Stang

That paintwork on the rear quarter is interesting. Should look really nice once it's freshened up. I'll probably be going for a Nistune as well in the next few months...

Cool shots everyone! Here are 4,500 photos I took a little while back.

For this hills run, I had my GoPro HD Hero camera stuck on the windscreen, taking photos at two second intervals for the majority of the driving. This time lapse video consists of around 4500 photos, and condenses several hours of driving into a little over four minutes. You'll see me wandering around taking photos here and there as well.

Daniel's daughter Ella was at the Women's & Children's Hospital, getting ready for surgery to install a gastrostomy tube, similar to my tube, but in her stomach. So after getting back into town, I clunked my way into the multi-level carpark and headed up to the wards.

With sunset fast approaching, I started to head back to Adelaide, stopping again between Norton Summit and Adelaide.

Driving further on I stopped on a dead end road near Mount Torrens. They're usually better for taking photos, as there's obviously less chance of traffic.

It started raining quite hard soon after I took off, to the point that I pulled up in a slow vehicle lane on Gorge Road for a few minutes, as I couldn't see too well. It died down fairly quickly, and I went up and back on one of my favourite sections. With a cliff wall right next to the road, you get some pretty epic exhaust sounds when you put the foot down. Since the roads were still quite wet, I was taking it fairly easy. But at the end of a gentle corner, I hit what must have been a patch of oil at about 50, and the car immediately snapped sharply sideways with no warning. With a rock wall on one side and guardrail on the other, I had to pull over a few minutes down the road to change my underwear.

I got the itch for more hills driving after puttering around the suburbs, so on a decidedly grey afternoon I made my way up to Gorge Road, and proceeded to increase my fuel usage threefold. It began raining fairly soon after I started to drive further east, which made the drive a bit different to the others. After the first section of Gorge Road it settled down a bit, and I pulled into a lookout area as the sun came streaming through the fast-moving clouds. While I do like having my car nice and clean, there was a certain amount of satisfaction in seeing the Ceffy dirty and dripping wet, with the exhaust burbling away as I snapped some pics; it's made for enjoyable drives like this.

After having a look, the KH Verada one is somewhat similar...

Thanks...got a comment on PF that the grille makes it look like a Magna.

So I guess you worrying about being able to see over the dash was unnecessary.

A few more random photos.

The Cefiro was becoming a daily driver now, and I drove it around to places fairly regularly. Sally and I visited a couple of friends who run a hip-hop/breakdance studio, and while they practiced I mucked around a bit taking photos using the mirror and reflections in the window, which made for some interesting shots.

The pink and black Ceffy belongs to Kelly Wong, one of the shop owners. A very small minority being a female drifter, she takes it to the track for some sideways action quite often, here's a short clip from Mallala. Once inside I had a bit of a look around at the parts and stuff, and then bought the lock bar kit.

Yeah, spoiled for choice with that lot! When I bought the Cefiro, I was under the impression that it already had a HICAS lock bar fitted. But while taking the rear wheel off, Daniel pointed out the fact I didn't actually have one. So the week after I made a trip to Sleeka Spares to pick up a lock bar kit. http://www.sleekaspares.com.au/ One thing I like about visiting import/performance workshops, is that there are usually at least a couple of interesting cars around whenever you go. Walking across the road, I saw this late 1990s Toyota Corolla Levin coupe sitting in a yard opposite Sleeka Spares, a model that is very rare here. There were a few carcasses walking through the gate, including this Toyota Celsior which had certainly seen better days. I wasn't expecting it, but there were actually two Cefiros sitting in front of the shop, clearly both track only drift cars.

