1988 Nissan A31 Cefiro

[rohan]

Continuing up Grand Junction Road, I made into the foothills, and settled in as I accelerated hard up the first incline, and started attacking the bends.



Unsurprisingly for me, Gorge Road was on the list of roads for my early birthday celebration. Thinking back to the same time last year, the feeling of freedom at being able to blast through whatever roads I wanted to was just incredible; something that's probably hard to understand if you haven't been bedridden in hospital at home for months on end. Within reason, I was free to drive where I wanted, instead of being too sick to sit up properly in a wheelchair, hooked up to IV lines and told what to do by nurses and doctors with minimal understanding of my condition.

The crisp air didn't stop me from rolling the windows down to enjoy the roaring exhaust bouncing off the rocky hillsides. After a satisfying fang through a significant portion of Gorge Road, I pulled up at the reservoir lookout for a few photos.

[rohan]

Not wanting to wear myself out too much for later on in the day, I headed back down to the city. Passing through through Norton Summit and onto Magill Road, I stopped in at the Japanese Motorsport workshop, in what had to be the most scenic route possible between Jaustech and JMS.





I had a look at a few of the aftermarket products on display inside, and had a bit of a chat to one of the guys about options for a mild power upgrade.









The black S15 out the front had a defect sticker on the windscreen, and from the looks of it was close to going through Regency.



The R32 GT-Rs next to it looked quite tidy.

[rohan]

Car activities over, I drove back home with a significantly depleted fuel tank. Which was worth every cent.

My younger brother had a couple of cool presents for me. One was a radio control tank, complete with several warning labels about the functional barrel that shoots ball bearings 20 metres or so, according to the box.



As well as this little Optimus Prime soft toy, with a plastic clip. For amusement I tried putting it on the tow hook on the rear bumper, promptly snapping the plastic.





The rear driver's side grab handle turned out to be a better spot for it.

[rohan]

While driving around the suburbs the next day with Sally, we came across something I thought was only a movie cliche. A mother duck with a line of ducklings was holding up traffic near AAMI Stadium. Sally quickly grabbed a few photos as I carefully idled past.





Also worthy of a few snaps was this 1951 Ford F100 pickup, tastefully detailed with a bit of chrome and fat whitewall tyres. This particular grille isn't my favourite of the 1950s Ford pickup range, but something similar from that era is definitely on my 'wanted' list for a nice cruiser one day. The tongue-in-cheek 'UGLY51' plates seem to point to the opinion this particular model isn't the most aesthetically pleasing.



Nothing wrong with the rear end though in my books.

[rohan]

A few more random shots.











Daniel had made a minor change to his Pintara in removing a red strip from the bumpers; a small detail, but it made the car look a little bit cleaner.

[rohan]

A few days later I headed over to Cameron's workshop to drop off the Ceffy, followed by Prach in his Chaser.





The paint on the front part of the Chaser's bonnet is a bit faded, so while we were there, Cameron had a look at it as well.





He was interested in what was under the bonnet as well after we had talked about our different engines and power levels.

[rohan]

I had a doctor's appointment in Stirling to go to, so we took off and headed up the freeway.



Our wedding reception is going to be in Hahndorf, and since we were most of the way there already, I thought we might as well check out the place to get some ideas for what was going to happen. I jumped behind the wheel this time, and turned back onto the freeway. While I'm not a big fan of automatics, the wafty and effortless mid-range torque the Chaser has makes for very rapid merging and overtaking, even uphill on half throttle.





Pulling into the German Arms carpark, I spotted this fairly rare Ford Zephyr.

[rohan]

The next day I got a call from Cameron saying the car was all ready, so my mum dropped me off near the workshop. Waiting to cross the road, this S15 Silvia Varietta convertible went past, and I quickly managed to fire off a few frames without looking. They're very rare in Australia, and I think I've only ever seen a couple on the roads. They have an SR20 four cylinder engine, but naturally aspirated, unlike the S15 Silvia/200SX coupe's turbocharged SR20DET.



