My Ceffy

[Stang]

With sunset fast approaching, I started to head back to Adelaide, stopping again between Norton Summit and Adelaide.

[Stang]

Daniel's daughter Ella was at the Women's & Children's Hospital, getting ready for surgery to install a gastrostomy tube, similar to my tube, but in her stomach. So after getting back into town, I clunked my way into the multi-level carpark and headed up to the wards.

[Stang]

For this hills run, I had my GoPro HD Hero camera stuck on the windscreen, taking photos at two second intervals for the majority of the driving.

This time lapse video consists of around 4500 photos, and condenses several hours of driving into a little over four minutes. You'll see me wandering around taking photos here and there as well.

Edited November 8, 2011 by Stang

[Luciano]

Absolutely loved the time lapse video Rohan; just awesome! Having lived up in the foot hills / North East Adelaide my entire life, that is a lot of very familiar scenery to me.

I travel between Athelstone (+ surrounding suburbs) and Tea Tree Gully quite frequently to visit friends and family. I love taking the hills run home, all four windows down to the sound of 100% RB and boost - via Gorge Rd Athelstone, up past Kangaroo Creek Reservoir, onto Torrens Hill Rd, then back onto North East Rd coming through Paracombe. Great 20 minute drive - compared to the 15 minute constant stop/start urban area route I'd normally take to get home. But as you know, fuel consumption is probably in favour of the urban route!

Even noticed you stopped at the grain store across the road from the Tower Hotel toward the end of the video.

When I used to live in Newton, one of my other quick hill runs I would take often was straight up Montacute Rd, then left onto Corkscrew Rd, and then onto the Gorge heading back into Athelstone. My previous R33 was a bit through Corkscrew with the 2-way LSD on a wet day. Good times...

Noticed quite a few old spots/past hangouts in a lot of your other photography up Gorge Rd. too! One most notable is what we used to call 'the Acid bridge' - (you can see it in the background of the 8th embedded photo of this post where you are comparing your black and white bonnets). Some time in the late 80's to early 90's, some nutter crawled across the bridge right to the middle (right above the creek bed) and tagged 'ACID' on the face of the bridge - hence the nick name we gave it; but it looks like it has been cleaned off in the last few years. The locked gates right next to where you are parked in these photos didn't used to exist, and you could drive right in, park your cars and pull up for a chat and hang out/all other sorts of tom foolery (as you can imagine, as soon as it turned dark). The Gorge was an awesome place to hang out - but being that fair bit older and wiser now, you appreciate the scenic side of it a lot more.

[Stang]

Thanks, I've done a few runs with the GoPro on, but between the rain, sunset and night lights this was the coolest looking set with the most variety.

That is a nice drive home...and I do the same as you, weather permitting; all four windows down for maximum noise.

Yeah I stopped at the grain store to syringe some water through (no prizes for guessing since you can read it ) as it had been a while and I was feeling a bit dehydrated.

I only rediscovered Corkscrew Road fairly recently, it's really not clearly signed at either end unless you're looking for it. That last/first hairpin caught me out a little, you pretty much have to stop to negotiate that last part. My diff starts skipping even on the widest one.

I did go up to the gate on the bridge a few years ago, all fenced off now though. You would need some brave pills to get across to the middle with a spraycan though!

[Stang]

The cycle continued with some more daily driving...

[Stang]

...which included a goods transport practicality test at Ikea.

[Stang]

After trying a few different spots, once we laid down the passenger seat, Sally and the Ikea guy managed to cram the box into the car.

[Stang]

Chicken and chips fit into the car with much less hassle.

[Stang]

Still entertaining the thought of changing my Buddy Club P1s to something in a mesh style, a few days later Prach and I jacked our cars up in his driveway, and prepared to do a front wheel swap out of interest.

[Stang]

Although I would want something with decent dish, and the size and offset were quite different, I thought it would give me a better idea of what that style would look like actually on the Ceffy.

[Stang]

I'd never had a really close look at Prach's wheels before, and just assumed they were BBS wheels, but on closer inspection it seemed pretty clear that they were copies.

With the front right wheel in place, it was much easier to get a clear idea of what they looked like on my car.

Visually they seemed to flow a bit better; the P1s are quite a dark colour, and don't come up that well in photos taken in sunny conditions. So while I think the P1s definitely make it look tougher, the mesh style rims would look better in photos.

[Stang]

Putting the Buddy Club wheel on Prach's Chaser, it really seemed to suit it well, with the stronger six spoke design making it look decidedly meaner.

With different widths and offsets, we weren't sure if the rims would fit the other car. They certainly didn't, to the extent that they fouled so badly on the suspension and brakes you couldn't even move them on either car. But it was interesting seeing the difference anyway.

