CamryOnBronze

I think I was more exhausted on Sunday morning than I was on Saturday morning. I woke up at 5:30 AM once again and headed down to meet Kyle and Jason in the lobby. Alicia enjoyed the event on Saturday and had a good time, but was feeling a little tired and a little sick of car discussion 24/7 so she elected to sleep in at the hotel and chill by the pool for the afternoon.

We cruised out to the track and arrived around 6:30. There was a lot less traffic out there on day 2, but there was still a line waiting to get into the gates. When we pulled in and eventually made our way through the long line to the infield, we were corralled into some really close together parking spots along the gravel edge of the parking lot we were in during day one. For whatever reason, the parking director-people decided to be super strict about parking cars on Sunday. They wouldn’t let us space out at all to put up the tent and made us all park about 8″ from each other. Obviously, with the reaction our cars got the first day, we were pretty bummed out about it.

We tried to negotiate with a different parking attendant, but with little success. I told Kyle and Jason that we should walk over to the VIP/Vendor area for the hell of it to see if we could bump into someone that called the shots over there in hopes of getting a better spot. As we walked into that area, a bald-headed gentleman with a goatee stopped us and politely told us that the vendor area was not quite open yet and we could stop back in a bit to check it out. He asked if we were looking for anyone or if he could help us.

I explained to this fine fellow that we were wondering who decided which cars got to go in this section and were hoping to run our cars past that person…

“That’s me- I’m that dude. I’m Don.”

Kyle quickly made Jason and I aware that this was THE Don, Don Napier- the founder of Import Alliance. Needless to say, we were pretty stoked to bump into this guy. I gave Don the rundown and explained to him that we were hoping to maybe score some better parking spots for day 2. It was pretty embarrassing telling him that we had an FD RX7 and two 240s without actually having the cars with us, since I knew he assumed the 240s were totally pieces of garbage, as they usually are.

“Tell you what I will do- you guys talk about it, decide who has the coolest car, and I will park it over here in this section. Sound good?” Don said.

It did sound pretty awesome, but I told him that we were trying not to split up our group of three cars. We ride together, we die together- Bad Boys for life. But no, I didn’t say that. At this point, as embarrassed as I was, I had to drop the, “My car was on the cover of Modified back in January” bomb. I told Don I felt like a jerk for saying that and I hated to be that guy, but he said those were the things he needed to know. At that point, he told us to go grab our cars and bring them over so he could check them out. If he liked what he saw, he would let us park there.

So ANYWAY, when we came back with the cars Don shook his head and said, “No you’re right, you’re right man! They belong over here.” Our minds were blown yet again. I told him we wouldn’t mind parking way in the back along the fence (or anywhere in that section for that matter) and he said, “Why would you park out there when I will put you right here in front?”

So anyway, I can’t thank Don Napier enough for not only putting on such an awesome event, but for talking with us and giving us such a great place to park on Sunday. I don’t think any of us expected anything remotely that cool to happen- pretty sweet! Here are some shots of the cars throughout the day:

There was a lot more foot traffic in this spot- tons of people around later in the day as more cars filed in. I think most people must have partied Saturday night and that is why the cars rolled in a lot later on Sunday. We hung out with the dude from Chicago with the silver S2000 next to my car a bit as well- super cool guy. I wish I could remember his name, haha- I suck at names.

It seemed like we got even more attention in this spot. Shortly after parking, I ended up meeting a cool guy named Simon from Colorado. Simon runs Ninja Status Apparel and is a freelance photographer for S3 Magazine. Simon was a really chill guy and cool to talk to- he shot some pretty cool photos of the car that I will post up later- he even introduced me to Johnatan and Yousef, the guys that run S3. Always awesome to meet people in the industry- very cool guys all around!

Later, we were approached by Dave from Canibeat. Dave was with another gentleman from the site, but again- terrible with names. It was super cool chatting with those guys as well- they seemed to be digging our cars, especially Jason’s. They offered for us to park in their booth for the day since a couple of their cars were not there on Sunday, but we felt bad bailing on the spots right up front that Don was gracious enough to give us. Hopefully we can park in their booth next year or something- super nice guys over at Canibeat.com!

