When in doubt, FLAT OUT!

Finally the Team Flat Out trackday pushed through. Unlike the previous April trackday, slightly cloudy skies greeted us at the track and a steady breeze kept us all cool and comfortable.

Also unlike April where we were about 30 participants in all, this trackday saw just 10 of us hooning around Subic International Raceway's short track. That allowed for more practice in consecutive hot laps and a greater chance of improving on my previous best time of 1:04.4.

Our machines were all Hondas and Toyotas. Rommel brought his GE6, while Justin and I both drove GDs and the rest had EKs in various high states of tune. For the Toyota camp, Russell had his AE101, while Arby brought his rare supercharged brown AE82 five-door hatchback.

Edward and JP were on hand to give me lots of tips and advice. They were extremely helpful in building my confidence especially under full-commitment braking, and drove home the point that I should "show the car who's boss" as JP often mentions on the Honda Club Philippines forums.

After a bus collided with Aibo's rear end last year, I had become traumatized by full-commitment braking, but I learned that on the track it's no concern and that it was key to everything. My half-hearted heel-and-toe on public roads ruined my technique too. Perhaps I should just stick to throttle-blipping and brake normally on the daily commute.



On my first run at 9:00 am I virtually duplicated my previous best with a 1:04.21. The times kept tumbling as the day went by, however.

JP told me Aibo had good balance and a predictable nature, with its low power output making it an easy car to drive and learn. Aibo's Toyo Proxes 4 all-season tires gained and lost their grip in a nicely progressive manner, too. After driving it at full commitment for three laps with me riding shotgun, showing me all the markers and tricks, he said a 58-second lap was possible.

By 2:00 pm I had shaved three seconds. I was rounding SIR at one minute flat. While the others cheered my success, JP and Edward egged me on.

Thirty minutes later I was breaking the 59-second barrier! I was starting to believe JP's 58-second premonition.

Rommel sat at the timing desk to cheer me on. He had also improved greatly from his previous -best 1:03. By the end of the day he was bagging one-minute laps too.


Finally at 3:15 pm I logged my fastest ever series of laps. They were consistently in the 59-second range, but one lap saw me very close to JP's prediction.

My personal best is now 59.14 seconds!

That lap time took me totally by surprise. Perhaps I could have broken the 58-second barrier, but at that point my front tires were past their best and were suffering slight understeer from the heat of running. In any case it was better than my wildest dreams as my initial goal was to shave just three seconds off - I almost doubled that!

In the end though, Rommel and I thoroughly enjoyed this event and we left at 5:00 pm satisfied. It really felt like a gathering of true petrolheads, with no hidden agendas, no need to show off and no egos to protect. The track and the lap times kept us all honest. Our enemies were only ourselves and our previous best lap times.

After all the bullshit that's flown about in the car clubs I've gotten myself involved in, this was a very welcome change.


My new friend Russell (center on the photo above) was amazed with Aibo's potential. Equally amazing was how Aibo still clocked 12.769 km/L on the entire trip, all hot laps at Subic and 120 km/h NLEX/SCTEX cruising included.

I just cannot wait until the next trackday. Edward had already extended an invitation for me to join Team Flat Out on the RYWB (run what you brung) time-attack competition rounds.

We'll see. The next step for me is to become consistent as a sub-minute driver.

Six years later

I'm tired of:
- Bruised egos.
- Posers.
- People who can't follow rules.
- People who post nonsense.
- Bullies.
- People who have no taste whatsoever.
- Moneyed folk with more purchasing power than ability.
- Having to apologize for doing the right thing.

The long and short of it is this: I'm tired of car clubs.

Just when I was about to give up on car club forums...

...I get good "karma" from people who appreciate what I do.

After becoming a virtual persona non grata on a certain car club for speaking out what I believe, I had gotten disillusioned with car club forum websites and the airheads that reside in them. I'm glad I didn't give up on them entirely. Apparently FitFreak.net's members know how to recognize goodwill and good advice.

Maybe there's some point to me doing the Mr. Miyagi thing this long. As long as I can help, I'll do so.

Waging war with the nouveau riche

For a few months now I've been frustrated with the way the PJACU forums have turned into.

The place has turned into some sort of ridiculous place of worship, where the main virtue is how quickly and how lavishly this husband-and-wife team can blow their money on their cars and their other toys. Every month they have either big-ticket mods or shiny new cameras - which is a little too frequent, to be honest - and with every new acquisition, they go on a massive show-and-tell rampage to wow everybody else. Just when I wondered where these people get their money to finance their various "hobbies," I was aghast at learning of their willingness to go into debt just so they could show off. They have a kid, for crying out loud! Even worse, every post they make just seems to allude to their next purchase.

Recently things came to a head when the husband bragged about his plans of getting a brand-new Nissan 370Z come June...some sort of birthday present. The same guy bragged about the cars he and his family members had owned over the hears.

