The new Bee*R R34 drifter looks nice and sharp under Nagoya sky

It's featuring the new Work Emotion CR Ultimate "Kiwami" wheels.

Daijiro Inada & Keiichi Tsuchiya - Bosses behind Drift Muscle & Exciting Car Showdown

More pictures here: Exciting Car Showdown 2012

This Celica went overboard with Oni-Camber - LOL.

Brake calibers were loosing paint so they had new layer of it, tough colour was much bright that i was expecting.

Subaru have clearly used chimpanzees as models in deciding steering wheel position, so to improve driving ergonomics i added 5cm (2inch) extension to steering wheel.

An archive photo from Fuji heavy indrusties--->

Baller!

I found a great write-up by Alex Zhao. He's had over 50 wheel set-up's under he's Maserati metallic green colored S2000 Honda. He's car really pops up with the subtile mods, that don't scream "look at me". They're more like OEM+ -style, that you really have to look up to find what's been modified. It's all about those hidden secrets of modified fender radius & suspension tricks...

Here's an other pic of that same Honda with some re-barreled Mugen M7 wheels, originally in NSX spec, but customized to 18x9.5 +28 rear and 17x8 +35 front with 5mm spacers all around. Nice!

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OK. To the actual story – How do you get a Perfect Stance or Advanced Stance. I'll let the wheel-man him self to explain the view's of this topic.

Alex: I often make "the morning rounds" before beginning the day's work, and by that, I mean that I visit a few top blogs – some of which are listed to the side of this post. And on these blogs, I come across photos of many cars. And after viewing said photos, I form opinions, and that is what I will write about.
I think of myself as a well-rounded car builder. I sometimes have odd tastes, but in general, I can see the big picture and appreciate anything as long as it is well done.

Leading off this new section; I'd like to get back to the topic's seemingly provoking title: The Perfect Stance.

Stance is a really broad subject and the perfect stance is subjective in more ways than most people can understand. Today though, I'm going to look at it from a judge's perspective. I have never judged a car show personally, however there are many times that I wish I could have that opportunity. As the winner of WekFest's first ever "Best Stance" award, I feel qualified enough to at least write this, so hear me out.

Because "Stance" includes such a broad number of cars, it might just be the hardest category to judge at a car show. At least 75% of import show cars today have good stance, and that is a conservative estimate. Below, I have compiled a list of elements to consider.

The Basics
Vehicle height and fender gap. If your car is low enough to eliminate the fender gap and the wheels are flush enough (within reason) to fill up the wheel well, then congratulations, you're officially one step closer to that award than a quarter of your peers.

With that out of the way, let's examine the basic definition of "good stance" in layman's terms: A car with good stance must simply look aggressive. Just remember, the car which displays this in the greatest way, wins. This also means that if you go overboard in one way or another, then your chances are slimmer. Now obviously "the bar" and our perceptions grow everyday. A few years ago, having -5 camber was almost unheard of in the US. Now, we literally have people with 4 times that amount driving their cars daily. It all comes down to how you present the entire package. Read on, and I'll explain.

Advanced Stance
Ugh, this is already going downhill. I am defying every fiber in my body telling me not to use cheesy terminology, but I will push on.

I'll go ahead and bring this one out early on. If your car is dropped on air suspension, you're not going to win in my book. No, air suspension is not "cheating" and it's actually really nice to have on a daily driver if your setup is decent. The problem with air suspension is that it never looks right. When you're at REAL drive height (and I'm not talking about creeping at 5mph), it's full blown retardation. Fender gap with unnecessary stretched tires, uneven higher-than-stock ride height in some cases, and unnecessary camber are just some of the side effects. Then when the cups or bags deflate, you get retarded amounts of toe-in on the rear suspension, and toe-out on the front suspension. Trust me, I have been there and done that. With 4 wheels pointing in 4 different directions, the car looks crippled. Often times, the front will slam lower than the rear, or vice versa and you're left with a front bumper that's on the ground and the rear pointing skyward (IE: MK5 VW Golf GTI).

Are you on coilovers with high spring rates? If so, excellent. Do you have liberal amounts of negative camber? If so, even better. Does the camber match from front to rear? This is very important as I find it to be attention to detail. A lot of cars these days (especially FWD macpherson setups, for some reason) tend to run upwards of -10 degrees of negative camber and then forget about the front. This is one setup that can make your car look broken and unbalanced. Front camber must be at least half of rear camber. On the contrary, if you have excessive negative camber in front with very little in the rear, this doesn't look all that bad. Lots of drift cars utilize this setup for maximum contact patch all around. This brings me onto the old phrase, "form follows function". This is true and applies in every sense. Does your car drive how it sits? With air suspension, the typical answer is that it does not. Also, if you spun your coilovers down at the show, then the case is the same. Do your wheels or tires rub on the fenders. A little rub is acceptable, but if it causes damage to your fenders and/or chunks up and shaves down the tires, then you have poor fitment, period. Consider that another round of disqualifications.

