to say but the cars speak for themselves.
During the Wekfest LA weekend a couple weeks back, we were all hanging out at the Rywire facilities and had some extra time so I decided to get some shots of their cars. They had both added some new things since last year so it was the right time to get some new pics of the two cars. I don’t want to talk your head off so here are the pics below… As usual, click on the links below for larger versions and towards the end I’ve included some 1080P sized wallpapers for you guys. Enjoy and thanks for looking. Some of the wallpaper shots are a little different from my usual stuff but I wanted to experiment with a much darker, more artsy “look” I guess you can say. If you don’t like them, oh well, just don’t click on them, haha….
Below are the desktop shots…
Widescreen Version (1920×1080)
Widescreen Version (1920×1080)
Widescreen Version (1920×1080)
Widescreen Version (1920×1080)
Broadened Horizons…
Okay, so things have been incredibly busy as of late but I have managed to complete all the orders that have been placed within the past month. I apologize for your items showing up a bit later than expected but I do everything in-house here in my apartment/work space/office/bedroom all at once so there are times when I may be preoccupied with other things. The orders have been completed though and sent out. There was a minor delay because I was waiting on some materials but that has been corrected and we are back in business….
I decided to dedicate this post on something totally unrelated to the usual stuff I talk about on here. I recently received an order from Japan for some Chronicles stickers and it’s always cool to see that I have fans outside of the states that enjoy the site. Usually my biggest customers are Takeshi from Type_K and Tetsuya Yamaguchi but there will be times when I have customers that order direct from Japan that I have never personally met before. While I was filling out the order, I went to fill out the address on the envelope and well, I came to realize that the address was completely in Japanese. I didn’t want to take a chance at writing down the Japanese incorrectly and having the package sent back to me so I decided to go on the website listed on the Paypal account to see if the site had an address that was in english so that I wouldn’t have to email the buyer. The risk of me emailing before I checked the website is that my email may not be translated correctly and thus would lead to a further delay as the two of us try to figure out what one another are saying. So when I finally hopped on the site listed, which was KC-Trading.net, I was surprised to see what popped up on the screen. The site and it’s owners may be Honda fans, but the cars they work on are totally not your typical Honda chassis. The site actually takes you to a business known as Blax Street Style Cruiser Equipment. Their “street cruisers” are actually Japanese work trucks, which apparently has a pretty big tuner following in Japan…
Cool right? It ain’t really my thing but these little trucks look pretty cool all done up. I really like that yellowish truck at the end with the round headlights. I went through the site to find a bigger shot of it but the pictures that are available are only in their online catalog and they tend to be very small. Here are some more pics of these trucks though and what these guys are all about…
I don’t know if these guys purchased Chronicles stickers for themselves or if they plan to resell them out there but I can honestly say that it’d be a pretty cool thing to see one of my stickers on these trucks. I’d rock one of these here in Socal but I’m pretty sure I would go 4 feet down the road without getting run over or me turning in one of them too fast and then them rolling over on it’s side….
Check out this one on TEs…
I know it doesn’t really fit the Honda demographic but it’s definitely interesting to see what enthusiasts in other countries are into…
That got me thinking about the RG-O site I was looking at earlier in the week so I started going through my Japanese Honda mag again to look for web addresses to look at. Surprisingly, most of the Japanese tuning companies have turned to blogging and a majority of the popular tuners now have their very own blogs. Spoon Sports, RG-O, ASM, etc., are all blogging now. You may have a difficult time trying to figure out what they’re saying but the pictures are always cool to look at…
Here are a couple of shots from the RG-O blog…
Love this shot…
While I was looking through that Honda Style mag, I spotted a really small snippet in there about this shop in Japan called CRaft A. I had never heard of them but from the small pic that I seen, their cars looks pretty cool. There was a webaddress printed on the page so I typed it in to see what they were all about….
