Stang

After wandering around the gardens for a while, we headed back home.

We then moved on to Camelot Castle, to see what it would be like as a location for wedding photos. The driveway is relatively steep, which wasn't a problem, but the invisible spoon drain at the crest was. So there was a nasty clang and grinding sound as the exhaust hit and scraped the ground, leaving me thinking 'What the hell was that!?' After parking the car I had another look, you can't actually see it at all when you're driving up the slope, which is fine for the majority of cars, but not great for lowered cars with big exhausts. I'd driven past Camelot Castle repeatedly over the years, but never actually went in to have a look. The front garden area is quite picturesque, and features an epic chess set.

After booking a time to install it, there was another Gorge run with Sally , stopping in Cudlee Creek for a bit.

A few days later I went to see Dr. Bolt about changing my intake piping.

I made the car dirty again with more driving, so dropped it off at the car wash while shopping. I noticed this neat R32 Skyline GTS-t burbling around the carpark, it was definitely an RB engine, and going by the sticker on the window, it was running an RB30, which isn't a particularly common engine conversion for an R32.

Back at Sally's house later in the afternoon, the soft dusk light looked quite nice.

Since it was a nice day and I was fairly close to the hills anyway, I kept going east for a brief squirt in the hills, stopping at Houghton for a few photos.

The next day I got a call from Cameron saying the car was all ready, so my mum dropped me off near the workshop. Waiting to cross the road, this S15 Silvia Varietta convertible went past, and I quickly managed to fire off a few frames without looking. They're very rare in Australia, and I think I've only ever seen a couple on the roads. They have an SR20 four cylinder engine, but naturally aspirated, unlike the S15 Silvia/200SX coupe's turbocharged SR20DET. Walking up to the workshop, I saw the Ceffy parked up near the back. In addition to spraying the side bumper bits, he also repainted the black section underneath the door with fresh matt black paint. You may have noticed in some other photos that one side was faded fairly badly, and had white streaks which looked a bit untidy. So while not a huge change, the car looked much tidier than before.

I had a doctor's appointment in Stirling to go to, so we took off and headed up the freeway. Our wedding reception is going to be in Hahndorf, and since we were most of the way there already, I thought we might as well check out the place to get some ideas for what was going to happen. I jumped behind the wheel this time, and turned back onto the freeway. While I'm not a big fan of automatics, the wafty and effortless mid-range torque the Chaser has makes for very rapid merging and overtaking, even uphill on half throttle. Pulling into the German Arms carpark, I spotted this fairly rare Ford Zephyr.

A few days later I headed over to Cameron's workshop to drop off the Ceffy, followed by Prach in his Chaser. The paint on the front part of the Chaser's bonnet is a bit faded, so while we were there, Cameron had a look at it as well. He was interested in what was under the bonnet as well after we had talked about our different engines and power levels.

A few more random shots. Daniel had made a minor change to his Pintara in removing a red strip from the bumpers; a small detail, but it made the car look a little bit cleaner.

While driving around the suburbs the next day with Sally, we came across something I thought was only a movie cliche. A mother duck with a line of ducklings was holding up traffic near AAMI Stadium. Sally quickly grabbed a few photos as I carefully idled past. Also worthy of a few snaps was this 1951 Ford F100 pickup, tastefully detailed with a bit of chrome and fat whitewall tyres. This particular grille isn't my favourite of the 1950s Ford pickup range, but something similar from that era is definitely on my 'wanted' list for a nice cruiser one day. The tongue-in-cheek 'UGLY51' plates seem to point to the opinion this particular model isn't the most aesthetically pleasing. Nothing wrong with the rear end though in my books.

Car activities over, I drove back home with a significantly depleted fuel tank. Which was worth every cent. My younger brother had a couple of cool presents for me. One was a radio control tank, complete with several warning labels about the functional barrel that shoots ball bearings 20 metres or so, according to the box. As well as this little Optimus Prime soft toy, with a plastic clip. For amusement I tried putting it on the tow hook on the rear bumper, promptly snapping the plastic. The rear driver's side grab handle turned out to be a better spot for it.

