Just a few more shots of the ED Civic

Accident damage. There was no corner light before but Dedy found the corner light at Honbits for $30. He installed it for me too, what a champ.


Just another angle.


JDM dash and climate control complete with a funky little push to open flip up cover to access the air-con temperature control (lol). Holden passenger side floor matt and speaker surrounds are a ncie touch too.


Engine bay.


Nutter alarm fob. You plug it into the ciggarette lighter to charge it up.


Crazy flashing LED to show the alarm is activated.


Rear view, missing a wiper but that doesn't bother me.

Kuwahara KZ-1 Replica Frameset

Excited when I saw the box!


Oh hot daym!


Strictly BMX threw in some free goodies too. Now that's how you do business, what cool mofos.

I just scored this Limited Edition Replica of the early 80's Kuwahara KZ-1 Frameset for $399.99 from Strictly BMX (thanks Blayne for the heads up!). Apparently only 250 of these framesets have been produced for the world and since I've been told that my Kuwa frame is a fake I'm most likely going to swap everything over to this new frame. Happy times!

Honda ED Civic

Christina's suspension install at Top One last week was going to take a few hours and I didn't really want to hang around all day so I asked Dedy if I could borrow a car to take home and this is the car he lent me.

It was a rainy day so I didn't get to drive it in a spirited manner (not to mention it wasn't my car!), the seating position was super strange. I felt that my face was so close to the windscreen and that my head would just smash right through it if I had to brake hard. The gear shift felt long and vague (like stirring a bucket of paint) but hey the little car got me home and back.

When I dropped the car back at Top One Dedy told me the car was for sale "cheap". Christina and I had been looking to buy a cheap beater for her to learn how to drive manual in (I didn't like the idea of burning up the clutch in my Jazz or GT-R). We thought about hiring a car for $500/week but also thought that we might not get the best use out of it during the week of hire, and that it would just be cooler if we could own a car for her to learn in at her own pace.

Me being me I had to jump on the internet and find out as much info as I could about the car. I thought there would be a shitload of parts out there for it but it turns out that there's just nothing much out there at all. I suppose the car is just too old and the fanboys are letting it go.

This particular car has had an engine swap (done by Dedy from Top One). It's got a trusty B16A in it (which revs to 8000rpm... VTEC YO!). It's got a new clutch in it (only done 20,000kms), HKS coilovers, HID lights, a ricey alarm system, newly re-gassed air-conditioning and rego until March next year. Unfortunately the owners mate recently had an accident in it and the front drivers side corner light is gone and there's some damage on the front bumper bar + the front drivers side wheel is a little bent.

I made some enquiries regarding the condition of the car, reliability and the price and after some positive feedback I made the call to buy the car. I'll be picking it up on Wednesday night, so more pictures to come!

R32OC Cruise

On Sunday Suga was invited to the first R32OC Cruise. An impressive 14 cars rocked up in total (13 R32's and one new golf TSI). We met up at Loftus Oval (hey I'm here every week!), unfortunately it was raining but spirits were high. After some friendly chat we were on our way.

Considering the wet conditions and the bumpy and windy roads I have to say I was glad to be in a convoy of R32's. Little 4WD's with traction control and ABS brakes, it's basically just point and shoot. Suga's car performed amazingly even on the rougher stuff. The screw mod we did the day before also eliminated the loud scrubbing issue.

The convoy of V's and IV's stopped at Stanwell Tops for a break and then proceeded down to the beach for a meal. Great guys, great cars.


Howie and Jane.


Loftus group shot.


Tommy's black on black beasty at the Stanwell Tops pit stop.


New school vs. Old school.


Supermotos.


The view.


14 R32's in the carpark.


View from above.


Group formation!


IV V IV V...


Mmmmm fush'n'chups at the lighthouse on Wollongong Beach.

Saturday

I hung out with the Locks earlier on Saturday and we checked out a new mall in Ryde called Top Ryde. The mall was like any other mall but the carpark had great LED board signage which told you how many parks were available and each parking bay had an LED indicator. Blue for available disabled parks, green for availablde bays and red for taken bays. Very nice.


One for the fixed riders.


Touchy park in Bondi Beach where idiots, both on foot and in cars, own the road.


Christina and I had good intentions to check out Sculpture by the Sea but the wind had picked up and we weren't rugged up enough so we settled for just checking out this big guy at the beach.


We had dinner at RAW BAR. I've always known of this Japanese Restaurant, have always seen it there (used to be green) and I've always wondered if it was any good. Truth is it's WAY overpriced and the food was crap.


The fish shop on the main beach road has been selling deep fried Mars Bars for years. I still haven't tried one, the Japanese food expanding in my belly prevented me from giving it a go this time.


