Cars, Bikes & More Cars

Car show last sunday, got these photos of my friends camera

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Some very nice looking vehicles.

Love that Plymouth Roadrunner. (3rd pic down).

I experienced what would have to be car enthusiast Nirvana today. The following pictures are not from an automobile museum, this is at somebodies house, a very rich somebody who I won’t mention by name. This is just a limited selection of his cars.

(Some of the pics are average due to how crammed it was)

This is what a real garage looks like. His house/complex is huge, reminds me of Tony Montana’s (Scarface).

That is the real Jim Clark Tasman series Lotus 39. This car raced amongst other fantastic drivers such as Phil Hill, Jackie Stewart and Jack Brabham. I would be worth an absolute fortune.

My dream car, the F40. Notice the Fiat 500 beside it (same as Dad’s) done up in the same colour to match the Ferrari, haha.

This next picture is for John, I imagine you would be drooling more than I was had you of seen this for real.

Is this the sexiest set of asses you’ve ever seen?

Nice to know that some Aussie cars can mix with other cars of such quality.

This is the original Falcon GT.

This is obviously one of his daily drivers, note the F430 in the background (drool).

This actually belongs to a member of our car club, hence why it is outside in the rain with all our cheap Italian cars, haha. That one car would be worth 10 times what the rest of ours would be worth combined.

Finally, this is his wifes car!!!

CLK 63 AMG Black Series. A rocket on wheels.

It hurts my head to know that one person that lives in Tasmania can be so wealthy, that F40 was worth ~ a million when he bought it brand new (Had to be invited to buy it). You wouldn’t even know that he was so well off from talking to him, he’s as down to earth as any regular person, a really nice bloke.

very very nice, but isn’t the F40 quite a handful in supercar terms to drive

IMO, all supercars should be handfuls to drive, they should not be a car that the owner can take down to the shops to pick up groceries. They are cars that require full concentration, no luxuries inside them, no car audio whatsoever, just you and the car.

That the only way to achieve pure driving ecstasy. I’m sure it is this raw feeling that most motorbike riders become addicted to.

Embarrassing as it is stupid, Murphy’s Law struck this morning.

Everything going fine as per usual. Suit up, get down to the bike. Fire it up, “huh, my light seems to have carked it, bugger”. I still need to get to work, so I decide to use the high-beam and adjust the light so I ain’t blinding people. Guess I should do it proper, so I go to put it on the centre stand, like i’ve done 100 times before. GODDAMNIT. Almost gets up onto em, but rocks forward off the stand, suddenly the weights going the wrong way and all I can think is “2 goddamn weeks”. That was probably the maximum time left til I had a new bike and i’d sell ol faithful on.

Managed to smash the oil gauge so oil’s all over the floor, but probably worse is the large cracks to my otherwise pristine fairings. Considering the small fortune they cost i’m gonna try repair em, tho it’ll never be the same.

But it wasn’t over. Just to dig the knife in a little deeper, I haul the bike back onto its stand… THE BLOODY LIGHTS WORKING NOW.

Sigh, great start to the day.

The ONLY positive I see here is it ain’t stopping me get a new machine, so I might just do it this weekend >.<

At times like those, you can only focus on the positives, even if there is only one, lol. That was a real doozy.

I can’t bring myself to laugh at this story considering you spent so much time getting it back on the road after pranging it, and I wouldn’t want to jinx myself, haha.

I’ve had plenty of problems with my old Alfa GTV’s headlights, most of the time it is simply down to the cruddy terminals that are full of dirt/rust or that have just worked themselves loose. I’ve pulled apart wiring looms, added relays, most of the time it is always the most basic/cheapest item that fails. It sounds as if your headlight just had a loose/sloppy connection, considering it worked after the bike received a nice impact off the ground.

Prior to this happening, it sounds as if you are definitely getting a new bike, make sure you post pics of the sexy beast.

Yeh I figured it would be somethin like that, was gonna check it out on the weekend.

Still torn up about it, but things are lookin a little hopeful. Unlike the first time where the fairing was shattered into hundreds of tiny shards, I’ve got 3 clean breaks (around the indicator, two up under the mirror/front fairing attachment) and from what I recall another smaller crack propogating up just under the mirror into the main fairing section. The oil came from the broken sight glass, and while I haven’t sourced a part the replacement seems fairly simple (compression fit, throw it in the freezer for a few hours while tryand get the casing warmed up). There’s a few shops around that do plastic welding for as cheap as $50. Gonna send some photos to em to see what they reckon it’d cost all up. Welding gets the best finish if possible, but they’ll need to sand back some paint. The glory of black gloss is i’m hoping I can do a dodgy local job on the areas without a full respray.

NOW, the far, far happier stuff. In light of being transportless, I’m hoping to bite the bullet and nab a bike this weekend, time permitting. Z750 is locked in.

But the tricky question - do I go with the iconic Green Machine, or the Black stealth fighter?

First up - Kermit.

Has carbon sports pipe, fender eliminator with small indicators front and back, ultra white 4300k head lights, k&n air filter, and an aftermarket engine management (prolly around the $1000 mark all up). It’s also been lowered (tho the original links are included) so I look rather big on it, but i took it for a nice blat the other week and can happily say I couldn’t give a toss :P. My only real concern here is the paint has the metallic flakes in it. Looks great, impossible to touch up (stupidity this morning just reinforced that aspect).

