drivetofive

Odometer (Legend coupe):  573,000

That took me long enough.  The Legend coupe was at 572,XXX ever since getting back from Florida last October.  I was getting sick of that 2 staring me in the face.  I’ve been plugging away over here in my director chair coming up with content for YouTube.

Except, I don’t just occupy a director chair.  For a total of 9 episodes now, I’ve taken each car in the collection and cleaned it, prepared supporting documentation, filmed it, edited the footage, and uploaded it.  I’ve scheduled releases through the beginning of June, each Saturday.  That was a lot of work but it’s also been super rewarding.

The Legend video has made it into 2 news articles (Motor1 and Carscoops) and even an article in Germany.  As I type this on Wednesday April 22nd, the view count has surpassed 120,000 in just the 3 weeks it’s been live.

Here are two more uploads exclusive to the blog since they won’t be public on the channel for a while.

Integra SSBP GS-R Video

RL Video

I also took a little bit of time to put together a summary video of the 15-year history of the National Acura Legend Meet.  This 5-minute piece captures select highlights from each year of the event starting in 2005.

The other day, I was rummaging through my case of printed car pics.  Back in the day, I used to have all my media printed up at Walmart.  I have hundreds of photos in plastic organizers, split out with dividers according to model, month, and year.  This shouldn’t surprise any of you.  But I came across a couple of photos from 2004 of my 1989 Prelude Si – the first Honda that really got me hooked – and it prompted me to do a little more digging.

These pictures show my friend Branson holding a camcorder and recording the scene.  We were looking at my then-wrecked (former) Prelude at a salvage yard in St. George, Utah.  We just happened across the car coincidentally.  I’d sold it about four years prior, and the new owner was rear-ended which ultimately was the demise of the car.  To this day I still have the rear “H” emblem off the trunk lid in my display case at home.

Anyway, I was determined to find the footage that Branson filmed that day.  And I did.  Below is a video showing the scene.  It opens up to October 30, 2004 when he and I were swapping wheels on a newly-purchased $700 project car, a 1991 Legend L coupe 5-speed, that I’d purchased from my friend Mike to use as a “winter beater” while I was going to school at Utah State University in Logan, Utah.

The video then cuts to Branson’s footage of the Prelude.  Next it takes you through some other things like me attempting to start detailing that $700 pile of junk.  Some things never change.

Below is another video from the same “Hi8” cassette tape that I found interesting.  It contains test drives of my 1986 Chevy Celebrity with 194,000 miles (displayed as 94,000) when I bought the car back for a brief moment of time in spring 2005.  It also has a clip of driving the Legend coupe.  It had about 165,000 miles on it at the time and as you’ll notice, it had the “TCS” (Traction Control System) light in the gauge cluster illuminated.  I remember that being because of a faulty TCS Control Unit, which was fixed later in September of that year.

Perhaps most interesting from this video though is that it has a brief walkaround of the 2000 Acura 3.5 RL, which I ended up buying back earlier this year after it had been passed around the family for 14 years.  The RL at the time of the video clip had only 23,880 miles on it.

Today, it has about 212,000.  Thankfully, it looks about the same cosmetically with the exception of now having the factory 16″ wheels on it instead of those awful aftermarket chrome 17’s.  You’ll also get introduced to our family cat, Gizmo, who is long gone.

Video quality has come a very long time over the last 15 years, hasn’t it?

I’ve crossed a few more home-improvement projects off the list in the last couple of weeks, including something I’d been meaning to do for a while.  Below you’ll see the last addition to the garage:  A sign for my (pretend) dealership.  The lettering is made from 3D foam from a company in LA called Front Signs.  I told them the design I had in mind, supplied the artwork, and they mailed me a box with everything I needed including the template to get everything installed in proper alignment.

The letters came in plain black so they needed to be primed, painted, and clear coated.  The whole process took a couple of weeks because I ordered all the supplies online as opposed to breaking my quarantine and going to the hardware store.  Additionally, the lamp you see there was ordered on Amazon and I had to run the power cord through the garage cabinet in order to get it wired up and working.

Here’s how it played out in a 1-minute video.

The next garage to get more work will be the ‘west’ garage which is begging for some custom flooring and paint.  All in due time.

A friend tipped me off on an article that showed up in the February 2020 Japanese magazine called Honda Style.  The magazine reads “backwards,” in other words, the pages flip from left to right instead of right to left.  The SH-AWD 1997 SLX that was part of last year’s RADwood build made a 3-page article!  I ordered 2 copies of the mag and sent one of them to the Public Relations team at Acura.

Lastly, a friend in Seattle hooked me up with an ‘actual’ 1992 GS-R window sticker, although it’s missing a chunk.  This helps as a point of reference either way, especially when coupled with the replica that Jason helped me with a couple of years ago.

Hope everyone is having a safe and enjoyable week out there.  Take care.

This entry was posted on April 23, 2020 at 6:58 am and is filed under House, Integra, Legend, Milestones, NALM, Prelude, RL, Throwback. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.