1988 Nissan A31 Cefiro

[rohan]

Thought I'd start a thread for my Cefiro, mostly copied from my blog as I post each stage: carscameraschronicillness.blogspot.com/

So there's some unnecessary details for car people, but plenty of pics.

Having owned an R31 Nissan Skyline GTS coupe in 2007...







...which I sold in early 2008, it was followed by an EG Civic, which was great for hills runs...


















...at least until this happened...











...but I started missing the feeling and power of a turbocharged rear wheel drive. So after thinking about maybe getting another R31 or a newer R32 Skyline, I decided that a Cefiro would be the best car for what I wanted to do with it. Which was to have a car that sounded good, handled well, had a bit of power to it, as well as the practicality of a four door sedan. I love the sound of the Nissan RB series engines, and Cefiros have that, but without the cop-bait circular tail lights of the Skylines. They were also one of my first choices of a Japanese import to buy in 2003-2004, but due to my health constantly being too poor to allow me even a marginal amount of paid work, I had to sit back and watch all my friends buy the cars I wanted, while I was stuck with dreams of being able to buy a nice car.

At the time in early 2010 I was also planning on using the Cefiro for track days and drift practices at Mallala motorsport park, but with my health taking a massive plunge in 2010 and being hospitalised for a couple of months...



...that's not realistic any more due to strength and money complications. Hopefully it's something I can do in the future though.





Here's a photo of the Ceffy taken a few weeks ago.






But back to the beginning...

Skylines are very common cars now in Australia, particularly R33s, and while there are a few Cefiros around the place, they are fairly rare, and there only tends to be 6-8 for sale nationwide on www.carsales.com.au at any one time.

Given that Cefiros are a very popular drift car, several of them would be track-only cars, or highly modified and a bit much for what I wanted, and sometimes both, and completely hammered. So after checking on the Carsales website and several Japanese import forums over the course of several months in early 2010, I finally came across an ad for a Cefiro that looked promising, and was actually in SA which was rare. While it did have a bit of the 'drift pig' look going with the panda style black boot and bonnet, it had some aftermarket goodies that were exactly what I was after, but with a fairly standard engine and some nice 17" Buddy Club P1 rims. So after having a bit of a think and reading over the specs and looking through the pictures, I decided to give the seller a call. When I looked at the contact details, both the name and number seemed familiar for some reason.

So I started typing the number into my phone, and it came up with the name Vince. With Adelaide being such a small world, Vince had complied a couple of my friends' cars, and I'd also chatted with him at a nearby workshop (Boostworx) during a dyno day a little while back. But the reason he was in my phone already was that I had his R33 Nissan Skyline GT-R on my feature car list to shoot for High Performance Imports magazine. So after giving him a call and asking a few questions, I headed over to his import compliance workshop to have a look at the car in person, to see what sort of condition the car was in, and take it for a bit of a drive to see what it was like.

Here are the photos from the carsales ad, taken by Vince.

[joem83]

All very nice car's there mate, esp like the R31. What was the ticket for on the civic, to low?

Current ride looks cool, not seen one of those before!

[rohan]

Thanks, the Civic was initially done for 'eyebrow height' being too low, which is the distance between the centre of the wheel and the wheel arch.

Which obviously meant it was a danger to society and had to be off the road within 48 hours. But they are very picky when it comes to clearing the defects, so had to spend quite a lot to get the Civic un-defected again.

[rohan]

And yeah, Cefiros are fairly rare...

[joem83]

Thats a very strange rule if you ask me, don't get how the centre of the wheel to arch gap can be an issue, to clear the defects does it have to go over the pit? think thats what it's called, the very strict Oz version of an MOT?

So anymore plans for the Cefiro?

[conrad]

they just don't want anyone having modified cars really so any excuse it seems.