We decided to pack up shop and roll out around 1:30 if I remember right. We kind of wanted to stay a bit later since we had such a nice spot, but Kyle and Jason wanted to get on the road to make it home at a decent time, and I had to be back at the hotel to pick up Alicia and drive 3.5 hours East into the Smokies to our cabin for the second leg of our journey. We said our goodbyes and rolled out- I couldn’t believe how fast the event went by. By far the best car event I have ever been to- I will be back next year for sure!

I’ll post up the pics that other people/sites/blogs took of the car and then continue with some pics from our vacation on the east side of the state in my next couple posts. Appreciate everyone reading through this!

Damon

I’ll get back to the IA story this afternoon.

A rare shot of Chip and Tomei NOT trying to kill each other.

After getting some much-needed shut eye on Friday night, Alicia and I got up at 5:30 on Saturday morning and met up with Kyle and Jason in the lobby of the hotel shortly after six. We sat and had some breakfast for a while, all feeling pretty beat from the day before. The small Asian woman that ran the breakfast cafe at the hotel came up to Alicia and I and told us not to trust Jason.

“He crazy. He take the steering wheel right out of his car! I don’t trust this one…” she told us with a smile. Pretty hilarious- I guess she just could not understand why Jason’s Nardi was sitting on the table while we ate breakfast.

After breakfast, we hopped in the cars and cruised across the street to gas up and get some ice for Kyle’s cooler. Thankfully, the cars were still there and unharmed in the morning, lol. No La Quinta action at this hotel!

Once that was taken care of, we made the cruise out to Nashville Superspeedway. For some reason, Kyle felt like driving about 95 MPH initially when we first got on the freeway. I know his speedometer had been acting jenky for a lot of the trip though, so I guess that was all it was. He didn’t even know he had been driving fast when I asked about it later, lol. Thankfully we slowed to our normal pace because we saw a line of about five cars pulled over just before the exit for the track. Not a great way to start your morning…

This was when the size of the event actually hit me. The line was already out onto the main road when we arrived at 6:45. Alicia and I were totally in shock- so awesome. People always say that you can’t appreciate or understand the size of this event until you are there in person, and I have to say I totally agree. It’s for sure the coolest and craziest event I have ever been to.

Here we are waiting in line to get into the track. Thankfully, they opened the gates early and the line moved pretty quickly.

Once we got inside, the flag people directed us to the left, which was the gravel parking area of the infield. Not cool. We weren’t too excited about parking on gravel all day. Kyle asked the guy if we could go to the right onto the pavement, but he said no. We sat for a minute or two trying to decide what to do and asked another guy if we could go to the pavement side. He said yes, so we made our way over to the paved infield area near the pits for the drift event.

We cruised up and down the aisles a few times and eventually decided to try our luck with a spot on the end of the aisle. It wasn’t really big enough for all three cars, so we parked mine out in the walking/driving lane and decided to wait to see if we would get yelled at. Thankfully no one seemed to care, so we set up the tent and chilled out in the shade for most of the day. This turned out to be an amazing spot since there were a ton of people walking by. I was shocked at the amount of attention our cars got throughout the day!

I don’t have any pictures from our spot the first day, so I am going to use these shots that Joey over at The Chronicles took. We were fortunate enough to meet Joey, DPK David, and Big Mike at the event on Saturday. They had nothing but awesome things to say about our cars, which was pretty crazy to us. I have to admit that I didn’t know much about these guys until Kyle explained it all to me (Kyle used to be a big Honda guy), but I had at least heard of The Chronicles. Quite a compliment to say the least- thanks again for the shots Joey!

Another cool part of day 1 was meeting up with Alex (Treefish on Zilvia) and Kevin (garagelu on Zilvia). Kevin went to school in Michigan and I met him a few years back at a dyno day when he had his S14 and I still had my Solara. He recently picked up an immaculate S15 and has done a little work to it, so I got to check that out at the meet and catch up with him, which was really cool. Alex was a really cool guy as well- LOVED his car!

I give him a lot of credit for drifting that thing- I know I don’t have the guts to do it with mine! I wish we had a chance to get some pics of the cars together, but Alex only came up for day 1 to rock the drift event and headed home after that.

After day 1, we went back to the hotel and hopped in the pool. It felt so nice to cool off after being out in the hot sun all day. After that, we showered and met up with Kevin with the S15 for some dinner at a Japanese steak house in Murfreesboro. There was a small gathering of cars across the street, including the blue CCW MK4 Supra (that was nuts), so we hung out and chatted over there for a bit after dinner. From there we all retired back to the hotel and crashed yet again before another early morning on Sunday.

