The End Of One Year.. The Beggining Of Another

Its the end of Two thousand and eleven! the last day of the year, what are you up to? well obviously I am sitting in front of my computer writing to you and strangely enough it is not about cars at all.. have i gone insane? am I feeling ok? well to answer the first I've been insane for years.. and with friends and family like mine i would have to be! hahahah... I love you guys.

Something that always comes up on new years is the need to party.. well for some and for others it apparently dictates how they will spend the rest of the next year and the stupid tradition of kissing your partner on the stroke of midnight and you will be with them for the rest of the year... maybe its because if pretty much been single every new year... come to think of it i really do not remember being in a relationship once over new years.. maybe that is why I never got that one...

well this is where I spin off into a tangent that I do not even know if it makes sense but if you do understand it let me know and if you dont well let me know? but like I said im insane and it could be my crazy ideas!

and away we go!


I don't know about you but to me it seems that Some people take life way to seriously. Well in the sense of always needing to be on the go, doing this.. doing that, keeping up with the Joneses and having all the latest... well lack of a better word in my vocabulary... Crap. Computers for instance, I always have customers ask if they should upgrade and keep up with the current systems... majority of the computers that i service are used for internet and emails.. and that is it.. so I ask a simple question and this can be put towards anything really.. mowers.. microwaves.. coffee machines.. cars even.. Is it still doing what you need it to do? well if the answer is yes then no you do not need to upgrade.. just because Joe Blow next door has something that takes two seconds to boot or a coffee machine that makes the best cappuccino in the world in a second flat.

This to me is why there is a lot of wasted disused things around and I am not just talking about material things, I have seen people do that to friends, loved ones.. use them for awhile and then when they get bored they go find some muscle bound twit and get abused.

The more serious people get the more that they focus on just one thing and then they get to busy with that one thing and the world passes them by another thing is they fail to see what is right in front of them for instance.. that old topic of relationships and Love.

Woe is me.. that is what comes to my mind, these people that get it in their head that they need this perfect person that does not exists and they put that imaginary person on a pedestal and then compare everyone to them. They then proceed to have a good old cry about never finding the one for them, they fail to realize that maybe the person that could make them the happiest could be right in front of them staring them right in the face and they do not even realize it because A. Then have this imaginary person up on that ol pedestal presiding over their decisions on what makes the right person or B. They take everything all to seriously and it blinds their judgement purely because of the fact that they can not let go of what ever drives them once so they will never see the entire picture.

Now some people may not agree with what I say, oh his completely wrong and doesnt know what he is talking about, but I am willing to bet that their are other people out there that share my thoughts and are saying you know what he has hit the nail square on the head.

Example is that person that always winds up in exactly that same spot over and over and over again and that spot is the dreaded friend zone!

Read

"Dear "Females" I'm fedup. Done. Finished. I always hear stories about girls not being able to trust guys because they cheated, or treated them bad, or hit them, I always hear stories of girls saying they just don't want to be with guys because of past relationships. say that you're waiting for a good guy etc. But why the fuck when you get a good GREAT guy you ignore him, Call him your best friend or some shit like that and when he falls for you, you give him some bullshit how you're not ready for a relationship...then two hours later you're fucking some asshole who clearly didn't give a fuck about you before. Dear females....you constantly wonder where the good guys are. they're out there...I'm just letting you know that you're the ones making us scarce.

Sincerely

Good Guy....or rather New Found Asshole"

Now I did not write that as I read it on a friends facebook and shamelessly copied it to mine for one specific reason and that reason is that it is the truth, I have been in countless situations like above before and it all starts out nice and innocent, spending countless hours with each other doing things you both enjoy doing and share in common or just sitting doing nothing at all and just enjoying having company.

Then comes the harmless flirting from her which does make you believe that they may actually feel something towards you and in this case the "nice" guy starts to fall for the girl and spends a while hiding it because they have been hurt before the same way OR they do not feel the time is appropriate because he knows exactly what makes her uncomfortable.

I do not write this about myself in anyway but like I said I have been in the same situation before, I guess that the biggest thing that has made me write this specific little thing comes as a result of watching Definitely Maybe which is a silly little romantic movie.. the sad thing is I watched it alone which was actually the second time I have watched it.. and funnily enough the first time i was alone aswell... hmmmm

That and it being New Years Eve I guess, that old saying of "what you do on the stroke of midnight is what you will be doing for the entire new year" well for me its going to be exactly the same as i was doing last year... sitting on the computer or in front of the TV at my Parents place in NSW.

