Stang

Thinking about swapping to meshies Kris? Here's a shot of my Ceffy in the hills yesterday...

So after doing a very rough and dodgy touch-up spray of the burnt part of the rear bumper, it was time for our first leisurely drive. It was also a good opportunity to take a few half-decent photos of the Ceffy, using my Nikon D300 digital SLR with an 85mm f/1.4 lens, which tends to give slightly better results than a low-end Canon compact. I decided to head a few kilometres along the coastline and up to Outer Harbour. Cruising along the Esplanade from Semaphore, you're greeted by sweeping ocean views as you make your way north up the Le Fevre Peninsula. There are a few open spots at Outer Harbour to choose from for taking car photos, but being a weekday afternoon near a busy port, there were lots of trucks frequently rumbling back and forth around the main roads and warehouses. So I turned down towards the boat launch ramp, which has a small road and carpark squeezed in between the export car yards and marina. It was fairly quiet, so I was able to park in the open area near the ramp to get some shots of the car. Then a few days later, took the Ceffy to church for the first time on Sunday morning, and parked it next to a mate's Toyota JZX100 Chaser, which has just under 200kw at the wheels, so it's much faster than my car, and much less dodgy looking. Photos were taken with my long-gone Canon Powershot A470 compact, may it rest in peace.

Thanks. Actually just managed to get a white bonnet from Christian Pickering yesterday, and I think a friend will help me whack that on today. Still want to touch up the bumpers and body marks further, but for the time being I will be less edgy driving around with the car all the same colour. I do quite like the Buddy Clubs, although saw an R34 sedan for sale recently with some nice Rays Gram Light 5 spokes, thought they might look good.

Saw what looked to be a maroon R32 GTR (?) with black bonnet turning off Cormack Road this afternoon, likely headed to Nisswreck where I'd just been. And also a bright orange R33 with the plates 'FLYLICE' parked at West Lakes Mall.

I'm liking that Ceffy, very tough. Would probably last about 10 seconds on the street here...

Having brought the Cefiro home the night before, the next morning I started it up and reversed out into the driveway, to take some photos of it in sunlight. After having it sit in my garage for nearly a year from June 2010- May 2011 with a repaired and resprayed rear end, when I looked at these photos again for this post, I was a bit taken aback by how much of a pig it looked when I first bought it. Mostly due to the melted and burnt rear bumper, as well as both the bonnet and boot being black. From this side it looks relatively ok. And then...yikes. Looks particularly nasty in this first photo, can't believe I drove it in daylight looking like that, even if it was only once to wash the car and pick up a few car-related bits and pieces from Port Adelaide. After taking a few photos of the Ceffy in the driveway, I headed over to a car wash at Port Adelaide to clean some of the dust and dirt off the car. While I was hosing it down, a guy from the Bob Jane T-Mart store next to the carwash came up, and said he knew the previous owner, and that at some point it had been defected and had to be taken back to stock. I mentioned that I was after some new rear tyres, as the current ones didn't have much tread left. He said that they had 17" tyres on special for a good price, so after rinsing the car off, I made the huge 30 metre road trip over to the workshop to get a couple fitted. Up on the jack in preparation for the new tyres. It was a good chance to have a bit of a look underneath the car, with it being quite low I wasn't able to see much lying on the ground when I first checked it out. With the new shoes fitted a short time later, I headed back home and parked it in the garage. The car came with a few bits and pieces, including a spare boot lid that didn't look black, although it's really more of a dark grey than black. Some pretty substantial flames came out of the exhaust at some point in time by the looks of the bumper. I've seen various rotors pop flames fairly regularly, but they don't melt the bumper like this. I suppose you don't need too many points to attach a boot lid, but I was a little surprised that there were only 4 little bolts holding it. So after a couple of minutes with a ratchet, and some awkward maneuvering holding the boot lid by myself, I got it off and laid it on the ground next to the bubble-wrapped replacement. It would have been even easier with a second person, but in the middle of a weekday with nobody else around I managed ok. I was under the impression that the spare boot lid was the same colour white as the car, given that would be the logical conclusion, and under the bubble wrap it did look white. It turned out to be more of a light grey colour, which obviously didn't match, but stood out a lot less than the blackish one. So it was the better option until I could take the car in to get resprayed properly. There were a few random stickers inside the new one. With some difficulty I held it in place while I did the bolts up tight again. So looking marginally more respectable after the change, but still has mismatched paint and the nasty bumper burn dragging it down. Some of the bits and pieces that came with the car in the boot, lots of random plastic trim pieces, as well as 600x300mm HKS front-mount intercooler. Coming up in Post #5; my dodgy stopgap bumper respray, and some decent DSLR photos of the Ceffy, taken on our first short cruise to Outer Harbour.

