It has been so long since you guys have had an official update on the Poke Swagg Shop website! I'm so sorry for that! However this didn't happen without reason.
I have been BUSY. Very busy...
Our last official update was Jan 31st, which just honestly makes me laugh like crazy...
It has been basically years of work, design, collaboration, grinding, blood, sweat, and tears all condensed into the past several months. Looking back on January feels no different to me then looking all the way back to our first ever vintage box break at the Poke Swagg Shop in 2021!
(which was Team Rocket Unlimited by the way lol)
First of all, I moved from California to Connecticut. Which essentially is as far I could have went in the United States so yay me for all the head aches!
The Race Car is still in California and is with my dad as we finished off building this incredible beast.
We took delivery of the Formula Continental Race Car on March 6th 2023 of this year. It was an incredible experience and its such a blessing to share this whole journey with my dad and his team at Eliminator Insurance. They are half of this project, without Eliminator, there is no race car. So shoutout to everyone at Eliminator Insurance!
Although it appeared to be all smiles, when we got the car we realized that we had a lot of work ahead of us. Honestly we felt very overwhelmed. The car came in much worse shape then what was lead on through photos, phone calls, texts and videos. We had a lot of complications with the seller of the car. He treated us very disrespectfully, especially me. He blew up on me and was very ignorant, rude and childish. I held my breathe and pride and just tried to get through the situation to get my car. I could have asked for a refund and unwound the whole deal but I needed the car, I wanted the team, and these cars were seemingly impossible to find and lock down at this point.
Once we took delivery of the car and had a minute to get our bearings we started diving into the massive headache this car had to offer. Every single thing with this project, from its inception all the way to today has been monumental issues, upsets, set backs, challenges, and pressure.
Every inch is a mile, literally. However these challenges don't come without a silver lining. Every obstacle my dad and I have been able to overcome has built so much knowledge, passion, confidence, and drive. We feel at this point we can conquer almost anything. When you pray to god to give you strength, I think he brings you tough days to conquer to build that strength. I believe he did that here. Pressure creates diamonds and we will shine!
Specifically with the car, the first thing to overcome was removing the wrap. It was very important to be as narrow minded as possible through this project so that we wouldn't get overwhelmed. I told my dad at the beginning; "Theres literally hundreds, if not thousands of steps to this. So let's take it strictly one step at a time." So that is exactly what we have done, and will continue doing moving forward. Without that code of law for us honestly we would have never made it.
Check out this video of me talking about how horrible of a condition the car came to us in!
Once we had the wrap removed for the most part it was time to move onto the other things. We needed to restore this car. One thing that was driving me absolutely crazy from the beginning was how awful the suspension was. It was atrocious, and honestly for no good reason. The suspension just needed to be repainted. It was super simple and easy. Probably the only easy thing that ever happened with the car, but it made a massive difference! So I gave it a shot and I was really bad at painting it so my dad stepped in and it came out great! There was so much unnecessary duct tape and poor patching that they used throughout the whole car. I guess when your racing and you're in a hurry none of that matters. It mattered to us though. We wanted this car to take peoples breathe away. We replaced the awful duct tape on the suspension as well with zip ties. It's the little, thoughtful things, that all add up to make something great.
Heres some before and after photos! Note how messed up the fiber glass is....
The next major upgrade for me was finding out what to do with the wheels we had. They were so dang bad. Honestly I have never seen wheels this messed up in my entire life. I was shocked when we unwrapped them from their packaging. I gasped and looked at my dad and said "Ya we need to budget overhauling these completely over. This is not gonna work." So we did just that. however I didn't want to dive into it just yet until I had a better idea of what the car was going to look like! I needed to have a better direction with designing the wrap. I had been working on it the past month and started with the idea of having the car be a Charizard race car. I played around with many different colors and combinations. I wasn't sure if I wanted the car Red, or White, or Black. I could not make any fundamental decisions with the wrap. I just couldnt make myself happy. Nothing felt right and at "home" for me. One night I was sitting in front of my computer and I was so frustrated with myself. I said to myself "You need to pick something that feels at home. What feels at home to you? Charizard is not working. Not this time with this wrap. Something needs to change. We need to do a different Pokemon"....After coming to this realization it quickly became apparent to me that Rayquaza was the move.
I went through many arts of Rayquaza and obviously the Gold Star Rayquaza was at the top of my list. I had an insane idea for that wrap that I might possibly do one day but I decided that it just wasn't what I wanted right now. I realized I wanted a color other than black as my base color. I am a huge fan of Dark Green on Porsches and Ferrari's and I've always wanted to have that on one of my cars. So I thought that would be really cool. I've always thought that color really stood out and grabbed alot of attention, cause whenever someone was bold enough to make it their color choice, it was on something wicked.
I originally wanted to do the 2005 Japanese Play Promo Art for Rayquaza on the car and thought that would work really great with the style of this artist I was friends with. However he massively disappointed me when I approached him about the project and wanted him to illustrate the Rayquaza for the car. I offered him a generous $500 for his time and he got greedy and rude. He wanted $2000. That really pissed me off. Im no longer friends with him. I valued his time but he was straight trying to take advantage of me and didn't want to help at all. I thought we had a better relationship then we actually had I guess. That was honestly devastating at the time because I had to go back to square one with my design.
