Ganador Super Mirror

Pic 1: The Ganador Super Mirror

I have been eyeing to get myself a pair of used factory side mirrors as spare....just incase some blind motorcyclist decides to side swipe mine off in traffic. :P

The factory ones costs around JPY 6,000 (used) excluding local domestic courier costs in Japan and international courier costs to Malaysia. Not exactly very cheap when one accounts in the postage charges.

One fine day I chance upon these nice pair of Ganador Super Mirror (Part Number SM-26FBL) with blue lens for sale. Hmmm.....really tempting indeed and somehow or rather I got it pretty much based on impulse. :P These are the same mirrors used on D1 Grand Prix, SuperGT, SuperTaikyu and Gymkhana races in Japan.

The Ganador Super Mirror is electric and uses the back factory wiring harness for the mirrors. It also bolts on to the stock factory holes. Basically, it's just plug and play. The unit I got came with blue mirrors and it's kinda curved (convex?); thus even with the smaller size, the view out is actually pretty good.

Installed it myself over the weekend and below is how it looks like on the car. So guess I don't need to get myself a spare side mirrors now eh? :)

So what do you think?

Pic 2: The ER34 stock mirrors

Pic 3: Comparing the stock and Ganador mirrors

Pic 4: Got to remove the door panels to change the mirrors

Pic 5: In goes the Ganador version

Pic 6: Done!

Pic 7: A closer look

Pic 8: The final look - side

Pic 9: The final look - front

Drive It Like You Stole It #08 - Frasiers Hill

Pic 1: The group.......

Frasiers again?? Didn't we just go to Frasiers Hill last weekend? Hehehe... Well, since I was pretty rusty last weekend and many of the guys can't make it last week, why not eh? :P

So guess Mun Kit and myself got our familiarisation done last week on DILYSI #07 and now we can push it a lil bit harder. LOL :D

We have an interesting mix of cars for the drive. There's 2 Nissan Skyline BNR34 V-Spec II, 1 Toyota MR2, 1 Nissan 350Z, 1 Subaru Impreza STi Ver. 8, 1 Satria GTi and myself in the ER34.

Pic 2: Russ and Nicole's Veilside kitted 350Z

It was a day after the Malaysian Election day, and seeing everyone so excited about the drive amidst fears of possible demonstrations was great. Politics aside, driving is such bliss after staying up the night before waiting for announcements of results from the telly and the internet for various constituencies, states seats, parliamentary seats, etc...

Anyway, we took the usual route to Frasiers and luckily for us, traffic was quite sparse that early morning. Just perfect for us to blast through the countryside and the twisties. Razlan in his monstrous BNR34 kept us in our toes to push harder in order to keep up with the beast. This car just pulls away from us effortlessly.

Pic 3: Razlan's monster BNR34 packing in huge horses under the hood....and big brakes too

As per last week, going up and down Frasiers Hill are still on the old format of time schedule based. I wonder when will the new road up are opened again, miss that crazy road with curbs on either side. :P

After breakfast up in Frasiers at our usual joint, we headed to the Jeriau Waterfalls. It has been a while since I've been here, many years ago in fact. Everything looks new to me, as if it's my first time here. :)

To get to the waterfalls, we had to drive our cars through a 4km treacherous single lane road to reach it. Quite scary if you're pushing the car too hard; the ravine doesn’t look too inviting to me.

Pic 4: The Jeriau waterfalls

The water at the falls were kinda murky, it wasn't like that a couple of years ago, wonder what happened to the water source. We did not trek all the way in to the bigger falls though. Instead we just hung out mid-way before we head back out from the falls to meet the 12:00pm timeline to head back downhill.

Traffic has begun to fill the roads on the way down, thus at some point or other we were stuck behind some slower traffic before opportunities came about for us to overtake. After the Gap, we made a pit stop at the Sg. Selangor Hydroelectric Dam for a quick breather before we head back to the urban jungle of Kuala Lumpur. Overall, this was an excellent drive coupled with great companies. I reached home dead tired but pleasently pleased with my morning spend on the twisties. :)

Pic 5: Pitstop at the Sg. Selangor hydroelectric dam

I’ve record a 10 minutes video footage of myself and Razlan’s monster BNR34 going up the Frasiers touge. Do take a look; the video is worth the download. :P

Comments welcomed. :)

Some other pics......

