The Mercedes Benz C320 wagon should have been pretty simple, but every since they implemented the dyno smog check, your car had to do more than just blow out clean exhaust fumes. Because the Electronic Stability Program (their version of traction control) was messed up on my car and couldn’t be disabled, it wouldn’t let them run it on the dyno without the ESP kicking on. The guy at the Mobile station that I went to told me that he technically could still do the smog check, but would throw a red flag if they didn’t run the car on the dyno. Great. It’s not like my traction control has anything to do with how much emissions my car puts out. Or do the geniuses that set up these rules actually think it does? Somehow I managed to disable the ESP for a few minutes and just long enough for the dude to run the acceleration tests. For some reason, I always get nervous when I’m getting a smog check. Like I’m taking a mid term in college (Yeah, I remember college) or physical at the doctor. About twenty minutes have passed and finally the guy tells me that my car had passed. Here’s the dumbest (OK, maybe not the dumbest) part, in order to save time (or paper), the smog certificate is sent electronically. That doesn’t seem like a bad idea, but they still charge you $10 for it. That’s $10 for a piece of paper that tells you the results of your smog test: carbon monoxide, knock levels, hydro carbons, and all that fun stuff that 99% of the population can’t understand anyway nor do they care. Anyhow, my Benzo passes after I drop $40 (with a coupon) and now I have to go home and pay the DMV another $181 for that 2010 sticker. One car down – one to go.

My Acura NSX isn’t nearly as simple to get smogged because it requires me taking it to a Test Only station. Those are state or government funded places that are only allowed to test your car, but not fix it if it doesn’t pass. Just in case you didn’t pick that up by the “Test Only” title. It’s lame because a lot of Test Only stations charge more even though they’re actually doing less. Isn’t that how things always work (See Mike Dunleavy reference above)? I kind of lagged on this one a bit because I hate having to find a Test Only station and one of my four O2 sensors was burned out so I had to get a new one from Hugh Le and have Will “Homer” Law install it for me when he was test fitting some DC Sports headers. I did pay the DMV registration fees in advance so I wouldn’t have any penalties, so I had to suck it up one day and go to whichever Test Only smog station had a coupon in the Penny Saver that week. That was a waste of about two hours of my life. Not like I have whole lot of other stuff going on, but I’d rather not chill at some grungy smog station. Because the C32A engine comes with direct fire ignition from the factory, a lot of people don’t know how to pick up the RPM signal on it. So trying to explain that to this guy while he clamping the pick up to every part of my motor. They could read it off of the OBD II as well, but their reader was old and kept showing a communication error. After three or four passes on the dyno, the technician pulled my car off because he still couldn’t get the machine to read the RPM. He tested an older car, I guess 1996 and under you don’t need to run on the dyno, and that hunk of crap passed. Then my car goes back onto the dyno, he finally gets the machine to read RPM, but the final stage involved linking up to the OBD II and their machine couldn’t do it. Ugh.

I didn’t want to, but I had to go to this old, grumpy Korean dude off of PCH in Long Beach to get my NSX test only smogged because I went there before and I knew he could do it. Yeah, it took me having to deal with him pushing me, grunting, and pointing at parts of my car, but it was worth it in the end. Of course, it wasn’t as easy as that. The first series of runs on the dyno, he forgot to turn the traction control off and kept messing up the acceleration test so my car failed because there were too many restarts. After another series of tests, my car finally passed and I was almost on my merry way home until I realized that he only took cash and with the $10 certificate I didn’t need, the total was $40. I looked in my wallet and only had $38 because I bought two tacos from Jack in the Box the other day and don’t carry my little bag of change with me in the NSX. I ended up having to bum $2 off some dude waiting for his car, which made me feel unbelievably ghetto. I’ll pay him back if I every run into him again. LOL.

All that hassle and this is every two years right now. I know that California wants to make older cars have annual smog checks. Not sure if it’s more the keep the air clean or just to make money off of people who can’t afford new cars. Whatever the reason, I know SEMA is trying to fight it. I’d be extra annoyed if I had to go through this nonsense more than once every two years. I understand that we need to keep this state clean, but how about putting stricter regulations on those trucks and busses that are blowing out black smoke? Just a thought. Then again, what do I know? I’m not the one who put California into debt and keep raising taxes.