After a bit of a poke around and with daylight fading, we started to head up towards Tea Tree Gully and into the foothills. After a fairly busy day physically, my stomach wasn't all that pleased with me doing more than usual, so I was feeling rather off for a while on the drive up. Having syringed a couple of cups of water through my jejunostomy feeding tube before we left, the fluid had made its way south, and before we drove up into the hills, I stopped at a tavern for a few minutes. With sunset fast approaching, I jumped back into the Ceffy, and let Daniel take off in front of me. His Pintara makes around 160kw at the wheels compared to my Cefiro's 139kw, so he does have the upper hand power wise. Although I'd already been on several hills runs at this point, both by myself and with my girlfriend Sally, being able to head out with a mate in another noisy turbocharged car was awesome. So we wound around some of the twists and turns for quite some time, enjoying the power, the fresh air, and the sounds of spooling turbos and crackling exhausts against the trees and rocky hillsides. Driving in the hills was enough fun to take my mind off feeling sick; although this generally doesn't work if you're in the passenger seat. By the time we made it into the small town of Gumeracha, the sun had just set, which meant there wasn't much light left for photos. So we both pulled into the carpark adjacent to the town's main oval, and I grabbed my Nikon D300 and Nikkor 50mm f/1.4, and started rattling off some shots while there was still enough available light left. Without a tripod or enough time to use one anyway, I just pushed the ISO up on the camera, while opening up the 50mm to let as much dusk light in as possible. It was really quite cold by this point, fortunately I had a jacket in the back of my car to wear, but Daniel was only wearing a t-shirt and shorts, and didn't find standing outside in the chilly hills air particularly comfortable. So here are some of the quick snaps I took of our cars. After getting thoroughly frozen while standing outside taking photos of the cars, and the sky darkening too much for handheld photos, we headed back to Adelaide.

Back inside, we had a look at a few more rims that would fit our respective cars. They have new stock coming in frequently, if you wanted to browse some parts, have a look at their website: http://japaneseimportspares.com.au/home/

There was a sedan sitting at the warehouse door with the front wheels on ramps, and a couple of guys working on it. I didn't have a good look at the time, but I think it's a Toyota JZX80 Cresta or Chaser, a model I don't recall having seen on the roads at all. The style I'd most taken a liking to were these kind of mesh rims. There are so many variations of similar styles that I'm not 100% what these are, but I think they're Work Stitches. I had a look at the specs; the rears were 17x10s, -23. A full inch wider than the P1s, and with a negative offset, they would be very hard pressed to not stick out the guards like a 4wd. But we rolled one outside to see how it looked next to the car anyway. One the way through the warehouse, one of the guys working there asked what car it was for. I said a Cefiro, and he had a bit of a 'That ain't gonna fit..' expression when I said it. Which is a fair point, the 17x9 P1s are pretty much flush with the guards as it is. They did look good when Daniel rolled it across the rear wheel arch. There was no way they would fit without some serious guard rolling, but it was fun to have a look anyway.

Once we'd got both cars sorted and ready to go, Daniel and I headed up to Japanese Import Spares on the way to the hills, for a more informed look at different rims, sizes and offsets.

With the wheel specs noted, we moved on to replacing the grille. After Prach spent a couple of minutes fiddling with a few screws and clips, the old grille came out quite easily. It kind of looked like a hillbilly with no front teeth when I closed the bonnet to see what it looked like without anything there. The new one was pretty easy to snap in place, and a few minutes later the Ceffy had a markedly altered front-end appearance.

Then it was on to the front. The R33 brake upgrade earns its keep in the hills, the coilover is losing some fluid though. The fronts turned to to be 17x8, +22.

With the rear wheel off, we had a look inside for the stamp with the wheel specs; 17x9, with an offset of +27.

Since I bought the Ceffy, I'd been asked a few times about the offset on my Buddy Club P1 rims, but I'd never actually gotten around to removing them to find out. And since I was thinking about getting some meshies, I figured it would help to at least know what the specs were on my current wheels. So while we had some tools out, Daniel jacked the rear of the car up, and started loosening the wheel nuts. My arms are much less suited to that kind of grunt work, so I helpfully took photos and played with the radio control car instead. I'd brought along my little GoPro HD camera, and set it to take photos every two seconds while we were working on the car. It made for a cool little time-lapse clip of the process.

I'd also brought my WRX radio control rally car for some fun. At only $15 from K-Mart, it was definitely a good buy, and goes quite fast and far for such a cheap plastic toy car. Still not great on dirt with only rear wheel drive though, so Daniel's very sick daughter Ella rescued it while Prach was 'driving'. I.e. crashing into things and getting stuck. Like me, Ella has a long list of pretty critical medical problems. As you can see in the picture above, at the time she had a naso-gastric tube for medications and fluids. Due to a childhood stroke and related issues, she aspirates fluids into her lungs. You can read more about her serious health struggles in the pdf document linked below. And if you're feeling generous, a donation towards this project to help her would be very much appreciated: http://www.sayso.com.au/weddings/pics/TheMissEllaSkyeProject.pdf

Both mine and Daniel's cars have fairly minimal exhaust systems, so are quite loud, while Prach's Chaser has a couple of mufflers, and in comparison you can hardly tell it's running. Cue some gentle encouragement from us for some straight pipes while he had a look under the car.