Tuesday, 20 December 2011 | Comments (3) | Categories: General, Magazines/Blogs
Thanks to Marc at C-Red, where the car was built over almost a 4 year period, for highlighting to me that SILLBEER has made it into the pick list of the SPEEDHUNTERS 'Reader Car of the Year' Awards 2011.
Be sure to check out the line up, there's some stunning cars there.
Monday, 19 December 2011 | Comments (0) | Categories: General, Magazines/Blogs
Got an email this morning from an old mate of mine who's also the original owner of the sillbeer.com domain name. Ryan was kind enough to let me use his domain when he moved away from the scene for a short hiatus and subsequently let me have the domain name.
Well he's back into the scene again now with a new 240SX (S13 chassis) that he's going to be detailing his new build into a weekend drift machine primarily used to shred rubber making sure to follow his own mantra of "Shredding tires is way more fun than *real* racing". On the blog Ryan has some great info on preparing and parts choice for the S13 chassis.
Be sure to check it out at:
http://givemeshred.com/
Saturday, 27 August 2011 | Comments (0) | Categories: Magazines/Blogs, Old School
What a pleasant surprise this morning when I went to take my 5yo son and myself for a haircut. Had to wait a little, so popped over to the newsagent, and found a new magazine called Japanese Retro Auto on the stands brought to us by Performance Imports (a.k.a. Express Publications). This is something that Australia has been needing for sometime, a well designed magazine with classic cars other than the usual Holden/Ford/Chrysler mix. And although there's some Japanese classics in magazines such as Hot 4's, Fast Fours, Zoom et al, they're all so overdone most of the time, they're not really in the traditional classic JDM style any longer...more like trussed up glossy candy that'll make you sick if you have too much.
Anyway, the Compilation Editor for this one is Ryan Lewis, the editor for Fast Fours, but more stemming from his involvement in the-lowdown.com blog. Together with graphic design Steve Cook, they've produced a beautifully designed and typeset magazine that I hope sets a standard for some of the other Express Publications magazines to take a lead from.
Ryan has written a quick introduction to the new Japanese Retro Auto magazine on the-lowdown, so go check it out for a preview of the quality visuals you'll see in the magazine. Once you're done reading, head on down to your local newsagent and grab one.
Cheers
Brendan
Monday, 4 January 2010 | Comments (2) | Categories: Magazines/Blogs
Been meaning to do this for some time, and finally got a few days off over the Xmas break to scan and process these magazine articles.
The first coverage was in the Australian Fast Fours magazine back in June 2008. I was stoked that it actually made it onto the cover too which is an accomplishment in and of itself. Then they went on to do a very comprehensive 8 page article with plenty of pics taken by Dean Summers.
Here's the cover (they were kind enough to send me a PDF version of the cover):
The rest has been scanned and resized for the web.
Table of contents:
Article itself:
The second coverage was in the UK Banzai magazine a year ago in January 2009. The photos and story were by local photo-journalist Rick McDowell. The photos used in the article were posted a while back.
Here's what the cover looks like (unfortunately I believe they only have UK cars on the covers) where I get a mention on the footer:
And the article itself (apologies for crap over saturation of colour):
Hope you like the articles and sorry for the overly long period between posts. I have a lot to post up while I'm on holidays including the subject of the engine rebuild...more to come.
Cheers
Brendan
Wednesday, 30 September 2009 | Comments (0) | Categories: Magazines/Blogs, Random
Fantastic, just seen the feature story on JDM Style Tuning. Many thanks to Justin Fox over at JDMST for doing the interview and putting together the story.
Thursday, 17 January 2008 | Comments (1) | Categories: General, Magazines/Blogs
Seasons greetings to all. Apologies for the break, but went on holidays for a couple of weeks...now back at work. So I suppose I should give you an update on how things are going. Well, pretty good on a whole. The last time I posted we had just had a tune, and although laggy, the power figure eclipsed my goal of 300rwhp. Of course, now we have to make it responsive. A story that is still playing (today actually).
