Armadale Auto Parts held their annual open day today, and one vehicle that certainly grabbed my attention (and that of many others) was this Excelsior motorcycle. I'll be the first to admit that I know very little about this bike, but I'm certainly very impressed with the restoration on this example.
The full selection of photographs will be on High Octane Photos shortly.
The Golden States championships are a drag racing meeting at the Perth Motorplex featuring rounds of the ANDRA Pro Series Top Doorslammer and Top Bike championships. Over 2 days, around 250 drag racing teams hit the black stuff.
Jay Upton returned to form in Top Bike, running 3 passes below the national ET record over the course of the weekend and winning the final.
In Top Doorslammer, Maurice Fabietti debuted a new paint scheme promoting the new Holden Trade Club program and stunned the crowd by top qualifying with a 5.84 second pass. During elimnations, Ben Bray fronted up to the first pass against John Zappia and the pair ran one of the closest ever passes in the class with Zappia losing on the holeshot with a 5.83 second pass against Bray's 5.88 seconds. The final saw Robin Judd taking a 5.87 second win over Maurice Fabietti after Fabietti shut down on the start line.
You can check out all the photos from Qualifying on Friday here, and all the photos from the Eliminations on Saturday here.
The Perth leg of the ANDRA Pro Series Pro Stock Championship was held at Perth Motorplex on October 31st. This was the first time that Pro Stock had visited the Motorplex venue, and saw some of the quickest passes in the categories history, with John Barbagallo resetting the national ET record and Aaron Tremayne taking the win over Lee Bektash in the final with the pair also laying down the quickest paired pass for the category.
You can check out all the photos from the 2009 Perth Motorplex Season Opener, featuring the ANDRA Pro Series Australian Pro Stock Championship plus all the local categories here at HighOctanePhotos.com.
- Mood:
groggy
The Perth Motorplex hosted a midweek Test'n'Tune event on October 28th. The main reason for running this event was to allow the Pro Stock teams visiting for their round of the ANDRA Pro Series National Championship to get some track time before the event. In addition to the visiting drivers, a number of local teams were in attendance to complete licensing procedures and test their vehicles.
You can check out all the photos from the Pro Stock Test'n'Tune over on HighOctanePhotos.com.
- Location:Kwinana, Western Australia
- Mood:
bouncy
I thought I'd revisit this shot from August 2008, as it was only a couple of weeks after taking this photo, that the Supra dropped the exhaust wheel off the rear turbocharger somewhere along Ankatell Road, on the way home from the Motorplex.
Now over a year later, with many distractions along the way, the Supra has been back on the road for a couple of short stints, but is still not sorted, and is back off the road with a starter motor problem.
Whenever I see this photo, I'm reminded to do some more work on the car, and also how much I want to respray the car so that the whole thing looks as good as the rear bumper does in this shot.
How cool is this? I love having one of my own photos, of a world famous landmark, hanging in my lounge room. And now that I've got it, I have a thirst for more canvas prints to put on the walls around here.
The main reason I haven't done it until now, is that a lot of my favourite photos were photos I'd take of racers at the Motorplex, and if I were to get a canvas of one of them to hang on the wall, it'd feel like I was playing favourites.
- Mood:
cheerful
I like this photo for several reasons.
Firstly, this is my 1970 Cadillac Fleetwood, and this is the first photo I took of it after we arrived in San Jose. Secondly, how cool is the sign in the background? These are the Winchester shops in San Jose, and the mall in the background is where k8 and I got our T-Mobile sim cards for our phones while we were in the US. T-mobile is the network our Optus phones roamed on to, and they use only frequencies that are compatible with Australian tri-band GSM phones, which is quite rare in the US. Not far from here, are the Santana Row shops, which is one of the most exclusive shopping precints in San Jose.
This is Google's pet dinosaur. as you can see, he lives on a steady diet of pink flamingos.
