The End of an Era – Farewell “lifewithjson”

/ jasonhoang / Leave a comment

It’s time. I know I’ve flirted with the idea of stopping lifewithjson for some time now and I’ve been telling myself to leave it and that I’ll eventually come back and blog one day but I don’t think that day is coming. The days of lugging my camera around and documenting my journey through life and cars are at days end. 15 years of blogging and it’s time to call it quits – admittedly kind of bittersweet. I’ve met a lot of people through this blog, participated in a lot of special things and had a bunch of special projects, I’ve been able to share my life in a way that almost seems archaic in today’s world of social media and way of quick dopamine hits by scrolling through pics and double clicking to “like” things. Long walls of text and mass amounts of pictures can sometimes be too much for the new crowd only looking for a pic of their car during a show or not having enough time to read the preface and I’m OK with that. I’ve had my fair share of this and I’m appreciative of those who stuck around since the beginning and for those that joined in along the way.

When I first started blogging, it was because I wanted to share my passion for photography and all the new skills I was able to acquire from photographing everything. I wanted to document my journey of building my cars and install days and hangouts – I just wanted to share as much as possible because it created connections and positive  (and sometimes negative) feedback. Over time, it turned into life changes and adult responsibilities and the blog evolved while you guys stayed with me. I’m now at the point in my life where that passion that got me started on the blog has moved onto loving my family and focusing on just doing what makes me happy. As I get older, I find that I’ve become more reserved and lowkey and some of you that are around my age might understand that same feeling. You find out that life becomes so much more peaceful when it isn’t about “Keeping up with the Joneses” anymore and more about “Keeping inner peace”.  Literally.

My 20’s were about the latest and greatest. John got new wheels? Guess I should too. Recaro’s are the new thing? I need a set too. People building VIP cars? I better find one. There’s nothing wrong with this – you’re young, you have little to no responsibilities, you have money to burn – do it while you can. It’s an intricate stage of your life where you’re learning how to be you and figuring out your place in the world. If you do that for long enough, you’ll eventually get tired, be broke, and become uninspired. You’ll feel like you don’t belong and you’re not sure where to go. You know what the “plot line” of a story is? I just described the “rising action”, the “climax” and now the “falling action”. The last stage of a plot line is the “resolution” or the “end”. Once you get there, you start a new “exposition” or “beginning” and you bring everything you’ve learned from your previous plot line into your next one but only this time, you know better to do better. You don’t relive those actions because you know that if you do, your outcomes will be the same; so you create new actions with improved approaches for new outcomes with improved results.

This is where I am now. Not everyone gets there at the same time but I wanted you guys to know my reason for this denouement. All I work towards now is inner peace. I want zero drama. I want zero toxicity surrounding me. For the younger crowd – I basically want zero ick. So what I learned from my first story is that in order to get peace, I need to create it myself and that just means getting rid of anything that I don’t need anymore (AKA this blog).

I’m feeling a bit somber as I type this out but it’s also kind of like a weight lifted off my shoulders – despite me not really doing anything but paying for the domain and hosting (maybe that’s what the weight is LOL). I’ve said it a million times through these 15 years on this blog but I’ll say it one last time…

Thank you to everyone who has supported this page, the content, the writing, and most importantly, me. Thank you for supporting me by tagging me, reposting me, sharing me – it might not seem like a big thing, but every single share has meant a lot to me. Without you guys, I would not have continued for as long as I have, and I wouldn’t be doing the things that I’m doing now without you. Thank you for being a part of the ride on this lifewithjson chapter of my life and for sharing everything from my first new car to my first house to my first kid. I have but one regret after 15 years and it’s that I have to end this and leave it to disappear forever. When I started this, I never really thought about what the end would be like – who does? But I guess we’re here now and while it is kind of sad, it’s really also super fulfilling and I think that makes it worth it. I’ve confirmed with the WordPress team that as time goes on, the content will still be available to view with certain media links potentially being broken. The domain may change to http://www.wordpress.lifewithjson.com but at least nothing is disappearing 🙂

I’ve cancelled the renewal for the domain for the end of the year. For now, the site will stay up until then. I’m not actually sure if that means this stays up as a forgotten website or if it gets taken down completely! It was nice having you all here. I’m still available via Instagram (@jayhoang) if you need me! As they say – it’s not goodbye, it’s see you later!

