fro and the cowboy monkey

When rods became popular, they were stealing the shells of cars 30 years earlier, and putting engines in from popular vehicles from 10 years ago.

To that end, is this sort of thing the "New Hot Rod" of the '0X?

I really hope so.

Tonight I went and looked at a 1977 Datsun 200B sedan, and have agreed to bring it home to my house. Yes, just what my wife wanted, another Datsun to sit in our yard and becoming a lawn-mowing chicane.

Why a 200B, you might ask? Well, it's mostly got to do with engine capaciies and the rules under which we go rallying in Australia, but the 200B came with a Datsun L20B 4-cylinder motor, which allows me to increase its engine capacity to around 2.4 litres without too much stress and strain on my backpocket.

The fact that its a 1977 model is important, because it means that it's the fully-imported version, before local content rules meant that the 200B switched from the Independant Rear Suspension (which this one has), to the beam rear axle (that later, locally assembled variants have).

In looking at the cars, it's really not that dissimilar to my current Datsun 180B rally car, but time will tell whether the 200B is an improvement or not. Although there's a lot of expectation, given what NSWRC competitor Dave King did in one in 2003/4...

In a master stroke detailed on Dubspeed, but initially brought to my attention on Jalopnik, Porsche markets directly to its marque-club members (the Porsche Club of America, or PCA), and offers its special edition "souped-up" Porsche to PCA members before it's released to the general public.

This is the kind of marketing/thinking that ensures that despite the relatively diminutive auto-industry player stays afloat, and one of the hot marques.

Even in Canberra, this is evidenced by Porsche Australia's insistence that Porsche Club Canberra be allowed to use the local Porsche dealership premises for club meetings.

Marque loyalty can't be bought, but it certainly can be influenced. And from my dealings with REACT and Mazda Australia, that's the kind of lesson that Mazda and many other automotive marques could well learn from.

As Ben said, everyone loves a survey. Sure, it's a bit self-centred, but that's me all over. If only I could have skewed it towards Datsuns somehow...

Following on from Ben's post over here, I thought it only fair to show you the offending Datsun equivalent part. You can judge for yourself whether this is transparent or opaque.

Just judging from the amount of screws involved, I'd say it was always meant to be user-serviceable.





Yes, the Datsun is from a bygone era, when things were meant to be fiddled with by the hacks that bought them.

Although, the hacks of a new generation are into Linux, GPL and Megasquirts. Their Peugeots may not come apart for their innards to be displayed to the world, but their software does? Weerie.

Okay, so when I was at Oran Park on the weekend, I saw this thing, and just had to take some photo's of it:





I'd love to know more about it, and might have to get along to another round of the NSW Road Racing Series, just to try and catch up with it's owner/driver.

I can't pin-point what it is, but something about it just appeals to me.

A few weeks ago, I logged on to the Triple J website, and lodged a Mixed Bag request. A "Mixed Bag" is a selection of three songs, that are played during the Super Request program (Monday-Friday, 6-9pm).

I thought nothing of it, until I recieved a phone call from Rosie Beaton, saying that my mixed bag would be played that night, and recieved phone calls through out the night, getting me to introduce my songs.

The kicker was that I was driving between Canberra and Sydney, delivering my friend Gemini rally car back to him, so got to listen to the tunes whilst cruising in the car to our destination. I couldn't have planned it better.

What did I request?
Bomb the Bass: BugPowderDust
Hole: Doll Parts
Herbie: Right Type of Mood

Yeah, I know, a late 90's throwback, but I hadn't heard any of the tracks in so long. Now I'm going to have go scouring the second-hand record stores for each of these tracks!

I'd been to Oran Park Raceway once before, back in mid-2004, when I had an invite to hang out in the pits at a V8Supercar round with the Dunlop tyre technicians.

This weekend wa a bit different, with Rowdy and I attending a more club-level event with NSW Improved Production, Formula Ford, Formula Vee and a whole bunch of other stuff racing. I was only there on the Saturday, but it was a completely different feel. And because hardly anyone was there, we got in some really relaxed spectating, got to kick back on the grass and lie in the sun, and practice using the new digital camera.

Speaking of which, you may now notice the flickr.com box off to the right... I figured I may as well have these photos for viewing if I'm taking them! And what I have put up was only a small portion of the ones that I took...

This is an example of how things can go wrong when system-integration doesn't work. And just exacerbates all those who enjoy giving GM a hard time.

Sorry for the break in blogging, scooted off to Melbourne for a couple of days doing some work malarchy.

I've been down to the Bega Valley Rally since my last post, navigating for my friend Matt, in hi snewly aquired DR30 Skyline rally car, which proved to have plenty of potential, but not much speed in its current form. The list of "upgrades" to be performed is relatively long, but I have every confidence that Matt will make it a very effective car in the near future.

My 180B still sits in the shed, awaiting me to get motivated and repair the damage I did at the Canberra Rally Experience.

This weekend brings the Improved Production racing at Oran Park, and a trip to Sydney. Hopefully I'll get a chance to try out the new digital camera, and report back with some shots form the weekend.

Expect a few tech and lots of car related entries next week!

I'd never heard of a Cheetah, until I saw this link on Jalopnik.

Spaceframe tube-chassis stuffed full of 350 small block Chev?

I wonder what my chances are of entering one in Targa Tasmania?

Further to my entry below, rally.com.au has this short interview with Ross Booth, Ford Motorsport Operations Manager.

He doesn't really give any new information, just that the Group N (P) Focus hasn't done any testing yet, and is still being built. And that they are in it to win… which will be an interesting challenge if it is a 2WD car.

There's talk on Autocar of 3-litre, 6 cylinder, turbocharged, all-wheel drive Ford Focus. Now there are parts of this story that sound feasible to me, parts that sound desirable, and parts that sound wrong.

