DIY Sim Rig!

Last week I started a project I've been wanting to do for a long time. I've watched videos and done my research, but now it was time to build it. You might wonder what a "Sim Rig" is, well, that's not weird, because they aren't the most usual thing somebody talks about. It is essentially just a frame in which you can mount a racing wheel and pedals to and have a TV in the front and a seat in the back to kind of simulate a car. 

 So, I started with my dad's old office chair, (which was broken btw). I took the bottom-end off and did some minor modifications involving a hammer and some clever engineering...ish.

I then layed out all of my planks that my dad supplied me with. Him being a carpenter, his access to planks is not as limited as others. Then I started to arrange them. This was all I had to work with and some other small pieces I found laying around.

I then mocked up how I wanted it to turn out, and screwed it all together. I had a plan in my head before I started working on this, but that quickly changed because of the lack of materials, but I made it work just fine. 

Now we can see that this thing really starts to take shape. The long planks sticking up from the base are the ones I'm mounting the steering wheel on. And we can see in this image that i've figured out how to attach the back to the rest of the rig, with a little help from my dad this wasn't as hard. 

After some time of sanding and mocking up where everything was going, we were nearing the finish.

And then, by the end of the day I started to paint the rig. It only took 2 layers of some cheap black paint, which was nice. 

And voila, here it is in all of it's glory! Although this thing really fills up my room, I think it was worth it, because I'll be having a lot of fun in this thing. The seat isn't mounted directly to the base, it is just sat down on to small planks which makes it able to move back and fourth depending on your size. 

Here is another close up of the rig. And I would like to thank my dad for helping me with this fun little project, because without him it would have been much worse and probably alot more inconvenient. 

The whole thing was built in one day and it turned out better then I expected :)  

Autoslalom Part 2

Although many of the people with more "outstanding" cars than normal people come to race at "Autoslalom", some just came to watch and brought with them some interesting cars along the way.

The cars I have pictures of here, are cars that I photographed, but there were some others that I didn't get to take a picture of, such as a Ford Mustang GT and a Lancia Delta HF.

Firstly, here we have a Subaru Impreza WRX. The WRX's are most famous for their huge success in rally. Petter Solberg won the World Championship in Rally in a car like this. Fun fact, these models are often called "Blobeye", because of their "big" eyes. 

Next up, we've got the legendary Toyota Supra. If you take on look at the internet, this will come up all over. This is one of the 90's classics from Japan, along side cars like the Honda NSX, Mazda RX7 and the Nissan Skyline GT-R R34. Although this car may not look as aesthetically pleasing as a Ferrari, it will always appeal to true petrolheads. 

This car I don't know so much about, since every german car looks alike. The things I know about this is that it is a BMW 3-series. These, as most german cars, came with a huge number of engines to choose from. You could have a 1.6 Liter diesel engine that struggles it way uphill or a sinister 3.2 liter Inline-6 producing over 330 horsepower. This guy may not have the biggest engine, but he doesn't probably need it because he can only go about 50 without scraping his whole undercarrage. 

The classic Volvo P1800. This was the car that featured in the James Bond movie. I have very little knowledge of this car, mainly because when this car was build my dad wasn't even born yet. Still, a very sleek car. 

Autoslalom Part 1

This saturday, me and my dad went to another car event hosted by the same people who set up the rally in Larvik. Only this time, it was better. 

We went up there at 11:40 something and it had already started 11:30 and there were no bicyclists who could ruin this event, since it was on an old runway. Well, what this was, was an event where people raced their cars around cones and the goal was to be the fastest one. There were many interesting cars on the grid, such as Porsches, a lot of BMW's, and Miatas and so on and so forth. 

(95' Miata taking the corner like a boss)

There were two types of people who raced; people who went all out and put their car on the edge and people who just did it for the fun. One of the contestant who really impressed me, was someone who didn't get the best time, but put on a great show. He was a lithuanian man in a Honda S2000. He drifted every corned and still got a great time. 

(If you haven't got the fastest car, you might as well put on a show)

There were also some older cars there, including an older Porsche 911, an Alfa Romeo from the 60's, an old Ford Cortina and a Ford Escort RS2000. These didn't get the best time, but looked very good fighting their way around those cones. 

(Old Porsche 911 hurdling down the straight)

So all in all, I had a great saturday on Torp. The cars were cool, the people were nice and the weather wasn't warm. I would conclude that as a pretty perfect week-end :)

(Some cars weren't there to race, so to speak)

- Anders

Rally Weekend!!

This weekend, or this saturday, my dad and I went to Andebu (30 min North of Sandefjord) to look at the annual rally called "Larviksprinten", which means the Larvik sprint, I guess.
Well, the race was scheduled to start at 11:30am, but when we came up there, no cars were flying by, only people standing and talking to each other. We later spoke to one of the leaders there, and he said that the race was delayed until 02:30pm, because of a bicycle race on the same road.

We realized later, since it was a gloomy day, that it was going to rain, so we went home to pick up some raincoats and kill some time.

We came back a little over 02:30pm, and there was no cars there then either. We realized the place we wore, was the place where the cars started the race, so we got in the car and continued a little longer down the road, until we came to the finish line, where we got to see the last leg of the race.
There were some professional race cars there, but mostly "amateur" Volvo 240 and BMW's and they all made a significant sound.

All in all, it was a great saturday to spend outside. Instead of taking a nice stroll in the woods and listening to the birds, I was out listening to these I-4 Turbos whistling through the forest.


- Anders

Trying something new! [repost from lollikandersen.blog.com]

This Saturday, I did something a little terrifying. I tore the family car apart. Not the whole car, just the dash.

Ok, the story is that we have an ’07 Mazda 6 and it didn’t come with an AUX Jack from the factory. An AUX Jack makes you able to play music on almost any sound system, it’s just a 3,5 mm cable that you connect to the back of a stereo system and connect your phone to. Well, I had done some research on this and found out that our car had a connector on the back of the radio were you could plug in a 3,5 mm AUX jack. So, about 3 weeks ago, I went on eBay and purchased a simple, little thing that cost me $10. It had a 16-pin connector on one end, and a 3,5 mm AUX jack on the other. It arrived in the mail this saturday, 8/30-15. So, I decided that I’d install it. I first started by taking the cupholder out and I moved forward towards the shifter. I took the shifter off and underneat the plastic covers sat 2 screws, I removed them, because I wanted to get the whole dash assembly out. I then proceeded to remove the glove box and unscrewing a 10mm bolt and voila; after some yanking on the radio, it came out. I then plugged in the thing from eBay and tested it out, routed the wire out of the glove box and screw everything back together. After an hour or so, I was finished. I was pretty proud that I didn’t break anything and finally I can listen to some good tunes in the car!

(These images are taken from YouTube, since I didn’t take any pictures when I did the installation)

Welcome to my blog!

Welcome! In this blog I will talk mostly about cars, since that is basically my only interest. I will be posting two times a week, mostly on news in the car world and things that interests me. 
I made a new blog here on Blogger.com, because the servers on blog.com is awful. (I've reposted from my old blog, http://lollikandersen.blog.com/)