Walking up to the workshop, I saw the Ceffy parked up near the back.





In addition to spraying the side bumper bits, he also repainted the black section underneath the door with fresh matt black paint. You may have noticed in some other photos that one side was faded fairly badly, and had white streaks which looked a bit untidy. So while not a huge change, the car looked much tidier than before.

[rohan]

Since it was a nice day and I was fairly close to the hills anyway, I kept going east for a brief squirt in the hills, stopping at Houghton for a few photos.

[rohan]

Back at Sally's house later in the afternoon, the soft dusk light looked quite nice.

[rohan]

I made the car dirty again with more driving, so dropped it off at the car wash while shopping.



I noticed this neat R32 Skyline GTS-t burbling around the carpark, it was definitely an RB engine, and going by the sticker on the window, it was running an RB30, which isn't a particularly common engine conversion for an R32.

[rohan]

A few days later I went to see Dr. Bolt about changing my intake piping.

[rohan]

After booking a time to install it, there was another Gorge run with Sally , stopping in Cudlee Creek for a bit.

[rohan]

We then moved on to Camelot Castle, to see what it would be like as a location for wedding photos. The driveway is relatively steep, which wasn't a problem, but the invisible spoon drain at the crest was. So there was a nasty clang and grinding sound as the exhaust hit and scraped the ground, leaving me thinking 'What the hell was that!?' After parking the car I had another look, you can't actually see it at all when you're driving up the slope, which is fine for the majority of cars, but not great for lowered cars with big exhausts.



I'd driven past Camelot Castle repeatedly over the years, but never actually went in to have a look. The front garden area is quite picturesque, and features an epic chess set.

[rohan]

After wandering around the gardens for a while, we headed back home.

[rohan]

We stopped at Vili's on the way for dinner.

[rohan]

Soon after, I left the Ceffy at Dr. Bolt's workshop to have the piping work done.

[rohan]

A few hours later, the car was ready to be picked up. Here's the original rubber piping.





The new piping is kind of hard to see, but I took a few photos anyway.

[rohan]

It had been a very long time since I'd shot a car using my Speedlight flashes. While they do make photos look way better in general, given that you have a lot of control over the lighting, it's also quite tiring running around setting up the camera, tripod, 3 flashes and sometimes 3 radio control flash trigger on light stands.

But since I was feeling able to, I charged up 12 AA batteries and headed out into the hills. It was hard to actually find a good spot. There are heaps of great locations, but they're all on roads that are used by other cars, and therefore unsuitable. After cruising around for a while, not following any particular direction, I came upon a slab of concrete near a big shed, with rows and rows of some sort of plants in the background. It wasn't perfect, but a safe place to stop for a while and set everything up.


I was quite out of practice using the flashes, so I did have to run back and forth adjusting the position and distance of them, while shooting from different angles.





After taking so many photos of my own car, I've figured out that Cefiros look sort of odd when using a wider lens closer to the car for some reason. Anything above 50mm is ok, but it probably looks best using the 85mm, which I used for these two photos below.

Here's a shot using just the natural light.



And one with the car lit by three flashes. You have to be very careful with reflections and hotspots from the flash units, but this lighting technique makes the details on the car pop a bit more, particularly the wheels.



This is the lighting setup for the photo above.

[rohan]

While I was shooting, a man came up on a quad to ask what I was doing. I explained I was just practicing taking flash photos, and asked if I was in his way, being in front of his shed. He said it was fine, and that the whole area was full of his apple trees. He was curious about my car as he didn't know what it was, so we chatted for a bit about cars and apples, before he had to get back to work and roared off again.

I was getting quite tired after going back and forth adjusting the position of the flashes, so I packed everything up, taking a shot of the rear quarter before I took off again.



Climbing up the slope visible in the background of the setup shot, there was quite a nice view of the rolling hillsides in the distance, with trees lining the narrow road.





Another guy working at the apple orchard stopped next to me on his own quad, and again chatted for a few minutes before moving on.