My NSX at a test only smog station

Ricky “RikDaddy” Chu

rikdaddy@rikdaddy.com

Obscenely bright and early on Tuesday morning, which worked out well since I needed to move my car for street sweeping anyway, we met up at Mitsubishi headquarters in Cypress and got a quick rundown of what was going to be happening for the next six or seven hours. The main thing was that we would be stuck in traffic. Come on, hitting the freeways at 7am in Southern California is like a death wish, but we managed to creep along slowly while shooting video and trying to figure out how Billy Mays died and what they plan on doing with his beard.

Less than two hours into the drive, we had to make a premature pit stop because somebody needed a potty break already. Needless to say, all of the Evolutions lined up going anywhere brought tons of attention regardless of the fact that they were all stock. Unfortunately, the lady working at the gas station didn’t appreciate the engineering that went into these cars as much as everyone else and told us to get out of the parking lot. Back onto the 5 freeway for another few hours. Because we got a late start, which is amazing because Moe actually showed up on time, we had to skip eating breakfast at our next stop in ultra sexy Button Willow. I tried to avoid the three-hour old donuts, but I couldn’t. My stomach was grumbling and nothing could taste better at that moment than the combination of a donut and a small carton of orange juice, both warm from sitting in the car. Yummy. Rolling on the on ramp, Will tried to get a cool shot, but Mitsubishi’s Laura Arbios’ failed attempt at keeping all of the cars lined up and together made it for a less than dramatic video clip. Sorry, Laura, but I had to call you out on that one. LOL.

More crazy angles for Will while he tried to suction cup the Sony EX-1 to any flat surface on the Outlander. Oddly enough, the suction mount wouldn’t stick to the roof and Will was sticking his head out of the sunroof for quite some time trying to make it happen. Whiteman’s frohawk is back again. Our lunch stop was supposed to be at Wendy’s in Los Banos, but we ended up at Carl’s Jr. Damn. I was looking forward to square burgers too. Corrrect me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t “banos” mean bathroom in Spanish? Pretty fitting name for this city considering it smelled, looked, and felt like a bathroom at an old, rundown truck stop. Utilizing the small amount of time we had out of the cars, we grabbed quick interviews with Melvin Bautista, Christine “C Jew” Jew, and Moe Durand. C Jew is great because she just bought an Evolution 9 and got challenged to a race by Elliott Moran. Weight factor aside (C Jew = 100lbs, Elliott = 230lbs), it should be a pretty good race. They just need to bet big on it. I say loser has to tattoo “I <3 Los Banos” on their forehead. Moe was being Moe. I had to remind him to put on a Mitsubishi shirt because he was rocking a bright yellow Zankou Chicken one with some dolphin shorts. Reminds me of the days at Super Street when he’s go into meetings and round tables with his shirt buttoned up wrong and the collar folded in. Ah, the good old days.

While we continued our drive up north, it reminded me how crappy Central California was. Nothing but a lot of dirty and dead grass. Oh, and garlic.

It didn’t seem like it would happen, but we finally made it to Infineon Raceway where we were greeted by the Jim Russell staff. Head instructor Chip Pankow gave the group a quick tour of the future classroom, a breakdown of what the Lancer Evolution Experience was all about, and then told everyone to grab helmets for some hot laps with the instructors. Just before that, Moe busted out the Lancer Evolution Experience birthday cake.

Will and I went outside to shoot the stickered-up Evolutions next to the FJR50 racecar, which uses the infamous 4G63 motor. After grabbing some more clips and filling up on pizza and Mitsubishi cake, we decided that it was time to go for some hot laps.

If nothing else, the Jim Russell school does rock some pretty dope looking helmets and head socks. They looked like Snake Eyes from the old GI Joe cartoons. Wait, isn’t that movie coming out soon? I probably won’t get to see since I still haven’t gotten to watch The Hangover because it’s sold out by my house. I guess I could go in the daytime by myself, but then what kind of loser would that make me? Oh yeah. I’m jobless and sit around all day watching the NBA channel and writing complaint letters. I guess it can’t get any worse than that.

