I spent the entire weekend working on the Pajero, so no adventures with the aurally challenged. I was feeling a bit under the weather with some kinda sinus issue and I got hardly any sleep all week cause it felt like I had one of those trackers from Total Recall in my face. As a bonus my voice went all gravelly like Michael Ironside. That gets old fast. The lack of a hang-over sadly didn't help progress on the EFI gear overly.

I had picked up a surge tank and a VL turbo fuel pump from eBay for not a lot of money, grabbed a handful of nipples (lol) from Pirtek as nobody else seemed to be in stock of anything. I'm not sure what car this surge tank came from, but it looked like a work of contemporary art. I'm presuming it was mounted outside the car or something, and that the extensions were wings provided for additional down force. After grinding off the aerodynamics, I set about mounting the tank and fuel pump in a way that used the least fuel hose and was least likely to fail catastrophically. I ended up reusing the coil bracket to hold the fuel pump - which worked a treat - and squeezed it into a gap between the battery tray and the plenum. Inexplicably, the VL turbo fuel pump inlet is 1/2" compared to its 3/8" inlet. Fuck you, Robert Bosch. Perhaps coincidently, I discovered today that my missing coffee mug at work had been annexed by the German chick. Or perhaps this is some sort of German conspiracy to mildly inconvenience people. If I cared I'd probably mention Olympic medal counts here, but I don't.

Back to cars, the throttle body that came with the EFI gear had completely different sensors and stepper motors to the original so wiring into the newer generation loom wasn't going to happen. We made a dash to a not so local wrecker to get a TR Magna throttle body. As Greg set about removing the $20 throttle body, I set about removing everything from nearby cars that I could pocket. Naturally, the correct throttle body didn't fit. They had completely different bolt patterns and a slightly larger diameter. We had to elongate the bolt holes in the plenum and make an adapter plate, or rather Greg did while I drank beers and tested if the surge tank filled. The low pressure pump worked a treat, but the surge tank pressurised and sprung a leak. I gathered it was because I had removed the carbon canister and plugged up its lines. Whoops. I ripped out the nipples and added more thread tape - which I'm fairly sure isn't rated for fuel - but hey, who wants to live forever.

The new throttle body eventually bolted up. It looks neat enough, so long as you don't look closely. I hope road dirt and mud obscure it sufficiently in case a cop ever asks to see under the bonnet. Hopefully, they'll appreciate the engineering involved. As when, if ever, its finished it'll be a modern marvel of engineering. Right up there with the Hindenburg, Titanic and the Goodwill bridge. The sort of thing Tony Stark might have built if he was still doing coke.

The next big problem was merging the Magna loom with the Pajero one. Not massively difficult from the Pajero end, just need to feed it 12V from the battery, 12V from the ignition circuit and a crank signal. Finding the corresponding inputs on the Magna loom isn't so easy, but the most difficult thing is finding a wiring diagram in the Mitsubishi service manual. Its a 1300 page PDF file with no page numbers, just chapters. Its like trying to find John Smith's phone number in the white pages on a windy night, using a torch for light. In the rain.

Eventually we gave up on that idea and decided to just splice back from the ECU end of the loom, based on pin outs which I found on the net on some Magna forum (yeah, Magna forum), as fun as under dash work is we decided to call it a weekend. Hopefully, we'll have it finished next weekend. Probably.

Saturday night was pretty random. In the space of about 5 hours I'd been both drinking at a bikie clubhouse and witnessed two deaf guys punching on.

To go back to the beginning late Saturday afternoon I got a call, "Do you want to come with me to this going-away party? I don't really know the guy or whatever but we're going to head out later." I'm elbow deep in Pajero at this stage, but yeah drinks sounded good. So I down tools and commence the decontamination process (seriously, why does front loader washing powder not work as well at de-greasing hands as top-loader powder? - send your entries along with a stamped self addressed envelope to the address below).

About an hour later, we're heading out to the middle of nowhere to some clubhouse. I'm half expecting to arrive, trip and knock over a chopper and get turned into 12-gauge fairy-bread. As it turns out it wasn't exactly the lair of the Hell Angels. The only drug running these guys are likely to do is nipping down to the chemist for cough medicine. I'm pretty sure they were the sort of bike crew who rode for charities and had a monthly steak at the Norman hotel night. You know, the sort of club that gives bikies a bad name. I doubt they ever even wore leather as they were probably members of PETA.

I never met the guy who's leaving party it was, and the fact that there was cake and "happy birthday" was sung suggested that perhaps Emma didn't quite know either. We got out of there pretty quick when it became apparent that the mood of the place was about to change from jovial to light-hearted and we feared a hug might break out any moment.

We headed back to Norman Park to what Emma described as a sort of share house that a couple of her deaf friends lived in. When we got there I realised she had understated it. It wasn't just a share house, it was like a party house for deaf people. Apparently 7 people lived in this typically sized Queenslander, all deaf. Which of course makes perfect sense, because anyone who has ever lived in a Queenslander knows that you can't so much as get a hand job without interrupting your flatmates bible reading. They have walls, but they have all the noise damping capabilities of the Pajero exhaust. 7 people living in a Queenslander would be like 7 people living in a tent. The only difference is the ceiling is higher.

After a crash course in how to talk slower, we and a couple of the deaf guys headed to the Chalk bar and proceeded to get very drunk. Emma was signing like a mad woman, a skill of hers I hadn't ever seen before. I'm completely useless in a club because of a history of PPE-less grinder use I become de facto deaf anyway, so I need to point my ear to hear what the person is saying but a deaf person generally reads your lips if you don't sign. I was like a bobble-head half the time but half the time managing to talk with a drink to my mouth, with my head turned away or without moving my lips. Needless to say I worked out the sign for "pardon" pretty quickly. I then immediately forgot it. Kat, the other "hearie" with us, managed to just continue as normal. Talking shit at people who weren't listening, except they had an excuse.

Out of nowhere, some drunk guy saw a captive audience and decided to lecture us on how not to get caught by the police for being drunk in a car with the keys in the ignition (if only someone had told him). After 2 minutes, I began to wish I was deaf. He offered everyone a round of drinks and stumbled off to the bar to get them, unfortunately he returned probably half an hour later - without drinks. Seeing what presumably were fresh faces he started his lesson from the beginning.

At a quarter to smashed, we caught a taxi back to the share house, which was now packed to the rafters. I had to introduce myself to 30 different people, and got offered drinks by everyone. Thankfully, I had translators at this stage. Its kinda surreal to be in a packed house with everyone talking but being able to talk at normal volume. There is none of that competition to be the loudest. I was probably still talking loud though, out of habit or in a totally offensive way, just not Matt Dale loud.

Then some guy who had just arrived from another party started words with some other guy who had apparently left said party without him. At least that's what I think happened, we'll assume it was Caxton St. The two weren't signing, at least not with open hands, so they weren't completely deaf but still screaming in that clipped deaf way. I had to leave the room just in case I burst out laughing. I wasn't ready for that. Meanwhile, people were sleeping soundly in rooms just off from the main living room. The guy who had been left behind stormed out, got in his car and left in a hectic burn-out which must have covered all 4 lanes of Lytton Rd, which I then had to explain to everyone who couldn't hear. I can sign "burn-out" apparently.

