So it was a sunny but windy Sunday afternoon this bank holiday so I decided I'd give the car a little inspection and check the oil and other fluids. In order to do this on a nice level surface on my driveway I would have to remove my front bumper as the Spoon lip would get ripped straight off due to the crazy steep driveway I am lucky to have. I checked all the levels and they were all ok, so no worries there. As you can see now that the bumper is off, I have mounted the second set of HID ballast boxes behind the bumper which are for the fog lights.
One thing I have been meaning to do is clean the exhaust tip, the inside of it mainly as it has loads of carbon build up and looks pretty nasty, so I got the trust wire brush out and a little bit of Autosol and off I went scrubbing away. The results speak for themselves really, great looking exhaust system the Fujitsubo Power Getter.
So here's my first attempt with my new Nikon D70 at a photoshoot. I called up my friend with it being a sunny day and me being pretty eager to test out the new toy. He agreed to come along for a nice drive and some photo's at some point along the way. I was completely shocked that even a standard GT-R is extremely fast, no wonder they are called Godzilla! After having a blast on some of the windy roads that England has to offer we had a bite to eat then decided on an industrial location for the shoot, below are the results. I welcome any comments and criticism as this is my first real shoot with the new camera, I think they turned out quite well, perhaps I should have set the ISO to 200 instead of 320 to reduce grain.
I really think the photo's are a vast improvement on the previous calibre, I look forward to hearing your opinions.
Well it was about time I purchased a proper camera, so being quite familiar with the Nikon D70 after using Jo's a few times in the past I decided to purchase a used one for myself. I picked up a beauty that was hardly used, came with all the original packaging even the ties for the cables were still on. So expect to see a little more quality on here and my other blog's once I get used to it. Full photoshoot coming this Sunday so stay tuned if your interested.
Ok so here is my final blog from my European trip. Firstly a quick video of the road from the hotel which we stayed at in Austria, this road was awesome, if only I had more time to practice on it for a little while and film a full throttle run along it.
After watching and loving the Austrian Hillclimb event we were headed for the would famous Nürburgring via the also famous German Autobahn roads with unlimited speed sections along the way. This was the first time I had been able to not worry about the speed limit and just concentrate on people pulling out into my path whilst travelling at 113mph (Japanese limiter was still installed). Here is a quick video to give you an idea of the speed, it looks as though the cars in the slow lane are travelling at 50mph, when in reality they are travelling around 80-90mph.
About halfway to Nürburgring we stopped in a town called Koblenz which is only about 50km away from the actual circuit. After being away from home for about 4 days I was actually in the mood for a good old curry. So I had a quick search using the TomTom and I found a curry house right in the centre which sounded good, so it was time for a spicy Jalfreizi and Lamb Tikka for starters, yum. Here is a quick shot of the town square, very nice architecture throughout Europe in the city centre's.
Nürburgring
A quick video of one of the test cars that day. I think it is an E92 M3 GTR.
Now for a kool story, whilst preparing myself to drive on the Nürburgring an EG3 Civic turned up from Belgium no less, I got talking to the owner and checked out what he had done to his car then vice versa. He asked for me to take him for a ride round the ring and vice versa, this was great fun as he was more experienced on the ring than myself so I got to see what speed to take the corners and which lines work the best for FF layout cars. So I'd like to say many thanks to Niels, and here is his Civic.
Ok so that was all the footage and photograph's we had time to capture at the Nürburgring, from there we headed for one of the larger cities in Germany, Cologne aka Köln in the local language. This was an awesome city, much like the others we had visited with its classic architecture and large city squares. This place had a huge main street with all the bars, restaurants and clubs along, it was a very buzzing place with some random graffiti.
Overall the trip was amazing and although we were quite pushed for time we managed to make the most of it I think. I've learnt that the next time I go it should be for much longer so we can absorb and explore more of the cities and countryside as most of this trip was driving, we roughly covered 2,500 miles in 5 days. The little Civic didn't miss a beat at all, I drove it hard on the Alpine roads, I thrashed it around the Nürburgring, smashed it along the Autobahn and it made it home in one piece. It is a testament to how well a 15 year old Japanese car can handle that kind of abuse day in day out.
Now after leaving Strasbourg and heading for the Swiss border this was going to be the most scenic part of the trip and also quite and experience. For some reason the people at the Swiss border took a dislike to my car, probably because of it being Black and heavily tinted in the rear. So they decided it would be fun to strip my entire car and go through all my bags, use the sniffer dog and search me and my friend. Obviously they found all the Cocaine and Canabis......
After travelling through the kool network of tunnels and flyovers in Switzerland we arrived at a place near St.Gallen and took a few snaps, then it was on to the real breath taking scenery and roads in the Alps.
The Alps
One of the main reasons for heading out to the Alps, in particular Austria was to see the European Hillclimb Championship, the Rechberg Rennen as its known locally. More info can be found on the Hillclimb here http://www.hillclimbfans.com/. After meeting up with Chris,(he is the guy who runs the Hillclimb fans website) he showed us around the track and we got to meet some of the drivers which was really good, we even got an applause from the drivers for coming all the way from England to spectate as I don't think many British people have seen this particular event. There was such a diverse selection of cars there all unique in their looks and sound, some of the VW Golf Mk.1's were revving upto 11k and the top turbo tuned cars were equally as impressive.
Here are a few short video's of my favourite cars, just listen to the Orange Lancia Delta of Felix Pailer.
