Which do you think was faster?

While up at my mate's farm where my Pulsar is. We decided to go for a little drive. He in his AWD Subaru and me in my FWD beat up Pulsar.

And who won? Me of course. Despite the nissan having this happen to it

Though it may have been like that before we started. We can't remember now. Thinking about it though, that may have had something to do with me not being able to turn particularly well. Especially the bottom corner, a big 180 bend. I could steer nicely through the first half, but then it would just go straight for the next couple of meters no matter what I did.

And we did our part for the environment. There are now a few less blackberry bushes standing in that paddock. They may still be there, but they are a lot flatter now.

With a big storm coming over the hill we decided to get a bit artsy with the car.

Credit has to go to my Mate for this one. I'm pretty happy with how it ended up so I might claim it. After all it was taken on my phone.

If we remember, next time we will get the Go-Pro out. It was sitting in the car we drove up there, but we completely forgot to get it out once we started the cars.

Cheers,
Rex

Sometimes it doesn't work out

Over the weekend I tried to save some money. The car we recently bought for my lovely girlfriend needed new tires. We knew that when we bought it though so no shocks there. What I did realize though is that I have a car with tires that still have a little tread on them on a car in a paddock that doesn't need tires that are legal on the road so I thought I'd try and put those wheels on the Mazda.

This is one of the stock wheels on the Mazda, They are a 165/70R13. So they are 165mm wide at the tread and have sidewalls that are 70% of that width. The tires on the Pulsar are a 195/50R15 so 195mm wide with a sidewall 50% of that width. That means that they are lower profile and are less likely to roll over themselves during a corner; but we aren't going to be doing that sort of cornering in this car.

Being that they are a bit wider I wasn't sure if they would fit. But in the name of not wasting a set of tires with a decent bit of tread left on them I decided to give it a go anyway.

Here they are in situ. Let's do this the easy way.

A rattle gun. With proper impact bits even. I learned my lesson after wrecking a 1/2" drive to 1/4" drive adapter with this thing. Get the proper impact bits. And so far I haven't wanted to use this driver on a bolt other than the sizes in this set so for most cases a basic set like this is plenty ample.

I did however make the mistake of undoing all of the wheels in one go. Then trying to take them off one at a time. If I was doing this on a hoist that wouldn't be a problem. But if the car is sitting on it's wheels then as you jack it it will move a surprising amount and you want all of the other wheels to be secure as it's shifting to stop it falling over.

This was the only jack I had with me. It's just the one that came with my Rodeo ute and was doing fine. Until it wasn't. All of a sudden it just wouldn't move either way. I'm not sure what happened but it worked fine the next day so it might've just gotten cold, or just needed a bit of rattling around in the toolbox on the back of the ute.

Luckily there have been a couple of paddock bashers through this paddock and we have usually taken the jacks out. Either because we needed to use them, or we wanted one less loose thing in the car with us. I managed to find this one down near where some of these cars have been kept in the past. It even had a driver on it so I could put a socket on there and jack up the car with the rattle gun. Very easy way of doing it.

So this is why they say to do this on level ground? That black dot is the last tire. It didn't fall over when I dropped it after taking it off. Then I couldn't kick it over to stop it so I just let it go. It finished not far from this picture so I just picked it up on my way out.

Here we are. That's a pretty tight fit. Overall these wheels have a slightly larger diameter. But within what is allowed by law so it's only a case of will they hit anything?

Moment of truth here...

And a no go. Unfortunately we don't just drive in a straight line so these wheels didn't fit.

We had a new set put on today for about $400. Not going to take food off the table, but it would've been nice to be able to put that off for a few weeks even.

But that's something to remember. As much as I do eventually get just about everything working how I want it. Sometimes it just isn't going to happen and the time and effort you have invested could probably have been better served elsewhere. But this was only a bit of fun and the results either way was very much more about if I could do it, rather than it being critical.

Cheers,
Rex

Yes... I did buy another car

Some of you may have seen on facebook the other day I had a picture of me with a car on a trailer.

The reason for this is I have a friend with some paddocks, and we felt they needed a little bashing. So between us we have obtained a couple of cars that fit into the category of Paddock Bashers. This one is mine. It's an old Nissan Pulsar SSS. It's got a pretty big ding in the front but probably could have been put back on the road. But that would have been more than the car is worth to do that.

Here we are ready to have a go. We stripped the interior and replaced the key with some switches. Why? Because we can. And the plan is to race each other to see who has the best, worst car of all of us. I can justify the whole key thing, the key does fall out of the barrel. But really it's just because I want to.

Time for this seat to come out. Really thankful for the rattle gun for my birthday. Makes this sort of work much easier.

What have we here, hiding under the seat? A big old CD stacker. Amazing what you can find in a second hand car. If I can make it work on the bench at home I might do something with it, otherwise it's old technology that has well and truly been replaced by my now old. But still very useable iPod.

And it's gone. I didn't get any more photos as we were having a bit too much fun. But once the weather clears up a bit and I head up there when there's some sunlight I will get some pictures to show what we have done to the interior. A Vast improvement I think. In weight anyway.

Cheers,
Rex