Man, there is so much going on lately. It seems like we just got back from the LA Wekfest event and I’m still in the process of catching up on everything and in just a few weeks, we gotta fly out to New York/New Jersey for the annual Wekfest East show. It’s all a bit overwhelming but I can honestly say that it is very much a “fun” type of busy. I love the summers not so much because of the dreaded heat but it just feels like there is always something going on, especially within the automotive tuning community. I can’t believe its August already. The year started out super slow with all kinds of random BS happening but as usual, the rest of the year has just sort of flown by. It’s wild to think that in a few months we’re already going to be in Corona for the annual Chronicles Anniversary Meet and Vegas for SEMA. I should probably really start planning this meet out by the way. I think I have a good idea of what’s happening but I’d like to try some new things and invite some more out-of-state friends to bring their cars out…

Anyways, I still got a lot of photos from Wekfest LA to show you guys so let’s get right to it…

The beauty of having two-day roll-ins is that it honestly makes things much easier for everyone involved. I don’t know how you guys feel about it but even growing-up doing car show stuff, I always did enjoy having the two-day set-up process. For out-of-towners, it gives them a chance to bond with their friends because they don’t just spend an afternoon inside a noisy convention center with one another. Guys and gals will typically need a place to stay so people will shack up in hotels, AirBnbs, or friend’s houses. This gives everyone more time just to hang out. I’m on the inside now helping to organize these shows but I honestly really enjoy going on the tour because I get to hang out with my friends when we are out of state or sometimes even out of the country. It’s just a fun experience if you have people you enjoy being around. Another joy of having these multi-day shows is that you don’t feel rushed at all trying to do as much as you can before the day ends. Often times with most shows, you have to set-up early that morning, meaning you don’t get a whole lot of sleep the night before, and then you’re just a zombie throughout the rest of the show, trying to clean your car after just waiting in line to set-up, and by the time you’re done cleaning, you’re all hot and fucking dirty. And then you just feel like shit the rest of the day. When you set-up a day earlier, you have time to clean your car, be as dirty as you fucking want because then you get to go and clean yourself up before dinner or whatever festivities you have going on with your friends. That just sounds way easier all the way around…

For guys like me, who handle media as well as sometimes having a car at the show, it gives me time to…well…to produce content. Simple as that. Normally I’m running around trying to take photos and do video and when I have a booth or a car there, I also have to set that up with my friends who I forced to be there to help me out, lol. Providing me with an extra day to create content makes a world of difference. That’s why you get to see so many photos from both Wekfest San Jose and Los Angeles this year, whereas in year’s past, these were our busiest shows so I barely had time to breathe. That Saturday during roll-in, I really just had a lot of freedom to walk around both inside the show and out, watching the cars come in and shooting them as they were setting-up. Then I got a full night of sleep too and I went back early the next morning to shoot video and hell, I even had time to talk to people which is really rare these days. I don’t know about you guys, but I wish most shows would be this way. I know it might feel monotonous at times because it feels like you are at a car show for two days but honestly, what the fuck were you gonna do with your weekend anyway?…

I will say one thing though, as I’ve gotten older, my body is definitely starting to feel the toll of doing all these car shows. It takes me a couple of days now just to recover from the physical stress of doing everything. The guys on this staff work incredibly hard and I don’t think they get enough credit for helping out sometimes. I’m glad we have a good team together now and these last three shows have been off the charts in terms of execution and overall chemistry within the group. I’ve never felt happier being on the Wekfest tour with these guys. It helps to have genuine friendships with these people too and an understanding of how to keep everybody mentally prepared for the stresses of putting on events…

