Wild Weasel's Sunfire GT and Mazdaspeed3 and Boxster GTS

March 14th, 2005:

Today marks 6 years since my wife and I had our first date. 6 years ago today we went out to the movies to see Analyze This and then over to The Friendly Greek for a bite to eat. She doesn't like Greek food, but she DID like my old Z24. Curiously, both that Friendly Greek restaurant and my Z24 are now history but my wife and I will be happily married forever. Just thought I'd wax nostalgic for a moment. Despite all the effort I put into this hobby, she is and always will be the best and most important part of my life and not a day goes by that I don't find new reasons to support that.

As for the car... I've got a few new toys on the way for the WM3 now. There's a subframe brace sitting in my garage courtesy of Jason Fournie (thanks bro!) and I've bought an old RK Sport 4-1 header for a damn good price from my buddy Zeek. It'll probably sit in my basement for a year or so before I get around to finally putting an exhaust system together but in the meantime, there will be a much bigger toy installed. Just waiting for it to make it's way here from the States.

January 30th, 2005:

I feel a whole lot better now that she's clean. It seems all is right in the world again.

The two interior shots are there to show the new B&M short shifter installed with my MOMO shift knob. I'm still not really decided on whether to keep that one or the billet knob that came with it. The stick is shortened by about the same as what I'd shortened mine to so with the MOMO knob it's still around stock height but with a shorter throw. The B&M knob is about the same height as the stock one was so its quite a bit shorter on this stick. It's got a neat feel to it so I might end up using it at the track. Time will tell.

January 27th, 2005:

When it comes to most cars, winter is a terrible thing. I'm sure I wouldn't be complaining if I were driving an STi or something, but as it stands, there's pretty much nothing about winter that's good for my car. Michelle and I took a weekend vacation to Ottawa to catch the baby Leafs game, skate on the canal, eat a beaver tail, and do some sight-seeing. It was great fun for us, but as you can see from these pics, it was pretty rough on the car. I've got all-season tires on there but hopefully next winter we'll have some proper winter tires for it. There's just no better safety precaution for the winter than a good set of winter tires. You'll notice that I took off the front valence this winter. Since it was freshly painted in September, I figure I should put some effort into taking care of it this time around. Last winter it was essentially a snow plough. Anyhow, it hurts me to see them, but here's the pics.

September 24th, 2004:

She's finally done and drives like new! Woodbridge Alignment bent the trailing arm back into shape yesterday and she finally feels like she's supposed to again. I was worried and skeptical about bending the arm back rather than replacing the whole thing but the work they did seems to be perfect. I'll keep an eye on it and have it checked for alignment again in a year just to ensure it holds up. Here's some pics of the finished product. They don't look much different from the ones I took on Monday but it's nice to know all the work is finally finished and she's fully healthy again.

Note that in these pics, I've got the suspension raised to its highest point in the back and turned down one or two turns in the front to even it out.

September 10th, 2004:

Well the biggest news is that I am now a married man!!! Last Sunday, Sept. 5th, I got married to the love of my life, Michelle. You can see our website at https://www.michelleandkevin.ca/

I'll get the site updated with some wedding pics as soon as I can. And as per my best man's speech, "May all the bumps in the road be filled with little Hopps".

Of course, the most recent bump wasn't so precious. A week ago yesterday, on the morning of our rehearsal dinner, I was driving along when someone decided that it was a good time to do a u-turn and didn't think to check if anyone might be directly in his blind spot. He signalled and just turned out, giving me almost no time to react. I hit my horn and swerved to avoid him but couldn't get all the way around before he hit me in the passenger rear quarter and spun me around. It's hard to stay angry at the guy since he handled the whole situation after the fact as well as could be expected and was very apologetic. Sure, it was a stupid move... but these things happen.

The car is being repaired right now and I'll get some more pics up as progress is made. At least a bit of good will come of it as the wheel that was hit is the same one that was dropped on its face during the brake install so it needed to be refinished anyway. I'm also getting a brand new tire for $30 and they're getting me a Proxes 4 instead of a Proxes FZ4 since I already have brand new FZ4's to put on the car and don't need a 5th one. At least when I need new tires in a few years, I'll be able to match them up with the new one. The FZ4's have been discontinued.

On a brighter note, my wife and I finally got our own digital camera so now you an look forward to even MORE pics here on this site. As though there weren't enough here already.

August 15th, 2004:

Today was the first productive day I've had with the car in ages. I finally got the side skirts put back on, though I still have to deal with the door skins. It's a step in the right direction though. The driver's side is just about perfect while the passenger side still needs a bit of work. I suppose it's going to have to come off again at some point for that but for now, I'll just be happy having it look a little less ghetto for the moment.

The door skins need to be mounted about 1/8" lower than stock. Previously, they were held there with 2-sided tape, though that was the reason I tore everything off a month ago. Now I'm considering grinding the holes down for the stock tabs so the whole thing will fall into place while still being securely held against the door. Whenever I have time again to work on it, that'll be the next experiment to try.

I also installed the new Axxis Deluxe Plus rear brake pads today. In the process, I adjusted the parking brake free-travel on the driver's side and moved the spring stop on the e-brake cable about an inch further to provide more tension. I haven't yet reconnected the e-brake cables though since I'll need to ensure now that with the free-travel adjustment changed, I haven't introduced any new issues. After a few weeks, if the amount of brake dust is even on both sides in the back, I'll hook the e-brake cables back up and see what happens. My expectation is that the brake handle will no longer pull all the way up, the brakes will hold much better than they used to when set, and the spring will have enough tension to release them completely. If all works as expected, I'll write up a HowTo on properly adjusting the e-brake mechanism.