Sometime back in the mid 80’s before I had a license, I remember checking out a Road & Track magazine where they did a road test of a 1984 or 1985 Saleen Mustang. I remember I used to like it a lot. I thought it was a pretty damn cool car actually. I had nothing against the 5.0’s, but then again, I didn’t know shit back then either (they suck BIG TIME ass stock). Most of my buddies in high school had 5.0’s. In fact, my first hidden nitrous install was in my buddy Ed’s 1988 5.0 Mustang GT. We smoked hella fools and made plenty of lunch money street racing that thing. All the black dudes with Mustangs, Novas, RX-2s, etc. would always set us out car lengths and sometimes the move in the Compton/Wilmington area. Anyhow, that’s another story for another time. Saleen was one of the first aftermarket “tuners” to build a turn key car sold at Ford dealers. For Saleen to do this successfully, the cars had to be built and prepared well. While the Saleen Mustangs back then were not much faster than a stock car back then, it was the general driving feel and appearance of the car that made it cool to own. The Saleen suspension and chassis mods made the Mustang a MUCH better car.

Throughout the years, Saleen grew and made bigger, badder, faster Mustangs. Then they came out with the mistake of a car, the S7. I think that was what broke Saleen as a company. It was a commercial failure and it looked like ass. Shit, for $550k why not drop another $200k and get a Ferrari Enzo? Or spend $200k less and get a Lamborghini Murcielago LP640? If you’re dropping $550k on a car, then $800k ain’t shit to you. I for one, have no idea what its like to drop $300-800k on a car and I probably won’t in my lifetime. Anyhow, this leads me to my activity on an online auction earlier today. Saleen/ASC was blowing out machinery, inventory, and equipment on an online auction.

Saleen/ASC Irvine, CA Online Auction

Saleen/ASC Detroit, MI Online Auction

There was some bad ass equipment that went for pretty damn cheap. I’m talking 3D measurement systems, automated parts washers, measuring equipment, machinery, spray booths, office equipment, tires, and even cars. I got some goodies from the Irvine auction for myself. Saleen is consolidating to a new location in Michigan. I hope they survive and continue building buff Mustangs, but with Ford loosing $8.7 billion, it might be a long, hard road. Saleen was one of the companies that paved the road for the acceptance of modified cars to the general public. Yeah, we still have to fight the whole “rice rocket” bullshit, but it would be a lot worse if companies like Saleen weren’t around. Good luck, Saleen.

A couple weeks ago Masaki from Apexi hit me up via AIM to see if I had time to do a touch up tune on the Apexi Formula D drift FD3S. It went like something like this:

Masaki said, “They converted it to right hand drive.”
I said, “Oh you guys brought the old D1 car from Japan?”
“No, they converted it.”
“Who converted it?
“Ron [Bergenholtz], Keith [Apex], and Chuck [Apex].”
“What the fuck? No Shit?!?! Did they chop and weld a new front clip?”
“Na, they just uh….converted it. You’ll see.”

So I went down to Apex to make sure the car was running alright. To be honest, I thought it might have been a bit of a hack job, but it was pretty damn clean. Apparently Ron had extended the engine harness and part of the main electrical harnesses. That’s 150 wires. Keith and Chuck cut out pieces and used some of the components out of a JDM front clip, and patched it on, welded, or used the pieces on the USDM chassis. So there was no cutting of the original unibody which is a good thing. I climbed in, started it up, and sure enough it fired right up. Apparently Ron did a pretty damn good job on the wiring powered by Red Bull. The car made the same power: 400whp on “A” and 430whp on “B” with the old reliable Apex AVC-R boost controller. The Power FC ECU is always reliable so not much mapping was needed.

Here’s the cockpit before in USDM form.


Here it is in RHD form. Except its still a USDM chassis.


Here’s the engine bay before.


Here it is after. Notice the location of the brake and clutch master cylinders.

Ron said that they had to make the car RHD to accomodate Ryuji Miki the driver. I wish all crew cheifs were that nice. Props to Ron, Ed, Keith, Chuck, and Masaki for the hundreds of hours of hard work and the clean mods & fab.