Here’s the photo from the mag that got me interested in them. Of course they have a blog too so I clicked on the link and they had a blog post about a photographer coming by their shop to feature them in the Honda Style mag…
Here’s the photographer snapping that exact shot that you see above in the previous image…pretty cool…
Here’s a shot of the mag that they took and posted on their blog…
Their site actually has a shit-ton of photos from their daily adventures at their shop as well as when they hit up car shows and track events. I think I sat there for a good hour or two just sifting through their blog and I don’t even understand anything that they’re saying…I don’t know how deep the blog goes but it looks like they update it a lot. I think I was on the 65th page before I finally decided to rest my eyes…
Here are their two main shop cars…
CRaft A “Black Monster” Original Super Computer!…
A exterior shot of their relatively small shop…EJ1 coupe on some larger old school Volk IIIs…
I like their shop slogan…”MODIFY UR CAR LIKE U BRIGHTEN UR WIFE!”…haha…awesome…
Custom aero…
I like the “Best Friend or Worst Enemy” line…it’s not lost in translation like their other quote…
Two-tone bay action…
Another shot of the outside…
Hatchback on some Borbet wheels…
North America ain’t the only ones shaving and tuck bays anymore…
On display at a car show…
It’s always good to look outside of the norm and see what’s going on outside of the U.S…These guys are relatively small and I’m sure completely unknown over here so I hope you guys enjoyed seeing this stuff. If I find anything new or discover any more sites, I’ll be sure to post it up for you guys. Below is a video of that bright green EJ1 coupe on the track…
If you guys want to check out CRaft A for yourselves, click here to go to their site…
If you want to check out the CRaft A blog, click here to go to their blog…
Thanks for looking and have a great weekend…
Stacks…
Well, final prep for Wekfest is in full force. Everyone is scrambling to get their cars ready while on my end, I’ve literally been slaving away on getting merchandise ready for the booth. So far, about 75% of the stickers that I plan to have available at Wekfest are now complete and tonight I will make the final batch before packing my bags. I still have so much to do and the shirts are also coming down to the wire. Hopefully they will be available for me to pick up tomorrow so that I can organize them and get there ready for the show….
The booth at Wekfest will have the most merchandise available that I have ever had at a booth at an event. When I say some of my stickers are limited runs, that definitely isn’t an understatement because I sit up hours upon hours at night cutting, weeding out, and putting the stickers together on my own. I don’t have any outside source that helps me do anything of the decal stuff. I have my computer on an L-shaped desk where the other end is stritcly for putting stickers together. To the right of me I have my TV and my vinyl cutter. Its a full on operation over here, haha. As you can see from the pic above, that is what I have finished so far. There are large stacks of the “Chronicles IV” design along with the Like Button stickers, and smaller quantities of popular stickers that I have had available in the past. I know some of you guys still like the older designs so I always make sure to have those available. I’m crossing my fingers that the shirts will come out great. It’s a little short notice but my normal shirt guy seemingly disappeared and fell off the face of the Earth, and luckily I had a guy available that’s close to where I live that stepped up to get them done. I’ll find out tomorrow how they look and I’ll get pics up as soon as possible with the finished product.
I should give you guys some other stuff to look at though, so here is what I’ve been glancing at on the web inbetween hourly long sticker-cutting sessions….
I can’t say I’m truly appreciative of the Accord CB7-chassis community. Thought I find myself always wondering if I should build another one, I go back to glance at the forums and there hasn’t been much of a change. It’s still the entry-level car that younger guys start out with but never fully go all-out on. Most guys find themselves with more funds as they get older and they just get something else. Sometimes I still have casual conversations with the homies about what my car would be like today if I still had it. I think by now, it would have been K-swapped already and the bay would have been much cleaner but the exterior would most likely be about the same, maybe a couple different sets of wheels, etc…Just the small stuff. Whenever I go back to the CB7Tuner forums though, I always look for a member’s page on there by the name of “aleks77″. This guy has had his car since I had mine and he’s one of those rare guys that has stuck with the car and continues to make it better and better. I’m not really involved within that community anymore so I rarely go on there, but I usually scroll through the member’s page to find his. I thought I’d toss up some pictures of it here because he’s all the way out in Canada so it’s never heard of and it’s definitely deserving of a mention. The car has seen quite the evolution throughout the years and I think in it’s current state, it’s one of the best Accords out right now. It doesn’t have an H22-swap but it is a boosted F-series that makes 357WHP at 19PSI of boost on pump gas, which is really impressive. I would have included some bay shots but I think he was redoing some areas of his bay since it cracked but believe me, it’s not bad. Actually, here’s a pretty decent shot of it…
Not bad right? The car is nice and the guy seems to be a pretty knowledgeable guy. He’s also into photography too which allows me to provide some shots of his car. I think you may have seen pics of it floating around before when it was primered black but now it’s painted and I’m a fan. Boosted, with aggressive Work VS-XX wheels, a simple yet complete lip kit with clean paint. What’s not to like? Just needs some seats and some other minor touches and it would probably make for a nice little feature car. Here are some shots of it, thanks to Aleks77….
