September '03 NEWS

Next Month

26/9/03 - 11:22pm Perth time. The tech tip article I added was on Wheel and Tyre legality, go check it out! Hmm, 3 entries in a day, wow. There's 45 minutes before we touch down in Perth, so I decided to waste a little more time typing here. Thought I would give a brief outline of the near future as far as myself and the car is concerned. Well, I'll be sleeping tonight and probably some of tomorrow, but trying to get back into the Perth time zone. Sunday is going to be painful, as it's Oktoberfest in Perth, which we have a lot to do with, since my folks are liquor wholesalers and all. So Sunday will be consumed by lots of drinking and socialising at the Moon & Sixpence in Murray St. Feel free to come along, it'll be good fun, as there's entire areas cordoned off for the festival, plus 1L steins with German beer, so you really can't go wrong!

Monday is back to work. No rest for the wicked. I really hope I'll be ok to head back to work, after all this flying and Oktoberfesting. Should be right, hopefully. I have this week to get back into the swing of things, then we start to strip down the engine bay of the Supra, in preparation for the turbo upgrade. I'll be needing to source a couple of blowoff valves and other bits and pieces, but we can get started on the manifold and pulling things off the car before they are needed, anyway.

We are estimating about 1 month of after hours work to complete the upgrade, then it will require programming and tuning, which will take another 2-4 weeks, and will probably prove to be more of a pain than I guess it will. :)

I've spoken to a lot of guys around the world now who have done turbo upgrades, although most are only single turbo conversions, so a fair bit less complex than what we're doing. Everything seems to be sound in theory, and hopefully once all the work is put into it, it will perform just as well in practice.

I'll try to get the pics up of the turbos in this news section or the images section at some point tomorrow.

Well, nearly home again! Going to sign off and get packed up ready to get off the plane. Here's hoping all my luggage hasn't been left at Singapore or something. :)

Cya,

Jason

26/9/03 - 3:21pm Perth time, 8:21am London time. Am on the plane, in the last 3 hours to Singapore. It really does suck waking up to find that you haven't even completed half your journey. Fortunately I've held off using the laptop all flight till now, so I can keep myself busy for the rest of this flight on here. I'm definitely missing not having any decent image editing program on here, as I have some pics of my new turbos to post! I'll make sure I get some pics up as soon as I've rested back in Perth. Going to add to the Tech Tips section now.

26/9/03 - 4:06am Perth time, 9:06pm London time. At Heathrow airport, waiting for my flight home. I fly out in 1 hour, and I have to tell you, I am really not looking forward to the coming 13 hours and 5 minutes of flying to Singapore. By the time I get there, I'll be even less looking forward to the final 5 hours to Perth. I have a 1 hour stopover in Singapore, at which time I will be recharging the batteries on my laptop, and probably trying to move around as much as I can, too!

Getting my car back will be one of the first things on my mind once I get back to Perth. Not driving it has driven me nearly insane. The closest thing I got to my car was taking off on the numerous flights I've had this trip, or driving in a few year old BMW Series 5 Turbo Diesel in Germany. Although it was nice, it didn't really compare, although it was very good knowing I could go to 230km/h+ without any police caring at all. Love the autobahns. Yes, I only got to 230, but hey, it wasn't my car. ;)

My nose is still killing me. :/ Stupid me. It's a nice dark shade of red on the bridge now, so I don't know how much luck I'll have with the girls on the flight back! :/

Well, signing off again now, time for a drink and stuff before the flight. Will probably end up putting another entry in while I'm in the plane, I'll be that bored...

All they need is internet access on flights, now THAT would rock. I'm sure they can setup satellite internet access on an airplane, assuming it doesn't interrupt navigation equipment (they probably use sat nav anyway), and then just share it throughout the plane and charge a flat rate for a flight's use or something. Plug your laptop in, and away you go!

Maybe I can keep dreaming, too. *Sigh* Ah well, at least we have our own TVs now.

Ciao!

Jason

24/9/03 - 12:26am Perth time, 5:26pm London time. I'm on the plane between Munich and London now. Germany was great overall, and the good weather has been following us all around. Only today it started to get colder and a bit of rain started to fall. The captain just announced that the weather in London is nicer than in Munich, so we should be in for some more luck on that front.

