Last night Suga and I installed a Gruppe M intake on her R32 Golf. We should have been in bed as we were both still struggling from the copius amounts of alcohol consumed at Jess’ 18th, but excitement got the better of us and once we started, we couldn’t stop.

The huge stock airbox and snorkel had to come out.

The instructions are all in Japanese but removing it was easy.

All the stuff that came out. Check the massive paper air filter.

The Gruppe M kit.

K&N pod filter.

Installed.

Lovely.

We went for a little drive straight after. Personally I couldn’t feel a difference in power (I’m pretty sure a small gain was made) but I could hear the intake which was subtle, not at all like the noise you get when whacking a pod filter onto a Honda.

Next up? Exhaust!

Christina’s sister Jess had her 18th last weekend. The afternoon prior was spent looking for an outfit for the Gangsters and Flappers theme. A quick trip to the mall did the trick: suspenders, some black pants, white leather shoes (I doubt I’ll ever wear these again!) and a wife beater.

I spent some time calming Mrs Lock down (the bottle of Absynth I bought Jess for her 18th B’day didn’t help), sure she was going to have 60+ underage kids getting wasted at her home but hell, they were going to be in a safe place right? It’s not like they’re in the city, or sprawling out onto the streets. The worst thing that could happen would be maybe 3 or 4 of them drinking too much and throwing up.

Out of the 60+ kids that rocked up only about 15 of them were guys. When I mentioned to a few of them that they were indeed lucky bastards to have so many girls at a party (ie: not a sausage fest) one of them yelled out “yeah, this is a taco fest!”. Taco fest?! Classic.

Anyways, had a blast. Almost threw up but held in there (felt even worst the next day at Jamie and Richie’s Bogan party). Christina threw up all morning (nice). Massive weekend, massive fun, here are a few hazy pics:

Suga and I.

Girls gone wild.

Cake time.

The birthday girl!

Skull skull skull!

Mr Lock. Loosening his tie did the trick me thinks!

Suga and I invited Stevey along. He’s got braces on at the moment so we thought he’d fit right in with the young crowd.

Suga’s cousin Norman and Amy. Turns out Amy knows Narada from Circuit Club quite well, small world!

Trashed.

Yesterday I had an offer too good to refuse.

Zi from JDMyard got me on MSN to tell me that Eddie wanted his Honda Jazz gone.

Eddie has been modifying his Jazz for about 2 years now and like myself he’s not one to settle for 2nd best. He has gone all out on his car. A Mugen body kit, full roll cage, Carbonetics brakes, suspension, Bride seats and perhaps most noteworthy, a K20A engine swap.

When I had my 1st Jazz I often spoke about throwing a K20 engine into it but at the time only a couple of people in the US had done it (the pictures of how they cut up the engine bay in order to fit the larger K20 engine freaked us out!) and noone seemed too keen on trying it locally. In some ways not being able to get that K20 into the car made me lose interest in the Jazz and it was perhaps the main reason for selling up (the car was all show no go).

I bought the 2nd Jazz (an auto) off my sister (who bought it off my mother). It’s been a great little daily driver for almost 2 years now. I’ve used it to carry bikes, it can carry so much gear, it’s easy to park in the tightest of tight spots, it’s cheap to insure at only $400 a year. Best thing is I get an average of 500km/tank.

It’s time to go… Jazz.

For the past few months I’ve been once again haunting carsales. Initially I thought of replacing my Jazz with something more powerful, more mature, more my age but I still wanted it to have some of the Jazz’s great qualities: Good on fuel, cheap to insure, easy to park, can carry the bikes etc. After a month of racking my brains (and others) I decided that the car I was looking for didn’t exist.

Since the Jazz was so cheap to run I then thought I’d just keep it and look for a 3rd car. I copped a lot of flack for that. 3 cars?! That’s a bit excessive for one guy isn’t it? Especially considering I only have one lock-up garage.

Timing is everything.

So yesterday Zi tells me Eddie wants the Jazz gone and that I should take it. Eddie’s been under pressure from his wife to sell the car for some time now. Earlier this year I even dropped hints, that I wanted to buy his car, but the asking price was way too high at the time. So what I got on MSN was this:

Eddie wants to trade with you on your Jazz. You give him your Jazz, and some cash adjustment and he’ll give you his Jazz, as is.

I thought about it for all of 10 seconds, there was no way for me to refuse the offer and I’ve been running with it ever since.

At 8.30AM this morning Eddie was at my doorstep, we hit the RTA, frustratingly dealth with a lot of paperwork and charges (rip you RTA motherfuckers!) and the plate and rego swapping was done.

Yes, it’s yellow. About the only thing both Christina and I can’t handle about the car!!!

I’d been running around all day and hadn’t had any breakfast so an Angus burger (my 3rd) was devoured.