Anyway
R31 was really cool amd the cefiro is cool too. Suck to hear about the health situation. Hopefully some improvement comes along in that regard

[rohan]

Yeah, even a police officer I spoke to about driving the car for repairs didn't know what that meant. There is an extremely strict inspection once cars are given a notice for a 'major defect', they go through the car inside, outside and underneath, and pick on almost anything they can see. So a pain when it happens.

Yeah still got plenty more posts to come about the Cefiro, just had a front-mount intercooler installed and a dyno run recently, and getting the bonnet resprayed white soon, as the current black one looks untidy and attracts unwanted attention.




Although due to crippling health problems, I only drove it once for about 10 minutes between June 2010 and May 2011. More details on that later.

[rohan]

Part 2.


So after getting a bit excited about seeing a promising Cefiro I was going to check out, I jumped in my Civic and made my way up to Vince's compliance workshop in the eastern suburbs. After plenty of stop-start traffic heading up Grand Junction Road mid afternoon, I got to the workshop and parked on the street outside. Walking up the driveway along the main building, I caught a glimpse of the back of the Cefiro through one of the garage doors. Just seeing the wheels and stance, the first thought that came into my head was 'Yeah, I'm going to want this...'

Here's a photo of the first view I got of it. Please excuse the terrible photos in this post, light was bad and I was rather distracted by looking at the car to concentrate on getting good ones.




After chatting to Vince for a bit about the car, I had a bit of a closer look at both the exterior and interior, it looked pretty clean for the most part. There were a few obvious cosmetic problems in the way of the burnt rear bumper above the exhaust, some scratches and a mildly dented front left quarter panel, and the fact the bootlid and bonnet were black. But for a car that's 22 years old, you can't expect it to look like it's just rolled out of the showroom.

And as I mentioned in post #1, it had a few aftermarket items which were at the level of what I wanted in a car, sans the turbo timer, drainpipe muffler and blow-off valve:

-Tein coilover suspension all round

-2-way mechanical diff

-Nismo heavy duty clutch

-Strut braces front and rear

-17” Buddy Club P1 wheels

-5 stud conversion

-R33 Skyline brakes

-Sprint sports steering wheel

-Bride bucket seat

-R33 passenger seat

-Apexi boost gauge

-3” turbo back exhaust into 5 inch cannon

-Oil catch can

-Bee-R blow-off valve

- HKS turbo timer

The general condition of the paint and body was quite good. I looked at a Cefiro a few years ago with a friend that had a fair bit of body rust around the windows and such. I couldn't even find a hint of surface rust anywhere on the car, except for a tiny bit on the gouge in the front quarter panel mentioned above. The interior looked really nice and pretty new considering how old the car is. So after a bit more tyre kicking, Vince started the car up and let it idle for a little while to warm up the engine before driving it. Vince was actually keeping the car in his workshop for a friend who owned the car, and if I recall correctly he was in Hawaii when I bought the Ceffy.

With some impressive maneuvering by Vince to squeeze the Cefiro out of its resting spot and out in the driveway, I had a bit more of a look around the car again in the open shade and sunlight, and took a few quick snapshots as a record.









It's not particularly obvious, but you can see the slightly dented front quarter panel here.




And here's the interior. The Bride seat is really good, holds you in quite snugly. But considering how ridiculously skinny I am, and that it's the right size for me, I'm not sure many people could drive it comfortably. But they're great in the hills, instead of straining to hold your body straight around corners, the Bride seat just holds you in the same spot.




The engine bay. Couple of unnecessary stickers, a glaringly obvious blow-off valve, and missing the coil pack cover, but looked pretty good otherwise.



These steering wheels are really nice to use compared to standard ones, smaller size and made of stitched leather (or maybe imitation leather). You can just see the boost gauge behind the steering wheel.



There aren't heaps of places to put one, but right in front of the speedo and tacho doesn't seem like the best choice, given it blocks the view of the more important gauges.



The 17" Buddy Club P1 racing rims. I tend to prefer dished 5 spoke or BBS mesh wheels better, but I do quite like the look of these. Offset is just right to have them sitting flush with the guards.




