Test Shooting in Manhattan

Tuesday 04 September, 2012 | By Ken

With SNTRL’s coverage of The PreGame and Wekfest East dropping on the site now and in the next couple of days, I just wanted to post up a few pics from some of our test runs for The PreGame. The days leading up to Wekfest East weekend, had us excited and in full-out planning mode with friends of ours from Chicago coming into town for the big show. We wanted to be sure to give them a taste of what NYC had to offer both from our city itself and from our enthusiast. But as we all know, the city streets can be very unforgiving. Putting together the safest route required driving through the city while noting all potholes, dips, wavey ashpalt and construction zones in the proposed routes. We also attempted to keep the meet to a reasonable number of 50 cars combined, inviting vehicles that would fit in well for group photos, but I’m a realist. We all know how things can quickly change, for better or worst. Being thorough in our planning is key. Even after we spent a couple of hours every other night for a week and a half-driving through the streets of Manhattan in my EVO, it still would not be the same as actually driving through the route that we had come up with, unless we had other true static cars, come on a drive-thru with us.

Posting on facebook is always a quick way to get a nice response. A test shoot along with the drive-thru? Sure, why not. At last minute notice, Vinny brought his Forester, Eddie brought his Fit, Sean brought his slammed and recently turbo’d S2000, and TMinus invited his friend with a lowered M5. Together, we would do a test-run of The PreGame.

I was looking forward to everything going smoothly with the route we had come up with, just based on the fact that we were very meticulous with the planning. But as always, “ish happens”. And this time was no different. Unfortunately, for Sean, his s2000 was super-slammed before going turbo. After the turbo had been slapped on, the 3-inch downpipe sat a good inch lower than the lowest point of frame. The width of two fingers could not fit between the downpipe and the street. Thats how low we are talking about. So when Sean was on his way to Manhattan from Long Island, along with his good buddy Evan, who is also an author on SNTRL, Sean happend to drive over a manhole that was slightly protruding out of the street level. Thanks to that incident, the vband clamp got ripped right off. They were able to make it to the meet-up-location on 53rd and 6th, but the downpipe had been dragging on the street while they made their way to us. I’m wondering if someone happend to get a pic of the sparks coming out from under this the slammed s2000.

Thanks to team work, more than once that night, Sean was able to join us for most of the cruise. His downpipe had been tied-up first with some speaker wire. But after that had gave way and dropped the pipe back to the street, a lucky find of a spare jack and a metal cord on the streets of NYC helped to temporarily get the s2000 back home to Long Island.

All-in-all, we found success with the route. And it would never have been possible without true team work! Shout out to the SNTRL Fam and friends that put the time in to plan this all out, including Edwin, Pravan, Dale, TMinus,and Chris for going through the actual drive-thru-route planning as well our static friends who trusted us to go through the route we had planned. Enjoy the photos!

Photo Cred: P R A V A N Photography | Kenny Bascon

About the author

Co-founder, Managing Director, Photographer, and editor for SNTRL. To many in the Tri-State, Kenny aka "MAD JDM" needs no introduction. Always out there, always ready, always down.


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TEAM PROCEED

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SNTRL IN CHICAGO: <BR/>A day in Chi–town
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