I ended up crashing out a bit later, after the fracas had died down. The rest of the party had decided to calm things down by putting on some porn. I fell asleep in another room to the sound of cunnilingus.

On Sunday, I went back for more on the Pajero. Its coming along nicely. The firewall needed a bit more persuasion to fit the fuel rail in properly. I fitted the low pressure pick up fuel pump down near the tank copping 5 flavours of earth in my eyes in the process. Hit a snag with the loom, as apparently we have the Gen 2 (curvey) Magna loom but with the Gen 1 (boxy) manifolds and throttle body. Most things work fine, Gen 2 uses knock sensors and the throttle body has completely different plugs. Shouldn't be a problem though. I've now lost track of how many different models this car is a chimera of.

I should receive the rest of the fuel gear this week (eBay specials), so with some luck we might have a turn key event by the end of the coming weekend. The locker diff still needs to be assembled and thrown in, along with the associated solenoids and so forth. The leaf springs in the rear should also be fixed before they completely invert. Unloaded they are effectively flat. Under full (over) load, it gets a bit scary.

I spent an hour and twenty on Saturday morning walking to where I had left my car. Good day for it, but my justification wasn't that I enjoy a walk. It was that paying for a cab twice in a 12 hour period was stupid, but paying for a third was just getting beyond a joke. There was also the combination post night-out cognitives having all the clarity of the Beijing horizon and trying to save those "Can I get a lift?" phone calls for when a car inevitably breaks down. (Sup, Marc.)

The walk was quite pleasant, enjoying the scenery that you don't see screaming by in a car. Like some poor bloke on a bike getting booked for no helmet and having to walk his bike into the distance while the police sat in their car congratulating themselves on another criminal apprehended. That always makes me laugh. Like riding a bike isn't embarrassing enough, you have to add a helmet to the mix. Full face helmets should be compulsory.

The previous night had actually been a surprise. Surprisingly good. Generally Friday nights seem to run out of steam pretty early. If you've made it to 0130 without any casualties you're doing pretty well. It was a girl from work's 29th ( 21 + 8 ), but there was only me and a girl representing along with a bunch of her non-work friends. We both expected it to be a non-event, hence I drove. The bar tab changed my mind fairly quickly. We later relocated to the Chalk (aka, the Hair Club for Men) and the night blurred into a mess of bourbons, MGMT, loud talking and far more than the usual quota of breast fondling. I would have called you, but you know, I thought you'd be busy.

Sometime around 3am, we got taxis and went home. Some hours pass and I'm walking to fetch my car. On the way I'm taking a peek in everyone's driveways seeing what the flavour in the area. Mostly Magnas, it seemed. The occasional LX Torana on blocks, which gets the imagination running. I've always (not so secretly) wanted a horrible Australian built V8. These days they are collectors items, or at least the rarity of them is starting to make up for the lack of features, reliability or rust-free panels. Too much money, in my opinion. Also, I have enough terrible cars.

Then I noticed this other vehicle. Parked, on a front lawn, expired rego. Went over and took a better look. Knocked on the door of the house, asked the owner what the deal was, how much he wanted, whats wrong with it, can I take it for a drive, etc. Now, I haven't mentioned the make or model. That's because this is a really stupid idea. However, that's never stopped me before. Its all kinds of wrong, which makes it perfect. I'm torn though, I know I shouldn't, but there is a niggling Ben Stiller in my head telling me to "Go ahead and do it".

I should put up a poll here. With a 100% reader response, it'd be something like 2 votes "yes" and 3 votes "no", I'd imagine. My next post might be a bit more interesting though, or not. Stay tuned.

Eventually, I found my car and went and picked up the Pajero (or rather Magna) inlet manifold from an aluminium welding place. I had to get the throttle body flipped to the other side of the plenum so that it wasn't hard up against the firewall. I removed the existing carby manifold, and gave the EFI manifold a test fit. Which it didn't - both the fuel rail and the thermostat housing fouled against the firewall. And not by a little either. Clearly the people who wrote the EFI guide for Astron-powered Pajeros didn't consider that fact important. The solution, of course, was a hammer. So, Greg and I spent the next hour smacking the shit out of the firewall with just a bit of cut and welding for good measure. Thankfully, there is nothing on that side of the firewall to worry about, brake lines etc are well clear and the engine bay is big enough to get a decent swing. Its just a shame we didn't have a sledge hammer handy. The rest of the job was pretty easy though. Magna EFI gear was clearly designed by Australians. Designed for no patience and big hands. Now just need to sort out the loom and fuel system, that will be easy right?

I love China.

Those crazy bastards churning out electronics almost as fast as they can carbon dioxides. And doing it so cheap. I rebuilt my main PC (cpu, motherboard and ram) for like $240. Total. Its stupid. Stupid cheap. There was a time you'd pay that much for a motherboard by itself, and twice that for the cpu. Its not only computer gear though, LCD panels, video cameras, whatever you can think of.

Its only a matter of time before we start getting their cars over here. In 10 years we'll all be driving Soyats and Wulings and they'll be so cheap if you forget where you parked one you'll just go buy a new one. Business as usual, probably.

In the meantime though, we're driving Japanese cars. A little bit more pricey, but at least the doors open the right way (or at all). Speaking of doors not opening though, its time for a Pajero update.

I got the diff welded up, but before we could install it the fuel pump died. Specifically it happened half way up a hill, which i had to roll down backwards un-powered. I've decided that its probably a good time to do the Magna EFI conversion on it as the carby on it was a heap of shit to start with. Soon the car will less original parts than one of the cars from Mad Max 2. (Movie tip of the week, go download Doomsday, it was awesome. If you disagree, you're shit.) I'm not too worried about having it off the road for a while to be honest as I was getting a bit sick of driving it, too loud, too vague and no stereo, plus the exhaust turned itself into a piece of contemporary art.

I've been driving the Gemini everyday which brings a lot less angry looks and a lot more my-mate-used-to-own-a-Gemini conversations with randoms whenever I park it somewhere. The down time seems to have done it wonders though as not acting like its pregnant anymore (aka, not holding fluids when it should and holding them when it shouldn't). Plus I didn't have to hand over a few hundred dollars to solve that one. Bonus.

The Pajero being out of action has a downside in that moving big objects becomes a bit more difficult. I had promised to pick up an old biological freezer from work for a mate to use in a (fairly serious) home brew operation he had planned. That's on hold now, and the Facilities Manager (aka a glorified janitor) had a big teary about it. The beer probably would have been shit anyway.

On Saturday I gave Gene a hand removing and moving a Starlet GT rear axle, which meant meeting up with the lads having not seen any of them in months. A whole lot of stupid drama had passed and gone under the bridge since then, which I hadn't been involved in except for comments from the sidelines. Everyone is well over it now, so not much needed to be said except for some jokes about it all.