This little controller on my keyring opens and closes the exhaust system so I can go from mild to wild at the press of a button.

6-speed goodness, right out of a DC5R Integra Type-R.

Flush mount bonnet pins. These really should be on my GT-R no?!

So, what are my impressions?

Well, the leather Bride seats are lovely but they’re hard to get in and out of (God, listen to me, I sound so 34). The suspension isn’t set up right. It’s too soft (which makes me feel a bit queasy) and there’s no steering feel at all (it’s a bit scary actually). I’m pretty sure that Doug at Heasmans can dial in some negative camber for me (he set up both my old Jazz’s to my liking). The exhaust is damn loud when open but very quiet when closed. It’s nice to have the option. The aircon doesn’t work but Eddie assures me that Dedy from TopOne (mechanic) is onto it. There’s also a knocking noise in the steering, something I’ll also look into.

Insurance couldn’t be done with Shannons (Hi Adam! Thanks for the help in any case) but JustCars have come to the rescue. It’s costing me 3 times more than the silver Jazz (Bingle) but that was to be expected I suppose.

More pictures, and updates as they come.

Last week I got a care package from old friends Tom and Sue who together run Tomsuey Inc.

I love free stuff, especially free T-Shirts! One of the great pleasures in life me thinks! Tom and Sue sent me a couple of their anti-twitter T’s (right up my alley!). They’re made from a really nice and sheer material too so they’ll for sure be put to good use this summer!

Find their wares at Tomsuey (click the store link).

Last night Dave from ImportStrings.com delievered my new guitar (how quick was that?!). Kelvin came around to take pics of it too (I’ll post those when he’s finished grading them).

All in all I’m chuffed. The neck is so fast I found myself trying to play faster than I was capable of. It’s soooooo metal. I tried playing it clean and it was just a no go, crap tone, no twang but hey, it’s a shredder!

The box.

Inside the box was a nice flight case.

Upside down upside down! :)

Inspection card made me feel fuzzy. Nice pick too!

Galaxy Black = sparkly goodness.

Cosmo black hardware.

Pearl inlay is a nice touch.

Even the Tremolo was coated in cosmo black.

Tool holder behind the head is a nice touch.

Whack ZPS3 Zero Point System (I doubt I’ll be playing with it anytime soon!).

Wrenchmonkees. These guys are so cool. I love everything they do. They are my idols (I have a few) and I got a huuuuuge shock when I saw that they plugged us on their blog. Heart attack man!

Crazy huge oyster at Sunny restaurant in Hurstville. Never seen anything as massive!!!

Gee, me and John. Gee was absolutely hammered.

See?

Gorgeous huh?

Fathers Day pressie for Christina’s dad.

Tony put the Riedel decanter to use straight away with a lovely bottle of Wynns (my fave).

FUCK YES!!! It’s an absolute privilege to be totally immersed in a good film isn’t it?

I’ve been a Tarantino fan since True Romance (which he wrote but didn’t direct). Reservoir Dogs blew me away and Pulp Fiction was huge for me (opened my ears up to appreciating much more music outside my comfort zone). I’m still not 100% on Kill Bill but Inglourious Basterds takes the cake. The real Tarantino is back!

I was so immersed in this film that I felt like I was in the movie, in the room with them. So long as a film does that to me once a year I’m be a happy man!

There’s still a thick layer of dust on absolutely every single surface, it’s going to take a lot of TLC to polish everything up for the camera, but as promised, here are some new photos of where the house is at right now.

Our en-suite is done! It’s a huge bathroom twice as big as it used to be. Mmmm heated towel rails. :)

We designed a built in shelf to hold shampoo and soap and like the guest bathroom it’s a walk in shower (no glass to clean!).

Lots of storage space, a huge compartment under the sink, compartments behind the mirrors and all of it is soft close, even the toilet, which is great as you can just shut the lid/doors without making loud banging noises.

We had an issue with the steps in the house, they were actually sticking out from the floor in the wardrobe room so we had to raise the tub, looks great though we think!

Every single powerpoint in the house has been replaced with these new slim/stainless steel ones.

The guest bathroom is finished as well.

New door handles replace the old gold ones. Amazing how much difference new handles make, they just feel so solid, smooth and new.

New large entrance tiles replace the ugly old pink ones.

We’re painting the driveway a dark grey to match the roof of the house which we’ve also painted (it was a bright orange/terracotta roof before).

The roof of the garage used to be a porous concrete of some sort which used to crumble onto my car, that’s now been fixed with a faux ceiling.

There’s still quite a bit of work to be done outside (new gates, garden landscaping) and we’ve still got to find some new room lights, carpet the bedroom and other bits and pieces but I estimate another 2-3 weeks before I can move back in again.