I spent most of this morning tracking down prices on the Bosch fuel pumps I need for the car mods, since I had figured that they would be cheaper in Germany than Australia, considering Bosch is a German company. Unfortunately not, it seems. I was quoted the Euro equivalent of $450 Australian dollars. I believe I can source them back in Australia for under $400, so that doesn't exactly make much sense to me, but who cares, at least I don't have to have airport security questioning me as to why I have 2 weird looking devices in my hand luggage ;)

So I have a couple of days in London, down near Hastings, where the big battle of 1066 occurred, then I head home to Perth. I'm now really starting to look forward to starting work on the car, and less looking forward to going through the pile of work related E-Mails I have waiting for me at the office. I was able to check this very briefly today, and closed it in disgust when it showed over 1300 E-mails waiting in my inbox for me. Great. This is just work E-mails, mind you, so it doesn't include the 800+ I've received on my personal account (which I've been checking!) in the past 2 and a bit weeks.
Oh well! I don't want to think about it right now anyway.

Going to fool around for awhile on the laptop now, before this flight is over.

23/9/03 - 4:25am Perth time, 10:25pm German time. What can I say? The past few days have been fucking insane. Friday we checked out the Hofbrauhaus Oktoberfest tent while it was empty and nearly finished being setup. I was fortunate enough to be spoilt by my hosts, and had the first taste of HB Oktoberfest 2003 beer out of anyone, damn it was good... This would be 6% alcohol beer, served in 1 litre steins, and the only available beer at the HB tent. As you can guess, people would get drunk... very drunk, on this absolutely beautiful beer.

Saturday... haha... well it was something else. People totally filled the tent at Oktoberfest, and we're talking a tent that seats 10,000 people, by 11am. NO beer was served till 12 midday, after the "official" tapping of the first cask of beer was done by the director of the brewery. (Which I had been fortunate enough to taste the day before, heh) After 12, all hell broke loose. Unless you've been there, you truly would have no idea what Oktoberfest is like in Germany. Official figures given to me confirmed that in the first 3 hours, they went through 20 HECTOLITRES of beer! That's a lot of beer. :)

Personally, my day was pretty full on. I had 6 steins total, and that's when everything went fully weird. It involved staggering around, meeting lots of people, ending up on the underground somewhere, and in a carpark with a couple of very nice girls, drinking straight vodka from an incredibly large bottle of Smirnoff through a pump dispenser (like what you pump hand soap from, just bigger.)

I'm not going to go into the rest of the night, for risk of further incriminating myself, but I will say "Hi Cassie and Amanda ;)".

Yesterday I woke up feeling pretty seedy but still not sick, which I was pretty impressed with. I was aching all over, though, and that took literally till this morning (the day after that!) to recover from.

So... this morning I am feeling sort of normal again, and went down for breakfast, etc... come back up to my room, and there's a girl in here making beds and shit. So I apologise for interrupting, and turn around to leave the room. She flashes me a smile, so I kept looking at her for that split second longer than you usually would, then spun around and stepped out the door. Straight into the door frame.

I'm not talking a little bump, I'm talking a crack, of my nose and forehead very firmly connecting to this very, very solid doorframe.

Needless to say, even with the crack of my nose and the total obviousness of what I'd just done, I calmly closed the door behind me, put my hand to my nose to catch the oncoming rush of blood, and started to walk quickly to our 2nd room. The key is in the lock, so since my left hand was free of blood, I figured I could open it and get to the bathroom before anyone would notice.

To cut this somewhat long story short, I couldn't open the door, someone let me in, and I promptly rushed into the bathroom to the tap and started washing up. Then shock set in, I started getting really sick, and eventually after making everyone very amused and late, I spent the day looking around German castles with a very swollen and red nose, a massive bump on my forehead above it, and a throbbing head. It's still too sore to touch, so I'm hoping like hell that I don't manage to roll over onto my face while I sleep tonight, or I'm really going to regret it.

So this is what my last few days were like. The funniest thing is that there was probably a lot more to it than this, but I can't share it all here, as I don't know who's reading ;)

Anyways, sore nose and all, I'm heading to sleep.

Night,

Jason

19/9/03 - 12:44am Perth time, 5:45pm London time. I'm sitting in Gatwick Airport, in the British Airways lounge (Qantas partners), and thought it was about time I wrote another entry. I finally figured out how to message Monica, but I think she probably hit similar problems contacting me, in that I had to figure out a multitude of prefix digits before the number. So I had to use the UK to international code plus the German code to reach her, and she'd have to use the same but Australian code to reach me. Ha, stupid phone networks. Anyways I'm in the airport now, and there's an hour or two before I fly back over to Germany, Munich this time. Here I'll be doing lots of partying, since in 2 days Oktoberfest begins! I've been refining my previously unused Beer Drinking skills over here in the UK, but the real test will come shortly, with 1L Steins of German beer! Believe me, I can't wait.