Anyway, the axle removal wasn't too hard even given we had to lift the car up to get underneath it, well we lifted while Gene got under it. Given that a Starlet shell weighs as much as the girl's handbag it is the automotive equivalent of it wasn't difficult.

We threw the axle in the boot of the Gemini, which isn't as pathetically small as you might imagine, in fact probably big enough to keep Ivan Milat happy. Even so, the axle hung out and the open boot sucked into the cabin plenty of exhaust fumes. Marc decided to change cars after about 300 metres. Probably a good choice.

I also saw the worlds worst kept secret too. Phil's 4-door R32. It's pretty rad. The subwoofer makes more noise than the exhaust, and probably more power than the 7 ever did. It makes me wish I had a R32 of my own to drive.

The nature of my job means that I tend to spend significant periods of time sitting at a desk with not a lot of real work (aka, something that isn't paper work) to do. I call these incubation periods, and justify it by the fact that even if I'm not physically doing anything productive, some biological process that I initiated is. So really, I'm multitasking when I'm browsing forums, eBay or staring blankly out a window at scrub turkeys in the distance.

Occasionally though during these periods I do come up with some cool ideas, and sometimes some dumb ideas. Whether or not I act on them is entirely irrelevant to the category they fit into.

During the week I contemplating, what sort of ghetto mods I could do to the Paj to shame chumps who take this off-roading business seriously. I love to stir people who take themselves a bit too seriously, especially if they spent a lot of money on their hobbies. Likely targets are people who wear shirts related to the hobby. Examples, wearing a GTR or EVO shirt (same difference). Now, I'm fully aware of the hypocrisy of this post, but lets ignore that for the moment as we wander off into another wonderful tangent...

There is nothing more satisfying than lapping some guy in a GTR with a similarly badged fire suit in a car held together by zip ties, electrical tape and bolts you borrowed from your futon. Well besides sex, that's pretty good. And that first breaking of the seal when you're on the turps. And a good Wagyu rump with mushroom sauce. So, actually there are quite a few more satisfying things. However, there's something about defeating someones idol in a nonchalant way that triggers a few endorphins. Its a bit like watching with enjoyment as some kid's sandcastle is destroyed by a freak wave. Yeah he spent an hour building it, but its just sand. Maybe I'm just a cunt, but I always laugh.

I feel sorry for the GTR owners who aren't fan-boys, and I know they exist. EVO drivers, well, I'm pretty sure their heads are so far up their own large intestines that they have no idea how the rest of the world views them. An Industrie shirt with all the buttons undone over a t-shirt of an opposite colour? Uhhh... please.

Brand loyalty is a bit like patriotism, by which I mean its retarded. The Olympics are coming up and patriotism is crammed down your throat in a way that is usually reserved for a reading of the Courier Mail. Its embarrassing. And I say this because I went to school with a gold medalist, and I always thought he was a dick. Now, Steve Bradbury what a legend. Got the gold by just not fucking up while all the favourites in the race slipped over and became a homo-erotic mess of spandex-clad losers. Just the sort of shit I'm talking about. The guy grew up in Brisbane - when was the last time you saw ice in Brisbane not in a bourbon and coke? He probably only got on the ice that day because he lost a bet and thought it'd be a laugh. A true champion.

I've never really seen the point in cheering on some random because you happened to be born in the same country and getting all excited because "we won". Yeah not really, you weren't exactly training at 6am every day.

Brand loyalty is pretty much the same thing, it invokes that same cringe worthy nonsense of being part of a community. No, not really. You just bought a car with the same badge as everyone else. Its not better because you own it. I mean if your Falcon is so great why is there a subsidy paid to build it (its not because its any good). Its like paying cunts to be unemployed. They get paid because people feel sorry for them, not because applying (googling) for 4 jobs that last fortnight was hard work.

Now Mitsubishi apparently doesn't have a great reputation amongst serious 4wder types (ie. bogans). And in fact models like mine aren't even supported by anything after market, aka your ARBs, etc. The end result is that owners of Patrols, Land Cruisers, Jeeps even Suzuki Jimnys tend to look down on you a bit for driving one. Now this kinda thing I love, because I'm the sort of person who loves a bit of drama, like a bit of the Rocky Balboa victory of the underdog emotion. Eye of the Tiger and all that (though given what Pajero is slang for in spanish, its probably more Eye of the Penis). Now I know you probably thinking that 4wding is incredibly boring, just a bunch of blokes in shit boring cars driving up hills. You're 100% right of course, it is just that. And I'm not really sure how I keep making blog posts about it. The thing is though, its kinda fun. You drive up some rocky hill smashing diffs, panels, bumpers and trees the whole way and when you get to the top you are wearing the same satisfied grin that the girl from the Westpac ATMs has when you've finish your transaction. And apparently there is a bit of skill involved in it, I don't buy it though. I just hold my right foot down and hold on for dear life.

Of course, the Paj was built from mostly stolen, scavenged and ill-fitting parts. It was assembled by some guys who were a little too grinder happy (especially after midnight) who believe JB Weld is a valid alternative to the balance shafts. The car is from eBay, the engine is from a Scorpion, the ignition gear is from a Sigma, the carby is from god knows what but its American, the wheels and tyres came from a guy who was giving them away for free (except for 1 that was left abandoned in a 4wd park), the EFI gear to fit to it is from a Magna and the fridge was built in the USSR (yeah it has a fridge). The whole thing is a cocktail of Mitsubishi parts that are different enough to not work quite right, or fail catastrophically. (The head for instance doesn't have the same size water galleries as the inlet manifold, so we had to make up an adapter plate from 2mm aluminium to cover the holes that don't match - but only after the JB weld didn't hold.)

Its a bit of a Frankenstein's monster, except that bloke probably didn't have as much trouble ordering parts. "Whats the VIN number?" "Uh... well..."

Anyway, to return to paragraph 2, this big idea I had during the week was to ghetto engineer a front diff-lock. Now there is a reason why a diff-lock is handy, when any diff (lsd or open) lifts a wheel all the torque is sent to the wheel spinning in the air. That means you've got no traction at all to that entire axle. If you lift a wheel on each axle you're fucked. A diff-lock stops this from being such a show stopper, but the problem is that for a start they are stupidly expensive ($2000), secondly they don't make them for Gen 1 pajeros and thirdly because thats all too easy.

So my plan was to source a Gen 2 diff that has a vacuum actuated clutch (not a slippy clutch like in transmissions or LSDs, but sliding race style clutch), weld the center (as in lock the diff), and have a switch which actuates the clutch. Obviously its ghetto, welding a diff is asking for trouble. Also because of the location of the clutch it basically only disengages one axle to stop it from binding up with its opposite wheel, so no axles or CVs will get snapped by driving it disconnected but because there's no differential action the front passenger side wheel (which will be constantly driven, essentially 3 wheel drive) will be undersped or oversped compared to the rear wheel on the same side. I'm guessing this will make the car under steer a bit, but because you only ever use 4wd on loose surfaces I don't see much drama.