Review: New Cerakote Ceramic Paint Coating Application!

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It’s about time we talked about ceramics around here again! This time, the good guys over at Blackbox Automotive (Jay and Vince) reached out and asked a select few to give Cerakote’s new ceramic coating a try to see how it stood up to the competition. Those of you that are familiar with Cerakote know that they offer a wide variety of thin-film color coating with different temperature ratings, patterns and effects. (Full disclaimer – this is kind of a sponsored review as I did not pay for these, but agreed to offer a full honest review in exchange).

We all hate the long-winded intros that we always stumble upon when looking up recipes – you know the ones that always start with “my grandma always made me this soup whenever it rained…”. Ain’t nobody got time for that today because everyone just wants to know how good this.

If there were a few top selling points for Cerakote – as I understand it – it would be:

  1. Ease of use – the product is meant to take away the stress and unpredictability that comes with ceramic coating – especially as a first time user. They want to bring a product to the masses that is both easy to use and extremely effective.
  2. Best performance – meant to be the top performer when compared to products that state they deliver similar results.
  3. Cost effective – to provide the highest quality coating at the best possible price. Should coatings cost you $200 per bottle? Cerakote doesn’t think so.

So I’ll jump right into it. Today – we’re looking mainly at tackling point #1. How easy is this product to use compared to its’ competition? Let’s find out.

For comparison, I am comparing this to CarPro’s Cquartz UK 3.0. I’m a big fan of CarPro products – they work great and they get the job done exactly as intended – I guess I’m somewhat of a fanboy. With that said though, I’m always open to trying new things if they have positive claims and that’s where Cerakote comes in.

CQuartz UK 3.0 was designed to be a long-lasting, high performing coating that resists chemicals, salt build up and can be layered up to 2 times. CQuartz also recommends the use of a topper such as Reload for the slickness and gloss. The suggestion is to use every few months or as needed to maintain the coating. On the flip side – Cerakote’s coating does all the same things but only requires one layer – though 2 wouldn’t be impossible. It also does not require a topper – slickness and gloss is all in one bottle.

To be fair, Cerakote’s pro coating would be more comparable to CarPro’s SiC coating, but we’ll get to that later.

The specimen that we will be working on is my Lexus RX330. I thought about re-coating the Type R but the RX would be a more fitting test subject because it will see more abuse and exposure to the elements than the Type R every would. The last time I coated this was about 2.5 years ago using two layers of CQuartz UK 3.0. It has gone through 3 winters and the coating is pretty much gone. There’s little sign of water beading and the use of a topper (Reload) has little effect.

The RX has gone through a lot and through the kindess of my daughters – they gave it a nice glove and dirty snow bath last year causing lots of marring and swirls in the paint on about 1/4 of the car as you can see in the picture above.

It hurts just looking at this… But there’s nothing a little elbow grease can’t fix! Before we even get to think about the fun part of applying Cerakote’s coating – we need to do some polishing, decon and surface prep. I’m not going to bore you with the pics and long-winded details but for info, this was my routine:

  1. Wash with CarPro Reset
  2. Decon – using CarPro Iron-X
  3. Claybar
  4. Wash with CarPro Reset
  5. Polish with Menzerna 2500 – one of my favourite polishes
  6. Finishing polish with CarPro Reflect
  7. Wipe down with CarPro Eraser

Kind of weird using all of CarPro’s products to prep the surface only to turn my back on it and use a different coating LOL.

Here is one pass with Menzerna 2500 and a yellow cutting pad

90% of the surface has been corrected and the gloss has been restored.

Here’s a shot of the final pass with CarPro Reflect and a finishing pad. Just gets a little more shine out of the car and removes any residual/leftover baby swirls.

Looking good for a 2006…

Black paint can be rewarding if you treat it right!

These last few shots show the application of Cerakote’s pro coating. A lot of the coatings I’ve used in the past come with a big fat warning on ensuring that you apply it correctly and watching your flash time, ensuring your humidity levels are good, and to watch that you’re applying it evenly to prevent any high spots. Any high spots leftover would then need to be polished down and the product would need to be re-applied.

