After some questionable weather recently, last night turned out to be clear and dry which allowed us to make our way over to Grey Eagle for another meet. There likely aren’t too many more to come this season so we’re trying to make the most of the ones we have left. It would appear that the casino is wrapping these up as there were no tents set up last night to provide food and drinks, but part of the lot was still roped off to save a spot for a large number of cars and enthusiasts to arrive and hang out.

As well, Chinook currently seems to be out of the question as security there is less than pleased with some of the revving, drifting, fly-bys and general disturbance caused by some. Hopefully they’ll eventually let us back in but despite our trying to contain and stop the antics this year we are all unfortunately looked down upon right now. I’m trying to be as nice as possible in describing the cause of this situation, but to sum it up – some foolish individuals went and ruined it for the rest of us. Thanks a lot.

But that’s not what I want to focus on here. This post is not to be a rant about the Chinook meets being cancelled for now; rather it’s about Grey Eagle last night, and one car there in particular.

Warning: The following content may not sit well with all viewers. Viewer discretion is advised.

A few of us arrived a bit early so as to secure some parking spots together and get as much time at the meet as we could. It was a little later in the night when we saw some of our friends arrive and once they found some spots we headed over to say hi and to check out the cars – the grey BRZ in particular was the one that we were interested in.

It was Levi’s BRZ – it has been seen here before but not with a matching set of TE37s. The fronts were fitted a while ago but the rears had been causing trouble so the car was usually seen on two different pairs of wheels. Based on the camber, you can probably figure out why there were issues. The TEs, when combined with the adapters to allow them to fit the BRZ, had an extremely aggressive sizing and would not fit on the car without some serious poke. More parts had to be ordered to increase the range of adjustment of the rear suspension (more camber and toe adjustment were needed), but even with those installed the tires were still fouling on the car.

The final requirement was a narrower set of tires and with that the last two TEs could be installed and clear the quarter panels. A final alignment is still to come to fine-tune it all but the car was able to be driven to GE and we were eager to check it out.

I’ll say it right now – the camber is too much for my personal taste. Does that mean I hate it though? No. Having been following Levi’s struggles in trying to get all four wheels on the car, I was glad to see he stuck with it and through some trial and error (and a lot of waiting for ordered parts) he finally got the wheels on before the end of the season. That said, I think a set of flares (Rocket Bunny fanboy here) would look pretty good, and they would allow the camber to be reduced. But that’s just me.

The reason I’m posting this is because I’m glad to see that it finally came together for Levi and he didn’t give up despite the headaches. And while it’s not necessarily to my taste, I understand what he went though to get here and can appreciate that. I wonder what’s in store next for the Toyobaru?

-Bill