Let me start out by saying that I had an absolutely incredible weekend. This one will definitely be a memorable one for me because I actually had some free time and spent it with friends and visiting friends from other parts of the country/world. Like last, year, I chose not to have a booth at the Wekfest LA show because the annual Eibach Meet was only a week away. The Eibach Meet is a Honda-dedicated event and being that my site is Honda-dedicated as well, I figured it would be best to have representation at that meet than at Wekfest LA. This would also give me a break from having to put the stresses of running a booth on my and well as May’s shoulders. She’s been busy starting up her dessert business so I wanted her to dedicate more time to that than have to worry about selling merchandise. Either way, I wasn’t going to miss Wekfest. I just wanted to have a chance to just chill out and take pictures instead of having to worry about the booth. It was a very relaxing weekend for me and I hope for the rest of the homies. Takeshi was in town from Japan as well as a couple of the guys from Norcal so I wanted to maximize my time with them since it is hard to get together these days now that everyone is getting older and busy managing other priorities…

The show coverage was great. I mean, compared to last year’s Wekfest LA photos, things have improved leaps and bounds. The show itself was also a huge improvement over last year, I feel, and I will talk more about that when we dive into the show coverage in part 2. I took about 800 photos and I haven’t had a chance to go through all of them yet, but expect to see Wekfest coverage this whole entire week. The Eibach Honda meet is this weekend so I want to be able to get through all of the Wekfest stuff before I have to start going through the vast amount of pictures I will be taking this weekend…

Today, we will be taking look at the Friday leading up to the Wekfest event. A lot of us met up down at Rywire to prep our cars for the show and a couple of out of town friends came by as well so I made sure to cover the day. I know how many of you enjoy the whole “lifestyle” feel of this site and I want to keep that going. What is more important than the photos themselves are the people and the story behind every photo. I’m here to tell you guys a story and I hope you have a better feel of the Wekfest LA event and our community by the time you get through this mini-series of coverage. There is just so much stuff to go through so I will just go ahead and start with the photos now. Again, my thoughts on the show will come tomorrow… For now, enjoy the Friday before…

ATS Garage members Fred Chapman and Chris Sakai cruised down to Socal late Wednesday night but I didn’t get a chance to see them until early Friday afternoon. Fred had brought Anh’s ITR down to get tuned at Bisimoto Engineering along with Chris’ EK so they were at Bisi’s for most of Thursday…

We all decided to get together at Rywire so we could all have our cars washed for the show. Ryan Der’s EK (pictured) had gone through a slaughtering of bugs on the way down to Socal and the rest of our cars were just dirty from regular driving. There’s a guy that owns a mobile car wash service that always stops by Rywire and does a really good job so we decided to have him wash all of the cars instead of doing it on our own in the sun…

What was great about the car wash guy was that he also detailed the interiors as well…Ryan didn’t have to worry about that of course because he has no interior to clean…

Our buddy Nick Caster brought his Civic coupe down to Socal and decided to just build his whole car in one day at the shop. You’ll see later in the coverage tomorrow that he actually did a pretty good job and his coupe was looking good at Wekfest. The car literally showed up with just suspension on it and he put the whole car together in a matter of hours… He is usually more of a dedicated track guy in his J’s Racing-equipped CR-X but he comes to shows with us just to hang out…

Falken Tire always takes care of us and for Wekfest LA, it was no different. The guys stopped by the Falken facility in the morning and picked-up some new Azenis RT615Ks…

Chris Sakai’s Civic looking great as usual…this was before the car wash too…

Anh’s Volk CE28s and Endless brakes needed some solid detailing…

Endless brake dust making Anh’s CEs look like they were bronze…

By far one of the most thorough, well-rounded Honda builds of all-time…Don’t know too many people that would argue with that…

DPK Darryl’s EM1 wasn’t going to be finished in time for the show so it once again remained Forever Alone…

Spoon brakes that Nick was installing that day on his coupe…

Mag blue Volk SE37Ks that awaited tires before going on Nick’s Civic…

Hondas everywhere that Friday at Rywire… Supertwinz John’s E-AT is getting prepped for FF Battle 4 in a couple of weeks…