Last week on Wednesday morning I made it out to K&N for the Ultimate Street Car Challenge as an “engineering guru”. The guru panel consists of 3 guys who are supposed to know thier stuff: me, Robert/Robi from Robispec, and Brian from Garrett. Brian was the turbo guru, Robi was the chassis/suspension guru, and I was the engine/fuel system/tuning guru. While I’ve seen Robi around at all the time attacks, this was the first time I got to talk to him. Both Robi and Brian were cool to work with. We judged 10 cars on their level of “set up” and engineering. This was my first time on the guru panel, but I’ve competed once officially and have helped campaign cars in previous years. XS won with Kim Johnson’s BNR34 GT-R back in 2005. The cars didn’t seem as crazy this year, but there were some nice cars regardless.

I’m not going to talk too much about the cars (buy Sport Compact Car when it comes out in a couple months), but there was a crazy old school E30 325i with an X5 4.4L V8 in it. To fit big tires in the rear, Groma Fabrications built a pushrod suspension and tied it all in to the cage. It also had a Rotrex supercharger and a shot of NOS. Pretty cool little car.

AMS brought out their EVO X and while it wasn’t too heavily modded, I think they did just about everything they could to it considering that aren’t many parts available. They did fabricate a GT35R turbo system and tune the stock ECU with the Ecutek software to the tune of 4xxwhp. I’m not going to give it away since you should buy the magazine, but let’s just say it was 13hp short of 500whp. All haters of the 4B11T because it is aluminum are lame. It is a damn good engine and while it may not handle 1100whp like the 4G63 block, I think it should be able to handle way more than the average joe can throw at it.

There were also some other cool cars like the very clean Technosquare 350z, but I think the SCC guys would prefer for me the shut up here. Get the mag.

Phil from 360 video sent me a text on Friday at around 3pm. Both Phil and Robby (both responsible for video and editing of the JDM Insider videos) like to do that. “Hey, I’m in LA. What you up to tonight?” It must be the norcal Filipino style. So Phil was down here filming a Nike Sportswear concert with Boadrum88. At 8:08pm 88 drummers drum for 88 minutes at the park next to the La Brea Tar Pits. It was pretty cool. There were 88 drummers with 88 rock drum kits. Ever hear 88 drummers in unison? I only got to see Phil and Marc from Fatlace for like 5 minutes after the show since they were tired.

Next door at LACMA, there was this pretty cool looking display of old street lights. If you want to talk about wasting electricity, this display was definitely doing that in the name of art.

Saturday I went to the Greek Theater for an outdoor concert at the Hot 92 Funkfest featuring Morris Day and the Time, Con Funk Shun, Zapp and Roger, Midnight Starr, and the SOS Band. Most everybody was a generation or two older than me. I think I was in 5th grade when Midnight Starr’s “Freak-A-Zoid” was a hit. It was Saya’s idea to go, but it ended up being a great show. All the performers put on a good show and the entire crowd was all into it dancing and singing, etc. Everybody was having a good time drinking and uh…smoking if you know what I’m sayin. R&B/Funk today isn’t quite what it used to be. Good times…

I love big brakes. They can stop a car faster, you can brake later in to a turn, and the car just feels better when you have them. What I think is even better than big brakes are FAKE big brakes! You know the sky is falling when people are making a living off of FAKE big brakes. As a true enthusiast, you can’t even imagine the concept, right? I was cruising eBay and I found this crock of shit:

They look real at first, but then without reading carefully, I scrolled down and saw this:

I was like, WTF? Then I read carefully and saw the word “cover” in the description.  You might ask, how the hell does this attach to your stock brakes? Well, if a dumbass is thinking of fake big brakes, then you have to think on the dumbass level.  Glue, how else?

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Is this bullshit for real?  Then I looked at the guy’s store page here: ebay fake brake store. It is definitely for real.

Its not just limited to Brembos though. They even have fake Endless brakes:

Some people are fucking lame.

On Monday morning, Troy gave me call and said, “Hey man. Some Nissan dealerships are blowing out Armadas and Titans for 50% off.  You should buy one.”  I said, “Why the hell do I want one? Gas is fucking expensive man. You should buy one.” And then I thought about it: my drive to work is 6 minutes even if I hit a couple of red lights. Saya’s (gf) drive is only 15 minutes and only because its a local (red lights suck) drive. Hell, maybe I SHOULD buy one. Superior Nissan in Puente Hills and a two other dealerships in San Diego were doing a 50% off sale for Titans and Armadas. Of course, a car dealership is well….a car dealership so you can never really believe what they say. They are all salesman after all…

