Month: September 2015

When I mentioned the phrase hard parker, Travis Sewell became audibly upset. This machine was built to put out big numbers all the while looking good in the process, though he cut me off and said, No, this thing still performs, I’m not really a hard parker. At first glance this beautiful black S2000 may check all of the boxes for that form-over-function crowd.

Travis first fell to the S2000 some time ago while serving as a car detailer; he states, I detailed on the side, and I cleaned a customer’s car. I only had it for a couple of hours and fell deeply in love with it. He went on the hunt for his very own roadster and came upon a low-mile, one-owner example quite a while later. This particular drop-top began its life in the possession of an older gentleman and incredibly only saw the light of day on perfect spring afternoons. Once the keys landed in Travis’ hand, it didn’t stay factory fresh for very long because he got to work towards it in onlyThat didn’t stop him from capping the car with a Seibon carbon-fiber hardtop and matching Downforce side diffusers, though travis admits that winter doesn’t hit Virginia Beach way too hard. To kill any unsightly wheel gap on his new ride, Travis prefered a set of Buddy Club N coilovers. With less than a season of wheel time, Travis grew bored of the bottled note that the ultra-efficient four-cylinder produced, so he installed and ordered a J’s Racing exhaust manifold and Invidia test pipe that exit through a T1R 70r Sparrow exhaust.

Travis wanted to build something worth looking at, as well as the stock rollers weren’t planning to cut it, although with the free-flowing exhaust, the S2000 could possibly be heard well before it was actually seen. Some CCW classics in an 18×9/10 staggered setup dwarf the car’s original rollers. Obtaining the aggressive-offset 18-inch wheels to match took a certain amount of coercing around the front fenders, and a number of pulling around the rear. That coupled with the almost 10-year-old stock black paint convinced Travis to put down a brand new layer of paint. Just before applying a coat of Crystal Black Pearl (away from the ’09 and newer Honda Civics) Travis installed a fresh OEM front lip, JDP Engineering rear diffuser, and APR carbon-fiber mirrors to fiton the black and carbon exterior.

When the power itch begins to flare up, it’s difficult to scratch. Luckily for Travis, his closest friend and roommate happened to operate a local tuning house named Ramey Built. When his shiny new Science of Speed Novi 1200 supercharger system arrived, his roommate had a bay and lift waiting for him. The new SOS system was installed, and Travis went a bit further, upgrading the pulley to some 3.4-inch option to push the system to 16 pounds of boost. Power is definitely not without fuel, and to get the juices flowing, a set of ID1000s was enlisted along with a Full-Blown fuel pump. Calling the shots is undoubtedly an AEM Series 2 EMS. Even before the tune, Travis knew he’d need help receiving the power to the ground, so he ditched the stock clutch and flywheel for an ACT Stage 3 clutch and 9-pound flywheel.

With some time on the rollers and his own tuning, Travis pulled over 440 hp on the wheels from the stock block F22. While there was more power to be made, Travis purposely scaled things back a bit to maintain that Honda reliability. He adds, It’s my only car, and I drive it such as this every day over 50 miles to function. People don’t believe me. Travis doesn’t have got a garage and tries his hardest to keep the car looking as clean as it appears in these photos. Other than finding somewhere to help keep his beauty, the next item on the list is 500 safe wheel horsepower. If this is precisely what the guy are capable of doing with his S2000 as a daily driver, we can’t wait to see it when it turns into a project!

Some people wouldn’t touch an increased mileage used car in a hundred years whereas others see the truth that a car has driven across the earth a few times a great basis for buying a bargain. A quick consider the odometer is the best way to know precisely how many miles your motor has covered in its previous life, just before parting with any cash you must also look out for several other signs.

May be the odometer showing a genuine reading? Some unscrupulous car dealers and private people will visit great lengths to try and unwind a number of miles from your odometer making it appear that the car has driven fewer miles than it actually has. Who knows how far it could have driven in real terms if the vehicle shows a comparatively high number of miles after it has been tampered with? It is more challenging to pull this type of trick because the advent of digital odometers yet it is still possible to do so.

One great way to ascertain whether the reading is genuine is to check on the vehicle history. If the motor you are considering buying comes with service history that can be a genuine bonus.

Offers the engine got a few more miles left inside it? Any potential engine problems can soon be identified with a compression test. In the event you don’t learn how to do this yourself it is certainly worth calling upon the services of an expert service mechanic or a friend who is actually a petrol head. It’s quite a simple procedure which involves replacing a spark plug with a compression gauge, cranking up the motor and reading the numbers recorded around the gauge. Low compression could be a sign of a leaking gasket, perhaps a damaged exhaust valve or just the engine is in need of major surgery before it can be supposed to ever run sweetly again.