So I would like to wish everyone a happy and safe new year, To all those "Blind" people let go and for one day do not take life so seriously, do not use that excuse of ohh I can not possibly do that because I am to busy. Kick back have a drink and soak in what is around you because life is to short to take to seriously as you will not get out of it alive! and who knows you might realize something special maybe right in front of you. How ever like all situations there is always an equal positive or negative reaction and there might not be anything there at all.

As for me, I will be enjoying a cup of coffee and a good book with a beautiful view like so.

with a beer or two later on

View from my parents back veranda

As always stay safe my friends!

- Bev

Random Photo

Hello all!!

I'm back again!

I just thought I would like to share this picture with you all from my journey down south this morning.

Storm incoming

- Bev!

Another one for the stable! - Merry Christmas

Well... where did this year disappear to? With 2011 over and 2012 looming ever so closely people are rushing to finish things off.. close up shop.. and take a well earned rest to start the new year fresh. Some people are completely convinced that next year will be the last year we will ever experience and the end will be fall us... Now I don't know about you but I'm a bit of a Science fiction buff... anything SCI-FI I love! doesnt matter if its read, watched or listened to.. if it is good ill have a gander. I have seen movies like Armageddon where the earth is faced by a HUGE asteroid that is bent on colliding with the earth and causing another mass extinction event like what befell the dinosaurs.. mass affixiation. The movie 2012 focused on the earths poles changing and causing a massive landmass change causing everything to flood.. honestly... the person that wrote that story must have had a giant Noah's ark attraction.

In all seriousness with the level of technology that we have developed over the years I'd say that we as a race will have pretty much majority of doom day scenario's well covered... unless the planet just has a massive FML moment and just spontaneously implodes.. if that happens i will shout out "Someone must have googled google!!!!" so rest assured guys I am pretty confident in saying.. well.. nighty nine percent sure that we will make it through to 2013!! well unless aliens invade and we all become slaves or science experiments..

End of the world crap out of the way...

Below we have a video.. very rare that I will post other peoples things on my blog but I thought that i might share with the rest of you my trolling efforts! so check it out! its pretty cool and those Euros know how to drive and put together a drift car! - ENJOY

TANDEM OF DIE | Team Yellow | 2011 from TANDEM OF DIE on Vimeo.

I must say the Hutchi is my favorite in that video.. whats yours?

Well talking about Hutchi's there is a new plan for Nathans Levin Coupe.. i dont know if its been mentioned before.. but its been in a few photos!! at the moment the little rolla has a S2000 engine and gearbox in it... well thats been the case for a few years now just sitting under the house not being finished unfortunately.

The story goes that Nathan always wanted an S2000 and putting the motor out of one into his Hutchi was the next best thing! until recently.. when he found a decent rolling shell of an S2000 for a pittance that just could not have been passed by! It maybe rough looking at the moment but when we are finished with it... Lakeside time attack warrior much?

Like the Kristens Cefiro Nathan ended up finding this shell out in the middle of no where under a tarp being neglected, the owner putting the power plant into a KE71 wagon. So we arrived to its rescue!!

With Nathans dad in tow with the ute and trailer we banged on a set of wheels... and pulled it up onto the trailer

Might not look like much now but just wait.

Nathan checking out the inside

Honda obviously made the S2000 around these wheels!

Well with the car all loaded up and one of Nathan's sources living in the area we decided to go see Bevan and see if he had any parts for us and that he did... having a S2000 halfcut on the shelf he also had the doors and bits and peices that would make up for what we didnt have left from the original halfcut Nathan brought years ago.

With doors now bolted on the S2000 was now looking more like a car and less like some sort of weird shaped bathtub! basically the plan for this one.. when we get to it is to pull the motor and gear box out of the hutchi and put it in the shell, then build the shell into a time attack car.

As for the hutchi.. all I will say is SR!! HAHAHA

For now.. its the end of the year and like most I am going away.. Off to my home town of Grafton for a well earned rest and some non-stop gaming.. with a bit of work to do on Silvie as well.. if I find the motivation..

So for now Merry Christmas to all and enjoy another video below!!

As always stay safe my friends and drive safely over the Christmas / New year break

- Bev!

Queensland Raceways Drift Matsuri

So I have been sitting here trying to come up with a way to start this post off with.. and quite simply words really can not describe how awesome the entire weekend really was.. Going into it I really had no idea what to really expect and to be honest.. I think with all the work we did to the cars leading up to it we were all kinda over it before it even started.

The weather on Saturday morning really did not help our mood either, with low lying clouds the massive thunderstorm making its way down the range from Toowoomba we headed out towards QR in the Falcon regardless.

