1988 Nissan A31 Cefiro

[rohan]

While the bonnet was straight and free of dents and scratches, there was some gaffer's tape on each side, which I think was to stop it being scraped by ropes or tie-downs.








It had gone hard being out in the open weather, so after a few marginally successful attempts at peeling the dry tape off by hand, we decided it needed some attacking with various cleaning and grime removal products. My arms are obviously not the strongest for tough cleaning, so my awesome girlfriend Sally started scrubbing away with some sponges, a toothbrush and a mix of Windex, Jif and lots of water. Judging by her comments, she was not particularly excited to be spending a sunny afternoon scrubbing a car bonnet in the backyard.






Under my careful and expert supervision, she managed to get all the tape and gum completely off the bonnet, leaving it much tidier looking than before.

[rohan]

We stood it up to dry in the sun for a little while, and then I supervised the transportation of the bonnet from the backyard to the garage.








At some point a courier had dropped off my Ensure liquid feed supplies at the front door.






With a ratchet at the ready, I watched as Sally and Todd carefully lowered the bonnet down onto the car. For some reason it looked like it wasn't fitting properly, which didn't make sense considering the bonnet was from another Cefiro, and I didn't see how they could be any different. But it was quite a way off actually being in the right spot. I spent a minute or two being confused, until looking more closely at the corners of the bonnet. I then realised that since the white bonnet came with hinges, it would probably work better if I removed the black bonnet's hinges from the car first.






With that low-IQ moment out of the way, a couple of minutes with the ratchet had the white bonnet secured to the car. Despite being a cooler shade of white compared to the slightly creamy car, it was immediately a big improvement to the look of the Cefiro.




After seeing it for so long with a black bonnet, it was great to have the car pretty much all the same colour. Not a perfect match, which was more apparent from some angles than others, but as far as blatantly sticking out in traffic went, the obviousness was dialed way down. I did manage to put a lot of greasy fingerprints on the previously clean bonnet though.




From the right-hand side, the paint appeared to be more similar, although that was partially due to the different light I think.






Feeling like I'd removed the target from my car with the white bonnet, and not having too bad a day health-wise, I decided it was a nice afternoon to go for our first hills run in a very, very long time.

Coming up in Post #17; a hills run to Hahndorf.

[rohan]

Following the bonnet swap and after cleaning up greasy hands and changing clothes, Sally and I headed out in the Cefiro, planning on going up to the German Arms at Hahndorf. I felt more relaxed driving around with the car not standing out so much due to panda-spec panels.

Getting up to Glen Osmond Road near the freeway, I pulled into a BP service station to fill the tank up with premium, which certainly hadn't gotten any cheaper since I was last driving regularly.










After topping up the fuel tank, we headed up the freeway towards Hahndorf. The Heysen Tunnels are always a good spot to lower the windows, slow down and then give the car a bit of a boot, with the exhaust and turbo sounds loudly echoing off the tunnel walls.

A little bit further on we passed a paddy wagon/ute full of pigs which I thought was a bit unusual. That said, I don't live anywhere in the country where putting pigs in a ute is necessary, so it probably isn't odd at all.




Rolling through Hahndorf, the sun was getting pretty low in the sky, so I took a bit of a detour on a random winding road to get some shots of the car in decent light. Coming up to a t-junction, the street sign pointed to 'Pain Road', which was mildly amusing I guess.




A little further up, Pain Road turned into gravel, so I stopped to take some photos of the Ceffy in the shade under some trees, with the golden sunlight in the background. It was so good to have such a nice backdrop for photos, as opposed to my garage or a Foodland car park.

[rohan]

After wandering around taking these photos, it was nearly 5 o'clock. We had been planning to pick up a few things from the Beerenberg strawberry farm on the way, and managed to just get there in time before they closed.















With a few random presents for people, we headed back to the Hahndorf main street and the German Arms for dinner. Well for Sally anyway, I was just syringing water through my jejunostomy tube instead.


















Headed back down the freeway, I made the tough decision to take the old Eagle on the Hill road instead of the tunnels again. There are some really nice twisty roads which are much more entertaining to drive on, but you do miss out on the epic engine sounds in a tunnel.

[rohan]

The Ceffy was kind of dirty again after the hills and freeway driving, so close to home I pulled into another BP for a quick happy wash.














After not going for a hills run since April 2010, the feeling of satisfaction I had in finally being able to go for one was great.