So I contacted a guy I bought a car off ages ago who I remembered was a boiler maker and he said he could weld up the centre for like $30. Awesome, so headed out to Minden (very west) to one of the few wreckers where everyone has good teeth and ripped out a diff in Olympic time. Greg wanted a new gearbox for his other Pajero (which hes now giving away to a cousin) so we headed over to a different wreckers and with the help of a gas axe got a gearbox out in about an hour. The shed we were working in coincidentally made my garage floor look more like a pubescent teenagers face in comparison. A lot of fun to work on that floor.

Anyway, I'm kinda hoping I haven't missed some vital flaw in this most ghetto of mods. To take down a serious 4wd in a car worth less than a decent set of mud tyres would be fucking mint. Either that or it ends up on its lid. Should be a laugh anyway, keep an eye on youtube.

Ok, so I haven't posted a week or so. And I know those 3 people who F5 this page daily are mildly interested to know if I fixed the skyline. Well I didn't.

I bought a new CAS from my local Arab wreckers, threw it on, plugged it in, dialed it in. Turn the key... still fucked. Well, less fucked in a way. It now revs freely when you first crank it, but stalls after a few seconds. This is new, but just as annoying and ambiguous. And the car is obviously just as undriveable. I tried shorting the fuel pump relay in case it was the pump switching off. Nope, not that. I tried a bunch of settings in the PowerFC controller, no goods. Maybe there is a massive air leak somewhere I can't see, or the maps have been nuked. Neither are things I can be arsed looking at, right now. Deciphering air or ignition maps is about as intuitive as trying to read the Japanese throughout the rest of the PowerFC menus. That said, I know what symbols they use for On or Off. Regardless, the cold snap turned me off the idea even more than frustration did.

Playing Diablo 2 with the lads (and ladette) re-introduced me to the idea of wasting time playing a video game, seeing as working on the skyline was apparently just as pointless. Defeating Bhaal was like Renton's last hit in Trainspotting. Once that quick fix was over, I vowed never to play it again. Of course, not everyone can stop that easily. Thompson is hounding randoms now to rush him through Nightmare, within a few months he'll probably have reverted to that pudgy kid with the goofy smile - a tragic reminder of what life is like without self control when it comes to Diablo 2. That said, I have cherished memories of playing Diablo 2 while back at uni at a mates house in Carina in the middle of winter. His place was in some horrible gully or something that resulted in stupid cold winters and stupid hot summers. Fighting demons wrapped up in a doona with upturned mattresses around the doors to keep the cold out. Good times.

The new game that drew me in was Mass Effect. Its got a cool story and the dialogue is surprisingly not cheesy. Its a blatant copy and paste from any and every sci-fi movie you can name though. The last mission I did was pretty much Aliens meets Star Wars Episode 2. Its a lot like watching one of those parody movies, you know the ones, Epic Movie, Scary Movie 4, etc. Except not funny, though its a stretch to call those parody movies that anyway. That's not to say its completely unoriginal, the main story is great, its just the missions you do aren't exactly new plot ideas.

One thing about Bioware games is they like to have a bit of interaction between the party characters, even back in Baldur's Gate you could chat up members of your party and have them fall in love or some shit. They took it a step further with Mass Effect and you can bone them (off-screen). One of the aliens is some kinda xenophile bisexual chick, so regardless of the character you play you can smash it. Which is appropriate because I've got a Michelle Rodriguez style character, who clearly prefers trim to a him. Scissoring aside though, the game is pretty cool.

Which contrasts with the real world lesbian I have to train at work starting next week (the Irish girl previously mentioned on this blog). Lets just say I think she enjoys ladies soccer. Not that I care or am prejudiced at all, in fact I'm sure it'll be handy to have someone around in case I need a jar opened or something.

Anyway, back to video games. One thing that always felt a bit wrong about them is how when you are running around with swords or guns or whatever - just generally looking like bad news - theres always someone coming up to you and asking for assistance with some trivial matter like delivering a letter or whatever. See in real life, its not really something you'd do. The person with eviscerated alien all over their combat armour isn't likely going to be helping you carry your groceries. I've generally found people just don't approach me for this kinda thing anyway, like they presume I'm the selfish and arrogant person that ex-girlfriends tend to describe. Then on the weekend I got invited over to my neighbours place for a phillo curry lunch, had some middle aged woman ask me to give her a hand with her some drama on her car and then even more randomly I'm out shopping and I have some guy come up to me and start telling me his life story EXACTLY like they do in games. He was some diabetic chef from Birmingham, who had his car written off (it then later blew a head gasket on the same day), he hitchhiked to a train station with a interstate truck driver but then proceeded to leave his diabetic gear, passport and drivers license behind in the truck (which was heading to Townsville), and so on. In the end all he wanted was a ride to a doctor nearby so he could get his insulin and then later visit his son (who surprisingly wasn't in hospital with rickets, though at this stage it probably wouldn't have really mattered).

Bit of a sob story, but a fairly epic tale of a day gone wrong. I did the mission and he thanked me and told me he believes in karma, which to be honest didn't mean a lot to me. I was hoping to gain a level and 5 skill points.

The other thing I did on the weekend was gate crash some Nissan Patrol forum day out. Now, Nissan Patrol owners are a bit like Skyline owners - fan boys to the extreme. If there's one thing they can't stand its some tool in a Mitsubishi with no exhaust ruining their day out. And theres nothing more upsetting when your brand new Patrol with 15 grand worth of ARB gear can't climb a hill that some budget Pajero climbed first go. Even more so when you lose your secondary battery dumping acid all over the engine bay, taking out A/C, compressor and air locker and smash your rear tail light in the process. Later, on the drive home on the M1 we noticed this horrible smell, which in the Pajero isn't completely unusual of course. It grew stronger and we spotted its source. The same tool who smashed up his Patrol on the hill also nuked his clutch in the process. He couldn't even maintain 100km/h. Needless to say I drove by at full noise with a big smile on my face.

Karma? Fuck that shit.

I fucking hate black box testing.

It's just such a fuck around, taking a wild guess at what could have gone wrong by inferring from some ambiguous readings or results. I do this shit at work all the time. You might get some weird trend in your results, so you go through it step by step for each of the million different things that could have caused it when in the end it could just have been pure chance. 90% of the time you never find what went wrong because you can never repeat it. Biological systems are like that, at the end of day you decide on some theory as to what it was and blather on in the CAPA how you came up with that idea trying to sound like it wasn't pulled out of the air.

Cars aren't much better. They shouldn't be complicated, you've got bits that move when shit gets burnt when some bit fires a spark. Except each of those bits relies on 30 other bits to do the right thing and every now and then something doesn't. Then the fun starts.

Mind you it helps when you do a bit of research or read a service manual, but the worst thing about owning a Skyline is that you own a Skyline. I'd sell the R32 for a Nissan Crew cause at least then I wouldn't have fat Systems Administrators waving at me because he bought an R33 and is now part of the special community. Its also annoying when to look for a solution to a problem you have to trawl the forums. Millions of threads for people asking how to get more power from their automatic R33 all featuring the keyword you are searching for. Cunts.