Upon arriving at QR we unlocked the Garage and started to organize our home away from home a little better then Nathan and I did the day before... really we just threw the stuff in as we couldnt have been bothered but the fact that we had a big storm coming in and we had to shelter all our gear as well as numerous people we thought it would be nice to be able to move around..

We then proceeded to hang around riding out the storm.. while some people headed out on track (crazy hey)

Waiting out the storm

 Green car fiddling?

 something was funny...

I told you we had a fridge!

  The monster.... just waiting for its time

 Putting on the front bar, ended up not leaving it on

 Tyre allotment for the 180

 Cass and his Hutchi!

 Skidpan action

 Back in after my first run testing the car on the skid pan

 configuring the EBC

 checking to make sure everything is tight

Well that was pretty much it for the Saturday, I spent the day just fooling around on the skid pan mainly because it was the first time I had driven the 180 and I wanted to get use to it before heading out on track. To be entirely honest It was really the first time I actually had even tried to drift before, I have done skidpan days, motorkhana's and circuit days before but nothing really in regards to drifting. 

Nathan on the other hand wasn't feeling to well on the Saturday and spent most of it helping me out and giving me pointers and when he finally felt up to it ended up having nothing but drama's with the Green car and called it quits for the day.

Sunday was an entirely different day, Gone was the cloud cover and the rain.. Hello Mr sun and a very hot sunday!

Sunday morning was spent by me going to Super Cheap auto to buy some new oil for the 180 as it needed to be changed out again specially since we didn't get the chance to before Matsuri (read one of the 180 build posts)  and changing it! Whilst Cass and Nathan welded the brackets for the hand brake on the champagne car (R33 Drum handbrake)

One of the other drifters had a welder!!

We then headed out on track to have some fun, Me being a lot more confident in both the car and myself after spending the day before out on the skid pan even though I was kind of kicking myself for not heading out on track sooner as it was the most fun I had all weekend.

Coming through the Crossover between turns 3 and 6 with Dave in the car

 Coming out of Turn 6 with Dave in the car

 Resting after having a floggin

Favorite Tyre of the weekend Dunlop SP Sport Max 3000

Old Advan Neova Semi slicks... destroyed them too

Nathan Ended up taking the Champagn car out on the sunday and had a blast.. unfortunatly though no one seemed to get any photos of him drifting... I how ever had a good seat watching him in the staging areas though.. and hearing him on limiter coming around turn 6 while i was over waiting at turn 3 with a helmet on.. goes to show how loud that car is!

Heading out

 Having a grip run

Well that's pretty much it.. it was an absolute epic weekend! and I am hanging out for the next one as there was not a time for that entire weekend that I did not have a smile on my face it was pure motoring Nirvana, I do have a few videos of myself on the skid pan and out on the track but i have to get around to taking them off of my laptop and putting them on the desktop so i can encode and upload them onto youtube. Once I have done that ill put them all up in one post!

Until next time guys stay safe!

Bev

I would like to thank all the photographers that took the photos being displayed in this post! they are purely awesome!

Lead Up To Queensland Raceways Drift Matsuri - PT 2

Ok well its been a little while... and i did not end up doing this right after the first >.<

Between now and the last post its been difficult to find the time... or the motivation to actually post up so I apologize that I haven't so where to start...

well the Grey 180 of Nathans became a Sil80 and we finally go around to putting the engine in gearbox into it.. the Green car has been slated for change with a NA setup using Tomei quads and Reytec ECU but more on the green car as we start pulling the turbo motor out and start to put the NA setup in to it.

The other weekend I blew the Diff up in the Silvia, and it really pissed me off because like most the times something drastic goes wrong with these cars its when your not thrashing the absolute crap out of them. I was actually on my home from work driving sedately when the pinion gear in the diff decided it wanted to shear majority of the teeth off of it.. I tell you.. jack hammer noise much!!

So last weekend we spent pulling the diff out and putting in another on the road out side of my house.. which was interesting considering the fact that my street is more of a one lane road on a side of a hill.
Most drifters will know all about the ins and outs of dropping an R200 out of a S13 so that was the easy part and we thought we were home free.. but my original diff used 6 bolt spines and the replacement diff had 5 bolt splines.. no worries nock the splines out of the old diff and put them in the new diff right? well I brought the original R200 off a mate over 4 years ok for $50 back when i had next to no knowledge of diffs and the differences so i was under the impression that it was just a stock VLSD. Well i was wrong when we knocked the splines out they were the same length which only meant one thing and that was the diff was actually a mechanical!

