Here’s the blog post about my (probably) most exciting event of this whole trip : Miatas at the Gap. It was their 20^th anniversary of the event and we were over 500 Miatas in that 11 mile with 316 curves. Let me tell you, it was amazing! It’s a small coverage, simply because I tried to enjoy the thing more than having to think about making this blog post…

It was a 330 miles drive from Charlotte, and outside temperature was crazy hot.

I’ve had my car washed because I like to show off 😀

The event lasts from Thursday to Sunday. I arrived on Friday noon, but did not miss much! I first stopped at Andrews Brewery for some refreshments :

After relaxing from this long drive, I decided to hit the Dragon’s Tail. It’s known as one (if not THE) most dangerous road in USA. I think it was really the case, because during the weekend, at least 5 Miatas crashed and one even fell off a cliff. Scary stuff.

I did not take much pictures during the weekend, unfortunately. The photographs (expecially Killboy) took most of the awesome pictures of my car during high speed cornering:

The Nielex Knuckle Support and ACRE Light Sports Brake Pads really made a difference to the car and it was great to have these items installed at the gap. I felt the rigidity during cornering and the extra power the brakes made. It was totally worth it and gave me a solid advantage on this road. I just wish I had better tires, because they were used over their limits. I’m not racing the car usually and they are perfect for my type of driving, but in the curves of this road, I would definitely have benefited from better grip.

I also had the chance to meet a new legend in the Roadster community : Sam! He’s asked me many times to get him a Garage Hundred-One Widebody Kit and I finally gave up and hooked him up. He also bought the Zeromotive NA Hood and Jet Stream Turn Signal Intakes to add some styling to his ride. Here you are :

The car is really legendary looking and has a Honda K engine swap from KMiatas. They are really good guys. I also met the people at V8Roadsters and many other vendors and customers during this trip. It was awesome.

Even though I did not take many photos, I did a lot of GoPro videos of my driving at Deal’s Gap. Here are two of them showing how many curves there are. I really had problems during cornering due to my greasy tires (Yokohama S.Drive) and, most of the time, stayed in 2^nd gear to be on the safe side and not end up down a cliff, or into the opposite lane.

Video 1 : REV9 ND + Brian’s NC + Chad’s FR-S (both of them are on RE71R tires)

Funny thing is that I met these guys during a stop I did to adjust my camera. One went at me and asked me if I was the “REV9 guy”. We rode the whole weekend together~

Video 2 : REV9 ND following (loud) Hayabusa & ZX10R

I met these gentlemens after chasing them with the ND. They were super cool and one of them really had one hell of a loud exhaust. I’m glad they were here to make the slow cruising bikes move over so we could enjoy the road.

Funny thing was that on the first video, my friends told me that they were pushing their cars, but on the very safe side, where their tires were not pushed to their limits. I was pushing mine to the limits and really got scared a few times. As for the bike chase video, it was real fun to see that the ND could follow them without too much problems, especially in cornering. I’d like to see how it is using better tires. Anyways, my MPH suffered a bit during this trip compared to what I’ve been doing in the past.

I’ve also had the chance to meet a new bike friend; Mike. He knew how to drive his ride and I really couldn’t follow him as he was much faster than me. My tires really suffered on this run.

It was lots of funs, and you can see the video below:

It was an awesome event and I even made friends at a random hotel in Robbinsville. Those Miata people were just hanging in the parking lot at 3:00 AM and I asked them if I could hang out. They answered positively, gave me a chair and a small gift… Moonshine.

I did not turn blind, so I guess it was good stuff. They were awesome people and I couldn’t thank them more for the time we’ve had. It was fun.

At one point, I had to pack up and say good bye to the dragon. Packing in this little car ain’t the easiest thing to do…

I’m so glad I made new friends during this event, and hope I’ll be able to meet the again in the future years.

Here are some more photos for your viewing pleasure. I’m now preparing my blog posts about my visit at Atlanta! Check out our full trip at our Roadster Trip blog section!

I’m really sorry for the late update. I’m writing this as I’m about to move to Birmingham, Alabama. I thought I’d have time to keep you all updated, but I wanted to enjoy this trip a bit so forgot about this whole writing thing. Now, I’m pretty much up to date with my work and I’ll try to post all updates for the blog posts today.

Here you go…

After leaving New Jersey, I moved 2 days to Virginia Beach, at some friend’s house to cool off and explore the city with locals. It was just a few hours drive and I was now at over 700 miles driven in this trip:

I really enjoyed this moment and just tried some good beers and saw a (free) concert of Third Eye Blind. That was a nice look to the past. Car got super dirty from staying under trees, but with all the driving I’m doing, it does not really matter anymore.

