lupinz-blog

Well I made the trip to the mini nationals.  The event was held in Dandy do it wasn’t that far to go.  2 day event with the best drivers from all over Australia and a few from overseas.  There were over 60 cars in the mini event, another 20 plus in the open mini and about 15 or so in the 4WD mini.

The weekend went OK ish for me.  The fist qualifier showed me that the car needed a little work.  Little did I know how much it actually needed.  I was fighting with a diff problem before the event and the control tires managed to compound the problem.  I managed to make it around in a fairly average time.  Qualifier 2 seen me loose a body pin resulting in running at the back of the pack.  Qualifier 3 seen something go wrong in a sizeable way, with me hitting the wall at speed, buckling a rim (meaning one set of tires were destroyed and you only get two for the weekend)  After some major repairs it was back on track but just wasn’t right and I couldn’t put my finger on it. The rest of the day seen lots of trial and error, before heading home for the day.

Day 2 seen me try again,  Things went slightly better in the first race for the day, but still wasn’t right.  So after even more changes, I finally got the car working the way it should be.  The only problem now was I was really at the back of the pack, putting the car in 47^th place.

But it wasn’t all bad, from there I managed to get some really good laps in and before I knew it I had the car running 2^nd in my class.  However driver error crept in a few times and I suffered a few turtles (turtling is where a mini ends up on its roof)

So after a good weekend out with good people I finished in the 40 something place.  A long way off were I would have liked to have been, but all in all it was a awesome weekend and I’ll build a new car for the 2013 nats.

Well I’m not sure where the year went but Lily has made it to one.

It seems like yesterday that she was being cut out of her mums guts.

We had so spend the night before programming her puppy to say the things we wanted though.

We celebrated the day with family and friends and she got soooooooo much stuff.

Well you all know how it goes.  You start with something simple then before you know it half the car is spread out across the floor.

What started as a simple sub and amp upgrade is now a full blown install. There is a second amp in the mix now as well as a minidsp for digital signal processing.  More dynamat and a custom install.

It all started when I realized that the amp was going to be a tight fit where I was planning on putting it.  So I decided that who needs a spare wheel I hardly drive the car anyway.

So now I have the entire boot stripped out.  Have made some nice custom power and earth cables, and done even more dynamating to the front doors and will do parts of the boot as time goes.

So here are a few teaser photos.

So the old girls going to get a little audio makeover in the next few weeks / months / omg this is taking ages.

My whole system at the moment is made up of stuff that I just plain old had laying around the shed. The only thing thats less than about 10 years old now is the head unit.

So I’m going to get some new stuff and have a small update.

Current system is, Pioneer Head unit (will grab model number later)
MTX Thunder amp (off to the scrap heap)
MTX Road thunder 12inch (as above)
MB Quart 6.5 Discus series from memory.
Some pioneer 6 inch 2 ways that were in the back of the car when I got it.

My head unit will stay.
My MB quarts will stay (as long as they still look good when I get them out)
I’ll replace the Sub and enclosure. Going to use a molded one to suit the car.
I’ll replace the amp
I’ll re-wire the whole thing, and deaden the front door and a few other parts of the car as needed.
I’ll grab something out from the shed and stick in the rear for fill (or maybe just nothing)

The idea with this will just be to get a reasonable cheap amp and sub. Deaden the car, rewire, and replace the sub box.

I’ve 99% picked what I’m going to use, its all based on a couple of things, price, size, and has to look decent.
That and I called in a favor from a old friend on some gear. ^_^

But there will be more to come in the next few weeks.

Collected the “box” on the weekend. Fits well in the space, buy yes its seems fairly thin. I’d say it will get another coat of glass. Its also not a great color match, so I’ll recover it in the stuff that matches. Its also bigger than what I though I work it out at just on 1cu ft. I’ll grab some packing foam and check it when I get a chance.

Head unit will stay. Need to pull it out and look for a rattle thats in there so I may as well replace the pocket why I’m going.

As for what was found in the shed that I’ll use, nice big length of 4 AWG and circuit breaker. Some nice fat speaker wire, that I’ll use for the sub, and check that old school PG logo, and a line driver. May or may not use it, as it all depends on what voltage the amp can take.

