Monday Matsuri Teaser

I belong to an RC Club that mostly does RC drifting, and some others like RC rock crawling too. We recently decided to come up with a "team body" design and everyone will be creating the same "paint scheme" but on any body they want to use. I completed mine first and made a little video teaser. Eventually, when everyone has completed theirs I will create a new video featuring every member's car including footage of them driving it.

For now here's the teaser:

Monday Matsuri Teaser from Jay Moorgrove on Vimeo.

2011 Matsuri Dates

I'd love to be able to go to one of these...if anyone wants to sponsor my trip feel free. I'll take lots of pictures for you. ^_^

G1 GP Round 1 (Course TBC) 29 April 2011
Spring Matsuri 30 April – 1 May 2011

G1 GP Round 2 (Course TBC) 12th August 2011
Summer Matsuri August 13 – 14 2011

G1 GP Round 3 (Course TBC) 11 November 2011
Autumn Matsuri 12-13 November 2011

If I only had the cash...

Found this JZX100 that is somewhat nearby, closer than the ones in Japan anyway.  If I only had the cash I'd run over there and bring it home today.

There's some things I'd change, but you gotta start somewhere.

Snow and changing tires

We got our first snow today, not a lot of accumulation, mostly a lot of wind causing the snow to fall sideways...hmm, appropriate I guess. ^_^

Also had to finally change the tires on the Audi.  Have to say this, it sucked.  Audi uses stud style lug nuts, which means that you have to get the tire positioned just right to be able to put the stud in and tighten it.  I prefer the Subaru (and others) style of having studs in the hub and then you just place the wheel onto them.  The front brake discs on my Audi are also a floating style so when you take the studs out the disc can move slightly causing one more thing to have to adjust just right to get the wheel back on.  It's not because of the AWD that you don't see drifting Audi's, it's because of the damn stud lugs!  It'd take too long to change a set of tires, by the time you're done the session would be over!

Anyway, got the winter wheels/tires on and have to say that I officially hate the way the car looks now.  Going from a 19" wheel to a 16" wheel added about 2" of fender gap as well as losing about 3/4" of flushness.  So now it looks like every other boring Audi on the road instead of being somewhat VIPish.  Oh well, at least I can swap the summer rims back on in 5 months. -_-

Till then I guess I can look at this pic from the summer every time I think about how ugly the car looks with the winter wheels.

Additionally, I have to say that this is the family car, it's sole reason for being in my possession is so that I can haul all the family stuff around and do it in comfort and safety with just a little bit of style. I really loathe driving it unless we're doing long distance trips where we can just cruise at speed for a long time. That's the only thing the car is really good at. It's also the reason that I'm saving to be able to import a Toyota Chaser Mark II as my personal "fun" car.

HKS Skyline R35 GT-R GT800 Racing Spec

Here is a vid on the HKS' Skyline R35 GT-R GT800 Racing Spec from behind the scenes. It is making around 800hp and has hit almost 190mph at Fuji Speedway, lapping it in 1:47.

Parking Garage Drifting

Here's a short vid of Remmo Niezen drifting up the spiral ramp in a parking garage.  Not much room so there isn't huge angle or anything but it's definitely drifting....

Credit: Found over on the http://keepdriftingfun.com blog.

Playstation meets RC Drifting

So here's a vid where a Playstation racing wheel has been modified to work with an RC car for drifting...interesting project....

Copping out...

Well since I apparently don't have enough to put here, I'm going to start including content from other sources.  I hope that once I'm finished with this huge work project that I'll be making more money and will be able to get a project car that will provide a lot more content for this blog.

So for now I'll leave you with a video of street drifting in Yokohama taken by Brian of Panda Pirate Brian.


Yokohama Drift from Brian Widiker on Vimeo.

Another new look and a dying phone

I can't really decide how I want to style this blog so I'll just keep playing with the layouts and colors until I find something I like.  Right now I'm liking this layout, but not sure about the colors. 

Also decided to ditch the Amazon box for now as it wasn't pulling any relevant content at all.  I specified that the blog would be about cars and photography mainly.  A few days ago I started seeing totally unrelated things like diamond rings advertisements, yes, that fits in cars and photography.

I've had my iPhone 3GS for a year now and in the last two weeks the battery has started to last for shorter and shorter periods of time between charges.  I don't have any notifications running and in 3 hours of not being used at all it went from a full charge to half charge.  You're not supposed to be able to change the battery as a customer, but if you go to ifixit.com you can get a kit to do it.  However, everything you purchase in Sweden has like a 2 year warranty regardless of what the manufacturer does, so I think I may try to go back to where I got it and see if they'll replace it with an iPhone 4.  I'd really like to get the white one but Apple is dragging their feet with it stating that the white paint isn't thick enough for the backlighting. 

Fell off the wagon...

So yeah, missed a few days there.  Truth is not much is really happening.  I'm working really hard and long hours at the moment to finish up a project that should enable me to make a lot more money so that has been my primary focus.  I'm still looking around to try to find some sort of project car but there's really nothing around here that is what I'm looking for.  It seems Finland has a lot more cool cars so I might wind up going there to get something.  I guess it doesn't really matter too much right now anyway though as I have no place to work on a car. 

Music Day

From time to time I find bands that I didn't know about before so I decided to start sharing them here. Sometimes they have been around for quite a while, to be honest I don't listen to the radio much so I'm not always up on the latest music.

The band for today is McFly.  I found them from watching the Wangan Midnight live-action movie the other day.  Check out their website here.