The all-wheel drive bit sounds very feasible. As does the turbocharging. Funnily enough, those bits also sound desirable to me.

The bit with the 3-litre, 6 cylinder engine from the unreleased Volvo S80? Not so much. To me, 3 litres and 6 cylinders sounds great, but not all hanging over the front wheels of something that has pretensions of being sporty. And the 2-litre motor that currently resides in the Focus actually seems to be a reasonably good thing, and would only improve its reputation with a turbocharger providing some extra huff.

Besides which, for the Focus RS to be a Group N Rally car proposition (against the Subaru WRX STi and Mitsubishi Lancer Evoloution VIII), the engine capacity has to be a 2 litre turbocharged device. And I would think it both feasible and desirable that Ford have a Group N rally challenger.

Whilst surfing the web, I ran across this article on Jalopnik, detailing Automotive Open System Architecture (AUTOSAR).

So a quick look at the AUTOSAR website (www.autosar.org) reveals a little more detail regarding the "partners" involed:

Initial discussions on the common challenge and objectives were held by BMW, Bosch, Continental, DaimlerChrysler and Volkswagen in August, 2002 and the partners were joined soon afterwards by Siemens VDO. A joint technical team was set up in November, 2002, to establish the technical implementation strategy. The partnership between the Core Partners was formally signed off in July, 2003. Ford Motor Company joined as a Core Partner in November, 2003. Peugeot Citroën Automobiles S.A. and Toyota Motor Corporation joined as Core Partners in December, 2003. General Motors became Core Partner in November, 2004.

Modular software, interoperability between control modules and scalability all sound like great virtues. I wonder if AUTOSAR will genuinely be "Open" though. Open System is one thing, Open Source another. Particularly in the automotive industry. I can think of EPROM's, Links, and interceptors, not to mention the plethora of aftermarket computer suppliers.

Oh, but for open source software on-board performance vehicles. I can see the next generation of performance car enthusiasts battling to be not only backyard mechanics and backyard engineers, but backyard coders as well. Although some would say we're already most of the way there.

Just like Ben, I too am a Ground Effect fan.
Just like Ben, I too own a pair of olde-skool Ranchsliders.

The Ranchsliders were officially my rally pants, having adequate pockets for a navigator to hold all the pens, keys and such, whilst having them not in the arse-al area, enabling easy sitting in racing seats without sitting on top of wallets and such. And they were damn comfy while you were doing it.

With my newly purchased race-suit, I'm sure their use for rally-related duties will decrease, but its likely that they will still remain at the front of my wardrobe, being a highly utilised part of my clothing collection.

And I couldn't help but snigger to myself reading a post where Ben uses the phrase "just gold". It seems the rally lingo is rubbing off on him after all!

A jam-packed weekend of hilarity and fun...

The wife and I racked up 1100 kilometres this weekend in a frenzy visiting friends and running errands.

From Canberra, we journeyed northward to Sydney on Friday afternoon, where I attended my monthly CAMS NSW Rally Advisory Panel meeting. There's some action to come out of that over the next few days that I'll link to as information is released.

Meanwhile, N had dinner with our friends at Temple. I'd tell you more about this, but wasn't there to experience it first-hand, so will reserve judgement 'til I can experience it for myself.

Saturday had us cruising up to Raymond Terrace to visit some other friends, and both of us marvelling at the shades of green in the countryside. With no rain, Canberra hasn't seen green in months (possibly years). This patch of the world was green, warm, and relaxing. It had us wondering when Canberra (and the rest of NSW) might get some rain! And had me wondering when I'll finally get a digital camera.

Sunday's journey homeward had us collecting rally-related car parts from Penrith, and visiting Krispy Kreme to load up with doughnuts for many of our Canberran colleagues.

There was plenty of in-car time for thinking, reflection and memes, but I'll explore these throughout the week, as I struggle for ways to express my thoughts.

A few Saturdays ago, I got to participate in the "2005 Snowy Hydro Southcare Canberra Rally Experience". I had a great day, even though the Datsun had to retire hurt with a broken driveshaft.

But the reactions of some of the people I got to take around in the rally car were fantastic. I got to take about 7 people before my car retired, and all seemed to enjoy their time in the car. The day raised about $5000 for the SouthCare rescue helicopter service, and gave people a taste of what rallying is all about.

And there were some cool photos that came out of it... like this one:

http://www.52photos.com/galleries/southcare_rally_exp/source/_mg_1327.html

Of course, I wish I'd been able to take a few more people for rides, but it's better that the car break there, than in serious competition. Well, as serious as my competition gets, anyway...

Well, Ben has found yet another cool toy. Automoblox.

The only real problem I can see with them is that I'm going to want to buy the whole set.

Ben finds all the coolest toys.

Over on Ben's Blog, he talks about rotary engines going in all sorts of wierd cars. Even Nissan played with them in the Silvia family of cars. The rotary Silvia only had a short life, and the Silvia nameplate was killed off only a few years ago.

Although there is talk of it making a comeback... Much like the Z-Car revival Nissan has pursued in the last few years. Then again, Ghosn was also talking about reviving the Datsun moniker...

Yes, I've been incredily recalcitrant in my blogging, and I wouldn't blame anyone at all for kicking me in the crowntch for my slackness.

So slack, in fact, that I had completely forgotten about this blog that I had... Yes, that bad.

I'm sure that I'll be using Ben's blog to provide me with inspiration for future entries. In fact, I'll be relying on it.

The mind is like a muscle. Without exercise, it whithers and dies. Except it's nothing at all like a muscle. If it was, I'd be able to take some form of mind steroid. Hmmm, mind steroids. There's a market some pharmaceutical company is already working on, I'm sure.