Spring at last

If you're a fellow Edmontonian, you can understand the struggle we've had over the past few weeks. The weather has been uncooperative lately, warming up, followed by a snow storm, then returning to mild temperatures again. However, the forecast finally gave us some hope and a whole week of sunshine. Count me excited!

For spring prep, there wasn't much to do car-wise besides doing a wheel swap. The Enkei TS10s are back on the car and the winter wheels have been washed, wiped, and coated, ready for storage. Since the weather has been amazing thus far, I've seen my fair share of summer cars and motorcycles out. Upon visiting TT Automotive on my day off, I noticed their summer cars were out too!

Exhibit A: Porsche 911 4s (997.1)

Exhibit B: Ferrari F430

I know Terence definitely isn't the type to show off, but I couldn't help but smile and think in my head "dayumm" walking up to the shop today!

This was also one of the first times I've seen the Ferrari outside in the sun. When it was shipped over from Toronto, it was hidden under 3 car covers and tucked into the corner of the shop. The Rosso Corsa color pops in the sunlight!

Also had to take some glamor shots of the Slamry. It looks insanely low but there's a dip in the road where I parked.

The front lip is barely an inch off the ground...I don't know how people who actually have their cars that low drive in Edmonton!

One more from the rear

This GC8 was in for some enging refreshing. Love the gold rims and livery.

The carbon rear wing is amazing too. Apparently this was a shop car before it was purchased by the current owner.

The carbon rear wing is amazing too. Apparently this was a shop car before it was purchased by the current owner.

Saw these BBS Lemans at the shop that were being cleaned up. I believe the specs were 18x8.5+38 on 235/40/R18 rubber. Perfect specs for my car, but I wouldn't be able to afford them!

In other, completely unrelated news, I'll be off in Portland/Forest Grove next week and will be snapping away! There'll be new car content coming up this summer as well, with the 780Tuners Season Opener, Driven Calgary, and the ECM Meet all happening in May. Exciting!

Until next,
Gary

XXV

Another year older, another wiser, right? I'm not so sure! I'm a year older but more importantly I've had a year to build connections, meet new friends, and enjoy my hobbies. That's not to say that life has been pretty easy. Balancing full time employment with going back to school has been a struggle, but as people say, "you're young, you can handle it".

For my birthday, friends and family of TT Automotive made it out to have dinner at Dorinku, a popular izakaya style Japanese eatery. I've been a few times already, but never say no to the food there! I also almost never take food photos, but made an exception and took a few shots of some of our food.

Wild Pressed Salmon Sushi

Assorted Sashimi

Hell's Chicken, from the special menu. The first few bites were not spicy at all but if you give it time to linger in your mouth, the spice is unreal. Super hot!

We also headed over to Snowy Dessert to cool our tongues off. Mango and Watermelon Bingsu!

No blog would be complete without a car photo. The front lip was recently paint protected at @blackoutautotinting and I purchased an EZ Lip and installed it as well since I've already scraped the lip twice...

I also stopped by the University to capture this photo. 2 years ago when I first really became interested in photography I took a photo of my stock Camry (above). Compared to how the car currently sits (below), there's certainly a big difference!

Now it's time for final exams and then some breathing room in May, where I'll have time to visit Portland and the Calgary Driven Show!

Cheers,
Gary

The Slamry X JP VIZAGE

At long last, after hours and hours of fitting, heating, trimming, heating, and fitting again, the Slamry has finally come out of surgery and is now kitted with a JP VIZAGE Aero Kit. In total, I think it was 3 full days work plus a full days worth of painting but overall I am incredibly happy with the fit and finish of the final product. Of course, it isn't perfect and it never is with these sorts of kits, even with a high end product from, say, Rocket Bunny or Liberty Walk. But considering how things looked out of the box, the result is really nothing short of extraordinary.

Here are some photos as proof!

In the warm spring sunset in front of TT Automotive

Still enough ground clearance for winter...I can probably go lower, right?

The front lip probably drops the front a good 2 inches lower. Pray it doesn't get scraped to oblivion...

As always, a huge than you to TT Automotive for taking care of my car and my requests. The car is now officially ready for the 780Tuners season opener, minus a few tweaks including putting the summer wheels back on and maybe lowering the car a bit more? There's always endless possibilities when modifying your car!

Cheers,
Gary

The Slamry Returns to TT Automotive

At long last, a few upgrades are coming to the Slamry. After getting lowered on coilovers and getting wheel fitment dialed in, it was time to address what was hiding behind the wheels: the brakes.

Now, the stock Camry brakes were no issue for stopping the car. In fact, I never had any issues with the braking performance. However, I was concerned with how they looked behind the wheels. Having been in service since the car was built, the original calipers were worn down and the rotors were rusty. I had plan to always upgrade the brakes to make them look substantial and knew that Highlander/RX350 front brakes (calipers, rotors, and pads) were direct bolt ons for the Camry thanks to the Toyotanation forums. So after a quick discussion with Terence and waiting my turn for an appointment at TT Automotive, it was finally time to get stuck into the upgrade.

Parts a-plenty!

I ended up purchasing quite a few parts. Pictured are:

  • Toyota Highlander front calipers (painted black by Eclipse Autobody)
  • Toyota Camry rear calipers (painted black by Eclipse Autobody)
  • StopTech sport slotted rotors for the front and rear
  • StopTech stainless steel brake lines front and rear
  • Toyota Highlander OEM front dust shields

With all the parts laid out, the next step was to remove the old DOT 3 brake fluid and put in new fluid for the brake fluid flushing later on.

