Stang

Thanks...I take way more photos than I post. And these are just to do with my car. Between being a professional photographer (sometimes) and being stuck in the hospital and at home for nearly a year too sick to do anything, the last few months I've been giving my cameras a hammering whenever I do anything. I'm still a couple of months behind at the moment with this thread, despite how much time I have to do things, so I would be surprised if anyone with a normal work/social life could dedicate this much time to a build thread.

Later that afternoon toward sunset, I thought it would be good to get a few half-decent shots of the Ceffy with its newly modified front end, and not in a petrol station at night. Since it was still quite dirty, I grabbed the hose to give it a quick rinse, but due to the cold and brittle plastic on the tap, the spigot broke off as I was pulling the garden hose across the front yard, which put paid to that idea. I threw a bucket of water over it and tried to take some of the grime off with a sponge, but lacking in energy and with cold fingers, I thought it would be better to just grab a few shots with a streaky bonnet than nothing. So I grabbed my Nikon D300 and Nikkor 50mm f/1.4G lens, and made the huge one minute trek over to the local Foodland carpark, and quickly snapped some shots as the sun went down. As I was wanting, the new matte black front mount intercooler is very subtle, and you wouldn't really know it was there unless you were looking for it really. Coming up in Post #16; bonnet swap and respray quote.

Following the appointment at Boostworx, I was feeling much more comfortable driving it, knowing that the mechanical side of things were ok. But with the black bonnet, I was still kind of edgy driving it around during the day, since it made the car stand out so much. Turbocharged Japanese imports get enough attention from the police without attracting them any further with mismatched panels. So a couple of days later I started driving a bit more, albeit keeping an eye on the rear view mirror. Coming home from my girlfriend's house one night, I stopped off to fill up with petrol, and quickly took a few shots of the Cefiro under the lights. As you can tell in these photos of the front, it needed another wash after being at Boostworx and then parked outside in the rain since. After topping up the tank, I headed back home again. A couple of days later, I went into the garage to take some close-up photos of the scratched and mismatched front left quarter panels and bumpers, in preparation for getting it resprayed. The front left corner was the worst off, with a scrape and gouge along the front and top of the wheel arch, as well as lots of scrapes on the front of the bumper. The side bits of the rear bumper are a darker shade of cream compared to the rest of the body and rear bar. I then headed over to Supercheap Auto to grab a few things I thought would be useful to keep in the car; jumper cables, a small socket set and some cable ties. I stowed them in the boot along with my HKS intercooler and 'Nissan' rear light garnish.

I've just downloaded a trial of Lightroom 3. When loading NEF files, the colours go off as soon as it loads. Seems ridiculous that you can do eleven biliion different things with the photos in LR3 , but can't stop it from buggering up colour and contrast in the original RAW files.

Cool light on the bike wheel too.

Thanks guys. Some point between turning off the northern expressway and Tanunda, on the way to see Classic Adelaide cars. Will post some more pics of them later.

Looking good. I think you win the multi-coloured Cefiro award.

I really like the look of that, particularly with those meshies.

A rare landscape photo. Some funky clouds around that day.

Not sure sorry.

After closing the bonnet on my car and driving off the dyno, there was an odd rattling noise coming from underneath the bonnet. Having a look at the engine bay again, the new intercooler piping was fouling on a few of the radiator fan blades, so there was a little bit of plastic trimming to be done to rectify the problem. After a few minutes spent removing a couple of centimetres from the offending fan blades, the Ceffy was good to go. It was good to be jumping back in the driver's seat again, and I enjoyed giving it a boot down the expressway, with the volume now turned up a bit on the induction and turbo noise side of things. It was also good knowing everything had been checked out, so I didn't have to worry about something going wrong from old fuel or bad spark plugs. So it was good to steer it back into the garage at home, ready for some proper driving soon. Coming up in Post #15; more daily driving.

At just under 140kw at the wheels it's not going to break any land speed records, but for standard boost and tune it's not a bad power figure. And as promised earlier, a little more info on the R34 GT-R that was parked outside when I turned up. Despite looking relatively sedate, with a front-mount intercooler and different rims, it turned out to be anything but. I can't remember the exact details, but with the T51R turbo setup it had on the RB26, it was making roughly 600kw at the wheels. Which makes my 139rwkw Cefiro seem like a toy in comparison. It was apparently defected on the way back from Mallala after a track day. The owner was pulled over on the side of the road by the police, and the officer went up to the car to have a look. He started by pressing on the boot, saying that since the suspension was stiff it was illegal, and once he saw the aftermarket performance catalogue under the bonnet it was sticker time.

With the front bumper back on the car, it was time for the dyno run.

After doing a lap of the workshop, I went back to my Cefiro to see how things were coming along. With the car up on the hoist, I took the opportunity to get a few photos of the underside of the car, which I'd never really seen properly before. With the last fins on the bumper trimmed off, it was time to re-fit and properly attach it to the car again. The standard side-mount intercooler looked rather small and sad sitting all by itself on the concrete. While I was waiting I took a few more random detail shots.