As I said before, rear bumper was a bit fried from the exhaust which you can see in these shots. But that's a relatively minor cosmetic blemish easily repaired.



So after having a good look around and taking some photos, it was time for me to get behind the wheel to see what it was like on the road. With a heavy duty aftermarket clutch, the pedal was a lot heavier than the one in the Civic, but I managed to slot it into reverse, and then ease back down the driveway without too much trouble. Vince was in the passenger seat, and while reversing out into the street, I commented how heavy clutches are easier to get used to than light ones. I then proceeded to almost stall the car trying to take off gently in first.

While the clutch wasn't as heavy as some other cars I've driven, it engaged very suddenly and fairly high up, which made things a bit difficult to get used to quickly. Obviously I was erring on the side of caution for stalling, preferring unnecessary revs to bunny-hopping. So I drove about as competently as an L-plater doing their licence test when it came to taking off from a standing start for the first few minutes.

The gearbox felt quite smooth and good for a car this old, as did the engine and suspension. With coilovers all round and a skipping mechanical diff, it wasn't what you would call a comfortable ride, but after years of riding around in and driving kidney-bruising Japanese imports it was nothing different to what I was used to anyway.



I drive my parents' VY Commodore now and then, which has pretty soft standard suspension. After driving something that handles relatively well with good suspension and meaty tyres, like my EG Civic or the Cefiro, you really notice how sloppy normal sedans like a Commodore are. Under acceleration and braking, the VY pitches back and forth quite significantly, rolls from side to side in corners, and when doing both generally wallows around like a ship lost at sea in a storm. I don't usually tend to get carsick as such, but having a car sit flat around bends is a much nicer sensation than feeling like you need to hang onto the windowsills to stop yourself from falling out and/or throwing up.

After giving the Ceffy a bit of a stick on a nearby main road in 1st and 2nd gear to see how it was running, and gauge the sort of power it had, everything seemed to be pretty good so I made the decision that I would buy it. So after weaving through assorted backstreets to return to Vince's workshop, driving a bit more competently than before (not a lot), I parked the car back in the driveway. After awkwardly half-climbing out of the low slung Bride seat, I fished $100 out of my wallet and gave it to Vince as a deposit, planning to return in the next few days with a friend to pick up the car.



Jumping back into the Civic, its clutch was ridiculously light in comparison to the Cefiro, to the extent that I repeatedly kicked my foot to the floor on gear changes at first, as I couldn't feel the take-up point. But after a couple of minutes I returned to driving like a normal person, and as I headed home I started to think about what I could do to the car and the motorsport events I could take part in after forking over the cash.

Coming up in Post #3; the purchase and introducing the car to its new home...

[rohan]

So after putting down a deposit on the Ceffy, I returned a couple of nights later to hand over a wad of cash in exchange for the car. I went back up with a friend in my Civic, so he could check out the car as well, and I also figured it might be a little tricky driving both cars back home myself.

Following a bit of a chat about the car, getting spare bits and pieces together and signing the registration papers, Vince handed over the keys to my new Cefiro. With a little more talent than last time, (still not a lot) I eased the clutch out to reverse back down the driveway, and made my way out onto Grand Junction Road to head back to another friend's house.

I did have a bit of smile on my face on the drive back, having the turbo sounds and power again felt really good. By the time I made it back to my friend's house in Flinders Park, we'd noticed that the Cefiro's left hand headlight was only working intermittently. So it was into the garage to have a look under the bonnet, and try to see what the problem was.







After a bit of fiddling with the fuses and wiring, we managed to get the light working again fairly consistently, for a little while at least.



The light was still going on and off for no apparent reason, so after working on and having a closer look at the car for an hour or so, I decided to head home, and take it to an auto electrician to get the problem sorted properly.




It felt good to get the Ceffy back to its new home in my garage, on the drive back I was pondering what to do first, while keeping an eye on the temperamental headlight. Cleaning up the rather rough appearance was first on the list, but there wasn't a whole lot I could do in the dark, so I locked the car up, closed the garage door and headed off to bed, ready to get going the next day.