Before I go, I thought I’d give you guys a few words on the cars that I hosted at The Chronicles booth this year. I think we had four total that ended-up being six and spacing was a little tight, but I’m glad we were able to get everyone situated. I’ve never had so many cars on display at my booth before but I’m happy that I was able to get such a versatile group together. The first one was Dave Chik’s Civic hatchback on white Regamaster EVOs. We needed a car to showcase the new Mode Parfume x Exceed front lips and rear wings for that chassis and Dave’s was the perfect candidate. His Civic isn’t generally that well-known in the community yet, because it is a newer project, and he has a DA Integra that is probably one of the most popular for that chassis to ever be assembled. The Civic provided Yuta with a blank canvas to work his magic on so Dave had the front lip and wing painted by his painter to match his car, and then he handed the car off to Yuta so he could apply the vinyl work on it and reset the ride height adjustments to his liking. We call it “Battlecrafting” but its honestly just Yuta’s take on what he thinks a car should look like to best display product and style and I’m happy Dave trusted his Civic with us. The second car that was notable was Derek Sanders’ 326power S13 coupe. You wouldn’t think that you’d ever see a car like that in The Chronicles booth because people most associate me with Hondas but I really do like Nissans, S-Chassis’ in particular, so I thought his car was a perfect fit. Derek is from the Bay Area and had his car down here for a video shoot with the guys from Hoonigan. Yuta wanted me to shoot the car as well for a possible future print feature so he invited Derek to come by the shop and we got to know the car pretty well. Yuta loves that thing and I really like the style and execution of it so we decided we should bring it to Wekfest….even though Derek wasn’t going to be around. The guy has a job and he was going to leave his car down here in SoCal for a few weeks so we managed to squeeze it into our line-up at WFLA. Ken from Wekfest is always pushing this idea of trying to get more race cars and drift cars into the show to make it more diverse so when Derek told us the car was going to be down here, it just seemed like the perfect fit. Our friend Chuck from Auto Factory Realize was even nice enough to pick the car up for us and trailer it down to the show. The other two cars aren’t that interesting, lol, well I mean, you guys see them quite often so it’s probably not that interesting to you and I but I thought it would help create a versatile arsenal of vehicles for the display. We had Chuy’s Phoenix Yellow Type R because Chuy is pretty much always in my booth anyway and his car was looking pretty great with the Spoon SW388 on it. Everybody loves Type Rs and his car just has  a lot of character to it so its always a popular car to look at. The fourth car was actually my Q45. I didn’t get a chance to bring it out for last year’s Wekfest event because I didn’t plug something back in correctly and my car just didn’t run right. It was limping on the way to the show so I just turned around and put the car away. It eventually made it to the San Jose show but I really wanted to be able to show the car at a Southern California event because this place is home to me. Nothing has really changed on it since last year. I put a new battery in it because it sat so long that it died but that’s about it. A lot of people haven’t really seen it anyways since I rarely bring it anywhere so I guess you can say it was a new build for the show, lol. I even drove it to dinner afterwards and that was nice. After we finished setting-up our display, we found that we had some extra space so we crammed DPK Darryl’s EM1 into the line-up along with his friend Vic’s S2000. Everything just came together and our gathering of cars at Wekfest LA turned out pretty sick. Well, I thought so anyway.

Okay, I gotta get back to work so I’ll leave you guys with the second batch of photos to check-out. There are still two more parts so come back for the rest. Thanks for looking!…

The Rywire-built Honda S2000 build featuring a Mugen aero kit with custom integrated widebody created with the help of Casale Designs…

Inside the ridiculously-clean engine bay is a built 2.5L Bisimoto-built 14.5:1 stroked F-series engine featuring a set of Kinsler individual throttle bodies hosting eight injectors…

The stroked motor also hosts a Ballade Sports exhaust manifold, XRP motorsports plumbing, custom T1 oil breather set-up, CSF radiator, CSF oil cooler, and some titanium RyTi accessories…

Dominic Le from Chasing J’s S30Z build, featuring a full re-spray inside and out, ZG flares, Work Equip 40s, and custom carbon fiber front and rear bumpers, along with a front splitter made with the red woven into the composite…

The SR20DET swap under the hood of Dominic’s Z features a built block, GReddy intake manifold and Garrett GTX3071R turbo upgrade. From just a quick glance, you’ll notice that the entire engine bay is fluttered with titanium bits and pieces, all crafted by Dominic himself…

VAB Subaru WRX STI on Forgestar wheels wearing a complete Oiram Japan widebody kit, built by Long Tran and the guys over at LTMW…

Chad Castelo’s beautifully well-kept NSX wearing an incredibly-rare complete Mugen aero kit and Volk Racing TE37…

Central Pine’s Lexus 3GS build sitting static on T-Demand suspension and newly re-released SSR Minerva wheels…

Another great-looking build to come out of the Central Pine camp is this Lexus LC500 coupe, also on T-Demand suspension, and SSR Executor wheels…

We never see enough BNR34 Skyline GT-Rs here in the U.S. so it’s always a welcome sight to see one at auto events…

Sara Choi decided she had nothing to do while she was hungover so she came by the set-up day of Wekfest to come chill with us. The light hit perfectly from the outside so I decided to snap some photos of her…

Sometimes the best photos are the completely unplanned ones. I guess you can say I’m pretty happy with how these came out especially since her and I are often stuffing our faces with food and hardly ever taking photos…

Lately I’ve had the urge to start shooting people again so I was just snapping photos of my friends who were just working or hanging out at the show. You’ll probably see more photos of people again like I did back in the day when I was shooting a lot more…

One of the coolest features at this year’s Wekfest LA event was an entire line-up of Rauh-Welt Begriff Porsches. They were busy cleaning them that day so I didn’t get shots of all of them, but I did manage to catch some that I hadn’t seen much of before…

Musician Fernando Lebeis’ RWB Porsche 993 featuring four center-mounted foglights on the boot….

