The Pacific Coast Dream Machines show has been going on for 22 years, but this was my first year in attendance. This show was actually the same weekend as the Ferrari Challenge, its just taken this long to get the photos edited down to an almost reasonable amount. Yes I overdid it a bit on the pictures but it wasn’t my fault. The show had a good turn out, which is great don’t get me wrong, but it leads to a lot of whoops there a hand or leg in that shot type of situations. The other cause of my shutter-happy-ness was the addition of air planes.

I’ve never been a huge enthusiast of flight, but some of the “war birds” have been changing my mind a bit. If you just associate the idea of flying with commercial airlines ,like I did, you end up with thoughts of large crowds of people you wouldn’t normally spend that much time with, in long lines waiting to be felt up or down, etc etc etc. Really it would be just as unfair as imagining all driving experiences were like being on a bus, terrible. So aviation for that I am sorry.

This show gave me a small taste of seeing some vintage planes in flight, and sparked my interest enough to get me to stop by an air show in Chino the “Planes of Fame”. Those pics are still being edited and sorted and hopefully will be up with in a week.

Getting back to the cars, trucks, steam powered machines. There was a good variety of cars being shown, the majority fell in to the muscle car and hot rod categories, but there were a few from the import crowd that snuck in, as well as a few off road machines, some military vehicles, and a Pontiac Fiero!

If your like me, then your ready to see more pics and read less words, so go take a look at the gallery.

Last weekend we made the trip to Long Beach for Toyotafest. This is probably the worst show possible for my state of mental health. My brain constantly jumping from idea to idea. Do I buy the new Scion FRS? Is it too “Subaru” to be a Toyota? Or do I keep the Scion tC and put some money into, or sell it and pick up a “beater” to free up more cash for the current projects? Or start a whole new project? … AHHHHHHH!!! just too many Toyota’s giving me way too many ideas.

Now the good new for any other Toyota fans is that while my brain was dancing, my hands and eyes were frantically clicking away with the camera to capture some images to later help feed my addiction.

Overall it was a great show, with a lot more of the MKIV Supras than in previous years. I was hoping to have a chance to really feel the Scion FRS in person, but the couple they had on hand were mobbed with people and were either automatic or roped off to block being able to even sit in one. Eventually I’m sure I’ll get a chance to experience the vehicle a bit more and decide if it was worth the overly long tease from Toyota or if it is the car I have been waiting years for.

If your ready to enter “Toyota Land” you can find the rest of the pics in the gallery.

This weekend, I took my first trip out to Infineon Raceway to check out the Ferrari Challenge race. I didn’t spend the whole day there, but did mange to snap a few pics, and get to see hear some cars that I usually don’t get to see being enjoyed.

All of the days beauties from the day weren’t originally from Italy though …

There were a few other “super cars” hanging around as well, just not on the track.

I shot a ton of pics that are available to be viewed in the gallery

Made it out to the first car show near our new “hood” on Sunday, or at least the first car show that wasn’t shut down by the fire marshal before we made it in *cough* Wekfest *cough*. We were there on Sunday which is the second day for this show, and with Saturdays rain, and Sundays sky I’m sure we missed more than a few cars. The best part about going to some shows in a new area is the fresh cars.

Even though it seemed like a lot of cars were headed out early, there was still a lot of good examples there.

As usual there are more pics in the gallery.

Decide as well as Lecherous Nocturne, Abigail Williams, and Jungle Rot brought the March of Death Tour to the Regency Ballroom recently. I won’t try to write a review but I will share a few crappy cell phone pics from the event.

More Pics

Hit up the LA Auto show yesterday to see the Subaru BRZ in person.

It’s Toyota sibling the FRS was on hand as well, but I had just seen this one in person at the SEMA show a few weeks prior so the BRZ was the main focus. If I’m honest the excitement for these cars is starting to diminish a bit with as long as the concept has been dangled in front of us. Maybe I’m just anxious because I’ve got my Scion project on hold waiting to hear the final details of these twins, but its not anticipation that’s building anymore.

The other car that I still find intriguing is the Fiat 500 and its hotter cousin the Abarth edition.

A turbocharged 1.4 liter in a simple reasonably priced car with a manual trans seems like such a refreshing change compared to the super boring and overly complicated hybrids and electrics that dominated most of the show. I will say that it would be an easier sale to me if they would quit trying to advertise it as a “Mopar” product, but with the Scion IQ only being offered in an automatic with no factory boost, the Fiat is tough for me to say no to.

The pics that I thought were worth taking can be found here.

So a cold spell recently came over the 4runner by way of a Whynter 65 Qt. Fridge/Freezer.

With an upcoming move and being temporarily “homeless” I figured it was the perfect excuse to make sure I had a permanent food storage solution for the 4runner. While we generally don’t do long expedition style exploring (yet!), it has been great even on day trips so far. Currently I’m only keeping water on board for the testing phase of the new battery system, but it feels good to not pay 12x the price for a simple bottled water when we are out and about. It’s equally great for groceries, and even leftovers after a dinner out.

I won’t go into details about the fridges technical specs, but it seemed more than adequate for our needs, and fit closer to the price point that I was willing to spend than similar models.