The Body
In short, how well are you framing the wheels? Since there are so many cars with great fitment at a typical show, it's necessary to be picky and eliminate all cars until you're left with one. After all, we're looking to award the car with The Best Stance. This means that it must embody that word in every way, shape, and form. If your fenders and quarter panels are not PRISTINE, then kiss your chances goodbye. That means a lot, right there. How can you have fenders in good condition while being flush at the same time? This of course means that custom bodywork must be done. Whether it's a small pull being smoothed out or a full on widebody, the fenders must be repainted. The fenders must also line up with the bumpers. If you flare the quarter panel, then you're fully expected to flare the rear bumper to match. Getting back to framing the wheels; are the fenders radiused? Are you running a proportionate wheel size compared to the size of your car? If you go wide, you must go up as well. By enlarging the quarter panel, you are effectively dwarfing the size of the wheels. The style of flare must be functional. Let me explain. If you use a fender roller and keep pulling outwards, it will eventually start pushing the fender up and you get a cute little flare that covers the tire, but limits vertical clearance. So even if you can roll straight without rubbing, the moment you hit a bump in the road, you're going to rub, and that my friends, is not functional.

And finally, having aftermarket aero is a great bonus. Part of stance is how mean the car looks head on, so headlights and front bumper definitely play a roll. That is one thing that a lot of people don't consider.

The Wheels
Simply put, how baller are your wheels? First off, if you're on replicas, you shouldn't even be showing. A 3-piece wheel shines here, literally and figuratively. Multipiece wheels give you a multitude of things to customize. You can having massive width, you can control lip sizing, lip style (stepped or reverse), lip finishing, face finishing, hardware finishing, and nail the offset perfectly without the aid of spacers. Wider wheels are better, and the tires should be stretched to a certain degree for clearance. Are the wheels rare/expensive? Is the finishing custom? Are your tires matching and of decent quality? "Stance" can be a quite expensive detail on a car so people often cheap out with ugly all-season tires. There is nothing wrong with that, it's just not as a good as it can be. I have been guilty of this. At the very least, the tires should be facing the right way, should be rolling the right way, and should have good tread remaining.

Everything is better in moderation
If a setup is already flush, why add spacers and more negative camber? Why do people camber it until their wheels are no longer flush? I have seen tires stretched so far that inner barrel is revealed on both sides. I am guilty of this, but it is not necessary unless one wanted extreme poke, in which case they wouldn't win anyways.

The Perfect Stance
So what constitutes the perfect stance? Before I answer that, I just want to say that if it were up to me, I would not have won that award at Wekfest.

The perfect stance must be awarded to a car that looks *good* even if it had poor stance. In other words, a Daewoo Nubira cannot win, no matter what. The car that I am picturing has a CLEAN custom metal widebody, similar to the one done on my S2000. The aggressive aftermarket bumpers will also be modified to line up. The car is on custom revalved coilovers with high spring rates and decent shock travel (other suspension mods must be in place to ensure this). The car has tubbed inner fenders and it does not rub fender under any driving circumstance, including full-lock turns. It is low to the point where the frame will hit reflectors on the freeway, but the suspension is stiff enough to keep the bumper from excessively scraping. Even being this low with oversized wheels, the car is not tucking rim, which takes away from the beauty and shape of a round wheel. Unlike my S2000, this car has it's fenders built around one specific set of wheels. From 5 feet away and further, it looks amazingly clean and flush. Upon closer inspection, you'll find that you can fit a finger or two between the fender and tire. This is because the wheel IS flush with the paper thin fender, but the tire stretch (which is subtle) gives it the necessary clearance to prevent any chance of rub. The car has a little bit more than -5 degrees of negative camber all around, but it never looks excessive. It is sporting high quality wheels with a big brake kit visble behind the face.

Happily, there is a car out there that just about fits the bill, and it is none other than this white Acura TL which debuted at this year's WekFest: SF show. It wasn't 100% complete at that show, however it is seen here at the rainy Autofashion VIP meet in San Diego. The owner drove it all the way down from San Jose.

If you liked the featured story, go peep out Alex's Blog for more "Stance" related wheel storys. Now go out there step up you wheel game!