Anyhow, so later that night I met Troy over at Superior Nissan and we checked out their inventory (Troy ended up getting a Titan near San Diego for Ark Design at about 40% off on Wednesday as Superior didn’t have what he wanted). The base Armada was $38k with a decent option package, but it had cloth seats and a base stereo. The decked out Armada was $52k with leather, navigation, Bose stereo, etc. Of course, the dealership has all the bullshit add-ons like $295 “door guards” which are pieces of plastic slipped over the edge of each door, $295 “wheel locks”, and a $995 “upgraded alarm with shock sensor”. Basically thats $1600 of bullshit. They only had two Armada LEs fully optioned so I sat down and had the guys run some numbers. It should be said at this point that while the salesman were pretty cool, they are just doing their job and being salesman. He writes down a number which was $38,895. I looked at that and said, “That doesn’t look like 50% off to me.” He goes and talks to the sales manager and comes back with $36,895. I said, “How the fuck does that work?  50% of $52,000 is $26,000.” He comes back with, “Well actually you had to have owned an Armada previously to get the $1500 loyalty incentive.” I said, “OK well in case you didn’t do the math, that would still be $27,500.” My Chinese side started kicking in (Chinese people are cheap as fuck in case you didn’t know) and Troy started getting in the mix so we were like “$29,995 out the door or we’re outta here. Not a penny more.” So the sales manager comes out and gives us the Spiel and he knocks it down to $33,000 out the door. At this point we say, “OK, screw it man. We’re outta here.” And the sales manager goes, “Wait up, hold on a sec.” This happens like another 2 times with some bullshit in between about it being a weekend ad and LEs were not included in the sale. I told him, “Look, you can give me the car tonight for $29,995 out the door or sit on the damn thing for another 3 months. Nobodys coming in to buy a SUV that gets 12mpg and even if somebody wanted one, they’d go and buy an Escalade.” Then they bust out the general manager. They are cool people, but you gotta go through the motions and GRIND. Finally, I got tired of the bullshit at 11pm and said, “Look, let me register it in OC and give me the $350 I save in tax. $31700 out the door or we’re gone for real.” What’s the lesson to be learned here? Car dealerships make too much money so grind the fuck out of them if you can.  If I paid sticker plus tax and license, I would be upwards of $58,000. I walked out of there saving approximately $26,300. Is that sick or what? You can be cheap on cars, but don’t be cheap on tuning. No matter which Nissan dealership you go to, you’ll still get a Nissan. Where you go for tuning and mechanical work, cheap is almost never good. So you have to be a cheap ass in the right places. I always pay top dollar for specialized labor of any sort if I know they’re good.

Then I had to deal with the finance guy, but that’s another story of sales pitch after sales pitch after sales pitch. Just say no to the finance guy when tries to sell you all the useless bullshit like the GPS locator, the 5 year paint and interior protection, the gap insurance, etc. I did get the prepaid maintenance for 5 years and with it comes LIFETIME free tires. I figured 275/60/20’s are pretty damn expensive so I got the prepaid maintenance and the 7yr/75000 mile extended warranty. If you don’t use the extended warranty, Nissan gives you a full refund too. Anyhow, go see Glen at Superior and tell him Eric sent you. Don’t forget to grind him though.

5.6 liters of fury to piss off the tree huggers, 317hp/385ft-lbs of torque, tow hitch with a 9,100lb towing capacity, room for 8 covered in leather, bose stereo (it’s alright, not bad), 275/60/20 tires, 4WD, and I even got the whiteboy style billet grille (it was already on the car). All this for $31,700 out the door. I couldn’t pass it up. It drives pretty damn good too. This 5600lb behomoth will still smoke a Honda to 40mph. For you guys overseas, the Armada is like a big ass Patrol that doesn’t smoke like a bitch. This giant is petrol powered.

I’m eyeing the Stillen long tube headers and their B-pipes.
I have to give my buddy James a call at K&N for a cold air intake too.

If you got a V8, you have to let the monster breathe. I’ll be giving Magnaflow a call too for their single tip exhaust. No need for the dual tips. I don’t live on a farm or fly the confederate flag.

After all the mods, I might see if I can make it out to Texas to see if they guys at Uprev can flash the ECU for a custom tune. Or maybe Tadashi at Technosquare/Techtom has got the 2008 Armada ECU figured out. Then I’m going to drive the Armada into the ground and sell it in 6 years just before the extended warranty is up.Check back for dynos soon.