While I was waiting, I had a bit of a wander around the workshop to look at some of the other cars that were there. This Nissan S14 200SX was sitting on the side, and if memory serves me correctly it's been there for quite a while, and doesn't look to have been driven recently. Turning through to the adjacent workshop, the closest car was a bit of a surprise for a company that mostly deals with turbocharged Japanese imports; a 1950s Dodge Custom Regal, parked next to a much less surprising Nissan R33 Skyline, and a Nissan Stagea. Walking back into the main workshop, one of the Boostworx guys had driven his R31 Skyline up near the hoists. It has a rather substantial amount of engine modifications, and from memory the power is somewhere around the 300rwkw mark running E85 fuel. This Datsun ute looked to have an RB20 shoehorned into it. Parked behind the black and yellow S14 was this Mazda RX-3 racing car, looking pretty tough with flared arches and wide rims, which I think are Watanabes. There was another R31 Skyline there which had a rather serious-looking twin turbo setup. Out on the street was a clean Nissan S13 Silvia.

The front bar was out on a stand being trimmed to accommodate the new intercooler. After cutting out some of the fins in the front bumper, a couple of the guys tried fitting the bumper on again to see how it looked. The bumper went on fine, but the little bits of plastic in the side openings looked a bit untidy, so it was off with the bar again for a bit more trimming.

Thanks. A bit over a week after I dropped the Ceffy off at Boostworx, I got a call from them saying that everything was pretty much finished. I'd asked them to call before doing the dyno run as I wanted to see it in action myself, so I headed down to the workshop with Sally to see and get photos of the car almost ready to go. Pulling up in front of Boostworx behind a tough looking dark green JZX100 Toyota Chaser... ...this stunning bayside blue Nissan R34 Skyline GT-R immediately caught my attention. Unfortunately as you can see, there's a defect sticker on the windscreen. More about that a little later. I was wondering what the defect was for as it looked rather tame. After taking a few pics of the GT-R I walked into the workshop to see how the Ceffy was coming along, and saw it first in the line up on a hoist.

Mostly because the huge CEFIRO in capital letters struck me as kind of 'loud' in a way, and it's a bit more anonymous with just the small Nissan text. I haven't seen any other ones though as far as I can remember, it's sitting in the garage at the moment next to the old grille...yours for $75 if you want.

In the meantime I went to Japanese Import Spares to get a more subtle 'Nissan' rear light garnish, to replace the CEFIRO one in big capital letters which I found too obvious. Pulling up in the car park, there was a purple Cefiro sitting out the front. A cool looking and different colour, but the panels had certainly seen better days. Inside the JIS workshop, there are loads of new and used performance parts all over the walls, floors and racks, to the point that it's hard to know where to look at first. Plenty of suspension options on the rack here as you walk in. Some very nice BBS mesh rims which I would love for the car, but at $2600 for the set, probably not the best use of funds. After asking one of the guys there about the rear light garnish, there were actually two options for the 'Nissan' one, dark red and light red. With my car at Boostworx I couldn't just go out and look at it, so after a couple of minutes of thinking and my girlfriend Sally suggesting it was the darker one, I bought it. Coming up in Post #14; the Cefiro at Boostworx.

After ringing Shaun at Boostworx to discuss what I wanted done to the Ceffy, a few days later I went over to the workshop so he could have a look at it, and see what needed to be done in regards to trimming the bumper, installing and fabricating the intercooler and piping. When I bought the car, it came with an HKS 300x600mm intercooler and a bit of piping, among other assorted parts. I was wanting to keep the look of the car fairly low-key, and have the cooler sitting behind the front bumper. I've seen quite a few Cefiros with a huge chunk of the front bar cut outto fit a large intercooler, with shiny metal piping sticking out underneath the car, something that would probably attract unwanted attention from SAPOL. After talking to Shaun about it, we went back out to my car, popped the bonnet and he had a look inside to see how much room there was for one. Considering that I wanted to keep the front bar intact, there was no way the 300x600mm one I had was going to fit without some major hacking. Not wanting to do anything drastic, I decided to just get a smaller 200x500mm intercooler instead, which would fit behind the front bar without any major cuts into the bodywork. There was some piping from the other intercooler that could be used, but I wasn't sure how much could be used, and what might need to be fabricated to fit correctly. After sitting around for so long I thought it would be good to also flush the coolant system, change the fuel filter, put new spark plugs in, replace worn rear brake pads and machine the discs, put the 'new' coil pack cover on, and finally doing a test and power run on the dyno. The car was standard power-wise apart from the exhaust, so besides checking that it was running properly, I was interested to see how much power it was making. There are always a few interesting cars around, this 32 is a good example of a huge shiny intercooler. Definitely something that would need an aftermarket front bar to fit. After dropping the Cefiro off and handing over the keys, I left the car there while they did the work on it for around a week.

Since the Cefiro was now getting driven regularly, although still somewhat gently, I thought it would be a good time to take the car to Boostworx to check that everything was running ok, replace a few bits and pieces, as well as install a front-mount intercooler. For some reason I hadn't consciously noticed that the coil pack cover on my engine wasn't there, I mean I knew it wasn't there, but hadn't thought about it until my dad mentioned it. So one afternoon I headed over to Nisswreck to pick up a replacement. There were a few cars lined up in their yard with expensive windscreen stickers from SAPOL. So after waiting a few minutes while someone rummaged around out the back, I headed back home in my friend Prach's JZX100 Toyota Chaser, and stuck the cover in the Cefiro's boot along with a few other bits.