The amount of rust spots can you find on the bodywork? Rust is often quite easy to identify if it is left to its own devices but some people are guilty of trying to disguise the fact that the bodywork is suffering. If the car you are looking at offers the original paint job you may be able to find small bubbled areas where the rust is beginning to grow. If the car has a few patches that happen to be a slightly different shade they have almost certainly tried to hide signs of rust. On the other hand you can’t expect an auto which has high mileage to be bright and shiny like it was the first day it drove from the car lot, not unless the previous owner admits that it has been re-sprayed.

Turning your awareness of the inside? Take into consideration this for the second, for every mile that the car drives someone will need to have been placed in the driving seat using their foot on the gas. If the odometer has become tampered with to show fewer miles the inside could help to offer the game away, this tear and wear will be a good indicator about the mileage of the car, and.

When a car has high mileage but has become regularly serviced and well-maintained it doesn’t necessarily mean that this will let you down. Modern cars can be expected to last for 250,000 miles or more with no problems at all.

Of course if you head down to Fontana Nissan you won’t need to worry about any of those ideas at all. Look at their motors at http://www.downtownnissan.com and you’ll see what I mean.

With a blistering 1: 55.43 (Buttonwillow CW13) under its belt, most would expect Rob Walker’s S2000 to be brimming with the latest in power-producing hardware, perhaps taxing the local dyno as force-fed air is crammed into Honda’s F22C powerplant. Not to be the daydream crusher, but this AP2 couldn’t possibly stray any further from that fantasy. Besides it lack a turbo or supercharger kit, it puts down a very conservative 204 whp on Evasive Motorsports’ Mustang Dyno. Furthermore, the car passes California’s stringent smog testing obstacle course with flying colors, contains every plastic interior panel installed from the factory (including a speakers and deck), and is driven quite comfortably to and from the track. So, what’s his secret? The simple truth is, there is no secret. It required plenty of hours behind the wheel, countless hours of research and development, and traditional-fashioned error and trial.

As a child, Walker’s family moved to Japan for a six-year stint; a slice of your energy that included heavy contact with tuners and also the automotive lifestyle in the land of the rising sun. He adds, My first exposure to real track driving was when my Japanese friend showed me a video of Kurosawa Motoharu (aka Gan-san) driving a 930 turbo from the rain. The recording was not regarding the all-out speed but focused instead on controlling weight transfer throughout the tires from theUnited states soil, he purchased an S2000 and wasted no time at all in getting involved in grassroots time trial events around California. The hobby quickly morphed into obsession with Walker attending a minumum of one track day per month, sometimes more. He began a site, Maxrev.net (see sidebar), which was used to log and review any modifications done to the automobile in order to evaluate their effectiveness on track performance. The purpose ended up being to show some great benefits of each part as considered in regards to the overall balance from the car. I attempted various track-oriented parts in that time and I learned so much from it. The continual research and hands-on testing paid off when Walker became the first S2000 owner/driver to break the coveted 2: 00 mark at Buttonwillow’s CW13 on R-compounds. This time using mere street tires, though not long after that, in 2008, he repeated the performance.

Having found positive results in his own development and research with his S2000, Walker received some news that would basically put him back to square one. I realized my close friend was selling his S2000. I always experienced a soft position for white colored Honda cars, so I jumped on it. It was actually also a good opportunity to start fresh on a lower mileage car together with the knowledge which i gained from building my first S2000. With two roadsters now in his garage, Walker began transferring carefully selected parts from the donor car for the newly acquired chassis. Along with a new car came a new challenge and objective: build a street-driven S2000 with full interior that could match or beat the lap times being posted by track-dedicated cars. His selection of guidelines offered little in the form of compromise.

Spotted outside of the SEMA 2013 convention hall at the HKS booth was this 2013 Nissan GT-R Black Edition. This is not even close to a stock platform though. It will reach 60mph into two.3 seconds and complete the quarter in 10.2 seconds as a result of 1,042hp.

Sponsored by HKS, this daily driver features the Jotech Motorsports Stage 6S kit, which retails for about $95,000 according to chosen parts. This car uses the HKS GT1000 turbo running 38 psi – a much more aggressive Alpha 12 twin turbo kit is also available.

Turn around time for this package is around monthly and a half. The Stage 6S kit includes a fully-built Jotech 4.1L engine (4.3L stroker avail. for $8K more), Sheptrans Stage 4 transmission, GReddy intercooler and full titanium exhaust, 3 custom air intakes, 1400hp-ready fuel system, ID 2,000 injectors, HKS boost controller, Cobb AccessPort V3 as well as a Jotech tune.

The 20-inch HRE wheels complete what is one killer Godzilla package. Now to figure out how to come up with the cash for this turnkey package.

KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA

There is more to saving the environment than merely recycling your newspaper. There are many great things out there that may really make your footprint smaller so that you can be rest assured that you are carrying out all you can to impact the planet earth in a meaningful way. Here are a couple of great ideas for you.

1. Make Old Things New Again

Buying some pieces of furniture used can really make any difference when it comes to the surroundings since you are buying pieces which may have just ended up in the landfill. You can be creative with what you buy by changing the hardware and colors. That is the positive aspect of buying second-hand. By searching on blogs and Pinterest across the web, you will get great ideas for how to remake old furniture to make it chic.

2. A Power Car

Few things can present you are serious about saving the surroundings like owning an electric car does. With all the Nissan Leaf from Nissan Riverside, you may get a reasonably priced electric car that gets an almost unbelievable 126 MPG. The Leaf is a great way to lower your carbon emissions every day. Find out more about the Nissan Leaf by going to http://metronissanredlands.com.

3. A Composter

A composter can be a great way to keep the amount of garbage you are sending to the landfill down if you possess the outdoor space for doing it. With a composter, you can keep organic material, including vegetable peels and coffee grounds, from the trash. Instead, you can put organic material in the composter and, with very little effort on your part, have material to produce rich organic material for growing your vegetables once planting season comes. When you have a vegetable garden, compost will work like fertilizer, without all the chemicals.

It will require a lot of balls to irreversibly modify a vehicle. In any aspect of the aftermarket game, the repercussions can be detrimental. Intakes and exhausts might still be replaced back with OEM parts, plus your wheels and ride height can be put straight back to stock with simple hand tools when it’s time to part ways (unless for reasons unknown you’ve been using a wrench to pull your fenders). But I’m referring to the real deal major changes, the big boy moves-like entirely dissecting a $35,000 luxury sports car and replacing its soul and heart with a long lost family member’s organs. Yet having a dream under consideration, that’s precisely what madman Tim Jordan chose to do as he dropped the infamous RB26 power plant and AWD transmission into his Infiniti G35 coupe.

We percieve a lot of different types of cars, you might already know. From stanced out showstoppers and innovative Frankensteins to clean up classics and VIP bangers. Personally, I’m the sort of guy that likes to see those “all-in” modifications, the creative “outside the box” transformations-I couldn’t applaud Mr. Jordan anymore on the focus on detail placed on the grueling process. See, where most people would have been completely content with just completing a swap with this magnitude (and getting it actually run), Tim lay out on a major goal to make sure the engine was completely leveled out rather than sitting crooked or tilted for some reason as many RB swaps have a tendency toThe True Infiniti Skyline

As a way to test fit the bulky Skyline motor and prepare for the swapping process, initiating the method, the entire front end was removed. With merely a small hose bracket blocking the his, Tim and fit friends quickly removed the pointless weld and began drawing up custom engine mounts that were eventually fabricated and popped into place. In doing so, the foreign heart managed to fit the donor’s body like a glove-and without using any hammers or rubber mallets to force anything into place. To finally level out the motor, the oil pan was slightly transformed and shortened making a much wider and shallower section allowing the block to sit flat as originally proposed. Once all components were secured in place, a Precision GT4067R turbo was slapped in place in conjunction with some more custom fabricated pieces, allowing the beast to reach a full 632whp.

With success inside the heart, it was time to proceed to the footwork. Though the RWD RB25 tranny is the usual option for projects of these sorts, Tim have been forever inspired by the strength and durability of the AWD RB26 platform and knew it would be the best choice for the build. The AWD goal was quickly checked off the list and the G’d up Skyline was easily blasting through gears in the interstate without hesitation, by creating a custom rear tranny mount and three-bend shifter to hold the stock stick location.The Actual Infiniti Skyline

The secondary building point for the project dips just a little deeper compared to technical realm. For years, Tim has been involved in the automotive industry and has seen it slip out and in of varied fads (as many of us have). To stray away from the current trends, the concept was to make a car having an actual purpose, focusing on the power of his childhood days rather than a money pit that just “looks nice.” In doing so, with much attention focused on the engine and transmission, your body was kept subtle and functional having a sleek GReddy kit all-around. A classic list of TE37s was put in place for that extra bit of tenuous flare. Again, even though primary goal of the build was to strive for functionality and power, Tim felt the auto wouldn’t are already complete with out a few interior mods. Upgrading the aesthetics, some Buddy Club seats along with a NRG wheel temporarily brings the project to a close.

Through and through, Tim has poured more then a few ounces of blood, sweat and tears into this project. But could you anticipate anything less? Literally, we’re talking about heart surgery here-and on a platform that has seldom been brought and dissected returning to existence. Though he’ll be the first to admit the build is still running through a few ECU and injector component issues, it can be by no doubt out contributing to ripping from the Houston city streets, and may only carry on and progress, as Sir Jordan vows the project will never be finished.

