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:

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!

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.

Last night I met up with Austin to shoot his 1980 Caddy on 15×8 BBS RM’s. It almost seems as if when ever I shoot lately a security guard is always watching me. The past few times I have found a location to shoot as soon as I finish setting all my gear up some mall cop who takes his job way too serious rolls out and tells me to pack it up. After driving around for a little while we settled on this spot.

Today I got the chance to go out to Summit point located in WV, to see a small scale pro am drift event. This was my first time ever seeing drifting in person and I was pretty impressed with some of the drivers that competed in today’s event. Although I left before the end of the competition I was able to get these shots.

Check out the rest of my coverage here…..http://www.flickr.com/photos/guilford32_chrismanje/sets/72157627203842135/with/5996262551/

Yes, you read that right. I first came across Kevin’s insane S-10 a couple years back through mutual friends. At the time it was the frankentruck’s first summer out, and back then it was sporting a Chevy Trailblazer front end. Up until a couple weeks ago, when I took these pics, 2 years has passed since the last seeing the truck. While, I heard of the updates and changes that the truck has gone through since I had last seen it, I couldn’t wait to check it out again. When a last minute cruise night came up and I heard Kevin was going to have his truck out, I was glad I had my camera with me!

After we cruised around for a bit, we all parked at the local Tim Horton’s to hang out. I took the opportunity to snap a few shots of Kevin’s S-10. While the thought of a new Camaro front end on an S-10 might sound odd to most, me included, gotta admit it looks pretty mean. The truck has been slammed, chopped and sectioned, allowing Camaro front end to look right at home on the truck.

Powering this beast, as you may have noticed already isn’t anything offered by the Domestic company that produced this truck originally. Kevin swapped a Skyline RB25DET engine and trans into the truck, wiring it up to run on Megasquirt standalone. Oh, and put a slightly bigger turbo on it ha! The giant holeset turbo sitting high on the side of the motor sounds like a jet engine upon spooling.

While the truck is far from completion, and it is a long term project, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t like to take it out and show it off. Driving past the local car meet you can just see the necks breaking and heads being scratched trying to figure out if that was the Batmobile that just drove by. I certainly appreciate the work and creativity into this project and hopefully I’ll be able to document the future updates to it.

I can’t wait to see what the next phase of this truck looks like.

I dont really know what to say about this car other than its clean and its on coils. Also this is Matt’s daily driver which everyone can respect.