So after putting down a deposit on the Ceffy, I returned a couple of nights later to hand over a wad of cash in exchange for the car. I went back up with a friend in my Civic, so he could check out the car as well, and I also figured it might be a little tricky driving both cars back home myself. Following a bit of a chat about the car, getting spare bits and pieces together and signing the registration papers, Vince handed over the keys to my new Cefiro. With a little more talent than last time, (still not a lot) I eased the clutch out to reverse back down the driveway, and made my way out onto Grand Junction Road to head back to another friend's house. I did have a bit of smile on my face on the drive back, having the turbo sounds and power again felt really good. By the time I made it back to my friend's house in Flinders Park, we'd noticed that the Cefiro's left hand headlight was only working intermittently. So it was into the garage to have a look under the bonnet, and try to see what the problem was. After a bit of fiddling with the fuses and wiring, we managed to get the light working again fairly consistently, for a little while at least. The light was still going on and off for no apparent reason, so after working on and having a closer look at the car for an hour or so, I decided to head home, and take it to an auto electrician to get the problem sorted properly. It felt good to get the Ceffy back to its new home in my garage, on the drive back I was pondering what to do first, while keeping an eye on the temperamental headlight. Cleaning up the rather rough appearance was first on the list, but there wasn't a whole lot I could do in the dark, so I locked the car up, closed the garage door and headed off to bed, ready to get going the next day.