As I stated at the beginning, Cerakote is toting that the ease of application with their coating is fool proof. They want to take the stress of having to watch for high spots or figuring out curing times before wiping it away. To see if that’s the case, I decided to take a chance and test different panels with different flash times. If I was left with hard-to-remove high spots, I would just take the hit and polish it down and re-apply. That’s the only way I could test the claim…

As you can see – application was pretty straight forward. The applicator pad needed to be primed/saturated a little bit to get some even strokes, but overall – a pretty similar experience to most other coatings. Nothing to write home about on the application side of things.

I wanted to illustrate how the coating “flashed” as time went on. Here is what the coating looked like after about 5 minutes. You can see the streaks start to disappear and the coating starts to collect and bubble up on itself.

One of the big differences with this vs CQuartz UK 3.0 and SiC is that you’re not looking for that “oil slick” finish which can be hard to see depending on the lighting and angle you’re working in. The nice thing about Cerakote’s coating is that it’s easily visible by the physical appearance of the coating itself on your paint.

Here it is after about 10 minutes. More collecting and bubbling forming on the surface.

Another shot with still at 10 minutes.

And after about 13 minutes, you can see the bubbling started to remain the same. No more changes to the appearance of the coating. I know some of you are probably saying “you left that on for 13 minutes??” Yes I did. Some panels, I left on for about 7 minutes, some I left for 10 minutes and some I left on for 15 minutes.

Again, the reason is because I wanted to test how hard it would be to remove depending on the time it took to flash. How “easy” could it actually be?

Last shot of the coating at 15 minutes.

After the wipe down.

The takeaway was that whether the coating sat for 5 minutes, 7 minutes, 10, minutes or 15 minutes… The wipe down was easy. Simple. Very light pressure was needed and it didn’t feel like trying to wipe away oil and having to flip the cloth several times to get a clean and streak-free surface. This was a bonus – I loved being able to use basically one side of a cloth and be able to wipe away a product

In comparison, both UK 3.0 and SiC required high attention to flash time – if it stayed on for a little too long, it was very difficult to remove – UK 3.0 more so than SiC. I do recall letting UK 3.0 sit a few minutes too long on one panel for the Type R and I was rubbing vigorously to remove it; which translates to a more difficult product to work with, which can then translate to the “stress” about working with a ceramic product.

Earlier when I mentioned that Cerakote’s pro coating would be more suitable to be compared to CarPro’s SiC – it’s because SiC was meant to be more of an all-in-one coating as well – higher resistance to chemicals, salt and water spotting. There is a more aggressive water contact angle. There is also no need for a topper with SiC as the slickness is added within the application as well.

Out in the sun – everything looked great.

Again, for a 2006 – it cleaned up real nice. The next step is to polish up the windshield, clean up with other windows and trim and apply Cerakote’s pro coating to that as well. It’s meant to be an all-in-one coating, so I’m excited to try it out on the glass too.

My overall takeaway when comparing Cerakote’s Pro Coating to CarPro’s Cquartz UK 3.0:

  • 9/10 for ease of use. The product is extremely easy to use. You really can’t mess it up and you don’t need to stress about the flash times. You could coat the whole car, take a quick breather and then go ahead and wipe it down right after without worrying about it sticking or hardening to the point where it becomes difficult to remove.
  • 10/10 for slickness. Comparing to UK 3.0 on it’s own – there is no comparison. UK 3.0 does not / can not compete as there is no slickness with UK 3.0. When compared to UK 3.0 + Reload – it’s still better by a long shot. The slickness with Reload and even Reload 2.0 is about 3/4 of the way there in terms of slickness. Finally, when comparing to SiC for slickness – they are so close, I would say it’s a tie. However, Cerakote wins again due to the ease of application.
  • 8/10 for the finish. I would say the finish does not provide a truly deep and wet look like one would expect from applying say a high quality carnauba wax. But neither did UK 3.0 and SiC. It did little in hiding small imperfections but to be fair, I’m not sure they market the product as one that does, so I’m not dinging any of the 3 products on that front.

The last thing now really is to wait and see how it holds up the our winters. It will indeed go through a lot of abuse but I’m eager to see how it performs with ice and snow build up. I’ll report back in a few months once the snow begins to fall. Until then, it sits and cures in the garage.