I had had enough. I got flustered and frustrated about how things had gone so far away from the club that I originally joined. PJACU was about showing off the cars and their modifications, sure, but it's also about trying to help fellow Jazz and City owners with much more important things such as maintenance, repairs and do-it-yourself tips. Seeing PJACU turn into this brag-to-the-heavens pissing contest is a major disappointment and it frankly just put me off.

I tried contacting my friends and some of the moderators about it and while some of them were willing to hear me out, ultimately these efforts were as useful as busting a padlock with newspaper. While I remained active, I was no longer enjoying my time there.

Perhaps it's about time I moved on. As much as I want to chew these two idiots out for their deplorable habits with money, and consequently the stinking bad example they're setting for fellow PJACU members, how they spend their money and get themselves deeper into debt is admittedly none of my business.

My goodness, their loss of taste and sensibility is irritating though. Ugh. I vow never to turn into them.

Two car clubs mourn the death of one great man.

It started out just like any other day. I went to work, fired up the computer and went to the JaCU forum for any updates.

The update that greeted me left me astounded and in disbelief. Francis Javier, the beloved "Frankster" of Honda Club Philippines and Philippine Jazz and City United, had passed away due to cardiac arrest on February 19, 2009. He was thirty years old.

He was one of the kindest and most responsible souls I'd ever met. Francis tirelessly attended the EBs and GTs (get-togethers) even if he himself wasn't feeling so good. He was also a genuine car nut just like me, his affection extending to even the most obscure automotive curiosities. His GD6 Honda City is testament to his passion for turning even arguably the "ugly duckling" of the recent Honda car lineup into something even the American members of FitFreak.net lust for.

A few days before he passed away, he was ecstatic at having driven a friend's yellow Honda NSX at the recent JaCU February EB. He seemed hale and hearty the whole day. Little did we all know that his collapse and admittance into the hospital just the previous month was the forebear of his impending passing. He was born with a congenital heart defect that left his heart enlarged, he told me, and with it came all sorts of cardiac maladies, palpitation to name just one.

Steve of JaCU remarked on the Honda Club Philippines forum that Francis was supposed to be next in line as JaCU's president. I have no doubt he would have been as fine a president as Juno Ongteco was/is for HCP.

Francis' act will be a tough one to follow. He will be missed and I am sure he is now in a better place, certainly one where he no longer has to worry about the condition of his fragile heart.

'Tis the season for mechanical curiosity

It's been a very interesting couple of weeks for a gearhead like me.
===

Because of a runaway piece of debris (concrete or dense wood, I'm not really sure what) snaking across the SLEX, one of Aibo's wheels had a very strong impact---strong enough to bend the rim out of shape and rip my Bridgestone S-02PP rubber along with it.


I had planned on replacing the S-02s---great tire with full tread depth, but due for replacement at seven years old---for a while now, and it seemed like the best opportunity to do so. After I had the wheel repaired, I raided the phone line looking for tires in my 205/45R16 size. Disappointed that the Yokohama S.Drives were out of stock just about everywhere, I decided to experiment this time with a brand that's not very popular here: Toyo.


After hearing about their great performance from overseas, I had already inquired about the Toyo Proxes T1R. They didn't have those in my size, so I ordered the Toyo Proxes 4 all-season radials instead. Armstrong, the distributor, even offered free dry nitrogen fillup for the lifetime of the tires. 200 kilometers in, I find the Proxes 4s quieter and more refined than the noisy S-02PPs, but are just as grippy and have a much longer treadwear rating.

The only downside to all this is the state of my Digo fund, which is now completely spent.
===

Yesterday saw me at Glorietta to check out the all-new GM-chassis Honda City. Unlike its GD forebear, the GM's styling no longer looks like a Jazz hatchback with a trunk (still at a capacious and usefully shaped 506 L) hurriedly grafted to its rear. Indeed, it's different enough that it doesn't share the GE chassis code of the new Jazz. The car is gorgeous, well-equipped and looks like a slightly smaller FD Civic; however, the price is not quite as pleasant. Its price encroaches dangerously close to FD Civic territory, and at PhP806,000 is even a few thousand pesos more expensive than the top-flight GE Jazz. The car itself is great, though, and deserves to succeed.

===

Finally I got not just one pleasant surprise, but two, in today's Jazz and City United monthly EB. Forced-induction pioneers Rico and Ken invited me to hitch a ride on their boosted rocket sleds. As Rico wound the engine to 5000 RPM, with 8 psi of turbo boost jamming into the cylinders and hissing like a vacuum cleaner on steroids, I was astonished at how the GD Jazz could handle such acceleration and speed. The sheer muscle these two silver hamsters had defied all my expectations---I had a hard time believing these started life essentially the same as Aibo!


