Monday Sucks again - The start of project Silvie

Ive always hated Monday's ever since i started school, The start of the week meant getting up early and having to do something that wasnt relaxing or the slightest bit entertaining. I guess goes for even now with working full time, one thing though that i have to love about being a sub-contractor and basically working for myself is being able to set my own hours. 10am start on a Monday makes the rest of the week worth it well most the time that is.

Ok i love my job it is pretty cool being able to boot around in the Silvia and then nut out problems with other peoples computers, but today just really wasn't all that enjoyable to be honest. When my daily is running i don't really use the Sil for work maybe one day a week and that's usually Monday or Friday, Since my festiva died late last year with a fatal headgasket failure my faithful ol partner was there to help me out and get me around even while nursing a pretty big hole in her Intercooler cold pipe.

Didnt really notice an issue with the car either well apart from only really making and holding 15psi, I actually thought it was a problem with the bane of all my problems the stupid xforce exhaust.

Sorry got side tracked.

Anyway i had gotten use to driving Silvie all day everyday and i always got comments from customers in regards to her and believe it or not it was more the oldies that gave me the thumbs up and the cool comments like "even though i maybe old i still love a nice sounding car" well maybe not that.. lets say sedate but I'm not going there atleast in this post.

I guess being back in and driving what normal society consider a "normal" car is just so mundane and dull.

I miss my Flutters :(

So Monday you suck again.

Soooo

The Start of project Silvie.

I brought Silvie always having the intention of modifying to my specification, and at that point in time i had no idea what i really wanted to do with her. Drifting or circuit work, Drifting was the cool thing at that point but... wait for it so was Need For Speed Underground and i dont know what most people did as their first mod in that game but mine was to paint the brake calipers red, so i took inspiration from that and did the same thing with Silvie.

I was down at my parents place that they owned in Coutts Crossing for a few days having a bit of a holiday and i was kinda bored so i ended up going to town and poking around Super Cheap Auto, I ended up finding some High temp red paint so it got me thinking.

Thinking to a point of doing actually, with a few cans brake cleaner, paint and the help of the family dog Silvie went from having drab boring brake calipers to having shiny red ones!!

 

 

I think they turned out pretty good and it was one of the cheapest "mods" that ive ever done, but come to think of it after doing a brake upgrade and having to swap one of the rear calipers because one of the pins seized only one out of four calipers is still red.

Next time Im down in Grafton visiting Mum and Phil ill be sure to fix that, and im sure Smokey the family dog would be more then happy to help me again.

A little random and a little nostalgia

What a day i tell ya, with the help of a good friend of mine Nathan we dropped Silvie off at Cameron's body works this morning and spoke to him about how I wanted it all setup. After this we headed over to Nathans work (East Coast Customs) and spent pretty much the rest of the day there working and and what not.

Nathan then dropped me off at Daves place to pick up his festiva that ill be reppin in for the next 2 weeks while silvie is off having a holiday and a make over lol..

got home maybe 6:30-7:00pm so a bloody long day on only three hours sleep but oh well i have no one to blame but myself. With going to bed late the night before and just plain being me.

Anyway the whole point of this post is because ive been sitting here trawling through my hard drives for the hundreds of photos that i have horded over the years of the car and various stages of the build when i came across some old photos that Hoji took at one of the first fortnightly Nissansilvia meets.

It was the Tuesday the 2nd of October 2007 and I'm pretty sure it was the first time we held one of the meets out the back of the Brisbane international airport. Now for the kids playing on Nissansilvia/Hardtuned this was the original QLD crew and how young we were lol.

Pretty much all our cars were stock or just starting in their build phases, we all were still learning and what we learned we passed onto each other, from memory we had the AFP come around to see if we were dealing drugs but when they found out we were just a car club meeting up to talk shit, talk cars they left us in piece. It's a shame that they all didnt do that when we were out there a few times afterward but hey i still blame the aircraft techs in the building in the background of the photos saying we were drunk and drinking alcohol.

anyway enough yammering here are the pictures. Ill Try and put names to faces in the group shot ;)

left to right - Josh (Mr. X) Myself (Silvieson) Josh (Halz) Rob (The Stapler *after many name changes) BJ , Ash (Steak) Dave (Disenter) bloodskull GF, Nick (empti_13) Kurt (noobis) bloodskull, Glenn (51CAZ) and last but not least Hoji 

I still remember that being a cold night but geez that night feels like so long ago now, Glenn had just brought his FD, Rob had his Autech s15, Kurt owned the white S14, Nick had those poxy chrome rims on his s13 hahaha... ohhh dear but when i look back it felt like a simpler time with not so many hassles that we have to deal with now.

Now before i finally submit this i might throw a few more pics up but of silvie sitting at camos this morning before i left her in his capable hands.

The Beggining

To be honest I have been meaning to write/type a blog for sometime but due to the powers of procrastination and motivation I just really havent gotten around to doing it, but here I am now at 4:30 in the morning.