I’ve never really been a fan of the 2-door coupe Accords or even the 90-91 front-end/taillights but since the front is all cut up anyway for a huge frontmount intercooler, it doesn’t really matter. Like I said earlier, I’m a fan…here’s a link to his member’s page here.
Anyways, here are some random shots of the Sportcar Motion Civic hatchback recently from some test runs at Streets of Willow…New additions include a custom Sportcar Motion front bumper and splitter, plus a Voltex GT2 wing and gurney flap…
Looks fucking mean!…
Back with some updates tomorrow, hopefully with pics of the new shirts!…
Eating crow…
Bare with me…I’m currently at my parent’s house for Chinese New Year festivities and the computer I’m using was the same one I used almost 8 years ago and it’s age reflects it’s speed…
Anyways, today’s updates consists of me eating a bit of crow, figuratively speaking of course…We all know Mike G’s Civic aka “Tank” and we have all learned of the lore and legend behind it’s existance…In reality of course, outside of the internet world, the car, much like ourselves, leads a much different life. I’ve known Mike for quite some time now and I’m not afraid to admit that I and the rest of the homies have basically sat back and watch this car sit for almost 6 years. Life outside of Hondas took over Mike’s life and getting the car back together was not a huge priority anymore. We all just kind accepted that fact and really had no hurry to push Mike to bring his car back. After all this time, most people didn’t even know that the car was still around. When Mike G informed all of us that he was bringing “Tank” back, we really didn’t know what to think. The only thing we thought of whenever he talked about his car were the images from years ago that still continue to be posted all over the internet today. I personally was a little iffy about the whole thing because I just didn’t think that he had the resources to get it done. That and I was worried that maybe his time had past and him bringing the car back out would not get the recognition he anticipated because the community had shifted so greatly from 5 years before. So I sat back and whenever he had something to show me, I would give him my feedback. When I was notified that he would possibly be getting the cover of Super Street’s annual Honda Issue, I was starting to think that this car would get some steam behind it and make a real push in 2010.
And then everything snowballed.
I know that Mike might not want me to talk about this stuff but hey, let’s be real. I’m not one of those random ass people from some other part of the country that just merely tunes in and gives him props to boost his ego. While I may not be incredibly close to Mike by any means, we have stood side by side and I’ve come to know him pretty well, for better or worse. It started to snowball when the car wasn’t in running condition for Eibach, and then the car wasn’t ready for its mag shoot, and when it finally came time for the car to be tuned, the motor just took a shit. It was set to make it’s huge return in running form at Nisei Showoff last year but with all the problems the motor saw, it just didn’t happen. Shit basically hit the fan. The lore of “Tank” had a sudden dose of reality…things weren’t good. I’m not gonna go into the reasons why the motor was fucked because I honestly don’t know the real story, all you need to know is that the car was fucked. And yes, no matter what the numbers were that you heard from whomever told you, yes…it was probably right on. News traveled quickly on the internet. Of course during that time, Mike and I had a bit of a falling out. It wasn’t anything serious or terribly personal and I also won’t really elaborate on it but it took me a couple months to finally want to listen to what Mike had to tell me or even absorb his words but hey, we can’t always see eye to eye on things. That’s just life. I finally realized that Mike G is who he is and I am who I am and we will butt heads. Whatever happened happened and he and I are good. Throughout 2010 however, with all that was happening to “Tank”, we all kinda sat back and waited to see what was coming next. Many of us who know Mike personally were wondering if he was going to crack. Nothing really worked out the way he wanted it to and anybody who was faced with the car issues that he had would have totally been down.
Luckily for Mike G., he had good help and Mike from Plan B Motorsports decided to take on the project and help him get the car running correctly. Mike was to tear the motor apart and reassemble it, fixing whatever was wrong with it along the way. The end result, to put it simply,…was better than anyone expected. We all waited for Mike G. to hit us with more bad news, because it started to become a reoccurring theme for him. It’s fucked up to say, but that’s the truth. Nothing seemed to be going his way and the car didn’t look like it would ever run. When news hit a couple days ago of what Mike and Doug at Plan B were able to accomplished, we were shocked. Not shocked because we had no faith in Plan B, because Mike knows what he’s doing and he’s very good at what he does, but because the motor was able to make GREAT power. They got “Tank” running again and it runs fucking good….