The alternative is the always cool black stealthfighter

Stock other than the custom pipe. Going to test this out on satdy but I don’t think i’ll notice a power difference.

Price is about the same (currently $8600 for kermit, including stamp duty), k’s are about the same (greeny is about 1000km more, but just got serviced) so assuming the other rides well it largely comes down to looks. I’m still diliberating, so what does OE have to say about it?

the green looks so much better

go the kawa imo

The green bike sounds like the better deal imo, also looks nicer. For stone chips and the like, you’ll still be able to touch it up but it will just be more noticeable. Just take more care not to drop it.

In regards to plastic welding, a mate of mine hit a roo in his VZ SS Thunder ute and basically broke the front bar in half. He had it plastic welded and repainted and you’d never know from the outside, very good result.

Bad luck with your bike falling john happened to me once when I had my zx-7 at the back of my mates house, pulled up placed the stand down went to open the gate and to my horror the bike shifted forward and smashed a hole in the side fairing…aaarrrhhhh it still haunts me to this day cost a small fortune to fix…

Vote 1 for green looks cool…I’m jealous…:wink2:

yeah the frog is the better bike imo

gah, extra stuff later, took 2 photos before the camera died >.<

In any case, some proof the bike is now sitting in front of my garrage :yahoo:

It’s just AWESOME! The power is bloody smooth. On my baby there was a little area of pickup between 5-6K rpm, then it’d ease off, and come back at 10K-12K. This feels almost perfectly linear the whole time. It’s also clear I’ll never be short on power for legal speeds, accelerating from 0-50 feels identical to going 70-120. The other thing that was immediately obvious was the glory of 4 cylinders. Smoooooth. The 250 wasn’t bad really, but spend long enough in the seat (i am talking > 4 hours or so) and you’d be rather tingly for a while after due to the vibrations feeding through.

Having said that, there are a few things I think the ZZR has over its big brother. Namely the seat and mirrors. My ONLY gripe with the Z750 is the seat, which I can only image was designed by a vengeful chick who wanted to prevent bikers from breeding. It’s at a weird angle which isn’t uncomfortable, but you’re forever sliding forward closer to the tank. I fear hard braking + not holding the tank hard enough with the thighs will result in severe agony. The mirrors are more of a side note. Seemingly designed for looks over practicality, I’m yet to get them into a position that’ll let me see more than an inch either side of my arm. Still, that’s nothing new to motorbikes, and the ZZR was only fractionally better.

The first thing most people have said when they see it is “it’s a lot smaller than I thought it’d be”, which is funny because everyone had the exact opposite reaction to the 250, even tho I this is still the bigger machine. I’ll try get a shot with me in it later, cause I do look a little monsterous over it. Still, its relatively slim lines mean lane splitting should still be a relatively easy task. The only issue is the mirrors are now higher. The ZZRs are in line with car mirrors, so I’d have to weave around them, but I could duck em underneath a FWD when space was tight. I haven’t quite worked out where these are yet, but it seems to be in limbo somewhere in between.

Anyway, new toy = endless smiles :yes:. While not very cool, I do think I’ll look into gettin a rack or somethin. As my only mode of transport, this bike has even less room to hold stuff than the zzr, and that’s sayin somethin serious. Also I’m thinking it’s likely i’ll burn money on some oggy knobbs. A cool $300, but they’ll hopefully save the paint and fairings from damage should the worst/stupid ever happen.

THAT IS SEXY!!!

I’ll have to look up “oggy knobbs” to know what they are and how they protect your paint.

You’ll also compensate for the strange seat by developing HUGE thigh muscles. That’s not a problem, lmao.

I’m sure the 4 cylinder feels light years ahead of the ZZR, what does it rev to btw?

Nothing too special bout Oggy’s, they’re literally knobs stuck on the sides of the frame to take the impact of a fall. Not everyone is convinced by em tho, as it does mean your localising impacts directly into the frame. Gonna do a little research on that first.

Redline is 12000rpm, cruising along at 70 in 6th gear sits around 3K. While I did say it’s a smooth engine, soundwise it really does become alive above 6K. The only problem is unless i’m in first, possibly 2nd gear, those rpm mean i’ll lose my licence >.<.

Last thing I forgot is GREAT, and it’s something pretty much all car drivers take for granted - I have a fuel guage! That is ever so reassuring. It does eat it up a lot more as you’d expect. Now I’ll only get 260km to the tank (18L), whereas the ZZR would manage 400 for 16L. I ain’t complainin tho, that’s the price of performance

Couple more pics. As you can see, I look almost comically big for the bike, but it feels perfect when I’m on it, so BAH!

And a finger point for good measure :laugh:

Here’s a video, tho it’s a crappy and short one. It’s not a super loud bike (although you can double the sound output if I change a washer in the muffler) but enough that I didn’t wanna annoy the neighbourhood reving the tits off it. Still, love that sound :D. Prolly won’t be using headphones for quite some time now!

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eySWIO3fGOk[/ame]

Looks awesome m8 hopefully you’ll keep your licence for a few weeks at least…:tongue2:

I’m looking over at my Honda and dying with envy

now u can do this

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSP-xXhHuuc[/ame]
[ame=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ztv_Hfqrs0”] [/ame]