I want to thank Blackbox Automotive again for the opportunity to try this new coating! In the meantime, if any of you would like to try and get your hands on this to try it – head over to Blackbox Automotive and you would be able to purchase some yourself! They are the authorized dealer for Cerakote products and would be happy to help you out! Great guys over there!

Midnight Rev Up Vancouver 2023 Coverage

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Another one in the books! The Vancouver/Abbotsford show was the last on their roadshow of trips to wrap it up for the year and what a year it’s been. This was the first year the team did the Western trip for their show – taking it out of Edmonton and bringing the collective mindset to Calgary and Vancouver to get a taste of something different.

The MNRU team flew JC and I out to Abbotsford to continue lending a hand in the show, so we’re super grateful for the opportunity to take part in their mastermind plans. Initially, I wasn’t planning on doing a post because I wasn’t going to bring my camera, but as soon as I saw the cars, I had instant regret lol. I just wanted to pack light so I thought I’d forego the whole process, but I ended up taking pics of what I could using my phone. So I apologize in advance for the lack of quality in the pics – I did my best LOL.

The show ended up being one of the smoothest and cleanest shows yet. From roll-in, to the progression of the show throughout the day, right on up to the awards ceremony and roll-out. Everyone was respectful and kept it low-key and knew exactly what the drill was. Maybe it’s a some kind of provincial difference but in Alberta, you always have a handful of guys that can’t help but do a burnout or rev a little more than they need to when moving 1.3km/h in a closed area. But that’s a different problem for a different day lol.

One last topic I wanted to touch on quick before we get to the pics – for the awards – if you happened to be at one or all of the other shows – you may have noticed that we’ve revised the way awards are handled. We really are trying to find the best way to handle it and the only true test is to do it at each of the shows. We’ve always had at the very least, 10 awards to hand out. How we hand those out is always the difficult question – do we do:

A) Categories?

B) By Make?

C) Overall?

D) Other?

We’ve done almost all of them and we’ve always gone back and wondering if there was a more efficient way. Each show and each city is different in what comes out – if we do categories and most cars end up being Honda’s, and we only have one domestic, does that mean that domestic automatically wins?

Personally, what I’ve found works is just by doing overall top 10. There may be some disagreements, but here’s my hot take… If we’re judging 170-200 cars and are unbiased on what the make and model is, then it becomes easier to look at the overall quality of each car without having to worry about whether it’s a JDM, domestic, euro, etc. This gives every car a fair fight to win a trophy. At the end of the day, what we’re looking for is overall execution of the car – quality of the car and parts, state of the car (is it swirly), attention to detail, overall completeness, etc, uniqueness and taste.

The perfect example is this last Vancouver show – most of the scene ended up being Honda’s – and quite a heavy hitter selection at that. Unlike Alberta where you see a lot of Evo’s, and STI’s, it becomes a whole different ballgame. At the end of the day, it really becomes difficult not to award a few more Honda’s when those same Honda’s are all at the top of the playing field. I did hear a few comments (not negative) while walking around that they were wondering why there was no categories and that is basically why. If there were categories and there was only one dude in the whole building that happened to bring a Mazda (for example), he’d be sitting there like “I got this in the bag” and I wanted to avoid that. There’s no easy way to side step something like that or to remove it the day of the show without looking like it’s being rigged. I could go on but that’s where my mind sits right now.

Anyway, no need to go into more specifics. Here are my iPhone pics – forgive me for not bringing my camera. Lesson learned for next time LOL. No particular order – when uploading from the phone, it got all messed up but I tried my best to keep them all together.

This BMW 340i was probably my favourite of the show. Saw it at roll-in and it was absolutely immaculate. I wish I had better pictures of it now 😦

This thing was totally hand-built – from the body panels to the fabrication inside. It wasn’t completed yet but they anticipate Spring 2024 it will be done. It started off as a mini clay model and is taking some good shape. Would be cool to see it when it’s finished.

Supra on LH Ordens with a white face/lip and purple inner barrels.

This is actually my first time seeing Advan GT Beyond’s in their max concavity. Looked way too sick. Trying to think of how I can fit that under the Type R LOL

I think this might have been the only S-chassis in the whole show if I’m not mistaken.

