When it comes to modifying or even simply maintaining your ride, we're sure we can all agree that everyone would love to see a few quick and easy tips that are easy to follow and best of all, cost little or nothing. Here are a few that we've found useful in the past and remain timeless to this day. So go ahead, try a few! Got a tip of your own? We'd love to see it. Send them in tomailsack@superstreetonline.com c/o Tips & Tricks, and if you have any pictures to illustrate your ideas, please include them.

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Last month we announced a big engine build-off between ourselves and some select Source Interlink titles as part of Castrol Syntec's Top Shop Challenge, where each magazine gets to pick an engine and engine builder of choice to see which one will make the most power and maintain its longevity while on an engine dyno. We said that this would be a David versus Goliath match, so we're proud to announce our entry: the Honda Accord F22A engine, to go up against the likes of the RB26, SR20 and 4G63 monoliths. Think we're outpowered? Well, we are, but that doesn't mean we're not going to put up the good fight. Bisi Ezerioha is a champion when it comes to tuning these engines, and other single cam Honda powerplants. His expertise has won him numerous drag racing challenges and long lasting engine configurations. This month he drops knowledge on the basic outline and battle plan for our engine in the months to come.

Call me old-fashioned, but I am in a minority group of photographers who still shoot primarily film. There isn't any compelling reason why I choose film other than I like the way it looks more. Yes, I do own a digital SLR camera as well as a digital point and shoot; but they are not my tools of choice. Film, processing and storage is expensive and inconvenient. I also believe one has to be more competent behind the camera because if the shot is screwed up, post production is less likely to be able to save the work. But in the end I see it as maintaining a craft that I hope never dies.

Without a doubt, this issue of Super Street is the one that I personally have been waiting a long time to do. What you are about to see is a collection of the cars that helped and continues to shape the import scene as we know it. Ask anyone and they'll say that my roots lie deep in a Honda. A black '91 Si was my first ride, my first real love, which taught me the basics of how to work on and modify a car for cheap. In high school, that hatchback was my dream car-compact size, but had enough room in the back to make out with girls (that backseat might as well have been a motel room with all those friends who used it as a spot to deflower themselves) and man, did it look great slammed (still does) on SSR Super Fins. I later went through a JDM EG and a semi-retro DA before I gave them up to do a SR20'd 240, but still, I never lost that love for the H-badge.

Take a good look at the guy highlighted on this page: it's Bisi Ezerioha, owner of Bisimoto Engineering and several record breaking, D-series powered Honda drag race cars. Trust us when we say he knows a thing or two about building highly competitive race engines that can take a beating. We commissioned him recently to take part in the biggest battle to take place between us and our fellow Source Interlink cast members: the Castrol Syntec Top Shop Challenge, where your favorite magazines, including yours truly, Import Tuner, Modified, Turbo and Sport Compact Car (to name but a few) will be building their own engines to see how much horsepower and torque can be made over a factory-spec/base engine, as well as horsepower per liter. The winning shop will receive a whole lotta cash (doesn't $25K sound nice?) for their efforts, bragging rights like no other and even you, the reader, can register to win the actual engine once the competition is over. This is no BS; this is a real heads-up challenge that's going to put true skills to the test! Stay tuned; in the next following months we'll be highlighting our entire engine build right on up to the end, where it will be placed onto the engine dyno for the final showdown. And just wait until you see what we've decided to build; it's going to be the ultimate David versus Goliath battle!

"This thing can do a mean burnout," brags Stephan Papadakis while we're huddled around an assembly of Hondas in the parking lot of Bowls. In an exhibition that is both gratifying and nostalgic, Stephan rips a massive cloud of dense, white smoke while the scattershot of black rubber bits from his back tire are starting to hit the front of my camera lens. Had this been 10 years earlier, Stephan probably would've given this demonstration in his Civic hatchback, but today he's showing off his Ruckus scooter, the latest cultural phenomenon from Honda. With two wheels, a spirited 49cc engine (pushing a paltry 180 lbs. of total weight), an infinite number of possible customizations and a low sticker price that could fit within most student credit card limits, the Ruckus is to choppers what the Civic was to hot rods. With pockets of Ruckus owners sprouting up in places like Los Angeles, San Francisco and Manhattan, the waiting list to get one from a dealer is starting to grow.

The legend of import tuning in America began during the late '70s in Southern California when a small population of car enthusiasts began exploiting the potential of lighter and more affordable cars from manufacturers like Toyota, Nissan and Mazda. These enthusiasts were mostly young Japanese and Filipino immigrants who needed a diversion from the various socio-economic problems that plagued their local neighborhoods. They began lowering these Japanese cars, replacing the factory wheels with some shiny rims, hanging fuzzy dice on their rearview mirrors and cruising around the neighborhood streets, similar to what the Latinos did with their lowriders. It was a mere shoestring hobby relegated for the weekends and to share among friends.