Eric Teboul on his rocket propelled bike breaks his own world record for fastest recorded MPH on a drag strip on 2 wheels with a speed of 281 mph at Santa Pod Raceway. 1/4 mile in 5,2 sec at 281,47 mph (452,98 km/h) Damn!!!

I live in downtown Helsinki. We have crowded streets and small parking spots. Also my better half sits behind the wheel time to time and needs help when parking the car. Most of the parking spaces are parallel parking type. Sometimes it's hard to see the distance to the other vehicle or to the hidden poles, curbs, etc. So, my solution was to fit a parking assistance by Valeo.

Valeo Beep & Park kit has a LED display with 8 sensors, 4 front and 4 rear.

The Valeo Beep & Park system is not just an accessory; it's also a high tech device that will make parking your ride really easy! If you dread parallel and reverse parking and, even after years of experience, are still having trouble parking your vehicle after several tries, then the Beep & Park system is just what you need.

Using 4 front and 4 rear mounted sensors, the Beep & Park system locates obstacles to the front and rear of the vehicle (other vehicles, pedestrians, curbs, etc) and informs the driver of their proximity with an audio signal that begins when an obstacle is 1.5 meters (5 feet) away, increasing in volume as they approach the obstacle and becoming continuous when the vehicle comes within 30 cm (12 in) of the object. The Valeo Beep & Park kit is supplied with a set of connectors, a mounting kit and screws, a drill adapted to the diameter of the sensors, angle correction rings and an assembly manual in 12 languages.

Features:
- 8 ultrasonic sensors, 4 front and 4 rear (tow bar compatible)
- LED distance indicator dash display & buzzer with adjustable volume

Valeo recommends that you have this product assembled by a certified professional, so that's what I did. I took the car to my friends ICE & Multimedia store, called Autoextra.

When I dropped the car in the morning I told that I left my pocket camera for their use, to get me some snaps of the installation. Here's their first mod, LOL.

OK, they started by stripping the bumpers & hatch, all the way to the front.


Looks like rust, but it's only dirt, huh! They used the oem rubber seal / bushing to get the harness through.

Everything ZIP-tied.

Mark the bumpers and drill the holes for the sensors.

The Milano Red (R81) paint was ordered from near by Paint shop in aerosol spray can. Coat of plastic primer, topped by red paint. Little heat to dry the paint fully. Then assembly and check that everything works.

Nice & neat. Not in your face, but in clear visoin on corner of your eye.

Done! Well pleased with this little mod.

For this test it was adjusted to "normal" people mode so it uses auto gearbox. It uses Rfactor software and the biggest thing is that you can find all finnish race track to it. And they sayd that they have new Botniaring tack coming near future. Thats is at least 5 month before no one will get ride that track live... sweet!

It was pity that you get only 6 min time to drive, that is 4 laps.Track was Botniaring "old" track As start it takes at least 2 laps to get tires and brakes right temperature so you only got 2 laps to get good time. My time was 1:18.xx, i would ques that 2 more laps and it would go something like 1:16 or so.. Car was 996 porsche race car. its felt quite realistic, those 2 hydraulic motors were to accretive, compared to real life feeling of that kind of race car, but it was fun!!

Simulator price is 32 000 € without tax (alv-0), if you want to buy your own...

http://www.foracer.com

Here is quick video to new vs. old camera. You can see much better video on low light conditions. I was surprised that there isn't so big difference on photo mode ?

Gopro HD hero vs Gopro HD Hero2

Thanks to Kuva Järvinen to delivering new gopro!

More info on new Gopro you can find Gopro website

I ordered a set of Eibach Pro-kit Sportline's. They should drop the car about 35-40 mm (1,35 to 1,57 in).

I didn't go for the coilover set-up as I wanted to keep the car drivable on Finnish horror roads. We have too much speed bumps & bad roads in the Helsinki city area.

My lowering springs arrived to Helsingin Rengaspalvelu (tire service), and my friend who works there installed them while I was busy at work. Thanks Nikke!
They even fixed few dents that I had on the driver’s door & rear quarter panel (Sorry no pictures of them). Great service!

So dropped the car off in the morning before heading to work.

I did a little before vs. after pics to show the difference in the ride height.

At first it looks like the front is higher, but actually it's not. The front fender has higher radius, so it just looks like that. The overall "stance" is right. Even drop on both ends.

Looks ok. Could be a bit lower at the front. I'll just have to see how this kit is settling in.

This is how we roll – looking better already. The ride is firm but not too stiff or hard. Progressive is the right word. Next mods to come in a few days