What Do Monsters Do...

Just an update, the car and myself were featured by the awesome guys at WMD (What Monsters Do), thought I would leave the link to the article here.

Thanks WMD! And InMotion Motorsports Photography for taking the epic shots of the 180!


Click the link below...

What Monsters Do - Mandi's Feature

You can sleep when your dead

We primered the car on the Monday night after work and the primer was super bright yellow, dad informed me it would be due to the top coat, which makes total sense, honestly I'm not sure why I didn't work that out in the first place hah. Anyway I had a bit of a go on the door at spraying, dad made it look easy and after a few goes I gave it back to him, made sweeping motions were no where near his.

With one of my front rims at the rim repairer and the other doing nothing, I cleaned it up and sprayed it to better fit the theme, I bought the rims polished, however for the theme I resprayed my rims back to a flat satin black. So chuffed with the end result, just check that finish!! Boss...

My confidence in my skills and what the hell Im actually attempting was brought back to surface last night when I let the results of my airbrushing draft ups speak for themselves as I hoped would be the case. I spent a few good hours afterwards with a good friend of mine (Trav - Stikerz) who like myself is naturally creative and has an eye for making things work, he works as a graphic designer/sign writer and has really helped me with all my stenciling for the car so not only did I get to hang out with my friend took a huge vital step in the progress. Another late night it was with about 3 hours there, got home around 12am.

Tuesday, with the car drying over night, dad finished up work early to come home and spray the car the base coat. When I got home from work I had a look, the colour was lighter than I had expected (sometimes its hard to judge a small panel of colour on a chart compared to it on a large surface such as a car) but after my initial "shit" when I opened the roller door the more I looked at it over the next 30 seconds the more I absolutely love the colour I picked out. To be honest even without the battle theme on the car I love the fawn, considering how many options there are available from paint suppliers I'm so happy I picked this one, not a shade lighter or a shade darker, so a big win there! Also so many cars have been done in almost every colour I love the fact that most aren't ballsy enough to go one like this and to be honest I kind of like the fact that some people will not doubt hate the fawn, sheep your disdain feeds me XD

After going inside and having some tea I came back out ready to start stenciling, as usual I have my abilities and ambitions mixed up... Well not entirely true, my abilities are there but the time I take to do things, Ergh not so good. Next stepping stone for me was to aesthetically complete the car, and while I was looking at the fresh paint drying on the car last night it was a little unnerving knowing what I had in mind to do with it, a beautiful blank canvas ready for something either amazing or something amazingly bad. Not only that, a car I've busted my ass on for the last few weeks, not to mention my dad taking the time to spray the car, is not exactly a piece of paper I can pull off my easel and start again if I screw up.
So went back out to assess my blank canvas, I gingerly put on the first stencils ready to lay my first airbrushing on the car, it was one of those moments where the cautious side of me started yelling "Really?You're really going to do this on this nice fresh paint job!?" but throwing that little voice to the wind I applied the stencil, fired up the compressor, ran my paint through the gun and started the stenciling! My new airbrush, was only a cheapy $70 gun but has a double action trigger, changeable tips and is something I can work with (the top feed or gravity feed gun though is a pain, spilled my paint on myself more times than I can remember fuuu) my first few runs with the whole set up (paint, compressor, gun, reducer ratio) were good, following the instructions of the mixing ratios for the paints on the bottle was wrong, rather than a 3:1 ratio it was more an 8:1, alot of thinners was needed to make the paint mix and not clump, in the end I was just going by feel. I suspect measurements need to be adjusted accordingly temperature as well.

I did my first few attempts on some cardboard and as soon as I started spraying the purple top coat I got super excited I could feel my vision take life, I love moments like these, they are few and far between in life  so it made me want to bounce off the walls as it was solid confirmation that yes I could make this work!

It took a few hours to do the first few stencils as I took my time getting to know all my materials,being able to see my photoshop come to life in front of me gave me huge amounts of energy, it was around quarter to one when I decided I really should get sleep, I probably would of stayed up another few hours if not for work several hours later.

Well it was mid week, kind of losing track of days to be honest I had so much I have to deal with and only can process so much at once. Having any kind of decent sleep seemed like a bit of a luxury at this point, however it's wasn't all doom and gloom. The car had been painted and was on track for being ready by the weekend....