Not wanting to wear myself out too much for later on in the day, I headed back down to the city. Passing through through Norton Summit and onto Magill Road, I stopped in at the Japanese Motorsport workshop, in what had to be the most scenic route possible between Jaustech and JMS. I had a look at a few of the aftermarket products on display inside, and had a bit of a chat to one of the guys about options for a mild power upgrade. The black S15 out the front had a defect sticker on the windscreen, and from the looks of it was close to going through Regency. The R32 GT-Rs next to it looked quite tidy.

Continuing up Grand Junction Road, I made into the foothills, and settled in as I accelerated hard up the first incline, and started attacking the bends. Unsurprisingly for me, Gorge Road was on the list of roads for my early birthday celebration. Thinking back to the same time last year, the feeling of freedom at being able to blast through whatever roads I wanted to was just incredible; something that's probably hard to understand if you haven't been bedridden in hospital at home for months on end. Within reason, I was free to drive where I wanted, instead of being too sick to sit up properly in a wheelchair, hooked up to IV lines and told what to do by nurses and doctors with minimal understanding of my condition. The crisp air didn't stop me from rolling the windows down to enjoy the roaring exhaust bouncing off the rocky hillsides. After a satisfying fang through a significant portion of Gorge Road, I pulled up at the reservoir lookout for a few photos.

This R31 Skyline coupe has also made friends with a few tyre stacks at Mallala. Inquiring inside about intake piping, I was pointed in the direction of Dr. Bolt, who has done work on their cars, and has a big sticker on the back window of Anthony's Cefiro.

In stark contrast, the silver R32 Skyline GT-R alongside was a nice clean example.

The rear looks decidedly worse for wear, and from the looks of it, the damage was from the wall tap in the first video from the ADGP.

The Cefiro looks somewhat ok from this angle... But moving to the other side, you can start to see some of its battle scars.

Parking at the end of the row, I walked down the line of cars to have a closer look.

One of the owners, Anthony Cece, drifts one of the best sounding Cefiros I've heard, with a hybrid RB25/30 power plant. Here are a few videos of him in action at Calder a week or so earlier at the Australian Drifting Grand Prix. As you'll see in the videos and my photos below, he's not shy about tagging the wall in the name of of a good slide. It sounds better in person than how it comes across in these clips.

After driving around in Prach's Chaser and Daniel's Pintara here and there, I noticed they both had a much nicer induction sound compared to the Ceffy. After having a look under the bonnets, it was clear that their intake piping was metal, while mine was rubber, which would explain the different sound. On my way to the hills, I pulled over into a side street to answer a phone call. Taking off again to turn around, I saw there was a Japanese import wrecker/spares shop, which I thought might be worth a look. Then a little further, a whole carpark full of imports and several drift cars came into view, which stopped me in my tracks. I'd inadvertently stumbled across the Jaustech workshop, which is quite well known in the Adelaide import and drift scene.

October 4th 2011 marked my 27th birthday. On October 4th 2010, I was in hospital at the start of a long and horrific 7 week stay, with doctors deciding to wait until the day after my birthday to shove a naso-gastric feeding tube down my throat. So whatever happened this year, it was going to be infinitely better than the previous one, which easily made the cut as my worst birthday ever. Being forcibly starved to death by a paralysed digestive system is no way to celebrate a birthday in your late twenties; or ever for that matter. As I write this post, it's now been over 400 days since I've been able to eat any food at all. Literally. The last thing I had was a few spoonfuls of apple puree on October 8th, 2010. But since then, I've been able to drink about a litre or so; all my nutrition and hydration needs are met with the feeding tube, bottles of Ensure Plus formula and syringes of water. Fortunately this year I woke up feeling quite ok. Given how horrendously trapped and helpless I felt last year being in hospital with tubes and sickness everywhere, I thought a spirited hills run on the open road would be an appropriate antidote to the memories of the year before. So after loading up my cameras, I headed east towards the hills. One the way, I stopped in at Cameron's workshop to ask about another mild paint touch-up on the Ceffy. You may have noticed in previous photos, but the side bits of the rear bumper were a bit darker than the bumper itself. It was exacerbated by this part being dirty, but it still bothered me when I looked at the car, so I figured it would be good to fix it. His awesome FB wagon was parked out the front when I pulled up. After having another look at the rear bumper, we organised to drop the Ceffy in the next Monday.

The Civic needed a couple of new tyres, so we went over to Bob Jane, who have a VE Commodore promo vehicle parked out the front, sporting what are probably the worst rims I've ever seen on a car. I'm assuming they did it to draw attention to the store.