Anyway, over the Christmas break, the family went on holiday down to Margaret River (about 3.5hrs drive south of Perth). As we were spending Christmas Day down there with the majority of the extended family, we had to take the 5 of us (the wife and I plus the 3 kids) and all the presents. Now my wife's car is by now means small, it's actually a bit of a bohemoth (1995 BMW 740iL) but still it wasn't big enough to carry everything. As such, I decided to take Sillbeer on an extended cruise down south. At this point, the car had only done about 1500kms, so I was a little hesitant to take her on such a long route away from workshops and cheap tilt-tray fees, but I'm proud to say she made it there and back without too much of a hassle.
To give you an idea of what it was like, from Perth down to Busselton bypass it was all smooth, but the last 90kms or so to Margaret River, the road goes real country. The suspension on the Sillbeer, although reasonably compliant, didn't like the rutted, potted roads on that stretch. You basically had to keep your attention at a very high level. Once down there, I took it out a little, but wasn't expecting from the little amount that I'd end up with a busted front parker/indicator light. It wasn't until I took it down to my brother-in-law's business to take a look at the car, that it was noticed. By the looks of it, someone has rubbed their black bumper lightly on my front bumper, which was high enough to crack open the parker light. Not happy Jan. Now the reason for taking it to my brother-in-law's business is obvious by its name - Margaret River Panel Beaters. You see, soon after getting the car moving, spider cracks started appearing in the rear bumper...an affect of not sanding back the original two colours of paint enough and possibly too much filler. After seeing that and a quick chat with Scott the spray painter, it was agreed I'd leave the car there the next day when I went back with the family and come get it a week later.
Well the job was top class. The paint colour match was brilliant, and with all the shake, rattle and roll of the trip back, not a crack to be seen. While they had it, they also gave it a good polish. Many thanks to Anthony (my brother-in-law) and Scott at Margaret River Panel Beaters for a top notch job - wish they were in Perth.
Photo Gallery
As the car had just been polished, an established local automotive photo-journalist Rick McDowell made time to take some pics of Sillbeer. Over a period of about 4hrs and with lots of experimenting here's a sample of the photographs that were shot (click on the photo above). Many thanks to Rick for taking the time to shoot the car. He tells me there's more to do though with undercarriage, more engine and interior and move shots to go. Once that's done, he'll be submitting them, along with a story, to a few international magazines.
He'll cover the whole story hopefully on how I got from this:
to this:
One thing you will notice in the gallery is the Defi Gauges mounted on the dash. I did this between the tune and going down south. The result was surpisingly good, and have now scrapped plans to do a custom gauge hood/mounting arrangement. Still to be mounted on the A-Pillar is the boost gauge which will have to wait for the time being until I can build up the fundage again. The job was relative simple, just using my eye, a ruler and some masking tape to pre-determine how the gauges were to be mounted. While I had the dash apart, I also tried to adjust my fuel gauge which was showing just over half full as being full. Unfortunately I adjusted it a little too much and now full is pointing past the vertical position.
Now there's still some rattles that I'm chasing down, the most of them in the doors were to do with the windows rattling on the back of the speaker magnets when in the down position. The main one at the moment is the right hand bonnet (hood) hinge. The pin that runs through the centre has worn enough that when the bonnet is shut, it rattles around in it's hole...and right at idle or 60km/h. For now, a piece of paper stuffed in the hinge is enough to stop the rattle, but I'll be working towards a better solution soon.
As mentioned first up, the car is up at Allstar Garage getting tuned...with a view to dial in the cam timing for better response and maybe even a little more power considering the car was still pulling at the redline from the first tune. If successful, the car will be getting a bit of pushing at this weekend's Motorvation where I'll be entering under the SilviaWA banner. There's driving events on including motorkhana, slalom and go-to-whoa as well as a dyno competition, sound off and overall car judging too. It'll be my first major show with the car in relatively complete format so very excited.
Will post up results of the dyno session when I find out, until then, drive safe.
Cheers
Brendan
