My First Blog, aka Project: e30

Hi. I think that's the standard greeting. Hi. Um... Yeah. Obviously I'm new to this. I never thought I'd ever blog - there was just no time and no interest in getting on a soapbox. But here I am, blogging. Here's hoping I know what I'm doing...

My posts will normally be about three things:

1. My irrational love for my project car, a 1990 BMW 325i
2. The occasional rant about motoring in the Philippines
3. A weekly top 10 list of whatever car-related thing I feel like making Top 10 lists of

I'll start by introducing my current project car.

Project: e30

1990 BMW 325i coupe (e30)
M20 2.5l straight-six NA
over 200,000 km on the odometer

Factory specs:

Dolphin gray metallic
Beige leather
Sunroof

3.73 ratio LSD

14" "bottle cap" wheels

The e30 was meant to be a long term project. The vision: a trackable street car, with just enough amenities to make it real-world driveable.

Within the first 6 months, it got new filters and spark plugs, a top overhaul, complete front axle refurb ( shocks, springs, control arms, bushings, tie rods), electrical cleanup, and a bunch of little detail work (like new roundels and door lever surrounds).

Upgrades were also fast coming along. As always, I start with suspension and brake mods such as Brembo drilled discs, EBC Green Stuff pads, stainless brake lines, H&R springs and sway bars, Bilstein HD shocks and a set of 16" BBS RS003s wrapped in Bridgestone RE001s.

Aesthetic upgrades were next, in the form of projector lenses and HIDs and a new Alpine head unit (the car did not have a radio when I bought it). A high-pressure fuel pump and a fuel regulator were also added in preparation for some engine tweaks, but not before doing a dyne run to see the baseline figures to benchmark the mods I was planning.

Then in 2009, disaster struck - while my car was in the shop, Typhoon Ondoy swept through and counted my e30 among it's victims. The water had gone up as far as the headlights, leaving my beloved bimmer in a sorry state and all the work and hard-earned cash put into it were for naught. The silver lining here is that the water level was just below the level of the new stereo and, more importantly, the motronic unit. Still, it was painful to see.

Over the next few posts, I'll document it's progress since then. Its taken me a year to get the project started again, and hopefully - one of these days - I can report on it's clean bill of health.

Until then, drive safe, buckle up, and save the racing for the track. Happy motoring!

- frag

Two Cars

If you could have two cars in a two car garage, what would they be?

This was the question Ferds tried to answer in his earlier post. And it's something I'll attempt to answer now. Answering that question won't be easy, given that the answer depends on your mood and your mindset as of the moment you choose to answer it. So here's my answer for now.

First off, the things I will consider for my choices. I won't go all-out dream cars here. I have to consider that I have a wife and kid. I have to consider that we live in the Philippines. So that means one car would have to be a family car, and the other could be any car. I'll try to be realistic for now, we can do dream cars some other time.

The first car I'd want would be the diesel Toyota Innova with automatic transmission. It's the perfect family car. It's spacious and it's tall enough to wade through some shallow floods when storms hit.

The second car would be either a blue 2004 Subaru Impreza WRX STi, or a black 2010 Subaru Impreza WRX STi hatchback. Just because I've always wanted to own a fast car.

Out.

just the two of us

Gani texted me this great idea for an ongoing topic. To paraphrase:

"What 2 cars would you want for a 2 car garage?"

Wow. What a tough question. Because its easy to list down cars that we want. But if you could only have 2? Wow. Would you just go balls to the wall and say "a Ferarri F40 and a Mercedes Benz SLS" (2 of my favorite supercars of all time). But assuming we are trying to inject some realism in here (realism with an unlimited budget), then the choices must be a bit more practical. So then we would think about ride height, fuel efficiency, etc. If its important to you, one might even go with hybrids or a hydrogen engine car.

A few years ago, an Austrian BMW test driver (his name escapes me now) answered a similar question very well. The question was "what car would you have in your garage". His answer went something like:

"I have my dream cars in my garage. I have an [BMW] e90 330i Touring (wagon) for the weekdays, and a [BMW] Z4 for the weekends".

Not a bad garage. Not bad at all.

So right now, at 10:50pm on July 26, 2011? Fighting off the itch to go with an F40 as one of my pics, lets try to be a bit more "practical" and give these 2

1967 Ford Mustang Shelby GT500

BMW F11 530d

Hmm...ok maybe those choices weren't that much more practical. At least I chose a diesel for everyday driving...

Allow myself to introduce...myself...

Sorry Gani, I couldn't help...myself. In my defence, Austin's car, the "Shaguar" (a 1970 Jaguar E-type) was a nice car.

OK back to the topic at hand. My handle obviously says "birdman", a derivation of elementary and high school teasing, but you can also call me Ferds (I'll let you decipher how I was teased. Its not that hard).

My interest in cars is obviously genetic. My grandfather used to buy and sell cars as a sideline back in the day, and the last car he drove was a pimpin' Caddy. My dad was good friends with the more known car enthusiasts and drivers, drove a Ford Escort AND a Mustang Mach 1. My older brother owned a couple hundred imported car magazines well before he could drive, and later on became known for an award-winning sounds setup on a car he gave up when he got married. Then there's me.

Now I'm not as huge a nutter as my older brother, but, again, its in the genes. While he loves to tinker and mod, there's really one thing I like doing with cars. I love driving. And no, I don't mean driving through EDSA traffic. I mean proper driving. While in terms of long driving, I haven't gone "all the way" (my furthest north is Baguio and my furthest south is Bicol), I'll take any excuse for a drive to quick getaways like Subic or Tagaytay. Just to drive.

Ok enough about me. Back to the introducing the blog.

Despite Gani's obvious humility, he was actually the one who came up with the idea of making this blog (which is why I "let" him have the first post). So this is definitely a tag-team effort, though we will hopefully be inviting other people to contribute.

Obviously, this is about cars. And not just to post pictures of cars from movies, but...well...pretty much anything about cars. From, as Gani mentioned, our rants about traffic, to reviews on cars we like and dislike, to our own internal arguments on what we like and dislike, maybe even random tidbits here and there and so on. We have an idea of what we want this to become in the future, but lets not get ahead of ourselves or jinx it. Lets let this develop on its own.

Allow Me to Introduce Myself

Hello and welcome to this blog!


My name is Gani, and I'm a car nut. Been one since high school, when I started paying attention to good looking cars.


In fact almost all my opinions about cars came from someone else at first. But eventually when I started taking cars seriously, I started forming my own opinions (no matter how strange or against-the-flow they are).


Now here I am, contributing to my friend, "Birdman's" blog. I'll be blogging about a lot of motor related stuff, and I'll also be ranting once in a while about my driving experiences here in Metro Manila.


For now, sit back, relax, and wait for our next post. I will do my best to post in this blog at least once a week.


Out.