My buddy Ayo Andrsn just published his most recent set of this Plum Crazy Purple Dodge Challenger on Vossen 22″ VVS-CV1 wheels. Check it out:

Well, better way late than never, right? Part 2 of our 4 part installment of following Stewart Leask during the end of the 2011 season comes from the XDC finale at the Texas Motor Speedway in Ft. Worth, Texas.

Stew worked all through the night getting his car all buttoned up for the event the following morning, and was still making adjustments when he arrived the morning of the practice session.

During the practice session, it was discovered that the car was absent a functioning e-brake. While not, essential for drifting, this meant Stew had one less tool in his arsenal to allow for mid drift corrections, or as an aid in deceleration when approaching the lead car in tandem. As the day went on, it appeared as if the lack of an e-brake wasn’t hindering Stew’s ability to rip up the course at all.

After a solid day of practice, Stew heads to the pits.

The next morning during the practice session right before the main event, bad luck strikes again with Stew’s car blowing up 3rd gear. This is an essential gear, especially for the long sweeper at the end of the course. All he could do now was slam it into fourth, pray, and clutch kick the shit out of the car in an attempt to make it around without much error.

As the competition was getting ready to start, Stew’s girlfriend and friends gathered in the stands to show their support.

During the driver introduction, Stew was showing his support by wearing on of our RUN WFSU shirts underneath his driving suit.

Unfortunately, the lack of 4th gear, and a questionable (in my opinion) decision by the judges ended the day early for Stew. Chelsea DeNofa went on to win the XDC Championship for the second time in a row.

Here’s a great video by the guys from Jersey Streets:

The unfortunate mishaps of the XDC event only motivated Stew to get the car back in his garage and fix the current problems to compete in Round 3 of the Lone Star Series. Stay tuned for those results in Pt. 3 of our 4 part installment!

Dope video of a couple Honda Accords rollin’ on 20″ Vossen’s. Check it out

This car is no stranger to our website. Over the last year or so it’s graced the front of the blog multiple times. For those who aren’t familiar, this Chevrolet LS1 powered Nissan S13 coupe belongs to a good friend of mine here in Texas, Stewart Leask. Hanging out with this guy as much as I do has more than likely doomed my financial future due to the constant inspiration from watching him build this car over the last year or so, reminding me of how much mine is lacking. Recently Stew noticed that at some point his strut tower started collapsing away from the stock location. Once he pulled it back straight he made the decision that that wouldn’t be happening again.

This is how the front end looked before the rebuild:

With the deadline for XDC Dallas only months away, Stew immediately dove into the project starting with cutting off the front end from the strut towers forward and tube framing it. A custom replacement lower tie bar was fabbed up to go in place of the weak stock counterpart. To beef it up even more Stew added corner gussets for it to grab more of the OEM frame rail. The frame rail was then later capped off for additional rigidity. In addition to the lower tie bar, the fender wells were cut out and tubs were put in their place. To ensure that the strut towers didn’t move again, a massive gusseted triangulated strut tower bar was fabbed up and installed.

To finish off the front end, a new crash bar was made along with a new wood splitter to attach to the bottom. I’m pretty sure it’s some sort of law in Texas that requires every drift car to have a wooden splitter.

Moving on to the rear, Stew cut out a huge section of the trunk to house a newly built recessed battery tray along with an ATL fuel cell setup. New metal was then cut to fill in the missing areas and bead rolled for extra strength and to be aesthetically pleasing. With the fuel cell now sitting in the trunk, a firewall was built to keep the interior of the car safe from any ill effects of a fire incident. The metal used for the firewall was also bead rolled and came out pretty damn cool looking. If you’ve never used a bead roller before, trying to create any sort of design is beyond time consuming!

With the firewall and fuel cell knocked out, Stew went ahead and fabbed up a new rear crash bar as well. The new crash bar uses the stock mount locations so it can easily be unbolted if it needs to come off. In addition to this just being a crash bar, it also has a triangle bar coming off of the bottom for a jack point. This is an essential feature on a low car, because now he doesn’t have to waste time removing the bumper to get the car in the air. My favorite feature of this piece would have to be the custom-made bumper height adjusters. The three adjusters can move up or down to ensure perfect fitment.

Keep in mind that he did all of the custom fabrication you see in his garage after work and on weekends. What’s most impressive is that the majority of the fabrication work had never been attempted before this build, so I’d say quite a successful learning experience. Stew also sprayed the bay on the car, which was also his first time painting.

It’s impossible to sum up this entire rebuild in one blog post, so there is a LOT that I’m leaving out. Feel free to head on over to his build thread on Zilvia to check out everything I missed!

Coming up on Pt. 2: XDC Dallas finally arrives

A close friend of mine John Deltoro, had traded in his old mk4 for something new, even though I loved his car there comes a time with anyone who’s involved in the car game to, “Get something new”. Luckily he found this G35, I’ve always been a fan of the body style and the exhaust note they carry.

It was only right that John fitted a crazy set of wheels under these fenders. An by crazy I don’t me a tacky colored wheel with a retarded sized tire just to make it appear to fit.

If there is one thing I know about John, he knows his offsets, widths, and tires. With the new VIP modulars just fitted, You can bitch about the fenders all you want. The car still sits amazingly clean for stock body and “massaging” the fenders to play nice, John also maxed out his rear camber settings which only threw salt in the cut for this fitment. With some time, Money, and patients, I know it’ll be flawless. Fitting 20×10′s and 20×12′s isn’t something you just bolt on usually… Kudos to my dude John.

This past weekend Dallas / Ft Worth hosted one of the highest quality car shows around right now; Wekfest. My good friend Sy Pham got some cool video footage of the event:

Switching it up with some film photos:

For all of Sy’s photos check out his Flickr page!

…it’s over. The buildup for this year’s H2O International was, to say the least, a bit more uncertain than in recent years. Rumors flew all summer that the show wasn’t happening and, well, you know how the internet Chicken Little’s handle unfounded rumors…

At any rate, this year’s H2O weekend was one I won’t soon forget. After arriving in Ocean City early on Thursday only to see the streets already crawling with VWs, I knew that we would be in for a good time. And as the horde continued to grow, seemingly by the minute, I knew that this year’s turnout was going to be one for the record books. And it was. From seeing the Convention Center parking lot packed quite literally all day and night, to the line of cars snaking its way up and down Racetrack Road trying to get to MBS on Sunday, the streets were flooded with European goodness (oh, and all that rain, too). Anyways, enough words from me, on to the photos. Here is just a taste of what H2O meant to me photographically, if you want to see more, click here.

H2O 2011 week is upon us! The end of September always brings great times with great friends. Volkwagens also take over an entire beachfront city but besides that, most go to hang with the friends they only see a handful of times a year. Here are some fun pictures from last year’s week /weekend in OCMD.  Hope everyone traveling far makes it there safely, without acquiring much battle damage. No doubt we miss those who couldn’t make it this year, especially our beloved cuppycake supplier.

Big thanks to Matt and Matt for the contribution.

This weekend my buddy Jeff came down for a quick visit from Oklahoma to hang out and assist in building a racecar in our mutual friend Stew’s garage (more on this later). While he was here we managed to find some time for a quick shoot of his LS3 powered Mazda FD RX7 dropped with Stance coilovers and sitting on some beautiful polished 18.9.5/11 Work Meister S1R’s. All shots were taken with a 7d and 24mm along with 1 B800 shot through an octobox in combination with natural light.

Shot a close friends mk4 awhile back, he’s been around for a while. It’s always good to see a OG who still has the passion for the community.