I miss my garage

Yesterday I was again doing some painting out in my in-laws garage.  It was raining slightly.  I closed the door partially so that the rain wouldn't come in too much and it was just so nice working out there.  Just the soft sound of rain falling, a light cool breeze and the sounds that I made while working.  Other than that it was pure silence.  No distractions, no interruptions, just me and the work.  It was so nice.  I really miss working that way and can't wait to get my own garage again and get working on a car. 

Legacy

Found a potentially suitable Legacy to play around with and at a great price. However, it is so far north the cost and time it would take to go get it makes it not worth it.

Slow day

Nothing much going on today, just did some furniture painting. Still trying to decide what sort of car I want to get to play around with as well.

Mt. Washington

Always wanted to do this...guess the golden boy beat me to it. :(  At least he did it with style and did it right.

New Camera

I currently have a Sony Cyber-shot W90 point and shoot type camera which is what I bought it for but now I'm wanting to do more than that camera can handle.  So I'm in the market for a DSLR.  I want a Canon but the decision is if I should get something like a T2i (550d) or if I should splurge and go for something more like a 7d. 

Thoughts?

Choices

I am currently looking for a fun car to play around with. So far my list of choices includes:
Nissan S12 (also known as a 180SX)
Nissan S13 (also known as a 200/240SX)
Early 90's Subaru Legacy

Any other suggestions?


Basically I'm looking for a car that I can setup to drift and one that I won't mind too much if it gets some battle scars.  I'm mostly leaning towards the Legacy as I can find them relatively cheap and I do have the 2003 WRX drivetrain that I can install, as soon as I get it shipped from the US...

I'm also going to be adding in some options to try to monetize this blog.  I don't know if anything will come of it but the idea intrigues me so I'll give it a try and will do my best to keep them from being too obtrusive.

Shipping...

So when I was living in the US I purchased a lightly wrecked 2003 Subaru Impreza WRX that basically only had minor body damage all around.  My plan was to turn it into a rally car but I never had the funds to complete it.  Now that I'm living in Sweden I'd like to at least get the drivetrain and a few other parts over here.  The problem is the cost of shipping...it's outrageous!  For a 20' container to put the Opel and the WRX parts into I'm looking at at least $5,000!!!  The container itself will weigh more than what I'm going to put in it so the weight isn't the issue.  I guess they're claiming it is the cost of fuel or something.  None of these shipping companies really inspire any form of confidence that they won't accidentally drop my stuff in the middle of the Atlantic somewhere either.

My 1973 Opel GT

Ok, so I missed a day there, it took me a while to find the following photos. I couldn't just go out and take a couple pictures of my GT because it happens to be about 4000 miles away from me right now.

Anyway, here are a few pictures of it as it stood about 5 years ago.  It has had a partial restoration, basically a face-lift and minor mechanical tweaks.  Currently it needs a full restoration and is patiently waiting for me to ship it here to Sweden so I can do that.

 Here are a couple pictures of what I plan on doing with her in the next restoration.
Steinmetz Widebody Flares:

Hood with twin scoops and front airdam:

There are many more modifications that I will be doing to bring her up to modern specifications, especially performance wise as the original 1.9 liter motor just doesn't quite have the punch that I want it to have.  I will likely drop in something a bit more modern with around 220hp to the wheels.

Unique Vehicles

One of the things I always look for in my vehicles is for them to be unique. There is nothing I can't stand more than "parking next to myself".

With only two exceptions, every vehicle I have ever owned has been unique, rare or custom in some way.

I'll start off with the very first car I ever owned, and still own to this day. It is a 1973 Opel GT. The 73' was the last year they were produced due to changes in the minimum bumper height law in the US. Of the 70,000 of so produced that year, only around 7,000 were imported into the US and few exist now.

Tomorrow I will follow up with a few pictures of mine as well as some of the modifications I want to do to it.

Another car....

Here's another car I've really been enjoying looking at lately.  It's actually kind of a rarity because of what it can do.  It's not often you see a 1993 Subaru Legacy Turbo that's been converted to RWD for the purpose of drifting. It's making me consider building my own, I do have a 2003 Subaru WRX drivetrain...

Here's a few pics, you can check out more on http://fulllock.wordpress.com/.

Here we go...again...

So this is probably the fourth or fifth blog that I've started now.  All the others have been miserable failures with me not updating anywhere near as often as I wanted to when I started them and eventually forgetting them completely.  With this one, I hope to have updates at least once a week but I'm aiming high and shooting for a daily update.  I've also given myself another advantage and setup my iPhone so that I can blog from anywhere that I can get cell signal.  That way I really have no excuse whatsoever.

So what is this blog going to be about?  Well just about anything really, but in all honesty it will probably primarily wind up being about cars and car life.  I have been nuts about cars since before I could walk and could name just about every make and model of every car I saw on the road by the age of 6 as well as being able to give statistical info about the ones I liked.

With that in mind, I want to kick things off with a tribute to one of my all time favorite cars.  Sadly it was destroyed earlier this year.  The car started off life fairly normally, being passed from one owner to another.  However it's final owner, tweaked and modfied it over and over subtly massaging it to suit his purposes, which mostly consisted of gymkhana racing.  During it's evolution it achieved something that few cars ever achieve.  It not only became rather famous in the Subaru community, but it gathered a huge number of followers and admirers.  I believe the reason for this is that the car developed a unique character that nobody could quite explain.  It had become more than the sum of its parts and taken on a life of it's own.

Here are a couple of my favorite pics of it: