All sorted !

That personal import permit sticker I mentioned in the earlier post had arrived and I affixed it in the appropriate location on the car. This was of course the last step towards getting a vehicle licence.

And here we are with a shiny new license plate ! :)



I can finally stretch my car's legs or wheels rather ?!
Btw. the plate above is photoshop'd of course :)

It passed !

A snap of the Welshpool Inspection Pits where I took the car this morning. I got there at 7:45am hoping to beat the rush but ended up 4th in my lane alongside 20+ cars waiting in the neigbouring lanes. It was such a drag and my car got attended to just after 11am.

They checked the lights, suspension, tyres, engine, ground clearance, tested the exhaust noise and emissions. They looked in the back for child anchors, pulled on all 4 seatbelts to ensure they were functioning, checked the mirrors and took the car for 3 km test drive. They didn't look inside the fuel door for any labels nor did they request to see an engineer's certificate, phew !

In the end the guy came back to me with a nice big approval stamp, but all is not finished !
I had to send one of the forms to a place in the eastern states to have them create a Personal Import Plate which I need to fit into the engine bay. It's a compliance plate for personal imports. Once the plate is fitted in, I need to go back to the Inspection centre and have them witness the plate and from then on i'll be issued my new registration plates !

I was worried but in the end ended up getting lucky, again !

Watch out Perth ! Here I come !

Brake clearance issues ? Come on !

Ever since I ordered CE28Ns I was very worried the offset could be a serious issue especially with the front brembo calipers. As soon as I received the wheels I had to try them on and see for myself ! Remember I went down from 60mm stock offset down to 40mm and increased the width from 7 to 8.5 inches.

I'll let these pictures speak for themselves !

Perfect choice of matte black !

Red brembos piercing through the black rims

Closer look

2cms clerance ! Hah !

What was I worried about !?

Rear has a 43mm offset and is 7.5 inches wide

No problems !

These wheels are amazingly light !
Bring on Barbagallo !!

And so are my RAYS !

Arrived in one piece or 4 pieces rather and on top of it I didn't have to pay any duty !
I'll probably try to take them down to a local tyre shop this weekend and have the ADVAN A050s fitted onto them.

As far as compliancing work goes :

- child anchors have been fitted in the rear parcel shelf
- PREMIUM UNLEADED ONLY label on the inside of the fuel door has been placed
- checked and confirmed seatbelts as self retracting and having a lock mechanism in front and rear
- fitted a VIN plate in the engine bay (that plate by the way is the ugliest thing I've seen !)
- checked and confirmed NEOVA AD08 tyres as ADR-compliant. 
- removed the convex mirror on the driver's side and waiting for a flat mirror to arrive from Honda in a few days (yet to be fitted)
- strangely my car doesn't have a factory immobiliser and so an alarm / immobiliser will be installed tomorrow.

That's all as far as compliancing a personal import (DC5 Integra) is concerned! Although there is one other thing an inspector could POTENTIALLY ask for and that is an engineer's certificate to verify the strenght of the side door intrusion bars. Again I'm going to take my chances on this ...

My time attack machine is here !

I picked it up from Freo yesterday afternoon after it'd been released from customs !
Interestingly, the state of the car was not what I had expected...

Firstly, customs must have been looking for drugs or something throughout the entire car because every single panel was removed, including rear seats which were very badly put back together, electronics around the dash were hanging loose as though someone was looking for something behind the dash and its plastic, my tools etc from the boot were all over the front floor and the back seat. Any ideas ?!

Secondly, I noticed that the rear tow hook was missing and the front tow hook was slightly bent. Later on in the day I found the missing rear hook, bent 45 degrees as though it had been caught on something whilst the car was being reversed and bent beyond repair. The front hook was intact but still remains bent. Again I have no idea what happened there !

Other than that a full tank of RON 100 japanese petrol somehow evaporated and I was left with only a few litres to get me from Freo to the nearest BP station (and its inferior 98 RON fuel) on my way home. Someone syphoned it out I reckon but WHY ?

So yesterday with some help I basically put everything back together, washed the windows off of all its writing, ripped off all pieces of paper glued to my windows, reconnected electronics and washed the car. I also installed child anchors and later today I will take the car for a VIN plate fitting. By the way all that under my 48hr temporary driving permit so if you see this car driven without plates HONK !

Oh didn't have to go through quarantine and saved BIG $$$ ! Also customs duty was quite acceptable (I think they felt quilty for ripping my car to pieces !). So in the next day or so final preparation and hopefully this friday I'll take it for an inspection and final registration.

Wish me luck !

Mark Webber and Red Bull F1 car coming to Perth !!

Yes you read it right !

Mark is coming to Perth for the annual Festival of Speed where at Barbagallo Raceway he will time attack the circuit for 3 laps in his actual F1 Red Bull car !

This is not only a huge boost for Perth but also for Barbagallo Raceway which recently won a huge injection of cash from the WA government to have the circuit upgraded and extended to a world class circuit.

World media will be there and so will I. I only hope the circuit can take it :)

Quick update !

I've been quite busy this week !

First of all, I had to find a customs agent to take care of customs clearance on the car.
I contacted about 5 medium-to-large size companies in WA asking for quotes and when the quotes arrived they were all so different it was virtually impossible to compare them side by side. Items such as customs clearance, port charges, port handling, wharf charges, quarantinee entry fees etc etc were just all so different I picked 2 agents I felt gave me the most descriptive quotes and decided to pick their brains in an effort to understand what all their fees were about. In the end it came down to Indian Ocean Shipping Agents in South Fremantle who won the tender !

I sent all my docs to them earlier this week and they took care of pre-clearing the vehicle for customs and hopefully (fingers crossed) helping in reducing the duty and taxes payable. We won't know though until the car arrives next wednesday but at least there is hope !

Second item on the week's agenda was getting insurance quotes.
Again I picked 3 larger insurance companies such as RAC, HBF and SHANNONS but right from the get go RAC refused to insure an imported car (what !?), HBF and SHANNONS however had no issues and came back with what I thought were very good quotes. I'm leaning towards SHANNONS for their JDM friendly nature.

And lastly I wanted to understand what kind of compliance work had to be done on the car. Still figuring this one out but I know at least I don't need to change the fuel filler anymore.

5 days to go !