First thing I will be doing when I get to Munich is finding out where the best place to buy Bosch fuel pumps is, since I'm going to need two of them for my car. After lots of problems sourcing them in England, I'm hoping that I'll have some more luck now that I have the proper part numbers needed for suppliers. Would you believe that in the UK, a supplier flatly refused to source me a Bosch 270L/minute fuel pump because "it would break a lot of road laws if you fitted it to your street car".

Man, the UK is screwed for car modification, it seems. Actually, I have now seen 5 Supras in the UK, all of them stock standard, and 2 of them driven by middle aged women. Oh, ALL of them were driving sedately, too. This sort of surprised me, but it really does seem like modded cars are being really targeted over here in the UK, and this is supported by a lot of the articles I read in a local magazine, called Fast Cars. Funnily enough, practically all of the featured cars were riced up VW Polos or other such small cars, and all of them had received the bare minimum of breathing modifications. Lots of bitching about the police, too... It's funny :)

Oh, and I walked past this beautiful yellow Ferrari Mondeno 360 which was being raffled off at the airport terminal. £80 Pounds for a ticket, and only 2600 tickets. That's a cool £208,000 in tickets purchased before the draw, and you can bet that the organisers were given a good price on the prize Ferrari :) Having said that, I very nearly bought a ticket, just for the hell of it. Only problem was that the car is Left hand drive, so I decided that was enough reason to save my $200+ ticket and put it to better use elsewhere, like my Supra ;)

I'm getting inundated with E-Mails while I'm away, because I can't check it and respond as readily as usual. In 4 days I got 263 messages last time I checked. I'm fearing checking again shortly here at the business centre. But to those of you who think I might be ignoring your E-Mails, please bear with me, and I'll definitely get to your message and respond to it when I have time to. If you think this means I want you to not E-Mail me, don't think that! Drop me a line and say G'Day, I'm missing talking to all my friends as much as I'm used to doing... remember, mesmerize@nokternl.com !

Well, I'm off to check my E-mails and such. Take care.

Jason

12/9/03 - 4:50pm Perth time, 9:50am London time. Her name is Monica, and she is *real* nice. German, long blonde hair, tanned, petite girl, who's flown to London for the weekend. She teaches Physical Education, is in her final year of a Business Administration degree, and hopes to go into marketing or PR. She looked about 18, or 21 at most, and was one of the hottest looking girls I've seen this trip. She speaks English very well, too, which was obviously a bonus! Turned out she's 28!!! Just right for Jim... ;)

The most impressive thing was the exchange of phone numbers. New one to me, but pretty cool... she asked me to call her mobile to check it was working, then asked for my number to check it dialled out, haha. Unfortunately neither phone was working properly yet.

So... with any luck we'll get in touch today or tomorrow and head out to see how the London nightlife is, since it's the first time she's been here, too.

Ahhh... anyways, I'm off to catch up with my cousin for her birthday today. Happy Birthday Claire!

Oh, and I only spent about 5 minutes staring at a photo of my new turbos this morning, before I decided to put my time to more constructive use to write this news entry. ;)

Jason

11/9/03 - 9:15pm Perth time, 3:15pm German time. I'm on the flight from Lubeck Airport in Germany to Stansted Airport, London. It's a cheapass airline called Ryanair, which costs next to nothing, but you get your flight, and that's about it. :)

I got word from Perth. The turbos arrived yesterday, awesome! Apparently they are "Fucking MASSIVE!" So I don't have any qualms with that description. I've been trying to track down some Bosch fuel pumps while in Germany, as they should be considerably cheaper than sourcing them from Perth. Interesting hand luggage, but most probably worth explaining to customs that they are in fact for a car, and not for blowing shit up. Add to that the fact that security is sorta high at the moment, being 9/11 and all. Let's hope this update reaches the website host...

I'll be in the UK for 1 week, then back to Germany for the Oktoberfest, in Munich. Yay to that! Although, at least most of the people in the UK will speak English, so that's a plus.

Still over the moon about the turbos arriving. It sorta signifies the point of no return as far as the car goes... Heh, I can't pull out now :) Hopefully that'll be almost as exciting for you readers as it is for me. Definitely less expensive for you, too. :P

Well, there's this real cute girl sitting next to me who I have to say hi to, so I think I'll sign off for awhile...

Jason

8/9/03 - 6pm Perth time, 12pm German time. It's about lunchtime I reckon. I'm sitting on the train between Frankfurt and Hamburg, so thought I might as well add another entry to the news. Frankfurt was pretty warm, 15+ Celsius I believe, so I got to wear jeans and a t-shirt all day, haha. That was about the last thing I thought I would be wearing in Germany, but hey, lucky I packed them.