Cruising through the web, I stumbled upon the Surge 02 Power Chip for only $99.99. Here are some of the features. Check out the image of the high tech kit below too.

• Improves engine output by as much as 10 %.
• Enhance throttle response, acceleration and low end torque.
• Preserves smog certification.
• Pushes up acceleration and dynamism by upto 15 %.
• Results higher top speed.
• Lifetime Warranty
• Easy installation in 30 minutes.
• Switch can be connected in line for on/off
• Reduces flat spots or delay time when you mash down the throttle.

Reading these features, you already know its all bullshit. How can anything attaching to the factory 02 sensor do all of these things? Beats the shit out of me. Read the product description. You have got to be absolutely gullible to even remotely think about buying this product.  But wait, let’s take a look at the Surge Performance Chip for even more power gains.

The Surge Performance Chip has got to be the latest and greatest, high tech item on the market. At least after reading the feature list, you would think so. Here is an image of the future of tuning:

Yes, with the addition of this high tech “chip”, you can have all of these features for only $89.99:

• Add up to 35 Horse Power - usually 7-10% power gain
• Add up to 20+ Ft LBS of Torque
• Fully adjustable for either Horsepower or Gas Mileage via Knob
• More low end torque
• More power to tow or race
• 1-4 MPG Savings
• Faster 0-60 MPH times
• Faster 1/4 and 1/8th mile track times
• Faster Acceleration at all RPM
• Up to 20% quicker throttle response time
• Smoother shifting (Automatics only)

Who needs a programmable standalone ECU, camshafts, turbos, etc.? You can install the Surge Performance Chip and the Surge 02 Power Chip and have all the power and torque you need for only $189.98. Something for almost nothing, huh? Well if you do your shopping at “yourhotcar.com”, that can become a reality apparently.

Of course there is the original con: the Tornado. Originally marketed to increase horsepower before the days where there was a chassis dyno around every corner, it seems to be marketed toward increasing fuel mileage now. Of course fuel mileage is something that most people don’t check and/or don’t know how to calculate. It’s all just another con.  What is the hell is going on in this world? Why do people and companies even exist? Look on the frontpage of the Tornado website and see how the guy links to a page showing John 3:16. Does the guy think that he will not burn in hell because he linked a passage from the bible?  Cheap imitations, China copies, Vietnam fiberglass copies of JDM parts, everybody copying everybody, poor quality, XS Power, etc. Cons like the ones above and the general condition of the tuning industry leads me to think: What is the tuning industry coming to? Screw it I guess. You can’t worry about everything all the time. I guess you gotta keep on truckin’ and hope for the best if you like it.

While the Miata is cool fun little car, it doesn’t measure too high on the manliness scale when you compare it to other Japanese cars that are commonly modified. The stock bumper has that look like its smiling and it is pretty small overall. Then in the US, you have many women who own Miatas and of course gay dudes. You’re shielded from my criticizm if you’re a normal dude and own a Miata, but chances are you’re not a normal dude if you’re reading this blog. To avoid gayness, look no more: AWR Racing has wide body kits that look pretty clean.  None of the cars on the AWR website are very complete, but you get the idea. With some finishing and detail to aligning, these fenders could make the little Miata pretty buff looking. I gotta give props to AWR for doing a great job on the overall look of the Miata with their widebody fenders. It reminds me of the old Tri-Point FC widebody.

Now that is a fender. You will jack up your scrub radius (I learned the hard way), but it looks good. The fender or hood (not sure which) doesn’t line up for shit, but it can be fixed.

British Racing Green is sweet; especially with big ass flares.

Not bad at all. The fenders and flare are cheap too: $450. If you take a look at the pictures on the AWR site, you can see that it does take A LOT of labor to straighten out the lines and make everything fit right though. But I wouldn’t mind rolling a Miata like this with a 400whp 13B in it. A normally aspirated B6/BP matches the stock Miata though: they’re both gay.

This is the NC that is featured in this month’s Sport Compact Car Magazine. The flares make the car look about hmmm…I’m not too sure…maybe 5000x better? Now I would definitely roll a car like this. The MZR 2.0 engine has way more balls than the B6/BP too.  Perhaps I should get one and drop in a 300hp Cosworth Formula Atlantic engine. Or better yet, a stroked 2.3L MZR with the Cosworth BVD (big valve duratec) head with Atlantic camshafts and a Cosworth Supercharger. The torque curve would be the top half of a big giant square. All credit I would loose driving a Miata would be made up with tire smoke out of every turn.

