Run-It-Hard

Long story short, I've lost my rights to drive in Victoria for 6 months and was fined. I'm very lucky in a way that's for sure! Ok, so why were we heading to Geelong? to pick these beasts up of course! Now it was time to head back to Melbourne, they were some nice twisty roads along the way. Here we are on the outskirts of the city. This is where things started to get conjested and crowded. I also had a problem arise with my newly aquired Stagea too. After driving around in this confusing place for a while we managed to find our hotel for the night. I think we checked in at about 6pm! We were all pretty knackered and chilled out for a bit before deciding what to do next. Yuan was keen on getting take out and bringing it back to the hotel, but Julie and I wanted to check out Ligon street. Apparently a lot of the restruants are very competitive and offer freebies if you eat there. We all started walking down to Ligon street and was stopped in our tracks as the restruant owner started haggling with us ... it was true! As usual Yuan ended up finishing his food first, and Jo almost finished all of his! Ok, so we then took the hire car back to the airport and went out to Crown casino to try our luck. Yuan ended up coming out ontop whereas the rest of us didn't. Anyway, after a long ass day we headed back to Quest hotel and got ourselves some shut eye for another big day just around the corner.

Fast foward an hour or so and there it is, the Nissan Stagea we travelled all this way for. It looked awesome just sitting there, so clean! much better then the photos posted on carsales. We spent a good amount of time checking everything, and found a few minor problems (as expected). I told myself as long as everything is in decent condition, and there is no rust in the chassis I'd take it. Anyway, after we scoped the car out, Yuan, Jo, Julie and I had some lunch and discussed about the Stagea. After we ate, we went back to the Stagea. I was hoping that I could haggle the price down a little, but the owner was playing hardball. I guess he knew he had the upper hand considering the effort we've made to see this car. So about 20 minutes of negotiations later, the car was mine! So we were on our way! but before heading back to Melbourne, we had plans to go to Geelong. We travelled via the Princess highway, and after doing some stupid things this happened.

The drive to Camperdown was lonley, we'd be lucky to see a car every 10 minutes. On the way we saw some beautiful things though, like massive fields of sunflowers ... it was like they didn't end! The further we went on, the shittier the roads got ... we were really heading into whoop whoop now. On our way, we went past a few lakes. It's pretty cool how you can see the deep spots in the middle. Ok ok, that's enough scenic touring for now.

I've always had a fascination with the Nissan Stagea, it's quite an odd car that many people either don't know about, or completely under-estimate. Until recent times, I never actually had a good long look/drive of them. My first drive of a Stagea was a few weeks ago, and from that point on I knew it would be my next car. I was never happy with the Kouki (Series 2) front end, and I was torn on whether to put up with it, or to buy an S1 and convert it to manual (the Zenki/S1 models never came in manual). I was leaning towards the S2 for a while, until I found something that caught my eye. It was a Zenki DAYZ edition, with twin sunroofs and all the factory extras, it also had extremely low km's. Problem was, that that it was in Camperdown, which is over 2 hours west of Melbourne. With a bit of planning, Jo (J_HUI), Yuan (RR-04-RR), Julie (MY-514) and myself were on our way to Victoria. 5am Saturday March 5th was go time!, Yuan and Jo made it to our house and we caught a shuttle to the airport. After arriving and checking, we had time left to spare. So we grabbed some breakfast ... my foot long was awesome! Here's Julie holding the tickets for our flight, Julie had never been on a plane before, so I was a little worried if she'd chuck a Marge Simpson and freak! ... thankfully, she enjoyed every bit of it. We landed in Melbourne at 8:20am, first thing we noticed when we walked outside were the yellow taxi's!, I don't think we saw a white one during our stay, wierd. Anyway, we headed to Budget to get our car hire sorted. We were orignally booked for a Hyundai Getz, but we recieved a free upgrade to a Toyota Corolla, as no Getz' were avaliable. After that was all sorted, we were off to Camperdown to check out this Stagea we traveled 1000km's for. All I had running in my head at the time is "God I hope this is the one". To be continued.

