Wow…to say that it has been a long weekend would be a complete and total understatement… I actually feel slightly hungover right now because my body is just beat up from doing so much the previous week in preparation for the Eibach Honda 2013 Meet. Not only did I have to put together a ton of merchandise for The Chronicles booth at Eibach but this year, I also attempted to put a car together in time for the meet. I hadn’t had a car on display at Eibach since like, 2007 or so and I forgot how tasking it was to try to get a car together for an event the caliber of Eibach 2013. I mean, I have another car that I bring to shows and what not, as you all know my Q45 VIP build, but to jump back into Hondas was exciting, refreshing, and well, a bit tiring. Just because the Honda platforms I always choose to work on are the less popular ones so there are certainly limitations that present themselves when it comes down to really doing work on them. I’ll explain that more appropriately later on when we actually jump into the Eibach coverage but today we’re gonna be taking a look at another event that happened a day prior…

You probably didn’t hear too much about the It’s JDM Yo!! event because, well, it wasn’t really advertised much. We were all a little bewildered by the fact that Tony didn’t really try to push this event much but he had his reasons. As many of you will remember, his 1-Year Anniversary event was quite a spectacle. It was bigger and better than anyone had ever expected and it was one of the hit events of 2011. Because of that event, Tony had a ton of expectations to live up to and the pressure was just way too much for him to really shoulder, especially working a full-time job and having lingering back problems that required rehabilitation and rest. Even still, he did a ton of planning last year for the 2-Year event and it was supposed to be just as spectacular as the first one but things hit a snag a couple of weeks prior and the event just didn’t take off. The city where Tony had planned to have the event just wasn’t supporting his efforts and so he was forced to shut the whole thing down before it even took off. Tony was pretty bummed about it and honestly, after that whole ordeal happened, we didn’t even hear from him much because he was so let down by it. When you have all that pressure on you and you spend so much time trying to make everyone happy, I can understand why he was so hurt from the whole thing getting shot down. I know I would be but I would never try to get anything that big. It’s just too much work for one guy. The size of his first event probably left people thinking that he had a full staff of people doing things for him. In reality, it was just him and some friends that helped him out with the minor stuff. Everything else was all Tony and I have a lot of respect for my friend because he pulled it off…

The 3-year anniversary meet he wanted to put on just sort of fell out of the sky…He called me a month or so back and asked if I thought it was okay to put his event on the day before the 2013 Eibach Meet and I told him “why not?” The event really catered to different genres of cars and wasn’t limited to just Hondas so it’s not like he was going to be taking cars away from the Eibach event. The people that were going to Eibach registered months before anyway so it’s not like they were forced to choose which meet they wanted to go to. Tony told me he wanted to keep it small anyway so it wasn’t going to really inconvenience anyone either way. His reasoning for keeping it small was because he didn’t want to deal with the hassle of applying for a city permit and finding a big enough venue to house all the cars that would equal or exceed the number from his 1-year. You didn’t hear about this event because he just didn’t really care to make it “big”. So he just kept it to the people that really supported the site over the last three years and just kind of spread the word like a week prior on his own social media outlets. He had the Savini Wheels parking lot as a venue which held a good amount of cars, but he didn’t want to draw unnecessary attention on them since that part of Anaheim was a relatively quiet part of the city. So to sum it all up, the event was never designed to be big, or epic, or a hit, or anything. He just did it. I guess it goes with his “Just Doing Me” (JDM) theme because it wasn’t about anyone else. If you follow the site and are familiar with them, then you knew about the meet. If not then you probably didn’t need to be there…

I had so much to do that day that I almost didn’t even make it out there myself. My booth preparation was complete but there were still various things that I had to do to my Odyssey before I could drive it out to the Eibach Meet the next day so I planned on it being a whole day thing. I also wanted to rent the new Canon 24-70L 2.8 Mark II lens to try it out for the weekend since I was thinking about purchasing it so I had to drive over to Pomona to pick it up in the morning. Luckily everything came together that morning so I was able to stop by for a bit before having to meet Ryan back at Rywire so we could prep our cars together. He had to meet up with Bisi from Bisimoto Engineering to borrow his trailer for Eibach so I had a couple of extra hours in the early afternoon to go to Tony’s meet. When I got there they were still setting and there was maybe an hour and a half before the event even opened to the public. There were some cars already set-up there so I decided to just grab coverage of whatever I saw while I walked around. I think I stayed for about an hour and then I took off back to the shop. In this set you’ll see my coverage from the It’s JDM Yo!! 3-Year Meet and then towards the end you’ll see some photos from our Eibach 2013 prep. Enjoy…