I’ve been to Infineon a couple of times for Super Lap Battle and Formula D, but I can’t recall if I’ve ever driven on the track. Will did last time with the Ford GT500 event, but that was nothing compared to this. I’m pretty sure Chip was driving, hard to tell with the helmet on, and he tore that track up in the black Evolution X MR. The class has both the MR and GSR Evos and we’re told in Super Sport mode, the MR will be faster. However, there are always people that want to go with the conventional five speed so that’s why they are there. Just some info on the Lancer Evolution Experience: it’s a one-day class that costs $1,000 and will start in August while early registration begins in July (this month). Not a bad deal if you have $1,000 and a day to spare. Most other classes out there cost a lot more and you don’t get to drive an Evolution X.

We had one more stop at Works Rally before we headed towards San Francisco and SFO where our hotel was. Fortunately, their facility was at the track so it didn’t involve more driving. Because so many people rolled up in the Evolutions that got left at the track, we had to cram everyone into the few Outlanders we had. Somehow, C Jew was the only one who jumped in our Outlander and I ended up driving down to San Francisco. Did I mention that I was really tired from waking up at 5am and driving the entire time? Driving always makes me sleepy for some reason. Someone should have penciled in a nap time somewhere in the schedule.

We finally checked into the Crowne Plaza and I noticed that I was in “murder central” – the last room on next to the emergency exit is called that because it’s an easy getaway for the killer. I saw that on an old episode of CSI (the OG one in Las Vegas, not the lame Miami or New York ones).  I also noticed that I didn’t bring any moisturizer. Yes, I’ll wait while you make bodily fluid sexual references to me needing moisturizer for my face. For dinner, we headed out 20 heads deep to BJs where I pretty much put myself into a coma by consuming Crown Royal, clam chowder, meat loaf, chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes, and some giant ice cream and cookie dessert thing. On the way back to the hotel (why was I still the one driving?) C Jew called me to tell me that she needed a bag out of the Outlander and they had to rush back to the hotel because Moe had to drop a deuce. Love

By midnight I was knocked out in my room and waiting for my 5am alarm clock and wake up call for the second morning in a row. Our fight was at 7am to Long Beach on Jet Blue. That would land us at around 8, at Mitsubishi by 8:30, and back home by 9 at the latest…or so we thought. Right when we checked in, it showed our flight was delayed for two hours. Wow, I think everyone could have used that extra two hours to sleep. And it’s not like you can just go back to sleep now that you already woke up. Just like you can’t force yourself to sleep at 9pm if you need to wake up at 5am. Though, how cool would that be if you could do both? I guess the flight wasn’t delayed because of the weather, but because the flight crew got in late last night and they get a specified amount of time off before they are allowed to work again. My goodness, I’ve never had a job like that. Everything we used to do was on a work now-sleep later basis. Their routine sounds pretty cush to me. Kind of like being a failure of an NBA coach like Mike Dunleavy who is also his own boss as the GM so he doesn’t have to fire himself. OK. Maybe it’s not exactly like that, but I had to throw that reference in there just because.

On the short, empty flight back we didn’t even get to enjoy the DirecTV because it kept freezing up so Will and I used the time to do some business planning. Will is going though all the footage right now and the video should be done by Mitsubishi Owner’s Day next Saturday. Speaking of which, does anyone want to hit Vegas on Sunday and Monday for some NBA Summer League action?

Ricky “RikDaddy” Chu

rikdaddy@rikdaddy.com

WordPress Video

The “Rally Practice” that was listed in the schedule for the first few days was just the tarmac racing in the parking lot. Sucked for us shooting, but it was even worse for the rally drivers since they would have a bunch of flat tarmac driving practice and very little in the dirt and on the giant jump. For Andrew and Team ACP, their goal was not only to win the event, but also redeem themselves for the major wreck last year where their Evo flipped end over end after landing the jump. Though Andrew managed to walk away with minimal physical injuries, his ego had to be a bit damaged. Especially with the YouTube video that has been circulated however many times. Sorry, you’ll have to search it because I am currently too lazy to link it for you.