Wednesday - was confident I could finish off my stenciling (passenger front guard, bottom door panels, passenger rear bar) again was kept up til around the same time this time I'd started airbrushing the runs and streaks, this was another "you sure you want to do this mandi?" moment as it looked really good with just the battle stencils. 

My first guard the drivers rear I was a little suss on but the great thing with airbrushing is generally the more you add the better it looks, so the more depth I added the more it really came to life :) while stenciling my friend the possum came back to which we had a bit of a stand off, it looked like it was going to jump on the car which was never going to happen under my watch, it all panned out okay though, I didn't have to turn him into a hat and he didn't have to claw me up :)

Thursday - Still with work to be done, after I got home from work I got straight back into it, cranked the tunes, the jim beam black label and the airbrush.I also called the rim repairer and hells yea one 17x9 +12 Varrstoen rim was ready, sooo happy! Tru Wheels came through with the goods, so excited! So again finishing up near 1am I had some of the passenger side missile stenciling to re fill in and the rear passenger guard and door to brush. 

Next post will be the finish up of the car enough for Round 1 and how the weekend went!

Weekends are for those who don't build drift cars

Well where to start, at the time of writing this the car is currently sitting in primer. I've spent the best part of 20 hours over Friday to Sunday prepping the car ready for dad to paint it. I'm relatively tired but am still no where near ready for this coming Saturday (which the car needs to be ready by, for the first round of the state series). 


The lawn is scattered with body panels and car bolt ons, the rear guards have been riveted onto place (thanks dad!), I suspect I will need some bolt on spacers down the track as the 17x9.5 +0 Varrstoen's don't fill the guards enough for a fitment nazi such as myself, that however will have to wait until after the round.

Upon removing the tail lights for the car (easier to remove than sand/paint around) the car claimed it's first blood for the weekend from me. Cheers for that, though in hindsight I knew using a flathead screwdriver to unclip the light plugs was a bad idea.. it has been every single time I've done it.

Anyway, so I started pulling my front pair of rims off the car so I could a. spray them to match my new theme and b. so they weren't on the car when it got sprayed. Pulled passenger side off and that was fine. I noticed my semi's had taken a fair beating from last track day though this means I've definitely improved my technique atleast :p Below is a quick run I had from that weekend at ADGP

Anyway, the next rim (drivers side front) I pulled off and found this to my shock! 

It's still holding pressure amazingly and looking back now I have found evidence of when I suspect this happened, thanks to the amazing photographers scattered around the track on the day I manage to have picture evidence of said time the crime had occurred! See below.

This was actually on my lead lap with my battle with Jake (side note bestest two runs, so much fun, high five Crawford, and of course Grats on the win! :D) so I had been drifting on it for the rest of the Saturday and the Sunday.
So that has been taken in last minute to a rim repairer to which I hope can fix it before Saturday, jury is still out on that though.


The rear guards were pot riveted on and for non genuines they lined up really well and very sturdy, money well spent! The rivets are going to be a great feature point with the car theme so having wider guards was a must!

So moving along the car got moved down into the shed which dad cleared out ready to spray the car. Can I just say getting in the 180 compared to the skyline (my tame daily) everything felt so "because race car" about it, diff, noise, fuel smells, steering :) 


Anyway I finished off my Sunday evening by masking up the car ready for it to be sprayed. Also a note to anyone masking up cars, don't skimp on masking tape that splits when pulling it off the roll, totally worth the extra dollars to get something decent ;)


 So this is how I left the car with a week left for this to be transformed, easy right, yea...

Prelude

Alot of people ask me what got me into this sport or why I do it, as if for some reason it's more of a mystery that a girl would love this just as much as anyone else, or perhaps it is just a genuine question with no thoughts of gender in mind.
Either way, I can't exactly give you a reason, the best I can do is tell you that it inspires me. Inspiration is a wonderful thing, it generally brings along excitement, motivation and passion and without inspiration, well without that the ratio of what's worth blood, sweat and occasional tears (in my case usually rage) seems a little tipped in the favour of not worth it.. I know when I drive the 180 on the track even with the cabin smelling slightly of fuel and hearing that exhaust leak I can't quite track down, thoughts of how much money and time I give into my hobby become irrelevant and I don't think there has been one track day I have been out there and within the first few laps not thought "worth it".


So this is my story..