To be honest, I like to grab a spanner and see whats going on myself, except its taken me forever to fault find in this skyline because I've had other (more?) broken cars to take care of. In the 6 or so months since I last drove it regularly I've ghetto-ed up some more solid mounts for the intercooler (because I initially thought that it might have been an air leak causing it to lean out), rewired half the electrics under the dash because the immobiliser failed to disengage, pulled off the fuel rail in a failed attempt to remove the fuel pressure reg (which wasn't faulty anyway), hooked up an oil pressure gauge to test fuel pressures to test the reg and cleaned the air flow meter more times than I can remember and heaps of other shit.

As it turned out all those sensors work, even the TPS which seemed to be a perfect explanation for the problems (and easiest to fix) was fine. AFM voltages were fine too. Everything is linear and everything is about right for base voltages. So nothing should be causing such a complete shut down of the motor. Except I never considered the CAS, clearly I've been around cars built in the 80s too much lately to even consider it. Anyway, that's my current theory, ie the CAS is shagged out. It explains why it shuts down, mostly. Why it failed at 3000 or so RPM I have no idea.

The good thing about having the PowerFC is that all the sensor inputs it needs and ECU outputs it produces are displayed on the hand controller. The CAS though isn't something you can really easily display, it outputs 2 wave forms; one for each cylinder's TDC and one which is segments between the TDCs. It basically allows the ECU to know where the motor is at (precisely) and how quickly its spinning. You can't really view that in real time, at least the raw form of it. There are of course ways to intercept what the CAS is saying the to ECU, but I don't really care what its saying, I just want to know if its fucked. The bad thing about the PowerFC is that it has no failure modes. If a sensor fails completely, goes out of range or whatever it has no idea what to do. A standard ECU has limp-home modes for half the things that can fail and error codes for everything. A CAS thats failing generates a code 11 or whatever and you just nip down to Nissan and pick up a new one for $1500. The PowerFC just keeps running like nothing is wrong even if its getting signals from the CAS that the motor has gone from 3000rpm to 0rpm or decided to skip a few cylinders to save time. The motor makes a fucking horrible noise and flames drop out the back end. You have to crawl it back up to your driveway as a few of the neighbours disapproving faces appear from behind curtains.

So yeah, next step is to find a new (or rather second-hand) CAS and hope that fixes things. If not, I'm running out of things that could be broken.

Also, speaking of disapproving neighbours, I'm apparently not the pariah I thought I was tearing up the street in cars with abbreviated exhausts leaving behind engine oil, cakes of mud or whatever else happens to fall off the car. I got invited to one of the neighbours' birthday lunch. I mean I've lived there for 2 years now, but surely being woken at 2am by someone parking their car would shit you off somewhat. I've also never spoken to them in that whole time except for the minimum that etiquette requires when another neighbour Thunderbird 2 launches his car backwards out a driveway and into a tree.

I think I need to be busy that day...

So as promised I did venture into that dank and decrepit place, full of horrors and treasures alike, seeking to put things right. I didn't have Deckard Cain to offer advice and my tools didn't offer any defense bonus to slashing or blunt damage.

I'm talking of my garage of course, and I was attempting to fix the skyline.

The first thing I had to do was remove the oil cooler lines as I had stolen the cooler for the gemini and the upgraded one I had bought has different fittings. I don't know how I fitted the cooler and more specifically the adapter (which attaches to the block and has 2 braided oil lines coming from it) in the first place, but removing it was not fun. For a start its like trying to do heart surgery by putting your hand up through the urethra of your patient. Its seriously that tight in there, at least on that side of the engine. I'm used to standing in engine bays kicking shit into place rather than half squatting at the side trying to undo oil lines with an inappropriate tool. The second thing is that because of the location and the condition of oil lines themselves my wrists ended up looking like they belong to a fan of The Cure who just ran out of eye liner.

Eventually I managed to remove the oil cooler (and most of the epidermis on my forearm) which made it a lot easier to get the fuel filter out. The fuel line to it for some reason had disintergrated. Perhaps it was the wrong type of hose, or the ethanol in the fuel, I'm not sure. It sure made a mess though. Combined with the oil lost from pulling off the oil cooler and adapter plate the floor of the garage looked more like Prince William Sound without the sea birds... uh, so exactly like Prince William Sound.

With the causing an ecological disaster part of the job out of the way and the garage now smelling like Aurukun on a tuesday afternoon, I pulled off the TPS, AAC valve and AFM and cleaned them all with the closest thing I had to electrical contact cleaner. Threw it all back together and tested voltages with what they should be. Throttle sensor I compared with what it says in the service manual and it was about right (0.5V) and it seemed nice and linear when you planted it. No dramas there. AFM it gets a bit tricky as its a Z32 one which results in me having to compare voltages with the (bunch of) retards over at the Skylines Australia forums. No short circuits or other nonsense there. Another 0.5V which is about right too.

Kicked it in the guts - it started - idled a bit rough but better than last time I turned the key. Voltages for AFM was about 1.1V at idle which sounds about right. Bit more revs and it started to die as it had before. Leaning out. AFM was getting 1.6-1.8 or so volts at 2-3 grand. Based on what the SAU guys said when they weren't rubbing cocks together (those that still have them) that's a bit low. Seems to have a big flat spot at 3 grand with no load. It sounds to me like its going massively lean. It actually feels something like its hitting the limiter, and watching duty cycles the injectors do seem to switch off at times, but TPS is reading ok voltages and not shorting. So I'm really confused. Even so, testing voltages beats the shit out of working on carbies.

Gave the AFM another big dose of carby cleaner trying to hose the element as much as possible. I'm running one of those useless oiled K&N pod air filters which probably fouled up the elements. After it tried off I took it for a strap down the road, ran beautiful for about 30 metres then shat itself, started missing and backfiring but I had a brief moment of wa-cha-cha. (I was half expecting to see the Red and Blues appear behind me.) Then it stalled. Got it back to the garage and parked it. So I think its a fucked AFM now, or at least I hope it is. I'll try clean it up properly (by removing the mesh and getting a brush on it) and I'll see if i can borrow one to test in isolation.

Its a bit of a disappointment, but I really should have realised that it wasn't suddenly just going to fix itself by sitting idle for 3 months or with half a can of carby cleaner.

Fuck cars.

So I did eventually find some actual Cold and Flu drugs that weren't just a herb flavoured placebo in a pill form. Something containing everybody's favourite amphetamine precursor, pseudoephedrine. I found it in the back of a cupboard in some tatty package, two years passed its expiry. I really didn't want to have to wait in a line with methadone addicts and hand over 100 points of ID to buy something to stop my sniffling, so in the spirit of scientific experimentation I went ahead and took them.

Evidently the efficacy of the drugs hadn't been lost in the 4 years since the pills were made. I was able to play a free weekend of Team Fortress 2 unhindered by a mucus discharge from my nose or the requirement for sleep. At least until about 2am on Monday.