Ryan Der spending 40 minutes on each photo he took before uploading to Instagram…

Der’s Civic rest inside the shop awaiting a wash and detail…

Random but I liked this shot of Ryan’s C’s Shifter…

A snap of Darryl’s Mugen EM1 + K20…

Nick Caster was excited about something…

Chris Sakai was hungry so he volunteered to take everyone’s food order for Lee’s Sandwich…

Car wash guy must have hated us by the end of the day after washing 6 cars in the heat…

Ryan was missing his canards but he put them on after all the bugs were removed from his front bumper…

ICB Matt stopped by the shop in the afternoon to drop off a Spoon wing…

He took advantage of his time in Socal and picked-up a shit ton of stuff for his shop…he opened the rear door on his van and showed us all the J’s Racing and Spoon stuff he had… Definitely a gold mine for Honda heads…

Fred banged-up Anh’s Spoon lip on his Integra leaving Bisimoto so he asked Matt if he had one in the van. Matt pulled one out and Fred contemplated picking-it up for Anh but the damage wasn’t noticeable enough to warrant the purchase…

Some Thai Iced Tea from Lee’s Sandwich to quench our thirsts…

Nick back to work on his brake install…

Progress…

Always time for sandwiches during brake installs…

It was a slow day at the shop so even Ryan had time to hang out…

Finished…

Wekfest LA was the first show of the year for my Q45…I haven’t really done anything new to it but Jonathan Wong offered me a spot in the Super Street booth and I gladly obliged…

The finishing touches…

Ryan checking out a new shifter from K-Tuned…

Ryan Der somewhat enjoying his Mexican soda…

Chris taping up the vents in his J’s hood so his motor doesn’t get wet…

Ryan all smiles…

DPK David’s EJ1 all cleaned-up and ready for Wekfest LA…

Chris making sure the car wash guy does a good job before he gets to his car…

ATS Fred and Ryan….

Chris’ EK… loving the Chargespeed front lip and J’s Racing hood….

Nick installed his SE37Ks….

A customer’s DA project that Ryan has been working on… the MF10Ls on there are actually Ryan’s too…

Interior detail…

DPK David and Takeshi from Japan checking out some parts…

Anh’s ITR was next in line for the car wash guy…

Since Anh’s ITR has ITBs on it, Fred had to find something to cover it so that water didn’t get in…

Luckily we had Lee’s Sandwich for lunch and had some plastic bags laying around….

Double-bagged for maximum protection…

Nick installing his front grille…

David Do from Mayday Garage and Joy flew out from Maryland for Wekfest LA. John Zhang aka 1013MM was their chauffeur for the weekend and was cool enough to drive them down to the shop during rush hour to hang out with us…

Takeshi playing with his iPhone 4S….

Ryan and Joy having a moment…

Takeshi documenting the day as well for his followers in Japan…

Joy and David checking out Ryan Der’s interior so that Joy could get some ideas for her Subaru STi…This is Joy’s amazing Subaru build if you don’t know… I think her reaction to whatever she was looking at was a little over dramatic, haha…

Floor-mounted steering wheel… steering column tuck… haha…

Joy and Der talking cars…

Glad to have these collection of misfits in one place…

GRIP HRD…

DPK JP cruised by in his newest acquisition, a Lotus Exige…

Pie and DPK David decided to rub shoulders and go for a quick spin in the Exige…

While that was going on, Nick and Ryan ran over next door to help Tony Jackson from Eibach Springs. He was picking up the K24 CR-Z from Ballade Sports after they did some work on it…

As I posted up a couple posts ago, you can catch this CR-Z at the upcoming FF Battle 4 event…there will be two K-swapped CR-Zs competing that day so it’ll definitely be interesting to see how they fair against the other crop of Hondas…

All cleaned-up and ready for the show…. After this shot, I packed up my stuff and took off. We met up later that night for dinner and shared some good times… Back tomorrow with part 2 of the Wekfest LA coverage. I promise I’ll have actual photos from the show tomorrow, haha…stay tuned…