And of course, congratulations to Tony and the It’s JDM Yo!! family for 3 great years…

The first car that caught my eye upon arrival was this Civic hatchback on WEDS TC-05 wheels. I started asking some friends about the car and it turns out that this is actually Eden Mao’s Civic, brother of Michael Mao (with the NSX) and Bay Mao (with the silver S2K)…

Eulises Torres’ S2000 from Forbidden USA…

Teddy Timoteo’s EK that was recently featured in Super Street’s annual “Honda Issue”…

Lewis Liang’s Integra Type R with C-West front bumper and custom splitter…

Out by the entrance to the 3-Year Anniversary Meet was Michael Mao’s NSX, which was on display sitting on a flatbed tow truck from Emergency Hookers. Before you call Mao’s NSX a trailer queen, he actually drives this thing everywhere. I can honestly say that this was the first time I’ve ever seen it on a flatbed and even I asked why. The car runs fine in reality and it was sitting on the truck just as a display to let everyone know where the meet was and as a promotion for Emergency Hookers, a towing company that specializes in transporting custom vehicle builds of all types…

Here’s a closer look at the NSX, which was actually a smart display out front as I saw people stopping as they passed by just to check it out…

Mao’s signature custom gold-plated Mugen MF10s…

Speaking of custom wheels, here’s a Z32 300ZX on custom re-barreled Work Equip wheels…

Nilo from DaYUUM!!’s vinyl-wrapped NSX on newly-installed Airrex air suspension…

Andrew Lim’s rarely seen Toyota Supra build made an appearance in support of It’s JDM Yo!!…

Chivas made the trip out from Las Vegas for Eibach and decided to make an appearance at the 3-Year meet along with his fellow Royal Origin members…

He’s recently made the jump from N/A to boost and now has a turbo kit installed…

This event was my first time testing out the new 24-70 Mark II so I tried a couple different shots to try to get a grasp of its versatility…

I kind of miss the car with the Sprint Hart CP-Rs but the CEs are slowly growing on me…Maybe a different color would be better but I don’t know. On paper bronze on orange sounds like it would work out great. I think I’m just so used to the car standing out more on white wheels…

Ojay’s VIP Toyota Previa build from Bippu VIP…

Subie from Royal Origin on some older Stern wheels that were actually popularized on old Saleen Mustangs…

2nd Gen Lexus IS on Work Emotion CR Ultimates…

Good to see Jeff Payuan aka Jeff Kumo’s RSX back on the road again after being a victim of theft while in Las Vegas…

Luigi Arroyo’s J’s Racing styled S2000 from Limitless Society…

Third generation Subaru WRX STi on Work Meister S1 wheels…

One more of Eden’s Civic…I would absolutely love this car if it had a paint-matched bay, haha…Maybe even in battleship grey…

F50 Q45 with Mode Parfume aero on SSR Professor MS3…

JDM OEM S14 Navan aero on this 240SX looking really good on Work Brombachers…

While the previous S14 was filled with JDM OEM goodness, Leon Casino’s long-term S14 project provided a much more aggressive, custom feel to it…

Chris Garay pulled up in his EF on super rare SSR Mclaren wheels…

This ITR had some rough spots but overall it looked pretty good on Dunlop Formula Harts…

The owner used any and every lug nut he could find to keep the Harts on the car, haha…

Parked next to it was this EF also on CP-R wheels, but of the Sprint Hart variety… Cool to see people rocking the OsakaJDM windshield banner…

This Chevy Malibu pulled into the lot looking really nice on CCW Classics…

Thomas Fitzgibbon’s reverse head-swapped H22A Odyssey from Fast Eddies Racing. Huge shout-out to him for putting in some work on my Odyssey last week in an effort to help me make it to the Eibach Meet. Couldn’t say better things about how generous this guy was in helping me out when I was in a bind…