[recarouk]

what a truly epic write up and what a stunning car, ive never ever seen one before. good luck to you buddy and the build, i shall keep an eye on this one.

[rohan]

Thanks.

On to Part 4..

Having brought the Cefiro home the night before, the next morning I started it up and reversed out into the driveway, to take some photos of it in sunlight. After having it sit in my garage for nearly a year from June 2010- May 2011 with a repaired and resprayed rear end, when I looked at these photos again for this post, I was a bit taken aback by how much of a pig it looked when I first bought it. Mostly due to the melted and burnt rear bumper, as well as both the bonnet and boot being black.

From this side it looks relatively ok.







And then...yikes. Looks particularly nasty in this first photo, can't believe I drove it in daylight looking like that, even if it was only once to wash the car and pick up a few car-related bits and pieces from Port Adelaide.









After taking a few photos of the Ceffy in the driveway, I headed over to a car wash at Port Adelaide to clean some of the dust and dirt off the car. While I was hosing it down, a guy from the Bob Jane T-Mart store next to the carwash came up, and said he knew the previous owner, and that at some point it had been defected and had to be taken back to stock. I mentioned that I was after some new rear tyres, as the current ones didn't have much tread left. He said that they had 17" tyres on special for a good price, so after rinsing the car off, I made the huge 30 metre road trip over to the workshop to get a couple fitted.





Up on the jack in preparation for the new tyres. It was a good chance to have a bit of a look underneath the car, with it being quite low I wasn't able to see much lying on the ground when I first checked it out.

















With the new shoes fitted a short time later, I headed back home and parked it in the garage. The car came with a few bits and pieces, including a spare boot lid that didn't look black, although it's really more of a dark grey than black.




Some pretty substantial flames came out of the exhaust at some point in time by the looks of the bumper. I've seen various rotors pop flames fairly regularly, but they don't melt the bumper like this.





I suppose you don't need too many points to attach a boot lid, but I was a little surprised that there were only 4 little bolts holding it.





So after a couple of minutes with a ratchet, and some awkward maneuvering holding the boot lid by myself, I got it off and laid it on the ground next to the bubble-wrapped replacement. It would have been even easier with a second person, but in the middle of a weekday with nobody else around I managed ok.


















I was under the impression that the spare boot lid was the same colour white as the car, given that would be the logical conclusion, and under the bubble wrap it did look white. It turned out to be more of a light grey colour, which obviously didn't match, but stood out a lot less than the blackish one. So it was the better option until I could take the car in to get resprayed properly.






There were a few random stickers inside the new one. With some difficulty I held it in place while I did the bolts up tight again.







So looking marginally more respectable after the change, but still has mismatched paint and the nasty bumper burn dragging it down.





Some of the bits and pieces that came with the car in the boot, lots of random plastic trim pieces, as well as 600x300mm HKS front-mount intercooler.




Coming up in Post #5; my dodgy stopgap bumper respray, and some decent DSLR photos of the Ceffy, taken on our first short cruise to Outer Harbour.

[surprisingskoda]

I'm getting the impression that this is going to be one of those awesome "attention to detail" builds!

[rohan]

The build won't be anything crazy, just tidying things up and a bit more power. But being a photographer I do tend to pay attention to detail.



So after doing a very rough and dodgy touch-up spray of the burnt part of the rear bumper, it was time for our first leisurely drive. It was also a good opportunity to take a few half-decent photos of the Ceffy, using my Nikon D300 digital SLR with an 85mm f/1.4 lens, which tends to give slightly better results than a low-end Canon compact.

I decided to head a few kilometres along the coastline and up to Outer Harbour. Cruising along the Esplanade from Semaphore, you're greeted by sweeping ocean views as you make your way north up the Le Fevre Peninsula.