This is the courtyard at Google... Not much to say really, except to ponder... How many body parts would you sacrifice to work somewhere like this? :)
This is the Android and the Cupcake, if any of you have a HTC Dream phone (known in the US as the G1), Android is the operating system it runs on, and is written by Google. Cupcake was the name of the first major revision of that software, delivered over the air to users of the phone. The next major update is called Donut, and will see a large donut joining the Android and the Cupcake.
As you can see in the photo, the famous LAX "Theme Building" is currently undergoing renovations. I didn't realise this before we arrived, and had been looking forward to getting some shots of it in all it's glory. Mind you, this is something different too, so I'm still happy to have seen it.
After driving around Auckland for a few hours, we went to the Botany Shops for a wander and a bite to eat. Here we found an awesome little Sushi joint, with some of the best Sushi we've had for a long time.
St Pierre's pride themselves on being the most authentic Sushi outlet in Auckland, from the ingredients to the restaurant to the staff's uniforms, this place definitely has that genuine Japanese feel to it (well, it does to me, who's never been to Japan).
This house (of unknown location :p) is one of the few regular non-studio locations used in the TV series Outrageous Fortune, shot in Auckland, New Zealand.
Only the outside of this house is used in the show, and apparently the family that own it, still live in it, so we kept our 'star spotting' to pulling up on the other side of the road and hanging a camera out the window.
So... we're off to the US shortly, where we'll be catching up with ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
luyer and nicolerego for their wedding...
I've also purchased a car over there, and David has been extremely helpful with getting in ready for us... (and taking some photos for me)
The car is a 1970 Cadillac Fleetwood 75, and from what I can tell, it's in pretty good condition for a car thats almost 40 years old...
So... on Sunday we had the annual Motorplex End of Season Staff Track Day... I was hoping to have the Supra back on the road in time, but dragged my feet a little too long and it wasn't ready in time... So I took the ambo down for a run... It ran a best time of 18.37 seconds at around 115kmh... Which ain't that bad for something that weighs almost 3 tonne... It also did some pretty decent skids... :)
Those two passes stood as the quickest of the day coming into the final round, just after 10pm, and saw Harris and DiFilippo line up in the A final. Harris blasted down the Motorplex quarter mile in a personal best (and track record) 5.147 seconds, while DiFilippo threw a blower belt and ended up running a 5.39 second pass.
You can check out the rest of the photos from the Nitro Funny Cars meeting, including all the regular Motorplex classes here.
The Greene Machine team were hoping to complete Fergie's licensing on the day, but unfortunately that was not to be. With former Greene Machine and current Top Fuel driver Allan Dobson on hand giving advice, Donaldson ran some of his most promising passes to date, essentially doing everything he needed to license, except putting down that elusive 5 second pass.
Meanwhile, the Harris / Shackleton team were working overtime, culminating in a final pass of 5.25 seconds at a staggering 299 miles per hour, making them the fastest Australian Nitro Funny Car team (Mark Sheehan has gone quicker, but no other Aussies have matched that speed).
You can check out all the days action here.
You can check out all the afternoons photos here.
Darren Di Filippo - Quickest Nitro Funny Car Pass in Australia, originally uploaded by High Octane Photos.
This pass was the Di Filippo teams third licensing pass on their test day on December 7th. Technically Darren and the car were licensed after the second pass, but they completed one more pass after getting the nod from ANDRA in order to give the car a real workout.
On this pass, Darren ran the car hard until just before the 1000 foot mark, and then coasted through the traps for a 5.25 second pass @ 241 mph. This is the quickest ever nitro funny car pass in Australia, and was witnessed by less than 50 people.
At the Boxing Day meet at the Perth Motorplex, Darren Di Filippo, Mark Sheehan, Ash Bailey and Ricky Steffens will be trying to better Darren's mark and push for that elusive first 4 second pass for a nitro flopper in Australia. For Sheehan and Di Filippo, this will be their first time driving a nitro funny car in competition, although Darren is a current Top Fuel competitor and Mark is an accomplished Top Alcohol competitor.
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