Lexus LS400 on Auto Couture Supremes…

EM1 Civic Si that’s been repainted a darker shade of blue than the more conventional Electron Blue Pearl…

Right around this time, I stopped shooting to chat with some of the homies before taking off to meet up with Ryan at Rywire. We had a ton of work to do still so it was important that we had enough time to get it all done before taking off to Lake Elsinore for the Eibach event at around 5:30 am the next morning. I also grabbed some food on the way there since I knew if I didn’t eat, I’d probably miss lunch and maybe even dinner. We both arrived at Rywire about the same time and I ate, then got to work. DPK David and Black Pie showed up awhile later just to hang out after they stopped by Tony’s event…

We’ve been really trying to keep this build under wraps for the last few months but since it debuted at Eibach 2013 over the weekend, I guess it’s okay now to let the proverbial cat out of the bag. For those who are probably wondering, this was at one time John Nguyen aka Supertwinz John’s old E-AT build. Having two of these things really took up a ton of his time and money, and it became financially unnecessary to keep both so he decided to trade cars with Ryan. Ryan would complete the project and put his own personal twist on it while John ended up with Ryan’s old CR-X. John later sold the CR-X but Ryan continued to move forward with the E-AT build until this point. This E-AT is an original Japanese Domestic Market vehicle, straight from Japan in MINT condition. I mean, MINT. The exterior wasn’t all that perfect but the interior was completely intact and I believe the car only had a little over 90,000 km on the odometer, which translates to about 55,000 original miles. The whole car was taken apart, Sunny from 515 Autobody reworked the entire exterior and painted it inside and out, and Ryan put it all back together. There is a ton more planned for this thing, including a very one-off drive-by-wire individual throttle body system that Ryan is designing. I can’t give away too much other than that at the moment so just enjoy the photos for now….

Ryan kept his ITR long block when they finalized their trade and the motor now sits inside his E-AT….

The obvious addition of course, are the Kinsler ITBs. The car is currently not running because he is still setting up the drive-by-wire system, but trust when I tell you that this is how the engine bay will look in the end. Nothing aesthetically will change with it and it was designed to look this bare. The only reason you see the harness on the naked firewall is to show off the harness and the Autosport connector that connects it to the AEM Infinity EMS system and Motec PDM. Rywire is a wiring company after all so it only makes sense that the harness makes an appearance in his personal builds…

Black Pie aka Crossfit Paleo Pie showed up, ate a Burrito, complained about how full he was, and then passed-out and took a nap while we worked on our cars…

One of the reasons why I decided to mod my Odyssey a little bit was so I could display my new Japanese Barramundi Design Eleven wheels, which are the same wheels that you guys have seen on the Banzai Attack EF from Japan. You guys hear me talk plenty about Barramundi wheels and I guess someone recognized it as I’ve now been asked to help push the company here in the U.S. I love the wheels personally so I agreed to give it a shot. The only thing I had to do was make these 17×9 BMD Eleven wheels fit on my Odyssey. There wasn’t really much of an issue as this sizing isn’t exactly uncommon in the Odyssey community, but I ended up having to deal with a ton of issues with the suspension I was running. More on that later because I’m just tired of talking about it, haha…

I had to do some mild cutting to get the Elevens to fit in the rear and since Ryan has the most steady hand in the group, I asked him to do it. He almost chopped off a finger in the process but he did a good job overall, haha. Why would Ryan need all his fingers? It’s not like he needs to use them to wire things or anything…

DPK David’s wife Jackie showed up to hang out with us and I was telling her about the lens I had rented and handed off the camera to her to let her have a go at it. She ended up capturing this really great shot of the sunset through the steel gate at the Rywire facility with DPK Darryl’s EM1 in the distance… Very cool shot. I didn’t even see it until I was looking through the photos on my memory card a day later…

Here’s a final look at the Rywire E-AT build before the epic 2013 Eibach Honda Meet. It would have been great to leak this on the site before Eibach actually happened, but fuck, I was so tired that I just forgot all about it. The next day it debuted at The Chronicles booth at Eibach and, as expected, it was a fucking hit. More to come when we dive into the Eibach 2013 photos… Stay tuned. It’s gonna be a crazy week of coverage…