Sorry for the lack of updates…again if you are on instagram and aren’t following me you probably should as you’ll get a lot more updates then I post on here, my name on there: SJKnoop

I’ve been working with Chris Sempek out of Richmond VA with developing new wheels for my drift car for the past 6-7 months. Chris is starting up a wheel company aptly named Sempek Wheels. I’m honored to have been included in his start up plans, and am rocking a set of prototype wheels I’m told are being called ‘Knoops’. The past few weeks have been a rush, with getting the new wheels in my hands and making it to one last drift event (Driftwater 16) before the end of the year (or world depending on who you ask). Its amazing to see them in real life after they’ve just existed on a computer for so long! I’ll let the pictures do the talking, video to follow shortly.

I couldn’t be happier, the wheels held up great to a day of drifting, no scratches or anything! Its been an incredible experience going from a rough concept to a real life product, I wish Chris the best and if you’re interested in a set of wheels check out his facebook page: Sempek Wheels!

I went up to Baltimore to surprise my Dad for his birthday. So I’ve been taking a bunch of pictures of their Maine Coon cat.

So I’ve been slacking pretty majorly on all things car related. Ive done a LOT of work to the daily over the past few months. In addition to paint/body work I replaced the steering rack, axles, and put PBM RUCAs and Fortune Auto toe arms on l, as well as SPL lock out washers. Here’s how she looks now!

Wow, sorry for the lack of updates! I haven’t done any drifting since April and have been doing little maintenance things to the daily (not worth documenting)…as well as lots of fender rolling. As of today the cream BBS RSs are sold on the green car…don’t worry what’s coming should blow them out of the water.

So I was finally able to do something fun to the daily S14 last week! I ordered a Stealth Custom Fab tension rod brace with the hopes that it would tighten up the feel of the front end of my daily driver S14. With the drift car being the only 240 I’ve driven in years, a completely stock S14 with coilovers feels like a floppy pile of crap, haha.

First off Jonnie Fraz, the owner/fabricator of Stealth Custom Fab, is awesome to work with. He’s very down to earth and promptly gave me a tracking number for my brace. When I got the brace in the mail I couldn’t believe how light the box was, I didn’t think it could possibly be it, but it was – this thing is stupid light weight. All of the welds looked great on it and the hardware provided is beefy as hell.

So when I got under the car to put the brace on, I was impressed it slid right in place with no effort and lined up perfectly with everything. This especially impressed me as my daily is very low and the undercarriage is less then perfect from bumping and scuffing on all sorts of different surfaces. One of the really cool things about the Stealth Custom Fab brace over say, the Nismo brace, is the double brace point that it has. This extra brace point, however, can mean a range of different things need to be done to your OEM tension rod brackets depending on what style brackets you have. Some OEM tension rod brackets have no holes in them at all, some have holes on one side, and some have holes on both sides. The brackets on my daily S14 have holes on one side but not the other, so this meant I needed to drill a hole on the other side so the bolt could fit through and thread into the brace. This part isn’t rocket science, I just used the provided hardware and tubing to line the bolt up where it is supposed to be and made some scuffs on the tension rod bracket where the hole needed to be drilled. I drilled the hole (which took like 15 mins per side as my drill bits were not the best ones…nor were they very fresh) and that was it! I loosened the front bolts on my tension rod brackets so I had a little wiggle room to get everything to thread together even easier.

Once I got the car on the ground and drove it I could tell an immediate difference. I was, and still am, completely shocked at how the brace changed the way my car feels. The whole front end feels connected now, before it felt like the four corners of the car moved separately from each other, now when I hit bumps and corner the front end will move in unison. The car turns in much quicker then it did before, and I know I have worn out outer tie rods – it feels like the front end has all pillow ball arms now! Its definitely made the car a lot more enjoyable to drive, and it feels much better put together – surprisingly extremely similar feeling to my green car (which has a full cage, corrected roll center [plus its actually higher then the daily], boxed in LCAs and tension rod braces, and an 1/8″ thick stainless steel skid plate that ties in the front subframe/tension rod braces/the front of the car). I have nothing negative to say about this brace, its 110% worth the money and time it took to install it.

I didn’t have my good camera with me for the install (its in need of some TLC), but I took some pictures along the way, as well as borrowed an image from Stealth-Custom-Fab so you can see what you get when you order it. In first picture of it on the car the brace is just sitting there in place, it fits that well. In the other early shots you can see how well machined it is, it lines up perfectly with the tension rod bolts. The next few pictures show where I drilled the hole in my tension rod brace, and the last picture shows it all installed.

Hit up Jonnie Fraz on Zilvia.net if you have any questions about the brace itself or are interested in ordering one. At $90 + shipping its completely worth it…I mean its literally a fraction of the cost of the Nismo brace, and you’ll be supporting a real live human being doing what he loves for a living.

Sorry for the major lack of updates lately! I’ve been pretty busy with the new job AND new ‘daily’ I just picked up.

Here are some photos from the past month and some change. Sumospeed had a massive turn out with our Springfest meet in early May, then there was another charity show a few weeks ago. I am also including some photos of my new daily I picked up from Lukas in FL.

Feel free to follow me on Instagram, I post stuff up on there all the time. @SJKnoop

Also, I am selling my white RSs: BBS RSs: 17X10/11 +7/-1

Courtesy of Arminas Česaitis I have an outside video from the cork screw course. I could have been way smoother with a functioning ebrake!

I had a blast though and can’t wait for Hyperfest!

I haven’t made any updates in like 2 months – sorry about that! I started a new job and got an iPhone so I’ve been doing a bunch of crap photos, I need to link it up with this site so I can make updates on the fly. Look for me on instagram if you want to follow me on there: @SJKnoop

Anyway, I went to the Drift Nirvana season opener on April 1st and have some footage from that:

I’ve also collected some photos from Dan Jenkins and Jordan Chronister.

The last photo is an edit I did off one of Jordan’s shots. Basically just cropped it a little and changed the color around a tad.

It got up into the 70s last week so I washed the S14 and took it out for some driving. I figured I’d take a few more photos of the fresh fenders….I’ll eventually get some of the drivers side as well, haha.

On a side note, got a new helmet and gloves, and also a suit. So now I just need my submarine harnesses and some shoes to do some tandem driving. I also discovered I had a broken LH axle yesterday, got the new one on the way, should be here on Tuesday. I was wondering when my 140,000 mile axles were going to give out, looks like only one of them did for now.

I picked my fenders up from the paint shop last night. Just finished slapping them on, they’re definitely way further out then they were, the shape almost matches the rear now.

I snapped these two pictures up at the gas station, they aren’t very good, but I need to put fresh double sided tape on my side skirts and wash the whole car so I’m not that worried about it.

Here’s a short video I put together, I can’t wait to drift more!!!