Pic 6: The group at The Gap. My bumper scooped a lot of leaves.....

Pic 7: Hanging out at the Jeriau waterfalls

Pic 8: Touge!!

Pic 9: Staring at the beast??

Pic 10: The 2 R34 GTR V-Spec II

Pic 11: Waits for regrouping.....

Pic 12: Someone runs out of fuel........hehehe

Nismo Carbon Pillar Garnish

Pic 1: The Nismo Carbon Pillar Garnish

I bought these Nismo Carbon Pillar Garnish (Part Number 99993-RNR40) exactly 11 months ago. Stashed it in my store room all this while until I took it out and decided to had it installed onto the ER34. The piller garnish is made of carbon fibre and glues on top of the factory piller via some ultra sticky glue.

Looks good or no difference? Oh well, might as well use it since it has been lying around in my room collecting dust. :P

Pic 2: A closer look

Pic 3: The stock factory piller

Pic 4: The piller with the Nismo Carbon Pillar Garnish

Drive It Like You Stole It #07 - Frasiers Hill & Genting Highlands

Pic 1: Charging up Frasiers Hill

Goodness! My last drive to Frasiers Hill was like 6 months ago. Been pretty busy with work and life to devote much of my time to pursue my driving fix. Sigh....:(

This drive is sort of like a last minute thing and together with Mun Kit in his SGTi and Arun in his S15, we blasted off to Frasiers Hill to cure our addiction to driving on touge routes. Bro Isma rode shotgun with me. :P

We took our usual route up and this time I'm noticeably rusty in my driving. Been a while since I really 'drove' the ER34. Heavy downpour the night before has dampened most parts of the route especially on The Gap and the way up to Frasiers Hill. The ER34's tail was a wee bit too happy for my liking. TCS being not 100% fail safe is not that reassuring especially on some corners whereby the car swung out more and longer than expected. Shudder.....

I tried running the ER34 on 0.6 bar and 0.7 bar of boost but the power cut is too erratic and thus the additional power does more harm than good. Boost even spiked to 0.8 bar and these sort of power cut is not something I want to encounter when powering in mid corners. Switching off the EVC fixes that problem but the reduction in power is a sad thing indeed. Oh well, that’s one thing I have to live for until I get it sorted out.

Pic 2: Stopped for a breather at The Gap

Upon reaching The Gap, I'm utterly surprised that they have reverted back to the old format of going up Frasiers Hill. The new road up was closed and we have to use the old way up and down based on a time schedule. Oh darn....looks like we will be stuck up in Frasiers Hill longer than expected. The road up Frasiers was really damp; from wet patches to wet leaves to all sort of fallen debris from overhanging trees. Surprisingly, instead of the super bikers, we have huge number of cyclist on our routes. Practising for the Tour De Langkawi perhaps??

Up in Frasiers Hill, we had our breakfast in our usual joint before heading back down. Arun just got his hands on the S15 and wanted to try some donuts with the car. Hmmm...where else?? This initiated a detour to Genting Highlands open air carpark!!! We have had fun here before in April '07 (write-up here). That was a fun drive indeed. Hehehehe

Pic 3: The group....

Genting Highlands it is....so we proceed back downhill and took the turnoff to Goh Tong Jaya via the old route before joining back the road up to Genting Highlands. I am not particularly fond of driving up Genting Highlands and this is no exception. Arun tried to do some donuts in the carpark but wasn't that successful. I gave it a shot and found that I too can't do donuts anymore. Horrors!!! Those darn 18 inch wheels and fat tyres are such a pain. Looks like there will be no more donut days for me. :(

After trying and failing a couple of rounds, we left Genting Highlands and headed back to Kuala Lumpur via Karak Highway. All in we clocked in about 220km of nice twisties. Can't wait to do this again. :P

Pic 4: At the Genting Highlands open air carpark