Coming up in Post #18; respray quote and random driving.

[Speedle]

Love this car, looks great dude! I hope you paid for dinner after making the misses scrub that bonnet

[rohan]

Thanks Speedle. I sure did pay for dinner to thank her for all the manual labour; burger, drinks and all, made cheaper by the fact that I can't eat.

Thanks Luciano, it was about to get a bit cleaner as you'll see in the next few posts.

I was still feeling quite good the day after the awesome Hahndorf hills run with Sally, so we headed up to Mullers Road Crash Repairs to get a quote from owner Cameron for cleaning up and respraying some panels on the Cefiro.

These first few photos are from a GoPro HD Hero camera, which I had mounted on the windscreen, set to take photos every two seconds. You can see more information about the camera on their website here: gopro.com/

You can make cool time lapse video clips with it taking photos so often, but the drive wasn't particularly interesting compared to hills runs, so these are just a couple with trucks in them on the way up.









Once we arrived at the workshop, I grabbed the D300 for some non-warped photos like you get from the GoPro, which as you can see in the above pictures, has a very wide field of view.










Cameron came out to have a look around the Cefiro, checking out the various marks and paintwork, and gave me a good price to have it all cleaned up the following Monday.

[rohan]

Back in mid 2009, I shot one of Cameron's cars for Extreme magazine; a purple EK Holden with a supercharged V8 engine. A beautiful machine and goes quite nicely too with the blower strapped on.








He bought a CD of 30 images from the feature shoot, and had one of them blown up on the wall in his office, which looked pretty cool.






In the meantime, he had also been building up a very tidy Holden FB wagon, with a funky teal and white colour scheme, complete with matching interior upholstery. He was actually headed to a car club meeting a short drive away from my house, so a little later that night Sally and I headed over to West Lakes Mall to check it out.




Couldn't really take any decent exterior shots at night, so here's one of the interior, but we made plans to get some half-decent photos at his workshop when I dropped off the Ceffy to have the bodywork done.

[rohan]

The next day we visited a few friends.












A week after going in to Cameron's shop for the quote, it was time to drop off the Ceffy, and at the same time grab some daylight shots of his FB wagon.










In the paint booth at the time was this cool old Ford Falcon van.






In the main workshop was the FB wagon, which Cameron had just finished working on.




With the stunning paintwork and chrome, when he parked it outside on the driveway, it made the Ceffy look rather cheap and plasticky in comparison.







There's a little bit of a surprise under the bonnet; a much newer fuel-injected RB30 six cylinder engine, pillaged from a Holden VL Commodore.










Coming up in Post #19: In the workshop.

[stealthstylz]

Nice to see a modified classic car in Oz that hasn't got 27billiontyinchshinychrome wheels. The Cefiro looks great too.

[rohan]

Yeah, it's a very nice example. Will be using it as a wedding car next year.



While Cameron was repairing and prepping the Cefiro ready for painting, he said that it had been partly resprayed previously, and the front right hand side of the car was a bit different in colour to the left. To make sure I was ok with blending it, he gave me a call and I headed over to the workshop for a quick look.










Some of the difference between the sides is exacerbated by different lighting, but you could see that the left hand side was a creamier white than the right. The bonnet is obviously different again, being from another car altogether.









I'd actually wanted to get some progress shots while the Ceffy was being painted, so it worked out well in the end that I went up there in the meantime.












So after checking out the paint and taking these photos, I gave Cameron the go-ahead to respray the front end of the car.

Coming up in Post #20; freshly resprayed hills run photos.

[rohan]

With the car freshly sprayed and polished, on the 12th of August, I headed back up to Cameron's workshop to pick up the Ceffy. As I walked up the driveway, I saw it was parked outside the spray booth, looking very tidy. Just respraying and repairing those few front panels, as well as painting over the black strips on the bumpers, made a huge difference aesthetically to the car's appearance. With the gouges and mismatched panels gone, it finally just looked really nice, simple and clean, which is the look I had been wanting all along.








I was curious as to how a blue pearl was blended with the white paint, so Cameron took me into his paint storage shed and showed how the paint and pearl combination was mixed.




I was very happy with how clean the Cefiro looked after the fresh paint job. So if you need some quality paint or panel work done, give Cameron a call at Mullers Road Crash Repairs, on 8261 2328.

After chatting for a little while about cars, I handed over some cash for the work, and then stopped in at a BP to fill up the tank. I snapped a few more photos as well.