I then headed out to Charlotte, NC. As usual, many stupid things happened to me, because I’m not the luckiest person on Earth. First thing that happened was for me to pay for a car wash that my car wouldn’t even clear:

This is a very stupid system. I had to back off the whole single-land road and dry my car while not being reimbursed because I typed the numbers on the keyboard.

Car was all wet.

When I arrived near Charlotte, I stopped at a shop to have my car dynoed and have a few parts installed. First of all, the dyno : I wanted to have a baseline of my car before I start going too crazy on modifications. Right now, I have only an Odula Air Filter, Autoexe Sport Induction Box and Fujimura Gentle Sound Exhaust. I will make full review of these parts after my road trip, into the ND Shop Car section. Here are the results:

First pull was doing 134whp & 134wtq, but the warmer it got, the less it made. Please note that the outside temperature was 38 degrees Celsius (or 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit)… so it was extremely hot. The Autoexe Sports Induction Box pretty much makes an open filter under the airbox and is not the best modification to have in hot environments. I normally live up north (Canada) where it’s cold, so it’s perfect for me, but not for the North Carolina, it seems. Still, the curves were pretty impressive showing maximum torque at 3700RPM and maximum power at around 5700RPM. Car is very solid and nice to drive… and makes 40mpg!

Here’s a video for your viewing pleasure:

The other things I’ve had done at the shop was to finally raise my car’s suspension (by about half an inch, or 1cm), change OEM brake pads to ACRE Light Sports Brakes and install the Nielex Front Knuckle Support. Let me tell you that now the car really feels like it should. The brake pads give that extra power it needs to feel more aggressive and less “old man’s” car. The Knuckle Support makes the front end super stiff during turns and really makes the steering of the car different. This is a very short review of those 2 parts, but I’ll also make a good writeup about them in my ND Shop Car section later (after more mileage is put on them). My friends at SB Garage also did a review on the Nielex Knuckle Support and seem to like it as much as I do!

I’ll now prepare the blog post for my visit at Miatas at the Gap in the border of North Carolina and Tennessee (Dragon Tail). This was one awesome event. I hope you’re enjoying the read on my USA Roadster Trip!

Recently, for some personal reasons, I really needed to go out of my place and see new things. I go to Japan quite often for business, and absolutely love it, but I have my absolute favorite car (2016 ND Roadster) sleeping in my garage all year long and wish I could drive it every time I’m travelling overseas. Before I wrote this blog post, the car had about 4000km or 2500 miles on the clock). I recently decided I’d do a ~8000km road trip in the USA to put some mileage on this car and also cool off from the recent stressful months we’ve had at REV9. For those wondering, I am still working while I’m on the road, it’s just on a different schedule.

I plan on doing some REV9 Night Meetings at different locations to meet customers and other people with nice Roadsters during my trip.

I left straight from Quebec, Canada and drove through the Adirondacks:

It was my first long drive with the REAL Japan Leather Steering Wheel and I gotta say that I absolutely loved it. The perforated leather really makes a difference in feeling and it’s just great. Looks awesome, too!

The quality is like 10 times better than the stock steering wheel. The D-Shape is not so noticeable and it’s actually a very nice thing. Much thicker than stock. After that, I’ve caught a very bad storm (rain & thunder), but, luckily, I did not drive through the worst part of it and ended up seeing this awesome sunset:

I gotta say that the 2.0L is extremely efficient. With a full tank of 91 octane, I did an average of over 39mpg driving at around 65-70mph. Computer is also pretty accurate.

I really did push that “range” to the maximum, having to fill up the car a few miles after it hit the “0 miles left”. Not going to do it again…

570 miles later, I did my first stop in New Jersey! It was a long 10 hours drive and I really had to stop.

Here is my schedule for the next month or so (which is pretty much not going to change):

July 26^th-27^th : Virginia Beach, VA

July 28^th : Charlotte, NC

July 29^th-31^st: Deal’s Gap (Tennessee/North Carolina)

August 1^st-2^nd : Atlanta, GA

August 3^rd : Birmingham, AL

August 4^th-5^th : Houston, TX

August 6^th-7^th : Austin, TX

August 8^th-9^th : New Orleans, LA

August 10^th : Atlanta, GA

August 11^th : Charleston, SC

August 12^th : Virginia Beach,VA

August 13^th-14^th : Ocean City, MD

August 15^th-17^th : New York, NY (I’m probably not going to be using my car in this location)

August 18^th-19^th : Boston, MA

August 20^th : Burlington, VT

This is mainly a trip for the East Coast of USA. I wish I could do the West Coast, but I’m really short on time and plan something MUCH bigger for 2017 (aka REV9 10^th Anniversary). If you would like to meet up and see our shop car, or help us arrange a meeting at one of the location we’re doing, you’re more than welcome to send us an email or comment this post on Facebook! The main goal of the trip is to attend Miata At The Gap on July 29^th to 31^st.