There are a TON of pictures of the cars from day one floating around on the web- I’ll try to collect a bunch of them and toss them up here for my next post before I dive into day 2 of the event. Anyway, stay tuned and thanks for reading!

Damon

Hope everyone had a great weekend and got to enjoy their cars! I finally got mine clean again on Saturday- it was trashed from the trip!

So after we ate at BDubs and got some gas we were on the road. This was probably one of the most fun portions of the trip for me driving wise. It was great to cruise with a couple other cars (let alone two other cars with TEs!) instead of just on my own. It was really starting to get hot at this point as we entered Kentucky, so Kyle and I began to work on our no-AC-in-S13 left-arm tans. Meanwhile, Jason continued to cruise past us in the FD with his windows up/ AC on while making a troll face at us.

Entering Kentucky- this bridge SUCKED! We hit some bad points along the way, but I think this was for sure the worst spot we drove over. Tons of metal grating and pot holes over the entire bridge. Thankfully traffic was backed up going in to Louisville and we were able to take it slow:

Downtown Louisville if I am not mistaken:

After cruising a little bit further, we arrived at the Honda Tech Caravan Checkpoint #3 at a welcome center in Shepardsville, KY. It was SUPER hot at this point. We were all pretty stoked to file into the welcome center to get some water and enjoy the AC in the building. I am not sure how many cars were there, but I would say 150-200 if I had to guess. Thankfully it wasn’t all Hondas and we didn’t feel too out of place.

This was the first point on the trip where I noticed how much attention our cars were getting. I was pretty shocked- I expected the attention for Jason’s FD, but not for all three of the cars. I guess a group of three cars from the midwest rolling on TEs is a pretty crazy sight or something! haha. It was awesome though for sure- it always feels good to get positive feedback on a project like that.

Here are a couple shots we found that someone snapped at the checkpoint (Awesome pics BTW):

So that was pretty awesome. I got to chat with a few other dudes that drove down from Michigan as well, but from the West side of the state. After hanging out there for about 45 minutes, the cars started to roll out. We were towards the back of the pack and ended up being apart of the caravan for about 15 minutes before we were left in the dust, lol. A lot of those dudes were weaving traffic and driving all silly-like, so we just took our time. A little too wild for old folks like us.

I thought this guy’s plate was pretty funny:

The passenger in the Del Sol was a young man by the name of Paul- pretty cool guy. He was hanging out the side of the car getting some shots of us as we were cruising along. He ended up finding us at the event and got my info to send me the shots. I’ve never really had true rolling shots of my car, so I thought it was pretty cool:

You can see the rest of Paul’s pics in my Flikr album here: http://tinyurl.com/3u6y4b2

This leg of the trip felt a bit long. I think we were all just anxious to arrive at the hotel at this point since we had been in the car all day. Alicia had the right idea:

Finally… Tennessee:

We got stuck in 5 o’clock traffic while passing through Nashville, so that was pretty brutal.

Once we made it through that it was smooth sailing for the last hour of the journey. We arrived at the hotel in Murfreesboro and checked in, then headed over to Outback for some bloomin’ onion action. After that, we hit up the car wash to get the cars ready for Saturday morning.

People sort of gave us crap for staying in Murfreesboro, but it honestly could not have been a better place to crash. At every intersection we saw about five or six modified cars- it was pretty crazy. I usually don’t see that many in a week up here in Michigan. There were only about four other cars at the hotel, so it was nice and chill. You tend to get pretty exhausted at IA, so it’s nice to come home from the event to a nice, clean, quiet hotel- none of that crazy La Quinta in Nashville stuff for me.

A couple beautiful snaps from the car wash, lol:

After the car wash, it was back to the hotel for some much needed rest. We planned to meet at 6 AM in the lobby the next morning to roll out to day 1 of Import Alliance! Thanks for reading.

Damon

It’s taken me a minute to get around to updating the blog, but my wife and I spent almost a week in Tennessee hanging at Import Alliance and celebrating our two year wedding anniversary. I’m going to try to toss together a series of a few blog posts to recap the trip- it won’t really be coverage of the event (since I didn’t take many pictures or walk around a lot,) but more about our trip and experience. Most of these will be pictures from my Droid Incredible 2, but I will add some from our DSLR as well.