We have a 2008 STi at Cosworth that has been internally dubbed the Red Dragon. We have been using the car for product development so it hasn’t progressed much although it is supposed to be SEMA ready in less than 3 months now. The goal is a kick ass track car that you can drive home: a gentleman’s STi. There are guys who have the cash and go out and buy a Viper or 911 to track, but after running the car two or three times they discover: 1)the cars are NOT easy to control, 2)the cars eat tires for lunch, 3)the cars eat brakes for lunch, 4)they are afraid to put them into the wall and sometimes do (wallet outweighs the balls), 5)they are extremely expensive to set up properly for tracking, and 6)they are expensive as hell to track in general (gas, tires, brakes, alignment, etc.). Well this will be the STi for these kind of folk. Anyhow, the Red Dragon is getting a dry sump put in at the moment and Lew has done a super clean job so far as usual. He fabricated a tank mount and the aluminum tubes that run to the front so far. I like how the tank is mounted for a true low profile. The rest of us are lagging on the engine side of the project since we are busy with other projects, but the test suspension pieces and turbo are on the way from the UK.

Now you see it.

Now you don’t.

How many places do you know that would install a dry sump system as the car’s first modification? It doesn’t even have an exhaust yet. To be honest we just want to get some mileage on the dry sump system. It looks like Tyler and I will have to get down and dirty to get the car complete in 3 months. It should be fun…maybe.

A couple weeks ago, Nick, Yaya, Saya and I headed out to Arizona because our friends Danny & Marilyn got married. Other than being really, really, really hot in Arizona (hell on Earth), it was a great time. I got a chance to hang out and celebrate with a bunch of friends I haven’t seen in a while, relax, binge eat and binge drink. I met Marilyn about 8 years ago through a friend who I used to work with at Apex. Danny is Jensen’s brother. Jensen used to work with me when I was at Apex, but when Danny moved to the mainland from Hawaii, he worked for me at XS fabricating and installing stuff. After XS, Danny went to work with the infamous Stephan Papidakis at AEM on the drift team, but got all serious with Marilyn and moved to Arizona. Small world, huh? Jensen is a little bitch (no comment section here, sucka!) and couldn’t hack it on the mainland so he moved back to Hawaii and is now working on boats. But I don’t blame him since Hawaii is literally a paradise.

Danny and Marilyn cutting the cake.

L to R: me, Buda, Jensen, Marilyn, Danny, Lanny, Alan, and Kyoung. Marilyn, Alan, and I are the only ones not from Hawaii. Alan went to school in Hawaii so he’s virtually from Hawaii (he can bust pidgin, bra).

We were chillin on the lawn (huge backyards in AZ) drinking. Here’s Jensen looking dumb trying to figure out how a camera works, Danny and Alan sippin on some syzurp.

Here was the dining table on night one minus the beer. I think D&M could have bought a car with the recycling money from all the aluminum beer cans and bottles from the weekend.

Buda busted out 3 bottles of the Crown Royal Cask No. 16 which I have got to say is pretty damn good (thanks Buda). The Guiness, Baileys, and Black Bush (yes, imagine the jokes) are the components of an Irish Car Bomb. Half whiskey (Black Bush in this case) and half Baileys dropped into a cup of Guiness and you down it in one shot (choke foam, bra). Jensen apparently is the master of the Irish Car Bomb and has been using it to pimp the hoes in Hawaii. The Baileys makes it easier for the chicks to drink.

Here’s me after 3 Irish Car Bombs. I suffer from the Chinese drinking sydrome and turn red.

Night two (three for some) and we’re still going strong. There’s the multi-talented Buda throwing the peace. We would all be drinking and then all of a sudden Buda would break out the vegetables and start chopping them for some of Marilyn’s special recipe salsa. Then he would turn around and bake some shit or make some other kind of kick ass food. Buda is funny as hell too and you want him at your parties. I left at 3:30am and Alan jumped in to the pool. Why not? Its still like 90°F (32.3°C) at 3:30am in AZ.

Alan drove his super slammed E46 M3 out from LA. Alan’s cars are always clean. If you see this car in person, you would say, “Fuuuck, thats low dude.”

Here’s the front of Nick’s 4Runner. Driving at night to AZ will result in a fucked bumper.

Anyhow, congrats to Danny and Marilyn. I wish them the best. I went to visit with them so when I finally settle down and invite them out to LA, they better show up!