For wiring I used one channel of the previously installed fuse block to power the fridge via “banana clip” style plugs. I wanted something a little more secure than a standard cigarette lighter plug that seems to vibrate loose on every trail we’ve ever been on. Rather than sacrifice the original power cord, I found a match from an old laptop PC, and converted it to the banana clip plugs now needed. This way the fridge can still be plugged in to the front auxiliary plug ins if needed.

I’ll post more about the fridge as we get to test it out better and come up with a more permanent but still easily removable mounting method.

Sunday we headed out to Cleghorn Ridge for some playtime with a few guys and girls from the T4R.org forums. This is not a trail that ranks near the top of the difficulty scale, but still a fun run.

more pics are here

Showing off its new Falkens, the 4runner doing a little flexing up near Big Bear, Ca.

In addition to the new tires the Toyota, has received a couple of other small upgrades. One of which being the jack/shovel mounts for the factory roof rack. I really don’t see a need for myself to have a full roof rack, but I did want the ability to get the dirty tools out of the inside. Nobody seemed to make a bracket like I wanted so a while back I made the one for the jack, and recently made the adapters for the shovel mount. Now that I’m not restricted to keeping the shovel in the back of the truck, I need to upgrade to a less petite and cute shovel.

The other addition for the 4unner has been a second battery. One of the things that has always bothered me about single vehicle exploring (especially with an automatic transmission) is battery life. Its next to impossible to find someone to give you a jump start while standing in a parking lot with your hood up and jumper cables in hand with people passing by. Now if you take away the people and turn the parking lot into a field, or mountain road, you’re really screwed. With a manual transmission, at least you could have a chance of self jump start, with an automatic, you are pretty much stuck. Same can be said for an alternator failure, two batteries will give you twice the distance to drive out with a failed alternator. There is another reason for the battery, but that will be for another update.

I’ve seen a few installations in the 4runner where a second battery is squeezed in next to the original. The race car side of my brain said it would be better to add the additional weight to the other side of the front end rather than double it all on one side. In order to fit the battery on the passengers side I had to rework the intake a bit. The pictured set up is only temporary, and I have plans for something closer to a factory design in the long run.

Few more pics can be found here
and here

5 days, 40+ hours of walking, 25hours of sleep, and a handful of meals… We started this years SEMA experience off by getting to Las Vegas a day early to take advantage of being able to check out the Halloween festivities in the city of sin. Fremont street provided the most entertainment, with hordes of people in costume, live bands, DJ’s and random performers. The costumes had a good variety; some scary, some sexy and some that were intended to sexy with a result that was more frightening than attractive.

Day two of our trip was day one at the show. We started off in the wheel and tire area and then moved into off road. The wheel and tire area is usually frustrating for me. While I’m not going to be buying a large quantity of tires from any one manufacturer in the next year, I would like to hear about some of the new technology, and have some questions answered regarding some of the tires I have thought about buying for my own projects, or that people are commonly discussing on the forums I frequent. In most cases the reps won’t give you the time of day, and the models do their job and hand you a lanyard, or pose for a picture, and thats about it.

Off road area was much better in this regard, and I was able to talk to quite a few people about their product lines. Depending on what I end up doing in the next couple of months this may prove to be very helpful. Even if I never end up being a dealer for these companies, its great to get an idea of the general attitude and product line before recommending something to someone. I do have to say I will never understand the purpose of some of these huge lifts with no ground clearance still. I’m very much a function over form in regards to my off road vehicle likes though.

Day two, three and four of the SEMA show we mostly in the performance area, and this is where I am most at home. I was able to talk with people I have done business with, people that have installed product I designed in the past, and find some people who could potentially be great partners on future projects.

As for the show itself, being a fan of the Japanese cars I was a little disappointed. A lot of the big name tuners out of Japan were missing, and oddly enough however HKS (who closed HKS USA recently) was in attendance. A good majority of their product line is still available in the states through distributors, but I didn’t expect to see them here.

Toyota was in attendance with all three branches, Lexus showing off the new performance oriented GS offering, as well as giving away t-shirts (for those who were more patient than I). Scion had the FRS on display as well as a few IQ’s from the tuner challenge. At least one entry was converted to a true three pedal manual transmission. It was done along with a mid engine move, and motor swap, so it wasn’t really a good measure of how hard the swap would be on a more production level drivetrain.

Honda had some cool vehicles in the show, not everything was hybrid this year, and there were a couple of forced induction examples to gawk at. Thumbs up to Honda. Kia took advantage of that great marketing dept and had a hamster available to pose with, and of course had a few cars as well, although none as cool as the hamster. Hyundai was all about the Veloster with quite a few tuned examples on display. Ford Chevy and Chrysler, all there, all had great displays, I just personally still have a hard time trusting build quality from these companies still. The cut away of the ZR1 that Chevy had displayed next to their demo track, was great to see and show off the design of these amazing machines. Ford had Shelby Cobras and current generation Mustangs giving demo rides out front when Ken Block was abusing his Ford Fiesta on the track. Inside they had a lot of nicely done customs, from Fiesta, to Mustang, to trucks. Chrysler should have had more Fiats on display. I know they have Chargers and Challengers and Jeeps to display, but the only one I cared about was the Fiat 500. The Fiat and the Genesis (Hyundai) are probably the only two cars to come out recently that have made me think seriously about buying something non-Toyota.

I could go on and on about the show, and the more I think about it, the more I remember. but really I’m sure if you are here you are looking for pics more than anything else, so go look already! ….. Gallery