The Diff had never really acted like a mechanical at all the entire time that i had it in the car it was quite loose so there were never any give away signs that it was, so off came the hat and sure enough the cartridge was a 2way either a Nismo or a Cusco we arnt entirely sure as at that point in time it was more important to get the car driving again.

we didn't have any 6 bolt splines to go into the new diff, so we ended up swapping the axles for 5 bolt axles which are thicker anyway, dropped the car back on the ground and away the car went.. what a head ache.

As for the future of the 2 way well once we get some time to actually figure out what it is we are going to order a rebuild kit and put it into the good diff

Part of the pinion gear

 Metal filings left on the magnetic bung

Ok well Enough of whats new and been going on lately.. its time to do the last part of Matsuri preparation!

Ok well we left of the last part with the S13 party, The 180 was home, it was turbo less and we still had a bit of work left to do on it!!

Nathan called up one of his contacts to come out and remove the broken manifold stud in the side of the head as well as the broken screw that secures no. 4 coil pack, with all that done everything went back in and the car was running again! How ever unable to arrange a time to have the car tuned with the power FC and the big top feed injectors out they came and in went the standard computer, injectors and AFM along with Nathans Nissan Console to keep an eye on all the vitals! (similar to a PFC hand controller)

the next on the list was to install the passenger seat and to... straighten both driver and passenger seats.

In and straight 

now what is a track car without a rollcage? well a mate of mine Scott (I have mentioned him before) was stripping his old Sil to make way for his new one and he had his halfcage up for sale so i snapped that up quick!

Leaning on the storage locker

Now plans are for a full rollcage down the road for the 180 which at that point ill put the halfcage in Silvie

Cage Installed

After re-installing all the front interior well... the center console we moved onto evening up the ride height and rolling the front and rear guards (with the jackhandle) and im quite happy with the result

Before

 After

In amongst it all we took the car down for a wheel allignment

 

Nathan doing his thing!!

 

This must be me just getting old because i can not remember when exactly we did this but in the middle of finishing off the 180 we also did some work on the green car, rolling guards and fitting the rear bar that we painted and had to cut so the exhaust fitted properly.

Night works (guard pulling)

 

At that point in time the Work Meisters had a pair of Federal RSR's on them put due to the offset of the wheel and not being able to pull the guard out as far as it needed to it just wasnt going to work. so off game the RSR's and on went some REO6 Adrenalins 

In the previous post I said we had 17 pairs of wheels including the ones on the back of the cars well that was just some of the gear we were taking, we loaded up two tool boxes with tools from Nathans big roll cab, we took 4 jerry cans of fuel, Nathans snap-on air compressor, a bar fridge and countless other things.. have a look!!

Nothing but JDM!!

 90 leters of BP Ultimate into 4 20L Jerry Cans

 Airlines, Air compressor, jerry cans and a fuel jiggler

Toolboxes, Trolly jack, CRC, Oil, Brake fluid, coolent, eskies!! we almost took the kitchen sink

We even had team shirts!!! (made by my sister - Just made that way)

 Now I have always had a thing for stickers and i got excited when I found a huge sticker sheet set on eBay that I just had to have.. some of them made their way onto Silvie.. well most of the rest found my helmet!

with one more last minute trip to japan autos to get an exhaust for the 180 we also ended up getting some mint silk road coilovers and a pair of river sides.

Last minute parts!

That sums up everything that we accomplished leading up to Matsuri... over a few days!! but one of the biggest tasks was still ahead of us and that was taking out three un-registered cars to QR with one car trailer. Luckily enough we received permission from Keith to take the cars out on the friday which ended up taking all day!!! put with good company and the time spent loading and unloading the cars for their wheel alignments we had it in the bag.

With the 180, wheels and some other bits and pieces delivered safely to our home away from home for the weekend it was back to the house for the next load.

Green car loaded

Campaign car loaded

All day we had these imports tailgating us!

 QR on dusk

 The cars all tucked away in the shed for the night!

What a massive effort!! but ohhhh so very very worth it!! well after moving all our cars and equipment out to QR which took all day it wasnt over for me. As I mentioned before my sister made us all team shirts and they were not all quite finished, so headed out to her place at Alex hills to help her out I was absolutely wrecked at that point but no rest for the wicked right? hahaha I ended up getting home about 11:30pm and went to bed which turned out to be a waste of time as I maybe got an hours sleep before being up at 4am to head to Nathans for the trip out to QR for a weekend full of drifting!!!

Well I hope you all enjoyed the final part of our Matsuri preparation I will hopefully have the full Matsuri weekend post up in the next couple of days!!

As always stay safe my friends

Bev