Josh Jett’s wife knew all about his girlfriend. The forum chatting, the late-night texting, the time they went to the drag strip together–she was fine with all of it. And their relationship, which had nothing at all with regards to surreptitiously sexting one another at all hours and everything to do with collaborating on each other’s RSX build-ups, was the kind of stuff car-guy bonds are made from, that’s mostly because Josh’s girlfriend wasn’t a girl at all. None of this stopped Josh’s wife from pronouncing her fellow and husband RSX chat forum member Zack Keller girlfriend and boyfriend though, even though they were only a couple of friends which shared a fervor to the final iteration of what was once the Acura Integra.

Josh and Zack met online and soon realized that they lived in close proximity to one another, nearby the outskirts of Columbus, Ohio. For Josh, his ’03 RSX Type-S was his first attempt at modifying a car in the ground up. He’ll tell you about the ’00 Civic EX he’d once owned, but he’ll also let you know that the changes he’d made to it pale to what he’d do in order to the RSX. Zack, the more mechanically experienced of the two, is partially to blame. Zack was much more knowledgeable when it came totransmissions and motors, and how things work, Josh says. I’m sure I used to be quite annoying with all of my questions, but he was always helpful.led to the 741 whp that Josh would later make and the 11-second pass he’d post his first time out. It’s correct that Josh’s new friend was the more experienced of the two, but his RSX would turn out to be the real teacher. My RSX is the first car that we really put some time into modifying and understanding everything [about] which i could, he says. I like to do things myself and tried to with this particular car up to I could. Josh’ll be the first one to remind you that his RSX is the thing that he calls built, not bought. It soon became an instruction manual for him, leading to his better understanding how difficult making power naturally aspirated was, how temporarily satisfying a supercharger could be, and just how worthwhile a totally rebuilt and turbocharged K-series is. In just a short time, Josh had subjected his K20 to nearly every form of aspiration, each of which concluded using a predilection to get more power, which is exactly what generated his settling on an engine program in relation to a Precision PT6766 turbocharger.

Take a peek at Josh’s setup and little will surprise you–unless a cluster of top-notch engine pieces and high-end suspension components are unfamiliar to you. Ductile, iron cylinders, Wiseco pistons, and Manley connecting rods make sure that the 28 psi that passes through the Golden Eagle intake manifold and into the lightly modified cylinder head stays put and doesn’t plan its own exit strategy by means of a hole in the block. A team of fuel pumps along with 2,000cc/min. fuel injectors tuned with the help of a Hondata K-Pro do their part in generating the nearly quadrupled power figure but it’s the drivetrain that impresses and, in addition to the exhaust that’s routed through the hood, toes the line between what Josh says is actually a weekend car and what exactly is really only a track car occasionally fired up on the street. A five-speed RSX gearbox augmented with PPG straight-cut gears–their whine of which, according to Josh, is the thing his wife can do without. Despite what the state of Ohio’s Bureau of Motor Vehicles says, Josh’s RSX is a race car by any description. Either of his sons will tell you as much, the older that pines for the opportunity to be straddled inside the passenger-side carbon-fiber bucket, as well as the younger of which, although not of sufficient age to ride in it, knows to refer to it as Daddy’s race car.

2003 acura RSX type S AEM gauges 08

2003 acura RSX type S golden eagle intake manifold 05

2003 acura RSX type S F1Spec type 2 carbon fiber seats 04

A smattering of mods you aren’t likely to find on any race car have also found themselves onto Josh’s RSX, like the shaved engine bay and body work that he did himself, both processes that gave him the opportunity to learn new skills, like paint and welding preparation. Interior enhancements have been made, just like a dyed-black headliner and carbon-fiber-vinyl trim pieces strategically placed across the center and dash console. It’s all very much the right contrast towards the exposed, billet-aluminum K-Tuned shifter box, CNC staging brake, and barrage of digital AEM meters.

Josh’s RSX has since been is and completed admittedly done. All that he says remains is to enjoy beating the hell from it, a job that’s been bittersweet ever since August 14, 2012, when Zack passed away following a fatal car accident. Still, beat it up he has. Within the once watchful guidance of his friend and longtime drag racer, who Josh says the build’s been dedicated to, Josh familiarized himself withlaunching and staging, and shifting. I wasn’t nervous; I was excited, he says of that first pass. Zack grew up around drag racing, so I wanted him there to give me pointers. I short-bogged and shifted at the beginning of that first pass. The time was quite embarrassing. Following a little bit of seat time as well as just before posting his quickest pass Josh looked to Zack and asked him how he thought he was doing. Excellent, Zack said. Now quit driving the vehicle like a pussy. You built it for any reason.