Pink Miata. Nice and clean

This A8L was also another favourite of mine because not many VIP builds go to these lengths to outfit their car in all the VIP bling that one would see in Japan with the hardcore VIP guys. D.A.D., Crystals, Swords, Tables, Sake… really clean execution.

Might not be for everyone but it’s hard to deny that it has been done well.

I even liked these ropes – never seen these utilized before.

This ITR was super OG on those CE28’s too

Clean teal EG. Simple

This CRX was crazy. Had a whole bunch done to it and was immaculate. Even had the glass conversion on the roof.

Man… It’s been a minute since I’ve seen a Del Sol at a show this clean. Advan RG’s in black – perfect.

John brought his Supra out for the long trek from Edmonton.

Really clean R34 GTR

JC and I were talking about how kinda quirky cool this was on R32 wheels.

The J’s Racing demo fit in the Yume Sports booth. Cool to finally see this in person.

FWD stagger

Another clean EG in the Yume Sports booth. It was a really tough choice with all the well-built Honda’s…

Also been a while seeing this chassis in a show. This was exceptionally clean on MB battles though – it’s rare to see these done up nicely because it can be a difficult chassis to mod but this was nice.

Widebody R33 on WIDE VS-KF’s

Mark’s Supra with the new livery

Cool to see Tesla’s out at the show too… Nice and big VS-XX’s

Wesley’s Miata

Jason Leung’s Corolla – this was an interesting one that had our pick for one of the top 10. Spoon brakes, a GR86 transmission swap, TRD buckets… Lots of cool little goodies hidden here.

Daniel’s GD Fit – looked really good in person. I love the front fenders. Everything flowed well.

HKS turbo charged

AJR’s Time Attack FK8 with Varis goodies

Jackie’s S2000 – still looks great after almost 20 years of ownership

Good job on the barrels Jackie! LOL

Corolla GR with upgraded Brembos front and back and Advan GT’s

Chris’s J-swap EG. I shot this many years ago when I visited Victoria and it was nice to see this again. Such a unique and rare build.

Just wild.

Super clean. You’ll never see this in Alberta without rust lol. 

A really clean Fit modded with a lot of unique parts from the Philippines. I think someone called it the Fit from the Philippines when they were telling me about it lol.

Retrofitted Porsche BBK too!

So cool to see this Integra on the Advan Oni’s.

Artisan Spirts GS-F. Pretty sweet all the way down to the wheels.

Jason Tong’s EG. Lots of rare goodies on this car and not shown. Jason owns a bunch of other rare sets of wheels and parts. Apparently every show he changes the parts, so it’s never the same from one show to another.

Actually pretty rare to see a full Mugen FK8 in all black.

Clean Euro R. I loved the mashup of blue and red on this build.

Mark’s Spoon EG – trailered from Edmonton!

It’s like we went back in a time machine looking at this. So sweet.

 

Clean Mugen TSX on chrome/polished TE37’s

Another shot of the trophies…

And I finally got a pic of some of the gang that puts this show together. Honestly, one of the nicest and most welcoming group of individuals I have ever met. They literally all work together as one unit – everyone is always on the same page and everyone is ready to back the next one up. There’s never a moment of unwavering confidence or conflict – this is the definition of an A-team and I’m thankful to be welcomed into it. See everyone next year!

Midnight Rev Up Calgary 2023 Coverage

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Well, I’d call the first Midnight Rev Up in Calgary a success! Another great show put on by the MNRU team and they came in full blast. MNRU originated in Edmonton and as you may know, we’ve been making the trips down there for the last few years to help judge and promote the show and it’s always been such a high quality show over there that it would be a shame to keep it there. There’s talent all over Western Canada and it just takes a good show to bring them out.

The MNRU took to the Platform Parkade in downtown Calgary and it could not have been a better place to host the event. The day was probably one of the hottest days of the year – we were sitting at +30C during roll-in at around 4PM but it started to cool down and cloud over lightly as the evening went on. Good news for the guys parked up top as they would’ve baked real quick.