Some fancy German DOT 4 brake fluid for the Slamry

Once the wheels were removed and the car was in the air, Terence made short work of the front and rears, finishing them off in a few hours. We managed to take some before and after photos to show the differences:

Apologies for the blurry photo

Razor sharp picture and brakes.

Ironically, the old setup looks bigger than the new one because I took them at different distances. But rest assured, the new 2-pot setup with a larger rotor is substantially larger. Here's Terence with the comparison:

The black on the StopTech rotors should help prevent rust from forming!

The old, rusted brake shield on the right and the new one on the left. Look like rust really did a number on the old cover, but that means it did its job protecting the rotor. Also, fun fact, if you plan on doing this upgrade the Highlander cover does not use the exact same 4 bolt holes as the Camry item so expect to drill a new bolt hole for each cover.

Terence working on the rears, accompanied by plenty of Rust Check to inhibit rust formation

Before: Rusty

After: BLAAAACK

The Slamry was actually finished on Thursday, the day I dropped it off, but we also ended up working on fitting the JP Vizage kit onto the car, which took significantly more time (and effort) than I expected. I left my car at the shop for Terence to continue finessing the kit onto the car to make the fitment as close to perfect as possible and came back on Saturday, where I was greeted by a massive snowstorm (it snowed at least 15cm in one day).

When the snow falls, the Subbies come out to play. Having driven Terence and Theresa's WRX in this weather, I've become tempted many times over to buy one for situations like this!

I also had a chance to finally take a look at Terence's lifted Forester. Looks mean in the shin-high snow!

More glamor shots

The moment the car got out, it had to manage through the freshly fallen snow, which the Slamry managed magnificently thanks to the Michelin X-ICE XI3's. You can also see the new brakes behind the wheels and snow!

While putting things back together, Terence asked if I was interested in testing out some LEDs in the fog lights. Curious, I said yes and in a few minutes, we put in some SaberLED 10 000 lumen LED lights into the fogs and I was instantly shocked at how bright the 6k colored lights were. So much so, that I immediately wanted to upgrade the DRLS and low/high beams. I had been seriously considering a HID projector retrofit from Lightwerkz but for about 250 USD in bulbs I could have some great performance at a fraction of the cost. I'll have to see how they hold up in terms of the light cut-offs as I prefer not to blind oncoming drivers with the heat of a thousand suns.

With everything finished up and the car off the lift, I thanked the team once again for their excellent work and took the car back home. Terence warned me that the brakes would be squeaky but my goodness, they are LOUD. Thankfully, it'll go away in a few hundred kilometers but in the meantime, apologies in advance to anyone I drive by because it's a pretty high pitched whine.

The next appointment for the Slamry is a new front windshield as it ended up cracking across this winter, followed by the final body kit fitment in 3 weeks. The pieces are going in for paint on Monday and will be done later that week! Super stoked on how things will turn out for this humble little car.

Until next time,
Gary

Terence's Porsche 911 Carrera 4 (997.1) Part II

The last time I featured Terence's car, it was a freezing cold Sunday morning spent running around downtown catching some scenic spots before things got too busy.

We did the exact same thing this weekend.

However, this time, Terence managed to get the roof rack onto the car (Porsche had apparently screwed up and given the wrong keys to the roof rack) and with the roof rack on and the snowboard zip tied to the rack, we headed off to shoot. Thankfully, this weekend it was slightly warmer (the wind chill was -32 instead of -37) so I could stay out for a few more seconds before having to warm up!

Our first stop was to Rogers Place, where we used the arena and nearby LRT station as backdrops for the car.

I love this shot. It gives me Akira vibes (you know, the poster where Akira is walking towards his bike). The wide fenders give the car such a fantastic shape!

I used the polarizing filter to reduce the reflection on the car. It looks futuristic with the spoiler up and brake lights on.

Carrera 4 X Snow, the greatest collab of February 2018

Rear 3/4 with the Macewan LRT Station in the background

A quick coffee stop at Starbucks (just kidding we ended up saving ourselves from the cold for a good half hour) and we headed over to the next stop, right beside the new Hyatt Hotel.

It was at this point that I realized that I didn't put a polarizing filter on the 24/70 (the lens this photo was shot on). Combined with the harsh light cutoffs near the bottom of the photo, I wasn't too happy with how this turned out.

This angle proved to be a lot better, but there's quite a bit of excess reflection on the Porsche.

Calling the Hyatt photos a bit of a bust, we headed over to Ada Boulevard, to hidden gem lookout over the river, scoped out by our good friend Andrew who joined us for the shoot.

The car was getting progressively dirtier, which wasn't necessarily a bad thing! It's nice when cars are driven instead of just put away.

Not a big fan of this photo, but the downtown highrises made for a nice backdrop.

This one is a favorite. Love the crop, the light, and the trees in the background.

Our last stop for the day was at the Rice Howard Parkade, where the famous "City Trust" sign is.

Parked up on the top floor!

Jumped on a ladder to get this angle

Glassy highrises make for a reflective background

Finishing it off with a stylish side shot!

Overall, I think this was another successful shoot. If I were to improve a few things, I would say:

  • Actually bring the polarizing filter for the 24-70mm (although 90% of the shoot was with the 55mm

  • Aim to start a bit earlier and to capitalize on the softer morning light (many photos had hard shadows surrounding the car, which wasn't ideal)

  • Play around with the polarizing filter more! I pretty much kept it at full polarize the whole time and I think in a few photos letting a little more reflection into the photos would have improved them.

As always, the quest to become a better photographer is never ending, but at least I am provided with great opportunities such as this one to better hone my skills!

Thanks to Terence and the TT Family for always being so welcoming and hospitable, and allowing me to shoot their awesome cars!

Cheers,
Gary