My friend spotted a champange C34 with R34 front giving it a hit in Merrylands yesterday.

That's interesting, because all R32/R33 and R34 GTR list the same part number for seat rails, the R34 GT's are the slightly different rails due to the floorpan layout.

I'd be going for the +15 if it were a 9 inch wheel.

No I wont, it's no longer run in AWD I'll keep the wheels that came with the car for when I want to run it in AWD though.

It's just getting worse and worse for Japan My thoughts and prayers are with them.

I bought some 18x9 +20 (215/45 tyres) and 18x10 +21 (235/45 tyres) wheels while I was in VIC picking the car up. the rears should work out perfect w/o the use of camber arms, but they are a little close to the rear shock, it looks like it should clear by 5mm or so, but I'm hoping BC don't use a thicker shock case otherwise I might run into some issues. Fronts aren't as aggressive as the rears, so I'll probably use a 10mm bolt on spacer to make it look even and have similar fitment all round.

yeah, I know which one your talking about ... he used a cigerette packet to wedge the brake release didn't he? I did that too haha. I've never really used handbrake as a form of initiation before though. My Mazda's handbrake was shithouse (as they are). Don't really need the handbrake for the wet pan, just power out and hold on! Oh yeah, theres some pictures of me sliding the boat on my website, which happens to be in my sig. edit: work likes my site now ... cool.

Spotted a gold M35 turning onto Horsley drive ... right near Weitherill park tafe yesterday around 6pm.

Shot of nos and a laptop flashing at you, stating "danger to teh manifoldzzzz". It'll be so fast it'll make your hectic checkerplate floor fall from under your car

I thought this too, until I went to the RTA. Because I've got till the end of the month, they told me to wait it out and then get the blue slip to put it under NSW rego. No fines apply for exceeding 14 days in this case.

Bought some clear front indicators on Monday evening, they arrived at my work today ... rad!

How loud is that Tim? I might even make something up myself where I can use the Nismo rear muffler for street, and blast pipes for the track.

thanks for that dude! I'll probably replace mine then somewhere down the track.

Cool, shame I can't see what they look like, damn work computer!

That isn't a bad price for a set of blast pipes, the set I am looking at would be close to $400 landed from the states!

Will throw them up when I get home, can't do shit at work. It was only the wet track though, real last minute thing aye (pulled the shaft out at 3pm, drifting started at 5). Should be able to hit up the big big track (Eastern Creek itself) in a few months time hopefully.

ohk cool! Thanks for that. So what made you make the switch, what are you running now and did you notice any power improvements from the Nismo item? (I suppose you would considering you swapped the dump pipe and such).

Some cool info on here! I've got a S1 Dayz eddition that came with the optional Nismo exhaust, just curious if anyone knows what the pipe diameter of the Nismo units are, I could probably take it off and measure it up but that requires some effort Just thinking whether it's worth replacing if it's 2.5 inch or something, or just making up some blast pipes for track/drift days. Anyone know if it's a full system, catback, or axle back only? Edit: Shit sorry, I thought this was an exhaust thread ... maybe we should make a sticky with something like "What exhaust are you running".

I took my 1 week old Stagea drifting on Friday night at EC. Rock up to the gates, 1st security guard asks if I was spectating, I said "nah, I'm drifting". Security guard 1 pauses and then says ok and lets me through. drive down to the pitlane and security guard 2 asks if I was spectating, I gave him the same reply, Security guard 2 was stunned and asked "YOUR DRIFTING THAT THING?!" my reply was, "yep, just watch me" And I did just that, drifted a stock, automatic Stagea ... it was good fun!

Cool cool, well I'm in no rush for power mods yet until the manual is in, which would be sometime later this year.

Yeah they aren't bad at all. Better then Spending 2k on the same seat ... that money can go elsewhere I do need one, won't be putting one on for a while though I think ... do you have to cut under the battery with your kits? I was going to run the stealth shit that justcrap sell so the engine bay looks factory.