There are a few open spots at Outer Harbour to choose from for taking car photos, but being a weekday afternoon near a busy port, there were lots of trucks frequently rumbling back and forth around the main roads and warehouses. So I turned down towards the boat launch ramp, which has a small road and carpark squeezed in between the export car yards and marina. It was fairly quiet, so I was able to park in the open area near the ramp to get some shots of the car.























Then a few days later, took the Ceffy to church for the first time on Sunday morning, and parked it next to a mate's Toyota JZX100 Chaser, which has just under 200kw at the wheels, so it's much faster than my car, and much less dodgy looking. Photos were taken with my long-gone Canon Powershot A470 compact, may it rest in peace.

[rohan]

After booking the car in to Smooth Garage to get a new exhaust, I headed back to the workshop a few days later. The cannon exhaust on the car was huge, and also mounted quite a lot lower than it needed to be, so I ended up getting them to make twin 2 inch straight pipes from the diff back. Apart from the tougher sound, it would also be able to tuck up nicely in the rear bumper's exhaust outlet, as opposed to hanging another 10 centimetres or so lower underneath it like the cannon. All photos taken with a Canon Powershot A470 compact.



It was a fairly simple job, so while they worked on making up, welding and cutting the new pipes, I just sat down on a lounge in the waiting area and flicked through a large pile of car magazines stacked on the table.

This day was really not a good one in regards to my health. Despite the fact that I was sitting down on a comfortable lounge, I was so fatigued and nauseated most of the time that just being there was stretching myself pretty far. It was a day where I really should been lying down. Bright fluro lights have the tendency to give me a mix of a headache and light head, so sitting there for a few hours with the loud banging metal noises wasn't a whole heap of fun.



I was sitting in an area to the left of this photo, but came back for a quick look every now and then to see how things were progressing. Not that I could see much of the exhaust at this distance and angle. While I was sitting back down reading the magazines, I heard the sound of an RB engine crank and start. My first thought was 'wow, that car sounds tough, I wonder what it is?' Then looking across as the car slowly rolled into view, I saw that the car was mine. Despite the waiting being unpleasant, hearing how good the Cefiro sounded definitely put a smile on my face.

You can see the close-up of my awesome painting skills here, along with the new straight pipes.




If you go back and have a look at the original cannon exhaust, you can see how much higher up the twin pipes sit, and aesthetically it seemed to make the rear end flow more nicely. Well, discounting the obviously mangled bumper which looks like it's been attacked by a 5 year old with a cigarette lighter and liquid paper anyway.



So after taking these few photos of the new exhaust setup, I jumped back into the driver's seat, started the car and trundled out onto the road. At idle the exhaust sound was noticeably louder, and once I got going on the road, it definitely had a tougher sound to it. I deliberately took the Port Expressway home, so I could give the Ceffy a bit of a boot up to 90 to see how it sounded accelerating at higher revs.

After turning and moving into the merging lane at around 40, I shifted back to second gear, so it would have a bit more of a boost kick. After checking for other traffic, I planted my foot on the accelerator and got it up to 90 as fast as it knew how. Between the power, the sounds of the engine, exhaust and turbo, it's safe to say that put another big smile on my face.

Coming up in Post #7: A quick shoot using 3 Nikon Speedlight external flash units.

[rohan]

After spending a few days resting at home, I felt a bit better, so I decided to get my Nikon Speedlight flash gear out to take some proper nicely lit photos of the Ceffy. It wasn't particularly clean, so I drove a few minutes down the road to Semaphore, and gave the car a quick wash in one of the bays. Photos taken with a Canon Powershot A470.












After giving it a quick soap and rinse, I jumped back in the car and headed over to Port Adelaide. Given that I was about to shoot a white Falcon with a black bonnet for Street Fords magazine, I drove down to Hart's Mill, located just next to the Port River, for a bit of practice. It has a large area of gravel and bitumen nearby with no traffic, so it's a really good location, and has that nice industrial look, with a choice of old brick, stone or corrugated metal backgrounds.