Like most drivers in Japan, Ryo Michigami got his start driving the competitive go-kart circuit. At the age of 13, he won his first series championship and went on to win another the following year. While working his way up the ladder of different automotive circuits, Michigami maintained a high level of success winning the Suzuka 1000km three times ('99, '03 and '04) and the All Japan Formula Nippon in 2004 as well. Currently, Michigami drives the 5Zigen Honda Civic Type-R and previously the 5Zigen Honda Accord Euro-R (Acura TSX for us) at our Super Lap Battles on a consistent basis. He'll be back with a new wide-bodied Accord Euro R for the SLB kickoff event in Long Beach and the CTR for the finals in November.

Way back when I was in high school, driving oneself to school was a major breakthrough in the quest for coolness. My school wasn't particularly full of well-off kids; driving a Ford Probe meant you probably had a dad who came up on some Netscape stock and was spoiling you rotten. So during the summer between my junior and senior years, I worked at a local sporting goods store in hopes that I could save enough money to help persuade my mom to get me a car. Time passed, I got lucky and ended up with a '91 Honda Accord EX. It was used, had about 60k miles on it, but was in fairly good condition. For weeks I was the big man on campus, walking around with my head held high, hoping to get some female action to christen the backseat. To call me obnoxious would be an understatement. Like most 16-year-old kids with a nice stereo in their car, I was bumpin' it hard. From that point forward I had my foot ankle-deep in the stinkin' pile of automotive modifications.

My dear friends, it has taken me many years to come to this sad but very true conclusion: I am no professional race car driver, and I am almost certain that I never will be-but I'm fine with it. Driving stick I can handle, but mastering those apexes and getting my foot to do heel-toe downshifting, forget it. I realized this about myself while testing out the '08 STI, with most journalists racing around the track as if they were about to beat the lap record for an STI. All I wanted to do was drive the damn thing the way I know best: like me. No power-shifting or playing out an F1 fantasy; I just needed to drive the car on my own groove, which I did, once I let everyone pass. Don't get me wrong; I love racing, but it's the one part of car culture that I've never excelled at. I suppose that cars for me have never been purely about the way they perform, but more for the way they're styled. I can't lie; all the cars I've owned looked good-after all, didn't Agassi once say "image is everything"? It always is. Besides, you don't go to a race track to jock the way it looks going around the course; you go there to drive!

Last month we gave you an in-depth look at Lexus' IS flagship, the IS-F, and if you couldn't tell, we found it to be a smooth and powerful player. All of its 400hp neck-breaking goodness is enough to please the speed addict in all of us, and Toyota's design staff has done a good job designing it to be a notch above the standard IS 250/IS 350 by giving it a wider stance and more aggressive rear end, which is great if you're looking at it from a pure enthusiast's point of view. But how well does the IS-F compare to the rest of the Lexus family? Does it stick out like Bmw's m-edition cars? we didn't notice nearly as many heads turning when we paraded the streets of Los Angeles as with an older E46 m3 or the current m5 sedan. This got us thinking: can Lexus' reliability, combined with ultra performance, be enough of an attractor to make the IS-F a sexy contender in the super sedan class? can it make a not-so-cool guy look like a stud? we hit the Melrose district of L.A. to find some answers.

Recently, we took a trip down to the Meguiar's headquarters in Irvine, CA where Director of Training and Customer Relations Mike Pennington quizzed us on our carcleaning knowledge. Think you know how to clean a car properly? You probably don't; even we were surprised at how misinformed we were. Using the methods my own dad taught me as a kid turned out to be utterly disastrous for the paint finish on my car. According to Mike, by using old T-shirts and towels to wash and dry, I may as well have thrown sand at my car while washing it. Mike explained to us how easy it was to clean a car using simple techniques and with any type of car cleaning products, not just the ones sold by Meguiar's. While we were there, we looked on with an intense look of concentration like old guys forever trying to remember the name of a song. Mike took pause in our puzzled faces and decided it would be easier for all parties involved if he just showed us how to clean a car in five steps.

Mark arcenal www.fatlace.com What's great about this industry is that it adapts to lots of things quickly. Whether it's the latest motorsport (drifting) or the latest trend in streetwear, people take notice and run as fast as the wind trying to separate themselves from the pack.

When I first started out as a photographer I worked mostly in a darkroom making prints for hours on end until the tips of my fingers started to get tingly from exposure to cancer-causing chemicals. One by one, I'd make test strips of different negatives, then wait for a few seconds while the paper bathed in the shallow cauldron of developer while I stood bathed in a faint red light. While people who shared the darkroom with me were making prints of trees, rusty fences and other impossibly boring objects, I impatiently aited for the soft curves of a female model to appear before my eyes. "It doesn't get any better than that," my photo teacher Mr. Milton said. He often leered at my prints just long enough for me to become uncomfortable, but ended up giving me an "a" in the class, so I suppose it was worth the weekly cringe.

By the time you read this, my super-JDM rock band will have finished its first ever tour of Japan. after years of toiling around los angeles' dirtiest rock clubs, we finally got the opportunity to play in some of Japan's finest live houses. No more crappy sound and broken monitors; we'll finally have pro gear, pro sound guys, pro lighting... the works. there's a bunch of other cool stuff associated with this tour, but I'll spare you the details for now. You didn't pick up this magazine to hear me ramble on and on about a Japan tour.

I can't help it, but I still get goose bumps whenever I'm in close proximity to any level (gimme your Bs and Cs, if you please) of celebrity. At the L.A. Auto Show, the gov'na-Ahnold-strolled right past me like a breathing wax replica (he looked as bad as the Terminator replica did in the first Terminator film) with his 1,000-man entourage in tow-but man, that's the f'ing Terminator! The good people of California didn't hire Arnold Schwarzenegger (amazing that this man's last name has a spell check entry in Microsoft Word, by the way), a politician who will fight for your needs; no, they voted for a cyborg from the future who was sent back into the past to kill the man who... right, getting sidetracked. Living just minutes from Hollywood, you can bump into anyone; just ask our resident celebrity stalker and art director, Bernice, who cites her biggest sightings as Chynna Phillips and the girl who played Winnie Cooper on The Wonder Years. Right.

Still hatin' because not only is it the most misspelled month, but it's the shortest one, too. February usually brings rain, sleet, snow and frowny faces. Stuck inside without our cars, I guess you're stuck reading Super Street. Look on the bright side: at least there are only 29 days of it.

Meet The Scene's Hottest Drivers
Bisi Ezerioha and Nobuteru Taniguchi are two of the most dynamic racers in the world. Bisi, a master of chemical engineering, developed his own single-cam package to become one of the fastest naturally aspirated Hondas to power down the 1,320 without the aid of VTEC or a second camshaft. "NOB" has been a strong racing force ever since he started to compete, and remains a long time favorite of drifters and grip racers alike. To say we are proud to have both of these men highlighted in Super Street would be a gross understatement.

We Have access to a lot of information that others simply cannot get.There are two main avenues when talking about the GT-R relationship with Gran Turismo. Obviously there's the cross-marketing that we've been working on together with Nissan. We always had the GT-R PROTO, and we also featured the "masked" GT-R that Nissan used for its viral communications prior to launching the car at Tokyo Motor Show. In the downloadable demo, we had the GT-R masked. Then it was uncovered in the game, synchronized with the reveal at the motor show, and then players got the production version of the car.

It's no secret that any car labeled "Lexus" represents a milestone in a tuner's career. It's a crossover, if you will, from childhood to adulthood, from boy to man, from... uh, you get the point. It seems to have the style and presence to tempt young boys out of their Hondas, Scions and Nissans and into something much more grown up. Chris and Joan Chan are such lucky converts. Both have either owned or experimented with Integras, 240SXs and Scion tCs before deciding to build out an all-out VIP platform, this 1991 Toyota Celsior, better known to us as the Lexus LS 400.

2007 ushered in the latest generation of drifters, sending more amateur level drivers into the ranks of pro superstardom, or at least, on their way to success. Not only are we beginning to see talent rise from the least likely of places, but it's also attracting stars from Japan who had nearly fallen out of sight, thus reigniting their careers and elevating the game to another level. Joon Maeng virtually came out of nowhere to become one of Formula D's most unsung heroes while Ryuji Miki dusted off his drifting shoes for a chance to ride for Bergenholtz Racing.

July '08
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2007 ushered in the latest generation of drifters, sending more amateur level drivers into the ranks of pro superstardom, or at least, on their way to success. Not only are we beginning to see talent rise from the least likely of places, but it's also attracting stars from Japan who had nearly fallen out of sight, thus reigniting their careers and elevating the game to another level. Joon Maeng virtually came out of nowhere to become one of Formula D's most unsung heroes while Ryuji Miki dusted off his drifting shoes for a chance to ride for Bergenholtz Racing.

I've joked about it, but I never thought I'd leave Super Street and Project Car for good. I still remember the day Jonny brought me onboard and I was crammed into a cube with just a notepad. Staffers came and went like a soap opera cast, each one taking a little soul with them. Nads just left and Jonny took the reigns. Carter worked on five mags like a Jamaican while I headed Project Car. Now I must bid farewell.