Rauh-Welt Begriff “Shingen” on Kinesis wheels owned by Allen Yang…

Levi’s RWB “Blackbird” 993 on more traditional Work Meister S1 3-piece wheels…

Ravi from CSF’s Jon Sibal-designed widebody Mitsubishi Evo X previously competitive World Challenge GTS class race car that has since been re-purposed…

The 4B11T 2.0L engine now hosting a custom Sheepey-built turbo manifold, Garrett GTX3582R Gen II turbo, and a Magnus Motorsports drive-by-wire intake manifold/throttle body set-up…

Big Steve was supposed to bring his Civic out for Wekfest but then randomly kinda crashed the car on the way there. Then he went home, brought his Mode Parfume LS400 out and won an award later that weekend…

The Chronicles display as discussed earlier with a pretty versatile line-up of cars…

Derek Sanders’ built SR20-powered PS13 coupe wearing a retrofitted 326power kit and WEDS wheels…

My Mode Parfume Y33 Q45 bagged, sitting on Work Meister M1…

Not sure how many of you noticed the Advan-parody decal we decided to create for Dave’s Civic…

Darryl’s Mugen-themed K-supercharged EM1 Civic SI coupe on original Volk Racing TE37…

Vic’s AP2 S2000 running a Powerhouse Amuse R1 front bumper and Mugen MF10…

Kei Miura’s Pandem BMW E30 coupe brought out for display by LTMW…

We’re starting to see more and more modded FK8 Civic Type Rs out here in SoCal now, most of them sitting on Rays wheels. This I believe might be the new HKS USA demo car on brand new Volk Racing ZE40 Time Attack Edition wheels…

Right next to it was another FK8 CTR, this one built by the guys from Evasive Motorsports, running AST suspension and Advan Racing GT wheels…

Daniel Song’s immaculate S30Z ZG-flared, sitting on Volk Racing TE37V…

This Cyber EVO-inspired Mitsubishi Evolution build wearing complete Voltex aero is a regular at all California automotive events…

This GDB Subaru WRX STI wore Varis aero and what looks to be front and rear wide body by Japanese tuning company Mature…

Vertex Lange Kouki S14 240SX from Jade Motorsports running Project Mu brakes and bronze Volk TE37V Mark II wheels…

Brian Duong’s Varis Kamikaze 86 running his signature white/Mag Blue theme that he utilizes on all of his builds…

Ferrari 458 Italia with a molded Liberty Walk kit and AL13 forged wheels…

Liberty Walk Ferrari F430 on RVL wheels…

Pretty cool to see this turbocharged Pandem Civic hatchback built by BJ Jaraba from BRI Motorsports. Believe it or not, this build is actually from Tijuana, Mexico…

K-series swap inside the shaved engine bay hosting a Sheepey turbo manifold, K-Tuned intake manifold, Precision Turbo and more…

Corvette Z06 featuring an exposed intake manifold through a cut-hood and staggered Volk Racing TE37 wheels, with a 18-inch TE up front and 15-inch rear to house a massive Hoosier slick…

Nick Fousekis’ FD3S build looking straight out of the ’90s with a Burnout front, TBO hood, RE Amemiya side mirrors, rare Rando Sports DIRect x TK Sport sideskirts, and Enkei RS-01 wheels wrapped in Falken Tires…

A closer look at the rare TBO FRP hood, known more popularly as the TBO “hot dog” hood because of its series of hot dog-shaped vents, lol…

Another view of the Enkei RS-01 3-piece wheel…

Amazingly good multi-stage iridescent paint on this ITR-faced RHD Integra on Work Meister S1 2-piece wheels…

Son from Hasback’s Civic, always crammed into its display area parked parallel to other Hondas and generally not in the best photographic position…

Next to it was Juan from Las Vegas’ Civic coupe build with a ton of Kevlar additions throughout…

B-series set-up with Edelbrock Victor-X intake manfiold and 1320 Performance header…

Wrapping up Part 2 with some more photos of Phil Sison’s Integra from ATS Garage…

…with a look at all the Cerakoted engine components under the fluorescent lights of the LA Convention Center. That’s it for today. Part 3 coming up next!…