Prach also had some other rims from somewhere, minus tyres, and stuck one on the hub since we already had the other one off anyway.

They looked very small, and when Prach said they were 18s, I didn't really believe him, but a tape measure helped put things into context.

Amusing wheel experiment over, we put the rims back on their respective cars and called it a day.

[Stang]

In the middle of September, one of my favourite motorsport events was on; the Classic Targa Adelaide. Under new ownership after some management issues, the name had changed. But the event was still the same concept; lots of expensive cars going fast on some of the best roads the Adelaide Hills have to offer.

Have a look at their website for more information: http://www.classictargaadelaide.com.au/adelaide/adelaide_home.html

It had been a very long time since I'd been able to attend any form of motorsport event, due to obvious health reasons. On Wednesday the 14th there was a prologue event taking place in the small country town of Tanunda, located north-east of Adelaide in the Barossa Valley.

I was feeling relatively ok in the couple of days leading up to Wednesday, so I tentatively made plans to go if I felt up to it. The prologue started mid-morning, which was a bit early for me, as it was the best idea to stay on my liquid feed for as long as possible to give me some energy for the day's activities.

Come Wednesday morning I was feeling able to go, and keen to see some cool cars, so at around 11:30 I grabbed my camera bag and headed out. Initially I was a bit hesitant about taking the Cefiro, not sure if it would be too obnoxious and uncomfortable for a longer drive on a highway. But since I was attending a motorsport event, I figured it would be more appropriate than a boring Commodore anyway.

On my way to the Port Expressway, this cool Toyota JZX100 Chaser caught my eye as I drove past, largely due to the nice rims, tough stance and custom plates; 'Nom Nom'.

I'd seen the car's rear from a distance a few weeks before, as you can see below, the boot lid is particularly distinctive.

The Chaser's owner was actually getting out of the car when I pulled up across the street, so I said hello and chatted for a bit about his car. Due to my photo spamming of multiple automotive forums and my distinctive car, he actually knew who I was, and his forum name was familiar from Nissansilvia.com and SAU.

After taking a few more pictures, it was back onto the road again.

[Stang]

It felt good getting the car up to 100, and then 110km/h once I'd made it out to the recently completed Northern Expressway. I thought the Ceffy was going to be a bit noisy and uncomfortable when I first set out. I needn't have worried. Although not as quiet as a standard Commodore, the exhaust sound was quite minimal considering how loud the car is.

I'd appreciated the side support of the Bride bucket seat in the hills, and as it turned out, it was good for highway driving as well. Since the roads were all quite good, the stiff suspension wasn't really an issue, and with the extra lumbar support of the seat, I actually found it more comfortable to drive than my parents' VY Commodore. With the flat and shapeless driver's seat, my back would tend to start aching fairly quickly from holding myself in place.

Turning off towards Tanunda, I stopped in a gravel area for a few photos. The green pastures and puffy clouds were quite a nice background, with trucks and cars passing by.

[Stang]

I continued up the road for a little while, and then pulled over again to photograph the scene on the side of the road; brilliant yellow fields of Canola stretching out towards the horizon.

[Stang]

The cool clouds made for a dramatic scene when I did a black and white conversion to this photo.

Crossing back over the road, I could hear a loping V8 in the distance, which turned out to be a Holden HK GTS Monaro. The pastel yellow paintwork looked pale in comparison to the eye-watering canola shade.

[Stang]

A few trucks thundered past as I waited to get back onto the bitumen.

Coming into Tanunda, I spotted the first of many competitors' cars; a nice green Holden LC Torana.

After going through some side streets due to the closed main street, I found a car park, grabbed my cameras and started walking into the town centre.

[Stang]

Nearby was this clean Mustang, complete with a soft toy version of the car's namesake on the rear parcel shelf.

This E36 BMW M3 had a far from subtle spoiler attached to the bootlid.

As I walked the couple of hundred metres towards the main street, competitor cars rumbled by to line up along the sides of the road. By the time I arrived the racing part was over, but I still got to hear all the awesome cars idling.

Visible in this short lineup (front to back) are a Mazda FC RX7, Porsche 944 and a Ford Escort.

A hot 964 Porsche 911. Now I'll do my best with correctly identifying the cars in these, but I can't be an expert in everything with such a wide variety of cars, so don't take the captions as gospel.

[Stang]

Rounding the corner onto the main street of Tanunda, I almost had to sit down as the scene came into view...millions of dollars of Porsches lined up side by side, for what must have been nearly 100 metres.

An angry sounding rotary engine from behind turned my head; the noise was coming from this early model Mazda RX7.

These tough 911s were close behind.