261.6HP/182LB-FT on 91 Octane. The “Michael Douglas” as the Plan B guys have come to call it, is making K-series type numbers. That’s pretty impressive…
Here are the specs…
GSR Motor AKA Michael Douglas, assembled by Doug and I @ Plan B Motorsports
Machine work done by RS Machine
Ported Head
85mm CP 11.9:1
GSR Eagle Rods
Clevite Bearings
Skunk2 Pro Series IM
Skunk2 72mm TB
Skunk2 Pro 2+ Degreed by Dave & Dr. Charles @ Skunk2
Skunk2 Valve Train
Skunk2 Header
Eric Valdez (Street Image) custom 3″ exhaust and turn down which houses the Burns Stainless Muffler
Eric Valdez (Street Image) fitted the GSR trans w/ an LSD to get the Michael Douglas powered Tank rolling.
Greg (Go-Autoworks) custom 3inch Cold Air Intake
I call this post “Eating Crow” because I was very skeptical as to if this car would ever run again. Not only is it running now, thanks to Plan B Motorsports, it’s running strong and it’s healthy. I kinda felt that everyone gave this car a little too much credit when it came back because it was based purely on aesthetics and just simply because it was “Tank”. I just wasn’t ready to really accept this project fully yet because I didn’t know what direction Mike G was going. Knowing that this car is in the type of running condition it is now puts a bit of a smile on my face. I knew a majority of what was going on behind the scenes and to see this car making pulls in the Youtube videos I’ve attached below finally makes me believe that “Tank is back”. Big props go out to Plan B Motorsports and to Mike G for following through on the car. With all that had happened in 2010, I was almost beginning to think that the car was going to sit another 6 years…
Here are some pics from Mike G. himself when the car was at Church Automotive Testing…
I know some of you may have looked at the dyno sheet image and wondered why it said “turbo eg” on it. No, it’s not turbocharged. The name was existent because Mike G. had dyno’d there before and that was the file name it was designated. This incarnation of “Tank” is all-motor….
Mike G’s still got some loose ends to tie up here and there but when he’s ready, we’re gonna schedule a time to get some better photos of it for The Chronicles. For now, check out the videos below…
Like someone on his NWP4Life thread said….”Welcome back Mike”…
Thanks for looking…
Exclusive Content…Henry from DPK’s Real Deal EG6 Civic…
You guys all saw Jared’s S2000 a couple days back and all the comments have been overwhelmingly positive, and now here is the other Honda that I shot two weekends ago. I really wanted to get some shots of a car that generally hasn’t been heard of yet or “whored out” so to speak, and Henry’s EG6 was perfect. It’s still a work in progress but aesthetically, it’s complete. Ryan and Rywire did the work on the bay and David and the DPK guys lended a helping hand in putting the car back together. It’s a legit Japanese Domestic Market Civic EG6 and one of the rare, true authentic RHD Civics that are registered and road legal out here in California. It still retains a B-series and also the complete OEM JDM interior, which was really cool to see. I hadn’t really been exposed to one up close in a long time and definitely not one complete as this one. The exterior is very simple and straight to the point with the only add-on being the J’s Racing front lip. One of the cool things about the Japanese market Civics was that they all came in varying trim levels where the moldings outside would be different colors, unlike the ones in the U.S. where it was either black or painted to match the body. This particular one had a silver body molding and when Henry had the car resprayed the original color, he made sure to do the proper research and get the correct paint code to repaint the molding it’s original silver hue as well. It also has a original bronze glass which I didn’t even notice until the sun hit it. It’s just cool to see something from overseas still be completely intact after years in the states. I’ve always been a fan of Sprint Hart CP-Rs and it was even the first set of wheels I ever owned for my own Honda when I had it so I can always appreciate a set everytime I see one. It flows well with the rest of the car and it helps the car retain it’s timeless feel. Being that it’s already 2011, you would expect to see a K-swap under the hood and who knows, maybe that’s in the future eventually but for now, it’s still has the motor that we’ve been acustomed to seeing after all these years. The whole car just has a cool, almost nostalgic feel to it, even though it’s a bit weird to call an EG6 “nostalgic” by any means. The bay still needs some work here and there but overall, it’s a cool build. I can dig it…and I hope you guys enjoy seeing it as much as I do. It’s totally different from Jared’s S2000 shoot on very differing levels but both were shot on the same day. Same deal applies, I really shouldn’t have to explain it to you guys. Links to larger pics are provided below each picture and I’ve even gone and attached a 1920×1080 sized desktop image for you guys that like to always swap different backgrounds. Have a good one, and thanks for looking…
For you guys that like desktop wallpaper images…
Widescreen Version (1920×1080)
Remember where you saw it first! Only on The Chronicles, all rights reserved, all biters served! Original content all day!