We screamed along the Kalayaan flyover, dashing past cars with no need for downshifts, such was the torque of these blown L13A3 motors. Ken's Jazz sported TEIN Super Compact coilovers, one of my erstwhile dream mods. I got to sample their ride for the first time, fully expecting my backbone to be jarred stiff and silly...but it didn't happen at all! Even while seated at the back, a problem area for the GD Jazz, the TEIN dampers just kept the forces of the car's body at bay while delivering quite the supple ride. I daresay it even rode better than Aibo's stock suspension. Maybe I should reconsider getting these...

Maybe I should be a mechanic...

Ever since I got my car, scratch damage and all, I've always wanted to address the blemishes it sprouted on its rear end. One of these was the cracked right rear taillamp, obviously held together by a repair job of glue. Not only that, but I also wanted to increase my car's visibility at night by adding to the lit surface area of my car's rear end. The lower third of the stock taillamps remains unlit at night and just acts as a dim reflector.

My friend Jobert from Jazz-City United just so happened to get rid of his "rare" LED taillamps for the pre-facelift Jazz. He wanted to update his Jazz's rear end to look like the facelifted version, so I bought his old units for a song. I got the pair for PhP5,500---cheaper than buying just one non-LED taillamp from Honda itself.

A few months ago, I had downloaded the Fit/Jazz electronic shop manual thanks to a link provided by the Jazz-City United crew. I thought it would be a waste not to use it, so the taillamp install became my very first DIY job on my car.

So off I went, screwdriver in hand, dismantling the rear bumper of the car, then proceeding to dismount the stock taillamps. Due to not having the right wrenches, one of the surprisingly soft taillamp mounting nuts (which I had to reuse for the LED ones) gave in under the force of my hand on the open-end wrench I used. At this point I was afraid I'd turned DIY from "do it yourself" to "destroy it yourself." Luckily, Jobert offered me a hand with his tools the next day, and with his sockets and tighter wrenches the stripped nut finally loosened.

It took a little longer than expected, but now that familiarity has set in, I figure I could do the whole job in under two hours. My fingers ached and my thighs got tired after the lengthened install, but they couldn't remove my pride from my work, installing taillamps that will never burn out and will shine much brighter than ever before.

HCP: Do I know you?

Lately I'm beginning to regret ever having returned to Honda Club of the Philippines.

Or should I refer to them as the Honda CULT of the Philippines?

Well whatever. When a club is made out of people who are so easily indoctrinated into thinking whatever Honda makes is automatically the best ever, that's kind of scary. While I like Honda as a brand, I'll be the first to admit not everything associated with them is automatically great. I get the feeling that if I speak out against Honda or its cars in any way I'll get hostile responses from the "cult."

In the span of time I was gone, the people in HCP have really changed. It's as if I barely know any of them. I'm currently reviewing if there's any advantage at all in staying active---the only thing that comes to mind are the wonderfully accommodating Audio people.

Mechanical temptation has beckoned yet again...

...and this time I've given in.

Last November I wrote about how tempting it was to buy parts for my Jazz. At the Jazz-City United EBs I'm the only guy who has an almost-completely stock ride. Not to say that the Jazz is a terrible car in stock form---I love it to bits---but there are a few areas where it could get better. It's no secret that my dad and sister find the Jazz's ride harsh, for instance.

So began my yearning for suspension modifications. According to fellow JACU members, even fitment of lowering springs already soothes the restless stock ride. I did my reading and learned that just fitting lowering springs on stock dampers will just not do, unless I want the stock dampers to go kaboom in a few months' time. Coilovers---a matched set of springs and dampers---are the best and most hassle-free way to go, but are very pricey.

Fast forward to tonight. I found Gustav, a moderator/acquaintance from HCP, selling his slightly used TEIN Basic Wagon coilover set for 2/3 the brand-new price. He and his wife were arguing about the ride height---he wanted to ride low, she wanted to ride high. He decided to refit his stock suspension as a compromise.

Long story short: I made him a deal and I'm on my way to owning them.

I'm about to blow a very large amount of money, so I'm a little nervous about the worth of this modification. My consolation comes in TEIN's solid reputation over the years.

I should take photos of my car's present ride height...and I can't wait until Monday.

Meeting the ladies of the Girl Racers Club

I was at the Fort Strip again this afternoon for Jazz-City United's monthly EB. This month's meet was a little more special: it was a joint meet with the now-famous Girl Racers Club.

Francis, one of our moderators, had the presence of mind to note two records held by this event. This was by far the meet with the most attendees at the earliest time, and 95% of them had no one else with them. I guess that's what a little "incentive" can do for EB attendance...

Anyway, I've always been a little hesitant about reaching out to the GRC ladies online. Let's just say I have my reasons. I'm happy to report though that the handful of members that did show up (today was a Sunday after all) were quite all right. They even found us "disappointing" because we were too shy.

After the EB proper, Jobs, Steve, Andrei and I hied off to Pier One for an early dinner with the rest of the GRC ladies. I got to meet Cherish, Chalie and Jackie.

All in all, a nice day.

I should cut down on these trips a little though...the expense is eating into my bank account. Heheheh.