With the back end still looking pretty nasty, I just concentrated on a few little details, and getting the lighting, composition and angles right for a front quarter shot. These tend to be used for opening spreads in magazine features, as it gives a view of the angle most people generally look at a car from.

Started off with a couple of detail shots. I like the random Japanese stickers you tend to find on most imports. All the photos were taken using a Nikon D300 digital SLR and Nikkor 85mm f/1.4D lens.













To start with the front 3/4 photos, I took a few photos with just the natural light. It gives a different look compared to using flash, and is also good for getting a baseline exposure to work with for the three external Speedlight flash units.







So after a few natural light photos, I got the three flashes out, set them up around the car, and started playing around with different angles and levels of light and exposure. When using the camera and flashes in manual mode, the general rule of thumb is that raising the shutter speed will make the general exposure darker, while dialing the aperture up and down will affect how bright the flashes are. That's not the best explanation of how it works, but it's all a matter of playing around with different settings until you like what you see. I think these photos were taken with the flashes set to half power.

So below are a few photos with variations in shutter speeds and apertures. The flashes I used were all Nikon Speedlights; an SB900 and two SB600s. After varying levels of success with the Nikon CLS optical flash triggering, I bit the bullet a few months earlier and bought a set of Elinchrom Skyport wireless triggers. Not cheap, but they do reliably get the job done time after time, compared to the optical triggering, where it was very hit-and-miss unless you were close with a direct line of sight to a Speedlight flash.

But combining charging the D300's battery, 12 AAs for the flashes, and the three Elinchrom Skyport receiver units, you need a lot of power points to charge everything up before a shoot. And that doesn't take into account charging spare/backup batteries, which is always a good idea.





















A few more detail shots to finish things off.










At this point I hadn't yet heard how the new exhaust sounded from the outside, so I put my Canon Powershot A470 on the ground to take a short clip while I started the engine and gave it a few revs.




At the time I was hoping to get out to some drift practices at Mallala, so I went to Nisswreck to pick up a couple of cheap stock R33 Skyline rims in my Civic.





And then got some secondhand tyres fitted.




The next week was pretty bad health-wise, so I spent quite a while trying to recover from the effort of getting out driving and taking photos. On the 12th I had a BMW to shoot for Hot 4s magazine. If you look closely, you can see the Cefiro in the reflection on the side of the BMW while I was shooting some rolling shots, with my friend/assistant Dean behind the wheel.





The actual shot they used didn't have my car reflected in the paint obviously.

Coming up in Post #7; photos and video from the first hills run.

[rohan]

After spending three weeks at home resting and recovering, I finally felt up to going for a drive in the hills. After dropping my girlfriend Sally off at the airport to visit her dad on Flinders Island one morning, I headed up to Gorge Road.

This stretch of road is my favourite hills run route. Gorge Road has a great mix of twists and turns, in combination with some stunning scenery, and towering rock cliff walls along most of the way to Lobethal. I love going through there with the windows open in a nice sounding car, the exhaust and turbo sounds bouncing off the cliffs.



Since I was mostly focused on enjoying the drive and getting some in-car video footage, I only brought my Canon Powershot A470 along and took these few photos just at the start of Gorge Road.















I then set up the Powershot camera on a Manfrotto suction cup, attached to the inside of the back window. For such a basic setup, the footage and sound actually came out quite well which was nice. I was a bit concerned that having the windows down would just blast the audio with wind noise, but you can only hear it a few times.




So here's a short clip I cobbled together of the drive up Gorge Road to Lobethal, and then back to town again on Adelaide-Lobethal Road. You can get a good idea of the impressive scenery I was talking about at the start of this post, and what the car sounds like with the new exhaust.