Got the 4 gauge run and ran the RCA’s the rest of the way. (Amp was previously under the front seat so ran everything the rest of the way, and I was only running 8 Gauge.)

Oh did I mention that its going to take me a while to do this, as I only get time when the babys asleep, and I’m going to try to get a hour or so one night a week to get things done.

With a bit of luck the sub and amp will turn up later this week so I can get started a little more. But I think I may end up running the sub inverted to keep the max enclosure size.

Well I’m not sure what I’ve killed yet but I’ve killed something.

In an effort to outdo Ronnie, I found a program to allow full control of my video card speeds, and voltage.  Now slowly creeping up on a decent setting, naturally I had a few blue screens.  But maybe one too many.

Now its stuck in a wicked blue screen loop, that I am yet to spend anytime working on fixing.  But there are a few possibilities.

1. Video card had become damaged from too much over clocking.  This one will be easy to test, I’ll just pull it out and put another one in and see if it boots.

2. Driver problem.  I did do a video card driver update.  As we all know ATI are crap at making drivers so there is every chance that its just that and I just need to wind things back.

3. Power supply is overloaded.  I knew I was getting close to its limit.  I’ll pull a few items, hard drives and the fan controller and see what happens.

4. I’ve damaged the CPU.  Seems unlikely but anything is possible.

So tonight I guess its back to the good old reset everything and try again.

Well new PC time.  Time to go Intel. Time to go quick. Time to go cheap (kinda)

Decided it was time for a small upgrade. That grew into a slightly bigger one when I managed to get stuff cheaper as we did a upgrade at work. WIN

So with a 2600K new motherboard, new ram, and a new SSD.  I added in all my old stuff and way I went.

Well were back in a Ford, and I must say its been a good change so far.

We needed to buy a bigger car.  The Mrs had been making do with the WRX, and her car was gathering dust in the shed.

So we headed off to look at a few different things.

We had a few on the list to look at, the Mazda 6, the Liberty, the Honda Accord Euro, and the Falcon.

Naturally it was down to value for money, and the Falcon won out.  There is no real other option for a family sized car for the price.

So after having a bad experience with a local dealer we headed up the Melbourne road to see what we could find.  After a bit of a walk around, and nothing else taking our fancy, we went XR6 shopping.  There were a few to choose from, and you could basically pick what color you wanted.  So after a bit of a discussion we took a Ego (charcoal) colored one for a drive.

It was fairly obvious after a short drive that the Mrs was happy with it, so we decided to get it.  After a bit of a discussion a deal was struck and we were on the way to getting it.  Signed the paperwork on the Saturday, Monday was a holiday, picked it up on the Thursday, then off to the window tinters on the Friday.

So far all is going well, its naturally not up to my standards as far as paintwork detailing but that will get fixed in the coming weeks.

It will be interesting to see how life with the XR goes.  So far fuel economy is possibly better than the WRX, but time will tell.

Only have a couple of shitty iPhone photos at the moment, but you get the idea.

Well I must say it was fairly easy.  All I needed to do was reposition the battery mounts slightly and it all went together.

Now I just need to get the car all set up and with a bit of luck it will be nice to drive, and hopefully quicker than the old chassis.

So now all that needs to happen is for the weather to turn a little better and with a bit of luck I can get out to the track and give it a try before a race weekend.

Well after all this time running my poor old worn out T2-007, I decided its time to do a upgrade to some thing better.

With the opotunity to grab a late model T2R I jumped at the chance and ordered the Exotek chassis upgrade.

http://exotekracing.com/EXOTEK_NEWS/Entries/2009/12/20_XR2.html

So far its been an interesting build. I have cleaned all the parts as best I can, and will select the best from my 2 lots of parts and work out the best approach.

At the moment its more about getting time to do it.  But with racing to restart in a couple of weeks I’m sure I’ll find the time.

Well its taken 3 years, but I’m back where I started.

After things turned to shit very quickly as my last place of employment.  I’m back in spare parts at ISR Truck City.

All it took was a quick phone conversation and here I am, back like I never left.

I’m not selling trucks though, I’ve come on board to look after the Hino spare parts side of things.

There are some big challenges ahead, but there is also a big carrot attached as well.

So here we go again.