Throughout the tarmac practice, Andrew did pretty well. And that’s saying a lot since there were a grip of top drivers out there like DC Shoes’ Ken Block, multiple time Formula D champ Tanner Foust, Red Bull’s Travis Pastrana, Dave Mirra, and Metal Mulisha’s Brian Deegan. One lame part of the day was just me being stupid. During the tarmac practice I realized that I didn’t have my car keys in my pocket or any of the 30 pockets of my Goodyear tires backpack (man, I think this backpack is dope, but sometimes I lose things just because there are too many pockets to deal with). So we’re not just talking my car keys, because my house, gate, and mailbox ones were attached as well. So even if I got a ride home to get my spare car key, I wouldn’t be able to get in. I started backtracking and filed a report at lost and found just in case. I made it all the way back to my car only to realize that I had very stupidly left the keys in the center console, meaning my doors were unlocked. Lucky for me that there isn’t a big demand for C320 Benz station wagons with bent four Privat wheels. OK. So that was my stupid deed for the weekend.

I don’t really remember eating the first day we were there. Will and I just roamed around trying to get as much footage as possible. We did, however, stop by the Muscle Milk booth and grab a couple bottles of that to tide us over until we could actually get a full meal that didn’t consist of overpriced cardboard pizza or dried up nacho cheese with stale chips. Before we bounced, we met up with Guinness Book record holder Ronnie Renner and got some shots of him talking about the sportback Ralliart Lancer that he was rolling around with. Not sure if Will took any spy shots of his girlfriend or sister, but I’m hoping he did.

Throughout the day I kept getting calls and text messages about doing a couple more videos either that same day, the next morning, the next afternoon, the next night, the morning after that, that night, or the sometime during the rally finals on Sunday. Nothing came through so we were chillen until Sunday when it came to the X Games.

Early Sunday morning they were still setting up the rally dirt course and big ass jump. I think they started practice an hour or so late, so it gave us some time to set up. Oh, it was pretty dope because Jarod DeAnda (voice of Formula D) was doing the live commentary during the racing.

ACP was one of the first cars to practice and he hit the jump hard. I mean HARD with dirt, metal, and carbon fiber flying everywhere. We stayed and shot the other cars for a bit then went to his pits to see what was up. There were a lot of fluids leaking as well as damage to the intercooler piping and exhaust. When we asked if they’d be ready for the race, they said that they had to be. It seemed like they should have delayed eliminations a bit since they started practice late, but they didn’t. We had to run back to the stands and try to nab a good spot not knowing whether or not we’d get CBed by security for shooting video.

They said that last year the ACP car flipped because he wasn’t going fast enough, but that definitely wasn’t the case for the 2009 X Games. Every jump that Andrew made was way beyond what he needed to clear the jump. Maybe even too fast since it made his landing really rough. During the break, the team had tied the Evo’s core support to another car in an attempt to pull it out and straight. At this point, there was so much damage to the car that even if ACP drove his very best, he’d have a hard time winning. That didn’t stop him from trying, but he ended up getting eliminated in one of the rounds. It’s hard to keep track of the rounds with the hour or so inbetween them while you’re sitting in the stands sweating your ass off. We should have snuck over to the street skating competition so I could remind myself that I used to be good…20 F-en years ago! OK. More like 15.

Even though the team we were following got eliminated, we tried to stay a little longer to see some more rally racing action. We got to see Ken Block go around the jump and almost cause a pretty big accident, which got him disqualified. I guess he came around the turn too slow and didn’t have enough speed to attempt the jump so he went with whatever seemed like the best option considering the circumstances.

http://www.rikdaddy.com/ssp_director/albums/album-17/lg/xgames030.jpg

Too much rally action for us so we ended up bouncing without waiting for the finals so I wouldn’t even be able to tell you who won. Then again, that’s not my job anymore anyway. LOL. I’m sure you can find the results if you really wanted to. Now if you wanted to see some pictures, you can find them in my Events Gallery on RikDaddy.com. The ACP video should be done soon. Actually, we’re finished with it on our end and are just waiting for approval so I’ll let you know when it’s up. Not sure what event we’ll be hitting next, but we’ll keep you updated if you follow us on Twitter: Will Roegge, Ricky Chu, Medium Monster.

Ricky “RikDaddy” Chu
www.MediumMonster.com
www.RikDaddy.com