I spotted a couple of Ferraris yesterday while wandering around the city, one Yellow, and a nice Red 355 convertible. No Supras as yet... I did see some shitty 1.8L or so VW which had been resprayed a really bright yellow, with a HUGE faded /////ALPINE V12 sticker on its rear window (I'm talking huge!), thumping its way down the street with a couple of guys in it. I guess there's some in every country... ;)

The girls are generally pretty hot... but they *all* smoke. Every fucking person in Germany smokes I reckon. I'm not just talking socially, I'm talking everywhere. Walking down the street, having a coffee alone while reading a mag, just got off the plane and waiting for luggage.... EVERYWHERE.

I tell ya what... if they don't manage to start another war and get wiped out again, noone's gonna have to bother in 60 years when the whole country dies of lung cancer, through smoking themselves or the insane amount of passive smoking that you can't help but do wherever you go.

So... the girls... Mostly blonde, great bodies. I don't think anyone has told them yet that Solariums can give you cancer, because I swear they must spend every minute they aren't out looking hot laying in one. Crazy. But hey, it works for me.

7/9/03 - Well, it's 9am Sunday Perth time, and I've spent the past 18 hours flying. There's another 2 hours to go, and once we land, I'll be in Frankfurt, Germany. Singapore was humid as usual, and fortunately my stopover was only about 2 hours, much better than a long airport stint.

It'll be interesting to check out how many real performance cars I see over here. Even better if I see a Supra, but I won't be holding my breath.

Would have been awesome to head to the Nurburgring and do some trackwork around the Northern Loop. Preferably in a Supra of course, but anything would do just for the experience. Unfortunately it doesn't look like I'll make it there this trip, as I'll be busy flying back and forth between Frankfurt, Lubeck, London, and Munich, and travelling between breweries and beer halls. That's some consolation I suppose! ;)

I managed to sleep for a lot of the flight between Singapore and Frankfurt. We boarded at about 10-11 Perth time, and the flight is approx 11 hours. Looking at the flight plan the plane is due to arrive at 5:36am local time.

Well, 3 weeks of lots of flights, lots of steins of beer, and lots of meeting new and interesting people... then I get to come home to start work on the turbo upgrade.

I unfortunately missed out on seeing my turbos, since they're still on the way from over East. I guess they'll be in Monday, not that that helps me now ;) Maybe I'll get a digital photo of them sent to me.

Well my laptop batteries are nearly worn out, and I want to make some quick changes to the Tech Tips section if I have time... so cyas ;)

Jason (On an airplane, over 10,000m high, 933km/h fast, and nearly directly between Warsaw and Kiev.)

31/8/03 - Ok, after a hectic week full of Viruses and lots of other crap going on, I thought I'd update the news! The .. big secret plan.. is underway. I have 2 turbos on their way to me from over east, nice big dual ball bearings. Mmm... There's lots of plans, and I'll be putting a full list of modifications, how to's and photos of the process as we design and implement the new system. It should be mad, and I really can't wait to get it all sorted! It's going to be a busy October...

With any luck the car will be running, albeit at low boost, by Motorvation, at which time you'll probably see me there competing. It'll be the first really large show the car's been in for quite some time.

Also I thought I'd say a quick thanks to those people who've already E-Mailed me about the car. Your comments are great, and makes the site and car just that little bit more worthwhile to me :)

Oh, I nearly forgot! Headed down to Kwinana Motorplex last Sunday, and ran a 13.3 second quartermile. It averaged about 13.5, with a poorly launched 13.8 being my slowest run. I also got the chance to weigh the car, which was great because I've been wondering for ages how much it weighed. Well, came in at 1681kg including myself, so it really goes to show how much extra weight the stereo and full luxury options takes, I guess. Another MKIV Supra weighed in at about 1580 inc driver I think... dammit. Please bear in mind that I'm also 80kg and 6 foot 3, so the extra 100kg was *not* me! ;)

Here's a pic of the 1/4 mile slip.

16/8/03 - Technically it's the 16th now (1:22am) and I'm just about done with putting images in the sections. Still no Image or Video links yet, probably will do them tomorrow.

For those of you who are interested to see what my car looked like when I first got it, here's the first ever photo I took of it, while it was still in the TNT warehouse after being shipped here to Perth!

And here it is now...

15/8/03 - Well, the site is up, and in its infancy. I'm suitably happy with the car Externally, and happy with the stereo. It's powerful, but not as powerful as I want... and you can hear the plans for this soon. I'm not sure about the interior, as it's still mainly stock. The stock setup is nice, but it's so tempting to save up for a properly retrimmed interior, and I guess to have a hope of taking out any big prizes, I'm really going to have to consider it. Well, I'm yet to finish all the other pages yet, so this will do for the first news post!

Jason