Finally I had come to the realization that the car was always meant to have the EX Emerald Rayquaza art boldly and proudly presented on the side of it. I have always been absolutely fascinated by the approach Fukuda took when designing it. Rayquaza was more like a serpent then any other depiction of him i've ever seen! He looked dangerous, venomous, fast, and proud. It was perfect. I began designing the car and quickly drew my conclusions that I had finally had a concrete direction, and I knew just the guy to help me get there.
I got in contact with MSVPokemon on Instagram. He has done my Psyduck logo for the Poke Swagg Shop before. He's brilliant and very kind. He's slow and I have to kick him sometimes to work but its very worth it. He was extremely excited about the idea and was so happy to help. It was refreshing and nice considering how my other friend treated me. I had him re-illustrate Fukuda's incredible illustration of Rayquaza in full high res to use on the car. After a hand full of messages and going back and forth for a month we nailed it.
Right away when I made the decision to go green I knew those wheels would have to be bronze. I didn't care how hard it was or how much it would cost. I had to have it. So we did! The wheels are made of Magnesium, which is an extremely lightweight metal. The problem with this material however is that when you powder coat it the wheels kind of fall apart and "Pit" everywhere. We were able to persevere through it and get them done and they came out fabulous!
Slowly but surely, things are coming together! Which leads us to the next thing. As you guys saw in the video earlier in the blog, the fiberglass is so messed up. We had to redo the whole car. Luckily my dad and I are close friends with Chuck and his son Charles! They run a company together called MSR Performance. They specialize in fabricating for high performance race boats. Some of the custom work they do includes fiber glass repair. Well ain't that lucky for us...
One phone call later and they were both on board. They worked on the car for 2 days with us for free which was so nice. They are amazing and thats why their name is proudly displayed on the rear wing of the car. As a thank you for their very generous work for us. They are such amazing friends. They helped us go over every inch of the car and make everything perfect. It was such a blessing honestly. I couldn't be more thankful to them. Me and my dad just looked at each other with our eyes wide open like "Damn we dodged a bullet there!". It was very fun and therapeutic to work on this car with them. They killed it! Thanks MSR Performance!
Once we did all of this and cleaned the car inside and out it was basically time for the wrap! We got in touch with a wrap company in Los Angeles and I worked with one of their designers there to bring the Poke Swagg Shop Race Car Design Concept to life! The design had to be translated in to so much more and adapted for 3d to be around the whole car. Once we broke it down together and went over everything for about 3 weeks, this is what we came up with!
Then the car was wrapped! We barely finished it like 48 hours before I was to move to Connecticut. We showed up to pick it up and the wrap was horrible. Honestly by far the worst wrap job I have ever seen in my life. So we took delivery of the car to get photos for marketing and stuff then returned it back to them. They wrapped it 2 more times, for a total of 3 times before they got it right. They had the car for 2 months. It really set us back. However, at least we were able to take some good photos of the car before I was to leave for Connecticut! I haven't seen the new wrap in person yet but it looks much better through the photos and videos my dad sent me.
Then we took it to our lord and savior Dave Freitas of DFR. He honestly saved us so hard and put us right back on track. Saving us months of heartache. It was finally time to dive into the mechanics of the car and we needed someone that knew what they were doing. The car had a brand new engine that had only been started once before. There was all these rules and things we had to do to properly brake in the engine and they just intimidated the hell out of me and my dad. We had so much bad luck with this car we did not want to be the ones who started it. Luckily our friend Jody helped. Jody was a previous driver of this exact car and we got in contact with him and he was alot of help. He told us about Dave. All Dave does is work on these kinds of cars with his shop, and when we presented the car to him on Facebook he was so supportive. He was so patient, kind, he listened to us and was willing to help us get on the track. We were somehow able to get a full day with Dave last minute and push all his other obligations to the side. He pulled apart the entire car and went over every inch of it. He broke in the engine. He took apart the transmission and pulled out the gears, to reassemble them with brand new ones. He changed all the fluids from the break in fluids to the proper ones for the track, he bleed the brake system and went through the whole system to make sure it was perfect. He and his assistant went through every single bolt on the car and tightened down everything. They then lowered the car. The car was raised for the delivery truck when we got it and we never lowered it back to spec, so he did that. Then he aligned the suspension and went through all the shocks at each tire and developed a maintenance plan for them based on their conditions. He really saved us here. This car would not be done without him. He did this all in one day with my dad watching him. He then took the time to teach my dad and go over everything with him so my dad could be a proper crew chief. It was amazing.
Enjoy the very first start up of the Poke Swagg Shop Formula Race Car !
Currently my dad is working on the car in California. Trying to make it as perfect as possible! I am on my way this weekend to drive it for the very first time at Button Willow Raceway on June 5th. Ill be breaking in the engine on the track and seeing where we are with the car. Im hoping I can get some hot laps in too! We will see! In the meantime I have an awesome event planned this weekend at K1 Speed in Thousand Oaks, California, where you can all come see the car for the first time in person! If you're in the area and have some free time Sunday night I would love to see you there! Thanks for reading guys! Till next time! <3
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