Extras…
Just a couple of extra shots from Sheepey’s HT shoot a couple months back. Now that the issue has hit the stands and is going to be replaced with the latest issue, I figure I’d throw these up. Kinda gives you guys an idea how it looks when they shoot these cars in a studio environment…
That’s about it for today, RPM show tomorrow in Irvine, CA so make sure and come hang out if you got the time…
Setting up for the cover shot. You can see here that the cars are rolled in and pushed instead of driven around because of all the white floors and walls…Driving things in and out would just cause a mess…This is also where other mags like Hot Rod shoot as well…
Bumper removal and what not for detail shots…
Rodrez at work…
Here you guys can get an idea of how the room actually looks and the gigantic lighting apparatus… I think this whole studio was priced somewhere near like a nice home or more…It was cool to see it because it moves around however you like it too. Shit is serious…
Post-shoot, rolling the car back out onto the trailer…
The bay…
Big ass Bullseye turbine…
Rywire harness with AEM EMS, ignition box, and custom enclosed relay box…
You can tell from the last two shots that only one side of the wheels were color-matched. At that time Sheepey was still unsure of whether or not he was gonna keep it that way so he just did one side…
That’s all for today, have a good weekend everyone…
The Top 10 Hondas of 2009…A retrospective…Part 2…
4-1…here we go…
4. Big Mike’s Honda Prelude…
What he’s up to now: Big Mike has been out in full force this year. He’s out there almost at every event trying to make his sponsors happy and to talk with people who have questions about his build. The guy has just been doing big things this year. The car is finally dialed in and he’s been able to drive it everywhere and as you can see, he finally decided to put his blinkers on…haha. The new Advan RGs are a great look as well but the last time I talked to him, he’s already got something new up his sleeve and will most likely debut it at this weekend’s Spocom event. I think he’s finally at a point where he’s happy with the car and just trying to enjoy every moment of 2010…
3. Arnel Ortiz and the Phaze2 EG…
What he’s up to now: Arnel’s Civic just continues to evolve. He generally keeps to himself and every time there’s an event, he comes out with some new shit. You just never know what this guy has up his sleeve. Like Steve Kwan and S2kJay, all the accolades and mag features has not changed him in any way and he just continues to work on his car. At Eibach he debuted a sick new tucked radiator set-up, air ride, and ITBs. There are rumors floating around that he’s actually building another Honda so the Socal Honda community has been anxiously waiting to see when he’s gonna bring it out. With his ability to always out do himself, the sky’s the limit for Arnel and we couldn’t be more excited to see him succeed…
2. Alex Soto aka Sheepey’s Acura Integra…
What he’s up to now: Not entirely sure what the Integra is up to these days. Most likely it’s sitting under a car cover in Sheepey’s garage. As you’ve seen on this site and in the upcoming issue of Honda Tuning magazine, Sheepey has been hard at work on his hatchback, which sat under a car cover while he campaigned his Integra last year. Hopefully he brings the DC back but in the meantime, we get to enjoy all 800+ horsepower of his race car. Studio shoots, mag covers, and some seat time at the track in the near future, Alex Soto has the world in the palm of his hands. Everything car this guy touches turns to Honda gold…
1. Sportcar Motion’s Acura Integra Type R and Honda Civic…
What he’s up to now: The Integra that was so dominant in 2009 is now taking a break from the rigors of time attack competition and sits dormant in the garage of Sportcar Motion. The feature for this DC is actually in the same issue that’s upcoming with Sheepey’s so make sure to go check that out. As you can see from the updated picture, it has taken on more of a subtle appearance without all the stickers and sponsor logos. Even so, you would be crazy to think that Loi would take this out and use it on the street as a grocery getter. The Civic is also currently stored away in the shop. That’s because the Sportcar Motion crew has been busy campaigning the KraftWerks supercharged Civic in 2010 and the hatchback recently took home it’s first win in competition. Loi had issues with cooling and minor things here and there that prevented the supercharged K-powered Civic from running correctly but it’s all dialed in now and looks to take home more awards this year. Loi is another one of those guys that continues to evolve in the community and who knows what he’ll build next. Of course the car will be white though because Loi apparently, is color-blind and won’t build anything that isn’t white…=P…
That’s all 10 (11)…hope you guys enjoyed taking a look back at last year’s top Hondas. With so many crazy ass builds coming out in 2010, who knows who will end up on this year’s list. Hell, even I don’t know. I haven’t even had time to even think about it. There are some cars that have caught my eye though but there’s still plenty of time for new builds to appear and impress…