Here's a Google map of the area around Lobethal. As you can see, there are plenty of awesome roads to choose from.

maps.google.com.au/maps?q=Lobethal,+South+Australia&hl=en&sll=-34.940161,138.790498&sspn=0.014864,0.033023&t=h&z=13

[rohan]

A couple of days after the hills run in previous post, I took the Ceffy to Seaton Crash Repairs to fix up the rear bumper and boot lid. Since it was pretty discoloured and burnt, I asked them to respray most of the rear bar, in addition to cutting out a neater square opening for the exhaust, and painting the boot white.

After a few days, the car was a ready to go. As you'll see in the photos below, it looks a whole lot cleaner from behind compared to when I first bought it. Photos taken with a Canon Powershot A480.

Stopped at a small carpark near home to snap a couple of shots in the sunlight.






And back in the garage at home.










Sadly, the Ceffy was to stay in the garage for a very long time soon after the respray, as I became too sick to drive for nearly a year.

[rohan]

This post by far covers the least active and most unpleasant period of time I've owned the Cefiro. As I mentioned in the previous post, soon after the respray, my health problems got to the point where I was not really able to drive.

In the middle of July, I got worse and was admitted to hospital for ten days, due to the nausea being so bad I couldn't eat or drink enough to get adequate nutrition or stay hydrated. Which is a lot less fun than it might sound, see this post for more details: carscameraschronicillness.blogspot.com/2011/06/my-story-hospital-2010-1.html



I was still very unwell when I came home, so the Ceffy continued to sit in the garage, waiting for me to drive it again. The next couple of months consisted mostly of lying down and trying to eat a fairly marginal amount of food, and barely having the energy to sit up for more than a few minutes at a time.

August 18th, 2010.




I was missing being able to drive the Ceffy, so in early September I borrowed a battery charger from my Uncle Paul, and hooked it up for a couple of days to resuscitate the battery. As you can see in the photos, there were already a few spiders making the Cefiro their home.

September 11th, 2010.






















So after giving the charger a couple of days to do its thing, I lowered myself into the driver's seat, with my Canon Powershot camera running video next to the exhaust. After not being driven properly for several months, I wasn't sure what to expect, or if it would even crank over and run properly after 6 weeks of sitting silently in the dust.

Surprisingly, the engine came to life as soon as I turned the key, and settled into a smooth but high idle within 10 seconds or so.



I let the engine warm up for a few minutes, and then slowly eased it out of the garage and onto the road. Just hearing it idling was nice, but it did feel good to actually drive it again. I was still rather weak at this point, and the clutch on the Ceffy is pretty heavy, so after gingerly driving it around the block a few times, I headed back home and nosed it back into the garage again.

Just the exertion of that short drive took the rest of my spare energy, and I spent the rest of the day lying down trying to recover. While I was obviously very unwell, I thought getting the car running again was a step in the right direction towards recovery.

Little did I know that I would not be well enough and able to drive it again until June 6th, 2011.

[rohan]

While being somewhat stable in a way for a couple of months, at the end of September, my digestive system pretty much decided that it didn't want to have to go to the effort of moving food through my body. Obviously this led rather quickly to me being hospitalised again. And if I thought the previous hospital visit was pretty awful, it paled in comparison with the torturous 7 week hospital stay I was about to endure.

Just as a warning, there are a few medical-ish photos below if you're sensitive to that sort of thing.

With my upper digestive system basically closed for business, I had to have a naso-gastric feeding tube inserted into my stomach. while completely awake and alert. It was a pretty horrific experience, and it actually felt a lot worse than I imagined it would, so whatever you think it might be like, it's worse. It's hard to describe, but the sensation was like someone was coiling up a rope in my throat and all the way down to my stomach, and strangling me while I was gagging, choking, coughing and being unable to breathe. Both my girlfriend and my mum had to leave the room after the first 30 seconds of attempting the insertion.

As you can see in these photos my girlfriend Sally took on her phone in early October, I'm not exactly the picture of health.





So I went from having some nice wheels to drive in the way of owning the Cefiro, to being relegated to a hospital bed and wheelchair for a couple of months.