The good news is that we saw lots of tough talent and old faces come out to the show. The great news is that they’re planning on coming back next year. I had the discussion with a few others and I’d say that the MNRU show is a good successor to the illmotion Sunday School shows. Not to the same volume, but the quality is there and that’s really what matters. Sunday School took huge strides in putting on one of the biggest and well-controlled shows in Western Canada and that was exciting. MNRU is taking hints from all over and putting on some really Wekfest-inspired shows and that’s what I’ve been begging for ever since I attended my first one in Chicago several years ago. It’s definitely not easy, but they’re making big steps towards it and I’m all for it.

I always go on about it, but controlling a car show and the entrants that come with it is not easy. First, you have to make sure everyone that should know about it actually knows about it. They need to want to come to the show to even make it happen. Once you have that, then the rest kind of all lands in the hands of the organizers. I’m not going to go on about the layout and parking situation but let’s just say you don’t let them park in random circles or give a group of 10 cars the space of 3.

I digress… I won’t go into much blabbering for YYC. The show was great, the team had did a great job in a new space that was unfamiliar to them and the cars were awesome. I would say that judging the Calgary scene was about as difficult as the Edmonton group. Lots of really high quality contenders and as I always say – you can’t win them all. There are 10 total individual trophies and 2 team/display awards. If we could give more out, they’d just be participation trophies. There’s a lot of behind the scenes discussion after we’ve seen all the cars and while we always think we made the best choice, there are always people that think we were wrong – and that’s OK. If you’re reading this and you’re a little upset that maybe you or your buddies should’ve won an award, I’ll tell you that there’s a high chance we probably had them on our list but there was something someone else had that just tipped the scales in their favour a little bit more. Some OG’s that continue to put in the time, the work and the money and some newcomers that came out of the gates just right. Congratulations to all the winners that night – all well-deserved!

Onto the pics!

Guess I’ll start with my heap lol.

And of course, following mine is always JC’s lol.

Brooke’s Q

Alyssa’s RS5

Justine’s FRS

This was too cool. Never seen this before – Honda Orthia

Maggie’s Golf R. She just picked up an OG VW Beetle that I was looking forward to seeing but there are still some small issues that she needs to resolve before taking it out.

Yolanda’s Focus ST

Mel’s Fiesta ST

Cool pairing. The color match just hits right

The view was also too cool at Platform being able to see across, above and below from wherever you were standing.

S14 – I think this was on air. Pretty cool

Some wild fitment on this STI

A really clean Celsior. Loved the finish on the Bazreia’s

Money M3

Danny’s TT

Xavier’s S430 – one of the winners of the night. I’m glad he came in on the JP Scara’s – always a clean look.

Alyssa/Chris’s 240SX. I don’t see this one too often but it was certainly one of our top contenders.

Harry’s MKV GTI

Paul’s Accord Euro R

Sun was hittin’ right

This was a super clean STI Hatch build. Everything was so clean. Admittedly, it’s pretty rare to see an almost mint condition STI with some good quality parts.

Harrison’s MX6 looking glossy AF. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this guys car dirty. Always clean barrels too LOL

Cool Suzuki Carry

This was pretty cool. Molded flares – kind of gave it an OG Datsun look. Definitely cool to see this over the bolts and rivets.

Frank’s LS Rocket Bunny RX7

Bill’s S15 looking good on the Super Advans.

Finally had a chance to see the trunk set up that he built to include the Auto Glym detailing supplies inside. Handy.

This thing was so wild. It was nostalgic of the 90’s where the loudest and hardest hitting sound system was all the rage. TV set up in the trunk and just these massive like 20″ subs right in the back seat. The sound was pretty clean too. I didn’t get a shot of the inside but you can almost “hear” this picture lol.

An FK7 with a bunch of wild aero including the Voltex Swan neck out back. Haven’t seen one on this Chassis before but it looked decent.

Funky Garage. I know I rag on people that roll into car shows with dirty cars but I’m pretty sure every car show I’ve seen him in, he rolls in without cleaning it. I’m used to it but it also just happens to match the whole vibe he’s got going on so I dig it lol.

Aldrin’s RB FRS – looking clean as usual.

Khail’s SI Coupe

Gem’s WRX

Jeff’s S15 on TE37’s. Great fitment.

Gerald’s slammed widebody WRX. A few years ago, Gerald’s car almost took our pick but he had a few things that were lacking but upon visiting it again this year, it was still in the back of our minds and it came up to par. A pretty underrated build that’s easy to walk past  but the body work and the attention to detail on it was great.

