I’d like to start by extending a HUGE thanks to Ron Adams of Visual Assault for this massive website overhaul. We have a spinning globe of links, blogs, a forum and lots of web hits thanks to him. What other car shop has all of this stuff? I honestly think that we have the coolest website. Thanks Ron.

Shop News

This has been a good month for us, better than last year which is probably a surprise to some. Everyone has been working very hard here at the shop. We all seem to be falling into positions that we can excel at as individuals as we progress as a business.

Nick is killing it on wiring. We’ve been inspired by Bill’s work over the winter and Nick has taken his training from school to the next level. He’s currently working on Ron’s Autronic wiring and Will’s Megasquirt. Both will be done this week.  Scot has been scoring perfect 50-50s on cornerweighting since day 1 and has also been pressuring Bill and I to conform to his professional race habits of making log books and taking tire temperatures. We’re very lucky to be surrounded by people who really care.

Ron and I have come into a good URL for a potential car forum. The story is sort of funny but I won’t tell it here. It’s www.Evo-m.net We were thinking of making a new forum that was entirely photo based. Users could respond to text threads introduced by moderators/admin using only photos. We were thinking of also pitching it as a forum for homologation cars, all types of sports cars that are designed for racing and refinded throughout a production run, like BMW E30 M3 for example. We know that a lot (okay, all) of our customers work on computers and that we have some SERIOUS talent in our customer pool. What do you think of this idea? I’m starting a thread on our DSG forums and we’ll go in the direction of whatever feedback we get. By using photos only we were thinking that people could get creative in how they wanted to communicate. It would be challenging and also avoid arguments between users. We would probably need posters to host their own photos though. Might be a snag.

Some quick tidbits include

• Ron’s Website World Time Attack (www.wtac.org) is gaining ground in the forum world. It’s a great resource for what’s happening RIGHT NOW in Japan.

• Nik, founder of Redline Time Attack paying a visit to the shop and enjoying beers with the beer team on Thursday night

• More and more 2008 STI in for tunes. It seems that they are starting to sell.

• Wicked-Big planning for the Wicked Big Meet. We are title sponsors for the largest gathering of Subaru in the World. Wicked Big Meet In our third year of sponsorship, we will continue our unspoken obligation to out perform the previous year’s effort.  We have some surprise guests and some cool cars to display- stay tuned on that.
• lots of Evo motor work. We have seen more Evos in the shop this month than ever before.

New Products for this month!

• Tomei releases their new Fuel Pressure regulator. It is the same as Sard which happens to be the only one’s we’ve ever recommended or used! The good news about this is that we don’t have to buy them from Japan now. We can buy them from a reliable and close business partner. We will have some in stock this week and they cost $120 with either Barb or AN6 fittings.

• Endless Vita Nuova brake pads for street and Auto-X. We will be stocking these pads as an improved alternative to my old favorite the Hawk HPS. The Endless are quieter and are rumored to last longer. The initial bite is very good and they won’t fade on the street, no matter how hard you’re driving.  The cost is virtually identical to the Hawk for an Evo or STI application at $105 front/$105 rear We will be testing their less expensive  S-Four Fluid at hillclimbs and even at the track to see how it compares to Motul RBF600.

Team Sponsorship News

Most of our free time after working hours during March was spent working on our race cars and on establishing partnerships for racing for 2009. We are very happy to announce that our efforts weren’t for naught. We have been so lucky to have BFGoodrich, a company who’s products we’ve been buying and using for years, sponsor us.  What I mean here specifically is that it’s easy to get sponsored by young companies, or even by companies who have inexpensive product (just look at what some teams are using) but it’s hard to get a relationship started with a company that has been involved in motorsports for so many years, developing and producing a quality and competitive product. We are very thankful for BFGoodrich and we think that these competitive Gforce R1 tires will be a major step in the right direction for our team.

In other sponsorship news, cutting edge menswear company Rogue Status has provided the team with clothing to wear at events in 2009. Thanks to Jasper and Rogue Status! www.roguestatus.com

Evo II news

My Evo is ready to run now. Scot has graciously offered to help me align and balance it. (we are now offering alignment services to race car customers to go with our previously offered corner weighting. It will go back on the dyno for the first time in a year for a retune. I have swapped the cylinder head and intake manifold to the original one. I was using a Galant VR4 cylinder head last year.  Matt and I are interested to see what, if any change this creates.

The first event for the Evo is at Ascutney in VT. ( www.hillclimb.org ) That race is on May 14-16 I think. Pierre J. will be coming with his Evo VIII, Tony with his Evo X as well as some other friends who will also be racing there. We invite anyone who wants to join us to come, competing or just spectating.

I think that’s all I’ve got. Before I go I’d like to also thank Austin for his recent computer upgrade at the shop. We’d probably be using slate tablet invoices if he weren’t around.

-Alex