Premium wasn't cheap that day at $1.64 a litre, but after ten months of having the same tank of fuel while the Ceffy was sitting idle in the garage, I figured it didn't matter that much.

With the fuel topped up, I thought that since the weather wasn't too bad, it would be a good time for an afternoon hills run to get some nice updated photos of it, while still looking clean and polished.

Coming up in Post #21; photos from the hills run.

[rohan]

Although I was really not feeling too good, I still thought it would be worth going for a hills run to get some photos, while the Ceffy was freshly sprayed, clean and polished.

After heading up North-East Road from Cameron's workshop, I made it into the hills, and put my foot down as the road curved steeply upwards ahead. After enjoying some nice corners for a little while, I pulled up on a side road near Houghton to snap a few photos of the Cefiro.

You'll see from the photos that the 'CEFIRO' tail-light centre garnish has been replaced with the more subtle 'Nissan' one. In combination with the de-badging on the boot, it was now fairly anonymous, unless you know what a Cefiro is. I'd talked to both the RAA and an auto electrician previously, and had to explain to both what kind of car it was and how to spell it, which I thought was kind of funny.

Photos taken with a Nikon D90 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4G lens, and Nikon D300 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4D lens.
















After taking these pics, I headed off again down the road, enjoying the corners and sound of the exhaust and turbo. My stomach wasn't very happy, but at least a hills run was a good distraction from it. A few kilometres further along I rolled into the small town of Inglewood, a again turned down a picturesque side road. Burbling down the steep grade, there was a small bridge going over a creek. It looked like a nice spot for some more photos, so I pulled up in the middle of it, grabbed my D90 and 50mm lens, and wandered around to get some different angles.

This is the view from the side of the bridge, which was quite idyllic with the gently flowing stream surrounded by trees and lush greenery.












The blue Ford F-Series pickup in the background looked pretty cool, so I got back in the car and drove up to the top of the slope to get a better picture of it, followed by a couple of the front of my car.

[joem83]

Love it, makes me want to move over there
Nice prgoress with the car, looks sweet.

[rohan]

Thanks. We do have some pretty awesome roads ten minutes out of the CBD.

From Inglewood I had a decent drive for quite a while, going up to Lobethal, before heading back to Adelaide on Gorge Road. It's one of my favourite bits of tarmac, with some really nice bends and epic scenery along the wall. After achieving a fuel economy level that would be bad for a V8, I stopped at one of the lookouts.

[rohan]

Continuing down Gorge Road towards Adelaide, I stopped in the same spot where I took photos on the very first Gorge Road run back in mid 2010.
















Just for a comparison, here are photos taken with my little Canon Powershot digital compact camera last year, and then this run with the aesthetic changes in between.


















So as you can see, there's definitely a substantial and much improved difference in the Ceffy's appearance between the two hills runs.

[Lex]

This is great I love these cars. Nice to see someone taking so much pride in their car and documenting it's changes.

One thing I must express though, is after all your mentions of defect stickers from the police, Australia just lost some of its awesome points it once had with me! Stickering the Skyline because it had stiff suspension and a fast engine? That's just bonkers!

I'd really like to own one of these one day, but you just don't get them over here!

[brawr]

Looks so much cleaner, and the wheels are perfect for this. Nice work!

Also, re: the truck; paging KevFromWales...

Oct 19, 2011 2:29:33 GMT rohan said:

[rohan]

After looking around for a newer model chrome grille for the Cefiro for a while, I finally managed to track one down from a fellow Skylines Australia forum member.

A few days later some packages came in the mail; the new grille and a couple of cool 1:24 scale model cars I'd ordered around the same time.






Following the hills run in the last post, there was some much more sedate driving around the suburbs for a bit.




It wasn't quite as clean as before, my girlfriend Sally wrote my name in the dirt so I would remember which car was mine.



But I did use the backseat to transport a radio control battleship, which is a pretty cool toy for $50.



I had the old Cefiro tail light garnish and the new grille sitting in the boot as well.



We then headed over to a friend's house, to show him what the new (and slightly dirty) paint and panel work looked like.








The dusk light was quite nice for taking a few snaps of our cars. His Pintara, which I've mentioned in previous posts, is faster than my car, with the CA18DET engine making 160rwkw, compared to my 139.












Coming up in Post #23; another drive up to Hahndorf.

[twincammy]

nice pics, keep em coming.