Happy Halloween!

Pinch Me

This has surpassed my loftiest unrealistic goals so much it just doesn’t even seem real anymore. It feels real when I see Melissa and get to put a wad of cash in her hand, her reaction, her facial expression, but actually seeing the stickers on people’s cars…that’s unreal. For people like us our car is a part of us, and we’re a very visually oriented bunch. We put a lot of time, effort, money, blood , sweat and tears in making our cars an expression of oursleves, to see a Melissa sticker on someone’s car, I’m just completely blown away.

Vadar Gauge Cluster

I so wish I had bought one of these when they were available. They were made by Evil Autostyle and you would see them on eBay from time to time but they were very expensive, close to $500 if I remember right and still required a donor cluster. But the blacked out electroluminescent faces are just so damn sexy. Plus they had an integrated shift light, 0-60 and 1/4 mile timer. Then they just disappeared. Poof.

For a while it looked like Buddy Club had acquired the rights to them and were going to release them rebranded as Buddy Club but as far as I know it never happened.

Thank You Club xB!

Contrary to popular belief, you do not meet the nicest people on a Harley, you meet them in Scions! I am absolutely astonished at the openess, kindness and generosity of Club xB and the Scion community. Just look what I saw on the front page of the best automotive forum on the net

Sometimes  you give someone a polite  passing “thank you” to blow them off,  sometimes you tell someone from the heart “thank you” to let them know how much you appreciate them….and then once in a great while you tell someone “thank you” and are left with this empty feeling because those simple words just don’t come close to expressing how you feel, no words ever could truly get across the gratitude and the blessing you experience from your interaction with that person. This thank you is definately the latter. Thank you to Club xB and the admins there, James, Cliff, Joe, Sakura, Casey, Sakada, Mati, Abel, Elias, Ton, AJ, Dustin, Viktor, Jose and the numerous others who have opened thier hearts to support The Melissa Project. Thanks to you not only is Melissa currently in alternating weeks of chemo and proton therapy but is able to remain optimistic and strong knowing she has this great army of caring people behind her. We are very close to breaking $600 so far, new batches of bB and xB stickers were made this week and that is HUGE! Mike was awesome enough to not only pick up a couple stickers but also forward me these great pix of them on both his and his wife’s boxes! This is my first time seeing the stickers in the wild, what an honor!

Got pix of your stickers you want to share? I’d love to see them, click to submit!

And please, if Joe B. or Pedro J. reads this or you know them I need their shipping addresses!!!

Before There Was Honda

I was a hardcore DSM freak. I still like them, but never really fit into the whole DSM “scene”, they’re a pretty close minded bunch when it comes to visual mods. I never really see DSMs built to the standards of a lot of the Hondas around, lots of very fast DSMs, but pretty boring visually. Having owned a few of them I have a theory about why that is; you never have the time or money to really build one because you are constantly fixing it and just trying to keep it on the road, you never have a chance to worry about things like tucked bays and the like. There were two signatures I remember from the forums back then that illustrate this point perfectly; “Volkswagen, the joy of driving. DSM, the frustration of fixing” and “DSM, turning everyday people into certified mechanics”. But seeing this one the other day reminded me of their allure, damn they can be sexy when done right.

I can only find this pic of the last one I had from when I was selling it, don’t laugh, I had the Blitz kit before Fast&Furious ruined all the fun. That movie did more damage to the second generation DSM reputation than all their mechanical short comings ever could.

Subaru STi Rear Diffuser

I’ve had a couple EKs with custom rear diffusers on here, this one uses a stock STi diffuser. Looks like it’s much easier to make work than an S2000 or NSX piece and probably way cheaper. Doesn’t look quite as effective though, looks like it would keep some air from collecting inside the rear bumper cavity but not nearly as much as a full size diffuser that covers the entire rear of the car. Props for trying something different!

Import Alliance Fall ’09

Swoop and Swoosh

Something completey different today, what can I say, I’m moody and like a very wide range of cars. I find as I get older I’m begining to have a deeper appreciation for pre WW2 cars. They’ve been pushed out of the spotlight in the last 5 or 10 years since Barrett-Jackson’s hype machine has driven muscle car prices to stratospheric new heights. As I take a closer look at them with a fresh perspective I realize that the era of the truly grand and decadent automotive styling is long gone for good. Yes there are plenty of amazing new concept and super cars out there, but there’s something about boat tails, pontoon fenders, and art deco grills that just drip extravagance and grace.

One of my favs is the 1936-1942 Lincoln Zephyr, this one has obviously been custom massaged into a work of art, but the essence of the original Zephyr remains.

But for me the all time king is the 1930 Mercedes Count Trossi SSK

 

The New Sexy

I really can’t thank Yoshitomo and Westhill Motorsports for his friendship and tremendous generosity, both with me and for The Melissa Project. Duke and I installed the Westhill gauge pod tonight and it went pretty smooth. It came with every little thing you need, sensors, mounting blocks, wiring, connectors, instructions,  everything. The only thing we had to buy we didn’t have was a 25mm socket. But I still couldn’t have done it without Duke, he’s one of those guys who has a natural gift for working on cars, plus I can’t solder, believe me I’ve tried but I always end up just making a mess. Install was pretty straight forward, first we mounted the gauge pod that came with the gauges pre intalled, wired and labeled.

I know, my camera is horrible in the dark isn’t it. Then it was time to jack the front up and get under it

Duke went under the car while I went to buy a 25mm socket. The gauge kit came with a plate that mounts between the block and the oil filter, the supplied sensors for oil temperature and oil pressure mount in that plate

Next the upper radiator hose is cut and the water temperature sensor block is placed in line. Like the oil plate it’s a beautiful anodized purple and comes with everything, even new clamps.

Wiring from the gauges is tied into the dash lights and grounded and you’re done! Or in this case Duke is done!

The gauges are easily visible, but don’t block your vision of anything else, it really is an ingenious design, and they look so sexy at night!

We did have a bit of a scare, we thought we had done something wrong or the car was acting up until we realized the temperatures were in celsius. I wish america would switch to the metric system more widely. Thank you Yoshitomo!

Itasha EK9 CTR

Another one of those trends my inner ricer thinks is fun, but that I wouldn’t do to my own car. What’s funny is your average tuner in the states would cry rice if they saw this, but this is as JDM as it gets. At some point somebody needs to do a good in depth study of how and why everything considered rice these days like body kits, wings, neons, etc all have their roots firmly in Japan, yet the hard line JDM crowd frowns so sternly upon these things. And don’t get me started on the USDM movement in Japan where they immitate us immitating them (see USDM Jam), there’s probably a cultural studies doctoral thesis in there somewhere.