So, with that being said, let’s get this show on the road!

My wife Alicia and I both worked all day on Thursday, so naturally we left the packing until Thursday night, lol. I dropped the dog off with my Aunt after work and headed home to get ready to leave. I got the car all washed and packed up while Alicia finished her packing and we finally hit the pillows at about 1:30 AM or so.

I think we got up at 6:30 on Friday morning and were on the road by 7. It had rained overnight, which was a surprise and was not in the forecast, so washing my car was sort of a waste of time. Naturally, by the time we were through Lansing, the skies cleared up and the tiny blip of rain that had been hanging over us was gone. Here we are after hopping on I-69 from I-96, about 40 minutes into the trip:

Entering the next state on our journey, lovely Indiana:

Everyone knows it doesn’t take long for the lady’s feet to find their way to the dash on a road trip… (don’t worry, she had permission. lol.)

We stopped to stretch and hit the restrooms a ways into Indiana. My heel was already starting to hurt from not having cruise control. It felt really good to stretch…

After about five hours or so of driving, we arrived at our first destination in Columbus, IN at Buffalo Wild Wings. We were about 45 minutes ahead of schedule somehow, so we stopped into Walmart to hang out in the air conditioning. We had only been on the road for a few hours and it was already starting to get super hot. Black car – air conditioning = huge bummer. Alicia decided to pick up one of these bad boys, which actually helped a lot lol:

As soon as we finished up at Walmart, Kyle texted me to say that he and Jason had arrived over at Bdubs, so we cruised across the parking lot to meet them. Kyle and Jason are both from Illinois- a bit south of Chicago, so they had a shorter cruise over to the checkpoint than we did. We hung out in the AC at the restaurant for quite a while and enjoyed the food…

On the way out, we gassed up the cars and began our trek down to Checkpoint 3 of the Honda Tech Caravan in Shepardsville, Kentucky…

I think I’ll stop there for now- in my next post I’ll run through meeting up with the HT Caravan and the rest of our journey to Merfreesboro! Thanks for reading.

Damon

T minus eight hours until the wife and I leave for Import Alliance in Tennessee! Time to go finish packing!

Well, after over 4k miles of virtually trouble-free driving, the car died on me on the way home from a Cars & Coffee meet over the weekend:

I blew out 4 or 5 ignition switch fuses in less than four miles. Ended up ponying up the cash to have it towed home, which was 60 miles away. I tore into it when I got home and found that the chassis harness loom had water trapped in it and the shielding from three power wires had been worn off. I believe the wires were hitting the chassis and causing the fuse to pop. This was all due to my jenky fuse box relocation.

On the 4th, I moved the fuse boxes back into the engine bay and sealed up all of the wiring. After that, I tossed the front end back on, along with my fender liners. I took the car to work today and the issue seems to be all sorted out. Thankfully this crept up now instead of hundreds of miles away from Import Alliance next weekend!

Damon

So, not a lot new to report. I think I drove the 240 every day of June and never touched the Camry, so that has been really nice. No issues with the car to report at this point- I am going to finish going over it this weekend and then it should be all set for the journey to Import Alliance two weeks from today. I am pumped! Alicia and I will be driving down to southern Indianapolis on Friday morning to meet up with Kyle and his buddy Jason with a red LS1 FD on TE37SLs. From there, we will make the rest of the trek to Tennessee, stopping to join the third and final checkpoint of the Honda Tech (lol) caravan along the way.

A guy that was at Eyes on Design a couple Sundays ago posted this video he shot of the “Tuner” section at the show. The last fifteen seconds or so show my car mowing the grass for them on my way out, haha:

My wife and I finally got smart phones last weekend, so I am hoping to be able to post more updates to this from now on. It’s so much less work now, haha. I hope everyone has a great 4th of July weekend!

Damon

For WekFest Chicago 2011. Hopefully I make it in! Would be awesome to be a part of that event and meet some other midwest dudes.

It’s been raining all week and my car is trashed. I keep thinking about washing it every night, but it is either raining or about to rain. Sounds like the weekend should be nice, though. Here are a couple snaps mid-bath from last weekend at the in-laws’ house.

It’s finally home! So excited that I finally found one of these bad boys stateside for an awesome price.

Time to take a Jase-esque picture of me looking in the rear view with a fro through Miracle X brace. lol. ❤

Damon