Enzo’s FK8. This guy changes wheels like I change my underwear.

Angelo’s Evo X

MNRU x JTOONED collab shirts

One more of Gerald’s WRX without the crowd

VIP 7-series laid out on a red carpet – the heat coming from this thing was intense.

Roel’s Varis Widebody FK8. I think a few things were holding this back from winning in Edmonton and Roel was quick to fix it for this show. The biggest thing was the paint mismatch on the flares – but it’s nice to see it all matches now and that is the finishing piece! Congrats.

Romel’s Celica – haven’t seen this thing in a minute. I still love this thing.

Binh’s Datsun 240z looking unapologetically good. Hard to argue that it might have been one of the top builds of the night.

Daniel’s RX8

Jeff’s GTI with Porsche-inspired livery/decals.

…Must… Not… Say… Anythi…. Your wheels were dirty.

Kanji’s Aimgain BRZ. Been a minute since I’ve seen this.

Danisha/Alex’s GTR from Executive Wraps. Your go-to spot for wraps/PPF/detailing!

Alex’s freshly finished ITR. I saw Levi post a story with a caption that fit Alex’s build so well…

“Imagine being this allergic to money”.

Mugen bolts in every spot a Mugen bolt could fit in the engine bay. Imagine…

Adrian’s EJ1. So nostalgic of the 90’s builds and I’m here for it.

Derek’s Mugen OEM FD2 converted Civic/CSX. It’s come a long way since he first got it and now it’s looking proper.

Jackie’s Spoon NSX sans the GT wing. I’m not sure whether I like it more with or without the wing. I like both LOL.

Brandon’s RSX with my favourite bumper ever for this chassis.

And some new Retrofitted lights. PERFECT.

Levi’s R32. Unless you follow this guy and see what he has to go through with this thing, you wouldn’t know any better. But it’s sick.

Josh’s M3 – it’s for sale 🙂

Isaac’s RX7

Another one of Alex’s toys…

Big Dinan Daddy

Danny’s Porsche on TE37’s – haven’t seen him for a while! Love that he hauls the kids in the back of this.

Nick’s GT3 on BBS’s

Jackson’s Porsche on GT’s. Good choice. I’m not biased.

Andrew’s IS-F. I’m sure you’ve seen it around but you probably have no idea. I’ll continue to praise him as the T-Demand king. Congrats on the win. Another well-deserved one.

I wish I got the chance to see the puddle lights though 😦

Alex’s IS-F. I think he drives this only to get oil changes and then back home again. Why does he get oil changes if he doesn’t drive it, you ask? I don’t know either. LOL

Jeremy’s 2JZ IS300. So good!!

Ben’s Supra MK5. Really love how this is put together. Not over the top but aggressive enough. Really clean lines all around.

Another winner of the night was this RX7. Simple, clean, but lots of good work put into it and you could tell. Very well done.

Benny’s Trueno. If you were at the top at any point, there’s no chance you would’ve missed seeing this. Always a pleasure to see.

Jamie’s S2000

Jonathan’s S2000 on Regas

Barb’s full J’s Racing S2000

David’s Spoon ITR

Stephen’s EG Civic. Good job on the wheel cleaning bro! He took them off to clean them LOL. Love the dedication.

Always a pleasure to see Ed’s 89 CRX. There’s something about seeing a completely unmolested oldschool Honda in today’s tuner world. Like… This is what they looked like!? LOL

Rich’s IS300 with dirty tires. JK LOL

Cholo’s Spoon FK8. Now he’s full Spoon with the change of his Recaro RS-G’s to Spoon buckets.

Marks’ Spoon EG all completed. So good!

And the last shot I took of the night was the view from the stairwell before heading back down for judging.

I know the MNRU team is super grateful for the support of this event and on behalf of them, I wanted to thank everyone for coming as well. We were all kind of unsure what the reception would be but I think it’s safe to say that it was a hit and it’s all the more reason to come back next year. The dedication the team brings to these shows is unmatched and that’s one of the reasons I love to come out to them to help and support them. When the team puts in a tremendous amount of effort to put on the best show they can possibly put on, it’s worth coming out to.

Next stop – MNRU Vancouver! If you’re going there, we’ll see you there!