To give you some quick history, before the 240's I was a honda guy. Most people who know me personally are clearly aware of this. Below on the left is my 99 honda civic Si (her name was Salli), I parted with the car sometime in 2005 and picked up the 1993 Honda Civic Si with a single slammer and a EUDM Sir transmission with factory lsd. Both great cars, and always drove through the mountains aggressively in both when I used to do that sort of thing. You can now write it down that Wayne the biggest hard parker in the world now used to recreationally take his cars to togue before it was "cool"
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| The years and line up changes, but the friendships remain the same. 2004 |
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| 2004 almost 10 years ago. |
It's kind of funny because the camera's back in 2004 were so damn bad, and photo hosting compression was equally as horrible, there are no high resolution pictures of any of my other cars in existence anymore. I lost two hard drives worth of data which is a damn shame, but that's another story.
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| The little green one up there under the merging sign is mine. This was 2005 |
What an exciting weekend for me, I think since owning Simone, this is the first legit time I've actually driven my car through "the twisties" or performed a "
togue". It was very fun, the back of the car stayed firmly planted and I was even able to make some 3rd to 2nd gear transitions on long sweepers without the back coming out on me amidst all of the rock slides we encountered today.
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Lot's of late nights led up to today, solid subframe bushings
(probably should've refreshed the diff while this was all out too. taken in 2012) |
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| All she needs is a swaybar. |
It's so funny that after buying this car back in 2008 that I never really re-adjusted the suspension completely. It wasn't until about 2012 when I upgraded the rear subframe of the car that I finally adjusted the coilovers on the rear properly and dialed in pre-load. I'll admit I'm an idiot when it comes to these things and I never moved the bottom collar, I always adjusted the height by changing the pre-load.
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| Adjusting suspension and Pre Load last night at +Jeff Jordan 's shop Jordan Innovations in Irwindale yesterday. |
Most honda coilovers (well the cheap ones) adjust this way. There was never a 3rd collar, so it wasn't until some massive trial and error with the car, and some shaky handling that I finally took a look at the front suspension to make sure it was in unison with the rear.
Previously I just gave the front a quick once over, the problem with that is the "stance" looked right, but the car handled like shit unless all of the weight was shifted to one side on turns, in the slightest upset you would awake the beast and Simone wanted to be all over the place.
Today the car just felt plush, the front pointed where I wanted it to, I dialed back the dampening to 5 last night on the front and figured since I'll be mashing my brakes today to kick it up to 6. I didn't want it too stiff, and it worked out wonderfully. I did probably shave a bit of fiberglass off but the front bumper isn't really wind resistant at this point.
When I woke up this morning I wanted to wash the thing, just cause. My idiot neighbor's kid had his girlfriend my cars parking space and went partying, leaving their car behind. After I told one of them yesterday I'm leaving early in the morning so don't park here. So I wasted 2-3 hours of sleep by calling the police, motioning to have their car towed and a host of other little intricacies. At the end of it all, it played out like a pop's commercial and I got my car out and on the road.
We met up this morning around 9am at Barnes & Noble book store in Thousand Oaks, this is the pre-caravan check in spot, then we drive down a bit further to ensure the group was all together. And really it's one of those times I wish I had asked to borrow a few gopro camera's. The scenery was beautiful today, sometimes while driving through the long sweepers of just autumn colored tree's and leaves in a tunnel of nature with sunlight poking through, the reggae, the engine sounds, my girlfriend terrified for her life all became null. You get lost in it, lost in your thoughts... Then you hit a transition or a tight turn and it's a quick blip, some trail braking, and back into it. Working the machine!
Torque is on tap with the car so for the most part I left it in third gear for a good part of the drive, but also left it in second while going downhill so I didn't bake my brakes. Luckily all braking was on point today.
This is the only footage I ended up seeing of the car, I'll have to download it and upload it to my youtube. So in case this disappears I have proof my car was driven on a mountain. LOL
I spent most of the day in front of the pack, found it quite hilarious everyone brought their kids with them now that everyone is old. "Oh, I'm going to take it easy, gonna bring the kids along" HAHA the kids were encouraging bad driving, and the big kids driving were like "OKAY".
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| We made it, and actually got to park inside. |
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| The first time I've actually eaten here. |
Back when I used to go on these runs, they always fell on a day after I had some bills and I wasn't in as good as a place I am now. So I never brought money to eat at these things, plus I don't even think they took atm cards 7-8 years ago. I can't recall to be honest, since I brought my girlfriend with me and figured she'd eat something with me. I decided to get their sampler, I've never had fried clams before. NOT A FAN this obviously threw my diet off a little today but no too much.
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| Everyone had so much more ground clearance than me. |
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| Getting ready to order! |
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| Carbs, so many carbs lol. |
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| Not a lot of honda's left in the group, everyone wants turbo or v8. |
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| This is my good friend Charleston Ong (if you've ever seen an ASR subframe brace on a honda, he's the guy who designed it.) And over to the right is Kent who's looking great these days. |
The gang all got together afterwards to take some group shots. None of which are online yet, of course haha whatever.
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| click for a massive shot! |
If something pops up from the mulholland photographers that snapped pics of my car, I'll make sure to post.
Otherwise I had a great day.
-Wayne