So after getting a bit excited about seeing a promising Cefiro I was going to check out, I jumped in my Civic and made my way up to Vince's compliance workshop in the eastern suburbs. After plenty of stop-start traffic heading up Grand Junction Road mid afternoon, I got to the workshop and parked on the street outside. Walking up the driveway along the main building, I caught a glimpse of the back of the Cefiro through one of the garage doors. Just seeing the wheels and stance, the first thought that came into my head was 'Yeah, I'm going to want this...' Here's a photo of the first view I got of it. Please excuse the terrible photos in this post, light was bad and I was rather distracted by looking at the car to concentrate on getting good ones. After chatting to Vince for a bit about the car, I had a bit of a closer look at both the exterior and interior, it looked pretty clean for the most part. There were a few obvious cosmetic problems in the way of the burnt rear bumper above the exhaust, some scratches and a mildly dented front left quarter panel, and the fact the bootlid and bonnet were black. But for a car that's 22 years old, you can't expect it to look like it's just rolled out of the showroom. And as I mentioned in post #1, it had a few aftermarket items which were at the level of what I wanted in a car, sans the turbo timer, drainpipe muffler and blow-off valve: -Tein coilover suspension all round -2-way mechanical diff -HICAS lock bar -Nismo heavy duty clutch -Strut braces front and rear -17” Buddy Club P1 wheels -5 stud conversion -R33 Skyline brakes -Sprint sports steering wheel -Bride bucket seat -R33 passenger seat -Apexi boost gauge -3” turbo back exhaust into 5 inch cannon -Oil catch can -Bee-R blow-off valve - HKS turbo timer The general condition of the paint and body was quite good. I looked at a Cefiro a few years ago with a friend that had a fair bit of body rust around the windows and such. I couldn't even find a hint of surface rust anywhere on the car, except for a tiny bit on the gouge in the front quarter panel mentioned above. The interior looked really nice and pretty new considering how old the car is. So after a bit more tyre kicking, Vince started the car up and let it idle for a little while to warm up the engine before driving it. Vince was actually keeping the car in his workshop for a friend who owned the car, and if I recall correctly he was in Hawaii when I bought the Ceffy. With some impressive maneuvering by Vince to squeeze the Cefiro out of its resting spot and out in the driveway, I had a bit more of a look around the car again in the open shade and sunlight, and took a few quick snapshots as a record. It's not particularly obvious, but you can see the slightly dented front quarter panel here. And here's the interior. The Bride seat is really good, holds you in quite snugly. But considering how ridiculously skinny I am, and that it's the right size for me, I'm not sure many people could drive it comfortably. But they're great in the hills, instead of straining to hold your body straight around corners, the Bride seat just holds you in the same spot. The engine bay. Couple of unnecessary stickers, a glaringly obvious blow-off valve, and missing the coil pack cover, but looked pretty good otherwise. These steering wheels are really nice to use compared to standard ones, smaller size and made of stitched leather (or maybe imitation leather). You can just see the boost gauge behind the steering wheel. There aren't heaps of places to put one, but right in front of the speedo and tacho doesn't seem like the best choice, given it blocks the view of the more important gauges. The 17" Buddy Club P1 racing rims. I tend to prefer dished 5 spoke or BBS mesh wheels better, but I do quite like the look of these. Offset is just right to have them sitting flush with the guards. As I said before, rear bumper was a bit fried from the exhaust which you can see in these shots. But that's a relatively minor cosmetic blemish easily repaired. So after having a good look around and taking some photos, it was time for me to get behind the wheel to see what it was like on the road. With a heavy duty aftermarket clutch, the pedal was a lot heavier than the one in the Civic, but I managed to slot it into reverse, and then ease back down the driveway without too much trouble. Vince was in the passenger seat, and while reversing out into the street, I commented how heavy clutches are easier to get used to than light ones. I then proceeded to almost stall the car trying to take off gently in first. While the clutch wasn't as heavy as some other cars I've driven, it engaged very suddenly and fairly high up, which made things a bit difficult to get used to quickly. Obviously I was erring on the side of caution for stalling, preferring unnecessary revs to bunny-hopping. So I drove about as competently as an L-plater doing their licence test when it came to taking off from a standing start for the first few minutes. The gearbox felt quite smooth and good for a car this old, as did the engine and suspension. With coilovers all round and a skipping mechanical diff, it wasn't what you would call a comfortable ride, but after years of riding around in and driving kidney-bruising Japanese imports it was nothing different to what I was used to anyway. I drive my parents' VY Commodore now and then, which has pretty soft standard suspension. After driving something that handles relatively well with good suspension and meaty tyres, like my EG Civic or the Cefiro, you really notice how sloppy normal sedans like a Commodore are. Under acceleration and braking, the VY pitches back and forth quite significantly, rolls from side to side in corners, and when doing both generally wallows around like a ship lost at sea in a storm. I don't usually tend to get carsick as such, but having a car sit flat around bends is a much nicer sensation than feeling like you need to hang onto the windowsills to stop yourself from falling out and/or throwing up. After giving the Ceffy a bit of a stick on a nearby main road in 1st and 2nd gear to see how it was running, and gauge the sort of power it had, everything seemed to be pretty good so I made the decision that I would buy it. So after weaving through assorted backstreets to return to Vince's workshop, driving a bit more competently than before (not a lot), I parked the car back in the driveway. After awkwardly half-climbing out of the low slung Bride seat, I fished $100 out of my wallet and gave it to Vince as a deposit, planning to return in the next few days with a friend to pick up the car. Jumping back into the Civic, its clutch was ridiculously light in comparison to the Cefiro, to the extent that I repeatedly kicked my foot to the floor on gear changes at first, as I couldn't feel the take-up point. But after a couple of minutes I returned to driving like a normal person, and as I headed home I started to think about what I could do to the car and the motorsport events I could take part in after forking over the cash. Coming up in Post #3; the purchase and introducing the car to its new home...

And now, back to the beginning... Having owned an R31 Nissan Skyline GTS coupe in 2007, which I sold in early 2008, it was followed by an EG Civic, I started missing the feeling and power of a turbocharged rear wheel drive. So after thinking about maybe getting another R31 or a newer R32 Skyline, I decided that a Cefiro would be the best car for what I wanted to do with it. Which was to have a car that sounded good, handled well, had a bit of power to it, as well as the practicality of a four door sedan. I love the sound of the Nissan RB series engines, and Cefiros have that, but without the cop-bait circular tail lights of the Skylines. They were also one of my first choices of a Japanese import to buy in 2003-2004, but due to my health constantly being too poor to allow me even a marginal amount of paid work, I had to sit back and watch all my friends buy the cars I wanted, while I was stuck with dreams of being able to buy a nice car. At the time in early 2010 I was also planning on using it for track days and drift practices and Mallala, but with my health taking a massive plunge in 2010, that's not realistic any more due to strength and money complications. Hopefully it's something I can do in the future though. Skylines are very common cars now in Australia, particularly R33s, and while there are a few Cefiros around the place, they are fairly rare, and there only tends to be 6-8 for sale nationwide on www.carsales.com.au at any one time. Given that Cefiros are a very popular drift car, several of them would be track-only cars, or highly modified and a bit much for what I wanted, and sometimes both, and completely hammered. So after checking on the Carsales website and several Japanese import forums over the course of several months in early 2010, I finally came across an ad for a Cefiro that looked promising, and was actually in SA which was rare. While it did have a bit of the 'drift pig' look going with the panda style black boot and bonnet, it had some aftermarket goodies that were exactly what I was after, but with a fairly standard engine and some nice 17" Buddy Club P1 rims. So after having a bit of a think and reading over the specs and looking through the pictures, I decided to give the seller a call. When I looked at the contact details, both the name and number seemed familiar for some reason. So I started typing the number into my phone, and it came up with the name Vince. With Adelaide being such a small world, Vince had complied a couple of my friends' cars, and I'd also chatted with him at a nearby workshop (Boostworx) during a dyno day a little while back. But the reason he was in my phone already was that I had his R33 Nissan Skyline GT-R on my feature car list to shoot for High Performance Imports magazine. So after giving him a call and asking a few questions, I headed over to his import compliance workshop to have a look at the car in person, to see what sort of condition the car was in, and take it for a bit of a drive to see what it was like. Here are the photos from the carsales ad, taken by Vince.