I was around 63kg at the start of 2010, but by late October my weight had plummeted to 50kg. After spending weeks with the naso-gastric feeding tube rammed down my throat, the doctors decided the best long term option for me was to have a jejunostomy. Which essentially involves surgically implanting a feeding tube directly into the jejunum, which is below the stomach, as my stomach wasn't working at all really.



About a week after the surgery and once I'd stabilised a bit, I was finally able to go home in late November. I really wasn't any better, but after the surgery there really wasn't much else they could do.

The next few months I felt too sick and weak to do anything at all, besides lie in bed trying to make it through to the next day. It wasn't until February that I even took any more photos of the Ceffy, when one of my friends dropped round in his JZX100 Toyota Chaser.

February 3rd, 2011.



Checking out my hellaflush spiderwebs.







March 7th, 2011.

Gathering yet more dust, webs and associated plant debris.






May 26th, 2011.

By this point the whole car was coated in a layer of dirt and dust, peppered with some paw prints from nearby cats. I was also wondering if I would need some sort of winch to pull it free from all the cobwebs connecting the chassis to the ground.



















I managed to very slowly pick up some strength in the first few months of 2011. At the end of May, I was still extremely sick, but was able to contemplate being able to drive the Cefiro again, so I made a post on Performance Forums to ask about getting it running again. It hadn't even been started since that brief drive in September, so I wasn't sure how much I might need to do to get it back on the road.

Coming up in Post #11; Bringing it back to life.

[rohan]

After the months of being essentially bedridden during late 2010 and the first part of 2011, by April I had started being able to get out again here and there. Towards the end of April I was gaining a bit more strength, and when one of my friends David dropped round with his 'new' Nissan S14 200SX, I thought that since it was such a nice day, we could try going for a bit of a drive.








After he had driven up the Port Expressway to Wingfield, I thought that since I was still feeling relatively ok, that I could try having a bit of a drive in the S14 myself. So after pulling over in a side street we swapped seats, and for the first time in nearly a year, I was finally back behind the wheel of a turbocharged car for a proper drive.






The tank was running very low so we filled up on the way back to my place.






I was pretty worn out after that, but it was worth it. After being a bit hesitant about driving my own car for a while, going for a trouble-free drive in the S14 helped give me some confidence and incentive to go about getting my Ceffy up and running.

So a couple of weeks later I made a post on Performance Forums asking for help with getting the car back on the road, and organised for a few people to come around on June 5th, a Sunday afternoon.

Given that there were heaps of spider webs all around the car, particularly underneath, I thought it would be a good idea to grab a couple of bug bombs, to kill any spiders or other insects that might be lurking around the chassis and suspension. I then went to Supercheap Auto to pick up a few necessary bits and pieces, like fresh oil, coolant, oil filter, fuel filter, oil change pan and so on. I put them in the garage next to the Ceffy, and hooked up the battery charger again, ready for Sunday afternoon.

Dad put a couple of the bug bombs under my car on Saturday evening, closing the Cefiro in the garage so they could do their thing.


















I woke up on the Sunday morning feeling rather crook, but fortunately once I turned the Ensure feed off and gave myself a few hours, the nausea had settled down somewhat by the time a few of the guys showed up. Adam & Marek from PF showed up around 2 in the afternoon, followed by one of my old friends Prach.

With my dad cooking up a few chops and sausages on the BBQ, the guys set about getting the car ready to be driven again, while I sat down and took photos.

First item on the list was putting some air back into the tyres, they looked fairly ok, but Marek had brought along an air compressor, which he hooked up to his Pajero and re-inflated the tyres to their recommended pressures.






While the bug bomb was fairly effective at killing the wildlife living in the Ceffy, there were still a few redback spiders clinging on to life underneath the car, which was a little unnerving when working in close quarters. Or so I'm told.








After pumping up the tyres and removing excess redbacks, topping up, flushing and replacing the old coolant was next.
















The coolant they drained out looked pretty gunky, and hadn't been changed since I bought the car.