We came across a whole lot of drunken riders on ghetto kids bikes in silly outfits, they were doing a pub crawl by the looks of it.

My old Jazz is up on carsales

Spotted my old Jazz up on carsales :)

House update

After much bartering we decided to go ahead with Academic Wardrobes. Today they came to do install both built ins, one storage unti for the hallway and a huge wardrobe with a small build in dresser in the bedroom. They ran into complications with the doors though, and other bits so they're going to have to come back another time to finish off the job. I've taken a few progress pictures in any case:


Huge wardrobe in the bedroom retreat with a built in dresser table + draw on the far end. Sliding doors are still to come.


Storage in the hallway for linen, and whatever else. It'll have some very minimalist sliding doors on it once it's done.

Drop it like it's hot

Christina's R32 Golf is now dropped on Bilstein PSS10 Coilovers which were installed by Dedy at Top One. Wheel alignment was done by Doug at Heasmans.

Coilovers are currently set to "0" (the coilovers have 10 settings and include numbered adjusters so you know exactly what setting you are on without counting clicks) and even at "0" they're super firm.

The car feels so much flatter now and more playful not to mention it looks damn hot!!! I think the wheel alignment has a lot to do with it (my cars always feel amazing after Doug has worked his magic).

The Sydney Bicycle Film Festival Warm-Up party

Last night the Sydney Bicycle Film Festival put on a few drinks with Onitsuka Tiger and Tiger Beer for friends of the festival at The Grasshopper/7m Laneway Bar.

Crazy venue (very Melbourne), awesome vibe despite the light rain. Here are a few blurry pics:


Crazy make-shift bar in a CBD back lane.


Screening shorts on the wall.


Familiar faces. The Future Büro/Boutique Cycles crew.


Matt and Andy.


Tom and Rob from Hell on Wheels.


Rusty Chains! Some of these cups had numbers at the bottom, and there were a stack of Tiger boxes with corresponding numbers filled with goodies as prizes (nice idea guys).


MCC.


Andy Mash.


Ramp.




Tomsational!

Higher resolution images here.

A little bit lame

It looks like my poster designs for the MCC Giant Giveaway at the BFF are coming under fire. It's not the first time I've been hammered in a gender debate. I'm going to try my best to stay out of this one because it's an argument I can't win!

Yeah... that's pretty good.

Removing friends from facebook

I had 626 facebook friends last week with a whole lot more friend requests which I hadn't approved (626 friends? YEAH RIGHT?!). I spent a little time clicking around at some profiles and I realised that I hardly knew any of the faces I was viewing. I'm getting conservative in my old age so I've decided to delete a shitload of people from my facebook friends list.

For the past 3 days I've been removing friends and I'm now down to 449 friends, of these people I can at least say I know the faces and have had conversations with most of them in real life. I feel a little shit about deleting people but hope fully I'll feel more comfortable about it in a few days.

Loftus Oval

Ash.


Sharing is caring.


Light Fantastiqué!

Last night a few of us hit Loftus Oval. I took the Anthem which now has a Joplin seatpost. 10 minutes into the ride I knew the saddle and seatpost weren't set up right. The seatpost at it's highest position was too high and the saddle was too far forward and the angle wasn't right either. Pretty pissed off as it was 100% perfect before with the old seatpost. An hour in and I was spent. Maybe I hadn't recovered completely from last weekend's 90km Gong ride, maybe it was because I only had a pastry for lunch at 3pm or maybe it was because the air was so damn hot and dry last night. I still had fun in any case, a ride's a ride right?!

Sydney Bicycle Film Festival

The faux movie poster designs I did for the MC Cyclery stall at this months Sydney Bicycle Film Festival have been printed and they're fucking HUGE!!!

The festival program is now up: Sydney Festival Program

Get your tickets now as they do sell out: Moshtix

Rockpool Bar & Grill

View from the mezzanine level.


Jess and Christina.


House rules.


They print out a new menu daily.


100% go for the grain fed over grass fed.


The goodness.

Last night we had dinner (again) at Neil Perry's Rockpool Bar and Grill to celebrate the last day of HSC exams for Christina's sister Jessica. Mr Lock had booked us into a table on the private mezzanine floor above the restaurant (pimp!) and this time we ordered our steaks "medium" instead of "medium rare" and they came out perfect (the waiter did confirm that they prefer to cook their medium rare steaks on the rare side).

The experience for Christina and I was so much better than last time (because of the steak), the starters were also awesome (we had sashimi, Australian meats, Calamari and King Prawns) and the warm rhubarb, strawberry and almond pudding with vanilla sauce was killer.