A bit of an update, this is from a post on PF earlier this month. Here's a photo of it from a couple of weeks ago. I'll post more newer photos later on. But at the moment I'm going through the car's photos and story again in more detail for my blog, so there will be a bit of repetition at first. See the blog post here: http://carscameraschronicillness.blogspot.com/2011/06/my-cefiro-1-carsales-ad.html I'll post the same stuff in this thread as well as on the blog. Getting quite a few things done at the moment to get the car how I want it. Ceffy is currently being worked on at Boostworx, where they are: -Installing matt-black sprayed FMIC, ended up getting a 200x500 cooler to fit behind the standard front bar, as the HKS one I have is 300x600 and would have required hacking off half the bumper. Anyone want to buy the HKS one? -For some reason the car came without the coil pack cover, so picked one up from Nisswreck last week, which will get put in at the same time, as it's under the computer and cooler piping. - Replacing the old one with a new fuel filter and flushing the coolant system, the coolant we drained was pretty gunky, and the fuel was nearly a year old, so seemed like a good idea. -Replacing some of the corroded hoses in the engine bay; had that on my R31 which required a tow truck when one of them split. -Putting some new spark plugs in if necessary -Sorting out why the front left headlight isn't working, may just be a blown bulb, or a similar problem with the electrical contacts like I had at first. -Machining rear brake discs and replacing brake pads, as they were right down when we got the car running again. -Doing a dyno run and tune to make sure everything's working properly and see how much power it's making. Will head over for photos and a video when they do it.

^^ That's what I figured. Love the DR30s too. Maybe Kris needs to make longer posts, he seems to be confusing people.

I took that in 2001.

I was just about to ask what the code was for my Ceffy, as I'm getting the bonnet and bumpers resprayed soon. KH0 G...does the G part mean anything? White with a blue pearl, so sounds the the same.

Went better than this one...almost a Darwin award candidate.

How much would you want for just the rims & tyres? This is one of the nicer R34 sedans I've seen, don't have that much money though.

I drove past that VE last week and only caught a glimpse of the wheels out of the corner of my eye, they're even worse than they looked.

The Adelaide one? Went in there last week for a rear light centre, they didn't have any grilles..

Yeah a chrome one, how much did you want for it?

After a S2 grille, been to 3-4 import wreckers here and nobody has any...

Happened on the way back from Mallala apparently. One of the best R34 GT-Rs I've seen.

Saw a very hot blue R34 GT-R at Boostworx yesterday while picking up my Ceffy...T51R and about 600kw at the wheels. Sadly it had a special sticker on the windscreen...

Looks very tough in this shot, nice. Much damage besides the obvious? Saw the vid, looked like fun. This is probably my favourite front shot of my Ceffy at the moment, took it about a year ago, made it onto Speedhunters. http://speedhunters.com/archive/2010/08/10/readers-rides-gt-gt-your-classics-pt-2.aspx Currently getting a FMIC installed and the bonnet will be resprayed to match the rest of the car in the next couple of weeks, so it will be looking a bit different soon. And I kinda like this recent one of the rear a couple of weeks ago, just a quick snap parked outside a friend's house.

There's a really nice bayside blue R34 GT-R around the corner from my house, think the wheels are some sort of Volks in bronze.