At the same time in a different place, a good mate of mine was also taking controlled drugs without a prescription. Although he had no trouble sleeping, eventually waking up on the streets Tokyo without cash, cards or rail-pass and nothing much else but a vague recollection of trying to settle a tab in a hostess bar in a seedier part of town. The last drink which was apparently on the house and had more than just ice in it ended up costing somewhere in the order of $1500 to $2000 and a rail pass, and a whole day of vomiting to boot.

The Japanese police are of course useless when it comes to preventing the fleecing of tourists like this, which is not surprising considering the way they present themselves. The yakuza being well known for covering their entire bodies in intricate tattoos of fierce animals like tigers and dragons, where as the Japanese police tend to dress more like contestants on Takeshi's Castle. You can't exactly inspire fear into tattooed gang members (who cut their own fingers off to say "sorry") when it looks like you couldn't cross a rope bridge with a giant foam lobster standing in the way.

Also speaking of throwing large amounts of money at the Japanese, I think I know why the skyline runs and idles like a dog. I had initially thought it was a fuel pump or fuel pressure regulator issue as it was going very lean as soon as it went onto boost and basically stalling when off the throttle. I did take a look at all the sensor readings but never bothered to check any with a volt-meter and I never checked what sort of ranges they should be within. It definately sounds like a TPS issue though, and I have no idea why I dismissed it so early before. So, I'm going to get stuck into all that diagnosis fun on the weekend if I can remember where I parked the car. Hopefully its just a matter of swapping over to a new TPS.

I haven't actually driven the thing in over six months for more than the length of my street, and its been nearly twice that long since it was last defected. It'd be a nice change of pace, and I'm sure the Oxley Traffic Branch have missed it dearly.

Last Saturday I went to this party which later in the evening when it became too cold to be outside and sufficient dranks had turned into a Sing Star competition. So me belting out a Bonnie Tyler classic probably sounded more like a documentary on mating wolves, but 2500 points says otherwise. Actually it doesn't. Anyway normally, when I attempt to sing I ruin my voice.

I remember back at Uni attempting to impress this girl I was macking on at an engineering ball with my interpretation of American Pie. Didn't go anywhere (though coincidentally I went out with her best friend a couple of years later without realising it) though probably not for the singing as I'm pretty sure i hedged my bets a little too obviously, and to boot I lost my voice for a week. It was so embarrassing, probably on par with having a stock exhaust on a GTR. Open your mouth and nothing. For a whole week. Sucked balls, immensely.

This time I didn't lose my voice, but someone at the party had a cold. And now, everyone who picked up the mike has a cold. Everyone. So now my nose is leaking more fluids than my cars combined. Its so fucking annoying, trying to run an assay or something and having to stop in the middle of a dilution step to grab a tissue. And no amount of sniffing works, like holding back the Brisbane river by sucking on a straw.

When my immune system gave up I did a run to Woolies to get some cold and flu tablets or sudafed or whatever, they had nothing at all. It was all this fucking natural medicine shit. Echinacea (which I just googled and its apparently better known as Purple Coneflower... haha yeah I'm pretty sure thats something else) with lemon rind essences and shit. No thanks, if I wanted fruit I'd buy a Corona. I want drugs. What happened to the old days when taking a Cold and Flu tablet was like a lucky dip in Carl Williams' garage. You want to know why hes always smiling? CAUSE HE DOESN'T HAVE A FUCKING COLD.

As a rule, I try stay well out of arguments between mutual friends. Generally though, its between girls and the whole thing plays out like an episode of the OC, except nobody throws a punch and there is no funny Jewish guy. The whole thing blows over in a week and everyone is friends again. Well ... mostly.

I go all Switzerland and I hear both sides of the story (not by choice), find the whole thing incredibly stupid and pointless and don't choose a side. Its basically just this huge bitch session and once its out of their system the drama is forgotten. Its a bit like World War I, which was started when the Archduke of Austria was accused of having an affair with his 17-year-old secretary named Jacqueline (although some historians disagree). Everyone choose a side, shit went all out and millions died.

Like a world war a big fight between ex-mates ends up being completely pyrrhic because people get caught up in the emotion of it and the whole thing becomes this self perpetuating drama. Some cunt acts a cunt, someone else finds out and reacts like a cunt, the original cunt gets all offended and takes it up with them, a third cunt hears about it and defends the second cunt, the original cunt has told some other cunts parts of the story and so has the second.

Someone who doesn't really care like me comes along. Theres a choice of sides, but in the end its like choosing between an Acupuncture session and going to the Annual General Meeting of the Mitsubishi Evo Drivers Club. Whichever way you go you are going to be stuck in a room full of pricks.

So I stay the fuck out of it. Not because I don't like drama, I love that shit. I watch from the sidelines because I don't like hypocrisy. Example, accusing a housemate of being dishonest and backstabbing based on what you read through all his MSN logs. Ok, there is no defending the guy who was being a cunt in the first place but you just gave up your high horse right there. You're dumped on bump stops. Its a low act that puts you at the same ride height as lying or bagging mates and ballpark with ANYTHING else you can name. There is no driveway you can navigate out from there.

Petrol right now is pretty expensive. Oh but hey hold on a second, I hear you say, all your cars are cheap so what are you complaining about. I ignore your comment, of course, but its not that simple. See cheap cars, are generally broken cars.

The broken bits usually are a bit like the pickles on a Quarter Pounder. You can either ignore them and suffer through them or remove them entirely, but you know when you buy one that there will be a couple on it, no doubt. Generally though, most people just suffer through them committed to finishing the burger like they would a terrible analogy. The broken bits though, can give a car character, like i'm sure Maccas was thinking when they threw a slice of fruit on a burger which is 95% meat. (Yeah, cucumber is a fruit.)

Good example is the gemini exhaust which made a noise unlike any car before it. Four guys pulling up outside a school to vote in the council elections seemed more like the arrival of the four horsemen of the apocalypse who had had to leave their horses behind because of Equine Influenza. (A few of the Family First party reps began repenting their sins.) It was stupid loud, probably not something that gave it character, like a slight lisp might give someone character, but full blown tourrettes syndrome is a bit much.

All my cars seem do develop some bizarre trait at some point which draws lots attention to them. Its probably some reflection of my mechanical ability in the first place, but the attention they attract is a big demotivator to fix them. Take the are32, the original tune was shit, on certain maps it'd knock (atleast on the PowerFC, I could never hear them over the racket) and other maps it'd over fuel. With that came the flames, big metre long flames which in the end meant the car had more cameras pointed at it than Britney Spears' snatch on leaving her Mercedes SLR at Hollywood party. And to be perfectly fair, it appeared on far more Windows backgrounds than her minge ever did.

The breadbox with its near perfect wheel fitment would sag so much with any weight in the rear that'd it scrub tyres on the guards. Driving back from Lismore with an Astron block in the back at 110km/h with tyre smoke billowing out the for the entire 300km journey, incredibly stupid, but stupid awesome. It also did it when there were more than 2 people in the car, or more than 3 cartons of beer. Shopping was fun, and because it was also great fun to rip the handbrake up in, it felt like the being in the Italian Job. Hang on, lads, I've got a great idea.