Well I guess its fact that i can not sleep due to one of the most important things to me in this world is taking the next step in its life, and that would be my car my Nissan Silvia S13 "Silvie"

I guess i had better start the story from the beginning and not halfway through .

I guess like most guys my fascination with cars started at a n early age and like most typical country NSW kids it all started with the good ol V8, I Remember that my Mother owned a brown HQ station wagon when i was only knee high to a grass hopper. the only thing is that most of what i remember of it was from photos and stories that my brothers and sisters had told me about.

After the HQ mum ended up selling it off and buying a more big family friendly vehicle a Mitsubishi L300 which for a young boy mad about cars was not very exciting, when I think about that van two things always spring to mind, the time when we were at marching practice for my sisters and i left one of my transformers on the bullbar only to get home and find it still there and the time that i managed to somehow get chocolate Billabong ice cream on the roof.

After the L300 departed ways to a family friend mum purchased the car that started my love for Nissans a 5 door Nissan Bluebird I remember the day mum brought it home in all its glory and i was hooked.

But sadly a few years down the track and my very first Nissan love was written off in a tragic accident, my sister driving it at the time the funniest thing about that accident was that my sister is as much obsessed with horses as i am with cars, now she had the back full of chaff for her horses and when one of the ladies that witnessed the accident she thought that it was pot and was insistent that she got rid of it for my sister before the police arrived on the scene.  

After that the wreck actually lived for sometime in the backyard with me always having the aspiration to one day fix it even though it was written off, how ever that would never come to be because after the gold car died my parents ended up buying the sedan version so my sister could still get around, now to be honest this one was a piece of crap and it eventually did a headgasket on a trip into town one day.

Now that being fixable in most case's my sister ensured that this didnt happen, ill say one thing when my sister destroys something she does a pretty damn good job of it. She ended up driving it with steam pissing out the back and up through the hole in the chassis for the gear stick thinking she may make it to my parents place but no it ended up seizing the engine solid. Good thing we still had the gold wreck in the back yard with a decent engine and gearbox included.

Now this is where it really started for me,There's an old saying: 'For want of a nail, the horseshoe was lost. For want of a horseshoe, the steed was lost. For want of a steed, the message was not delivered. For want of an undelivered message, the war was lost.' well in this case my sister needed a car and we had two sitting there one had the rad support and its lower tie bar pushed back a good 25 mm and one with a seized engine, what were we to do? so they both came apart and all the good running gear from the gold car ended up in the red bomb.

There are quite a few great memories that i have of that, Spending time with the old fella pulling apart cars and of moving the red car around the back to do the work on it, now were we lived it wasnt just a straight shot out the back, we had to move this thing around the town well.. village really so the old man got out the trusty snatch strap and hooked the red bomb up to the Pintara. The funniest thing i can remember is sitting in this car with no engine wires and bits and pieces hanging out of the bonnet getting pulled around Coutts Crossing with me steering it while Phil towed it.

We had a few different cars between the gold Bluebird and me getting my license, as a first car i ended up getting my other sisters Daihatsu applause, it was no Nissan but i made it mine and i loved the little thing to bits

I had the applause for about a year and a half in that time i did little things to it to make it mine, like the stereo, the stickers, the K&N airfilter and its 2 1/4 exhaust, but it just wasnt what i was looking for. Now I have always had a thing for S13's even well before i heard the term drifting, I remember when i was ten or eleven we came to Brisbane on a family trip and saw one at a set of lights that had been slightly modified with an exhaust and wheels and i was instantly in love with the car, then it took off and all i can put that sound down too was true boyhood bliss. I still don't think mum liked it when i shouted out that i was going to get one and make it go fast!

So my hunt began and by hunt i mean i looked at two and i brought the second.

  You could pretty much say that i was the happiest bloke in the world.

So starts the beginning of the Silvie Saga, My very own 1991 Nissan Silvia S13, when i brought it it was stock as a rock, A non turbo SR20DE Automatic and it was mint inside and outside.

The First thing i did was transfer the stereo from the applause into the Silvia and with the help of my brother in law Sean we started at about 10pm the night that i got it and finished up about 2 hours later, at the time i was working at Pizzahut doing day deliveries and making dough so i put it into service right away which was a friday and it was the best friday that I ever had working for pizzahut because i now owned my dream car and it was all worth it.

Now I'm not going into the full details of the build so far on Silvie in this post ill be doing that mainly over the next few days because i guarantee that ill miss her to bits while she is gone.

So ill post up a few pics between the day that i got her until now then ill finish up.

So thats basically how it all started, my love for cars, my love for one specific car in general, the start of project Silvie.

But right now that next step in Silvie's life that i mentioned at the start of this post is actually a full respray, after the years of being the multi-coloured piglett that Ive grown so attached to she'll be one colour.... well two to be specific but ill let it be a surprise to once it comes back from Camo's right now I have to go have a shower and head over to Nathans place.

Take care and stay safe

Bev