The Pajero has a slightly messed up carby, running redrilled idle jets and main jets and air correctors stolen from the gemini. It now runs mint, but I still haven't dialed back the idle. So when you pull up at your destination and kill the ignition it keeps dieseling for a ridiculous amount of time. Like the other day, I pull up near a bank. Turn key, get out of the car, lock the door... I reach the other side of the road before it stops. Hilarious. The rolling eyes of disapproving passers-by continued almost as long the motor ran-on for.

Anyway, returning from the extended tangent which is becoming the hallmark of this blog after only 2 posts, paying for fuel is a bit hurty at the moment. The big problem is that I have fuel vanishing. For some retarded reason in the last week the Gemini has being going all David Copperfield with the petrol. Initially I thought it was just the sender telling lies, but having no MSN logs to prove it, I have to assume its actually disappearing somewhere. I filled up tuesday morning, drove like about 100km to and from work and its now on about a quarter. I have no idea where its going to though, I can't smell it and nothing is on fire. So i think i might just stop driving it until i can do the EFI conversion. Its also got a blown gasket on the inlet manifold which leaks coolant, and combined with that is a oil leak possibly from the rear main seal. Coolant leak will be fixed when i fit the EFI manifold, no drama, oil leak I'll just keep topping it up. The big problem is that the oil level is impossible to read as it goes up and down all the time. I initially thought that might be where the fuel was disappearing to, aka the carby leaking into the inlet manifold and draining into the sump. No fuelly oil smell though and the motor hasn't seized. I think the oil tide, if you will, is caused by the oil cooler. Its mounted fairly high up in front of the radiator and i think its draining back into the sump, but obviously when you turn the key and it will fill with oil its going to drop the oil level significantly. Pain in the arse.

The pajero fuel consumption wise is pretty sorted, it runs fairly economically so long as you don't drive at speed. Its aerodynamics are only surpassed by its ability to impress tourists, so on highways i tend to drive like the car's Spanish namesake suggests and tailgate vehicles to save on fuel. Yeah, I'm that guy.

The other problem with it is that climbing big inclines the fuel pick up, well, doesn't. At least with anything less than half a tank of fuel. Its carby so you can keep driving so long as you have fuel in the bowl, but if you stop or get stuck its game over. Then you have to roll it back down the hill without power or get snatched up the hill. Which is embarrassing when its 4wd capabilities are the best they've ever been thanks to a removed front sway bar, shaved or completely removed bumpstops and (second hand) 31x10.5" mud tyres. Overall this makes the car an animal to drive around corners, it tripods by lifting the inside rear tyre off the ground, and you really need to weight shift neatly or else it gets really unsteady - chicanes really aren't its forte. If it shows up someone who spent twice as much on a diff as I did on the whole car then its worth it.

Changing directions for a minute (with all the grace of the pajero) right now my work place feels more like a backpackers hostel than it does a lab. Apparently theres a skills shortage going around, which presumably means at least 5% of the population are useless cunts. The result of this is that places like the company i work for who are trying to hire loads of people invariably end up looking at working holiday/501 visa people to employ. To give you some idea, in the last 2 months or so, we've hired 2 Germans (although the girl had already worked for us), a Scottish girl, an Irish girl and an American girl. Thats along with a Brit, a couple of Indians and a Japanese girl whos been around for a while too.

Makes things interesting when you hear germans talking to each other in their native tongue punctuated with the occasional word like "buffer", "conjugate" or "titration" that at least tells you they are discussing work things. I haven't met the Irish girl yet, but my boss described her as "intense" whatever that means, but which he tried to tell me was a good thing. In my dictionary means it "too much" and generally I prefer subtlety in other people as it makes my life of being over the top a whole lot less work. The Scottish girl who apparently speaks english as her native languge is harder to understand than the Germans speaking english (probably par with them speaking German) which doesn't help when she uses words like "gown" instead of "lab coat". She looks like the sister of the Proclaimers, so i don't feel like I'm missing out on anything. The American girl I haven't met either, but I'm guessing she'll be easy enough to understand. Being American though i can imagine I'll be able to understand what shes saying from the opposite end of the building. The Jap girl is about as stereotypically Japanese as you can get. She literally acts like girls in anime do. Overly happy, but kinda shy at the same time. Hilarious. The Brit girl is easy enough to understand, until she gets drunk then her language becomes a mess of inits, likes and yeahs. She also can't seem to decide if she wants me to bone her or not. Drop the panties and be done with it in my opinion. But that's another story, the thing is the workplace is more like a 19th century gold field than it is a lab. I've been thinking i should just start going around calling everyone cocksuckers and maybe start my own brothel. Or maybe start organising an uprising for better pay. Cocksuckers.

Around about 8 or 9 months ago, I was out on the town with some uni friends. Bear with me while I go off on a tangent to make an observation.

At uni pretty much all the guys i knew had basically two hobbies, drinking and chasing tail, and they both go with the uni lifestyle. Which is a fairly fixed routine. You wake up 2 hours late for the 9 am lecture for Immunology, at a mates house, on his futon. You dust yourself off, (maybe go home) shower etc and make your way into uni. You're getting a bit hungry so you make your way to refec to grab a chicken burger or whatever. You hear music from the campus club upstairs and decide, "Why not, I'll make a quick sweep for mates at the pub". The guy at the door waves you through knowingly while he stops everyone else for an ID check.

Next thing you know its 5pm, you're well toasted, and its your turn to buy the next jug with the silver coins that everyone has dug through their wallets to find. You decide its probably best you don't go to the MAB121 Tute you have that afternoon and instead invest that time more wisely in a game of pool. At some point the bar closes (or you're asked to leave) and the study group moves onto another pub. Drunken blur. Next thing you know its AM and the hour matches the sum total in your bank account. You're at the end of the bar in the Port Office with your tongue down the throat of some girl whose name you either didn't ask or did but forgot immediately. A mate taps you on the shoulder, and gives you a bourbon you either didn't ask for, or did but forgot about immediately. Your recollection beyond this point stops as abruptly and as disappointingly as a Sopranos finale and you find yourself on an unfamiliar couch the next morning wishing you could regurgitate your knowledge of cytokine-based signaling pathways with the ease that you're about to a late night Quarter Pounder.

Anyway, back to my point. Uni-life is a government subsidised party where your final grades are the reciprocal of how much fun you had. There is not a whole lot of time for hobbies. And there is even less money for expensive ones. Then you graduate. The real world puts an end to it all but pays you handsomely to not start drinking at 11am. The cash that you aren't drinking and is found in bundles of thousands rather than tens needs to find a use, this invariably ends in, for lack of a better word, a hobby. This is something like a stupid car or an overseas trip or whatever. Whatever you choose tends to be come the thing that defines you unlike back in the uni days when you just whatever everyone else did (ie. drink).

Now I went and bought a car. The Skyline. Threw plenty of cash at it and it kept me busy. My mate Luke went another extreme, he bought a Mitsubishi Challenger and threw plenty of cash at it. Of course they are completely different cars, one can't climb a driveway but can turn a corner and the other can climb rocks but can't turn corners. In principle they are the same though, most of the parts are bolt-ons, they just come from different companies, Tein instead of ARB. At the end of the day they are a pointless waste of cash, but they do nicely until you find yourself in a marriage and have to sell them and instead throw your cash at your own spawn.

So back to paragraph one. Said mates are out on the town, its probably someones birthday (there needs to be an occasion these days). Luke asks what people are doing for New Years, which is in my opinion the most stupid day of the year. Its this over-hyped event which I just don't care about. The fact that you have to learn to write an 08 instead of 07 is not something I feel the need to celebrate (but do anyway). Anyway, Luke as I said is a 4wd kinda guy, he suggests a trip to Moreton Island where his expensive toy becomes worthwhile. To me spending time in a tent on some remote island sounded more like something you'd do if you were seeking political asylum. Not something I'd do by choice. As the night drew on, a whiff of that uni life recklessness wafted into the area. The ideas started to flow like the bourbons. The stupid sounded awesome.

In the end my other mate Greg and I decided we would buy a cheap 4wd and show up Luke by showing him what a waste of time and money his shiny Challenger is. Going halves in a $700 car, what could go wrong. Surprisingly, the drunken idea carried over to the next day, and the next week. I bought a 1984 Pajero from ebay, and we spent 2 months getting the thing to work and be roadworthy.

The trip actually happened, and was hilarious. The whole thing was a bit of an adventure. The weather was shit and the island itself was pretty boring. However, it was all this that made it fun. On the second last day, down to like 1/4 of a tank (all three of us) and burning something like 40L/100km on the beach (which was impassable at points due to the king tides and beach erosion thanks to the cyclone up north), we attempted a mad dash at low tide (~9am) to the bottom of the island with all 3 cars to one of 2 fuel stations on the island. Just getting there was a mission, we nearly lost the pajero to the ocean and had to spend a good 45 minutes digging it out on an incoming tide. We ended up having to drive the rest of the way on the upper sand dunes (which is illegal, whatever), simply because there was no beach. It took us about 3.5 hours just to drive the 20 or so kilometres from our camp to the township. When we got there, the nice lady at the store informed us they stopped selling fuel 12 months ago.

So we had burnt loads of fuel just to get there (and we all had about the same fuel load by this stage), and the only extra fuel we had was 20litres of pre-mixed 2-stroke fuel back at camp (which had been contaminated with sea-water when we nearly lost the boat the day before). We bought lunch and decided to make a run to the other fuel station at the top end of the island. Low tide was long gone but we were taking the protected side beach. So away we went driving as quickly as you can when you look at the fuel guage as often as you do the direction you are going. We ended up hitting an impassable section and with the tide still on its way in we had no choice but to stop and drink beers.

We waited a few hours for the tide to turn. It was now about 4pm (high tide was 3pm), a quick call to the servo and we found out they closed at 5:30pm. If we waited till the tide was low enough to drive it would be probably 6 or 7pm. We also didn't have enough fuel to make it back to camp and to the servo in the morning, plus we had a early barge ride back to Brisbane the next day. Waiting around was getting a bit frustrating and never wanting nature to get the better of us, me and Greg grabbed an axe and a saw and started hacking at fallen trees (its a national park, whatever). After about half an hour we managed to clear the point enough for us to pass with a little ocean dip and started making another mad dash to the far tip of the island. The idea being that we would get a full tank and siphon out enough for the others to make it back to the barge the next day, as the others weren't prepared to do what we were to get there.

We drove through knee deep Moreton Bay at speed, over logs and through dead trees, losing the primary alternator, the drivers side indicator lens and the antenna in the process. After a couple of near misses with big washouts, we came to a screaming halt when a submerged log we couldn't drive over or around, or chop up blocked the path. So we just got stuck into the beers and gave up on getting fuel. It was something like 15 minutes till the place closed anyway, and the sort of driving we would have had to do would to cover the distance in time would have a bit too extreme. There were also, as we found out later, several even more impassable places up ahead as the seas on the protected side of the island had been big enough to wash away most of the beach. Eventually the others found a pair and caught up to where we had stopped. All along the beach were abandoned cars. People had given up trying to get back to their camp, parked their cars and walked. Presumably to return to them on low tide. The benefits of an in car beer fridge. The tide eventually went out enough for us to pass by which time it was well and truly dark. In all this we had left one of the girls behind saying we were going to be a "couple of hours", and our camp was out of mobile range so we couldn't call and explain it. We had presumed she'd be all worried about us and shit, apparently she enjoyed the quiet and hadn't really noticed as she was reading a good book. Bitch.

We did eventually get back to camp at about 8:30. Driving the whole way in 2WD to save fuel, which makes the inland tracks rather tail happy but its not as much fun when nobody is standing there with a camera and your car is roll-over hazard at the best of times. In the morning one of the other guys made a run on the smell of an oil rag to the servo and picked up fuel for the rest of us to make it back to the barge.

In all it was fun. An adventure, just to get fuel. Except we didn't. And we broke probably a half dozen laws in the process too.



On the Queens Birthday weekend, we did another island mission. This time to Fraser Island. It was organised by a guy who was convinced that the island was full of European backpackers (he used the term barra) just dying to meet an average looking Aussie who can barely play a guitar. The guy was certainly confident, and I'm no player hater but it was amusing to watch none the less. His probably most successful attempt was on a couple of canadian girls who he had spent 30 minutes talking up the pajero to. They later wandered over to see what all the fuss was about. On hearing that it had a large bar fridge full of beer, an in car PC, reversing cameras flip down LCD visors and so on, I'm presuming they expected to see something like a pimped out 300C raised on dirty big mud tyres with more flashy electronic gear than a Daft Punk concert. The look on their face when they eventually saw it was priceless. Like they had seen a dingo for the first time and realised it was just a dog with ginger hair. "Oh..."

Other than that the trip was pretty boring. The pajero didn't break down once, it didn't even get bogged and nobody caught any barra. The most eventful thing to happen was me forgetting the tent and having to sleep under basically a pergola/shade cloth which when it did provide some protection from the rain would rip out its pegs and launch across the campsite. Yet it was still more comfortable than sleeping in the pajero.

So anyway, I've decided a working car isn't much fun. Nor would a camping trip with perfect weather be fun.

So i had a crack at this before, then realised car blogs are shit and stopped. Car blogs are, I guess, probably the most boring shit on earth to read. As i see it, cunts don't care what you did no matter how good that Nismo gear knob looks now. Anyone can do that, they care more about why you did it. The human element. And not just the arm that turns the spanner or swings the hammer.

Now, why do people care why you do things - who knows? Perhaps its like the Being John Malcovich concept, being inside the head of another person but without the portals and shit, instead having nothing but an overly wordy post about why they bought a pair of shoes, punctuated with catchphrases you weren't even there to get.

Which comes to the next point, why the hell do people write blogs? Fuck knows, but here we go.