Lord Cyric

I have the 19" Zenetti Kaotik Black rims on my Black Beast.

US version (Part# VPA-B222) is only available in the US... if the part number for the unit is VPA-B222-R, then it's the WRONG ONE!

They had just finished sealing it when I drove it before xmas. Thought I'd give it a few months of use first before we cruised it.

CRUISE CANCELLED... Will redo this cruise at a later date. TARALGA & OBERON CRUISE When: Sunday, April 6th, 2008 Starts: 8:30am sharp! Meet @ Mount Annan Shopping Centre Carpark GETTING TO THE SYDNEY RALLY POINT Take Narellan Rd exit from Hume Hwy and head west Turn left into Waterworth Drv Right at the first roundabout (next to the Shell servo) Carpark is in front of you Caltex on Narellan Rd (Vortex98) Shell at Mt Annan Shops (V-Power) CRUISE ITINERARY Cruise down Hume Hwy to Goulburn Morning coffee break then north through Taralga up to Oberon Pub lunch Down to Jenolan Caves, then up to Lithgow Final pitstop before taking Bells Line of Road back home Cruise route on Google Maps IMPORTANT! 1. Fill your petrol tank PRIOR to reaching the initial rally point. This will help prevent unnecessary pitstops during the cruise. 2. Make sure you have a CB Radio with batteries fully charged! 3. Any silliness on your part does not make me or FordXR6Turbo.com liable under any circumstances. As always, it's about good cars, good roads, great people... CONFIRMED (6.5): Lord Cyric Phantom Ute rizzo-xr6 +1 Saleen (possibly soft?) Scubzz SouthsideGT

I'm posting up cruise details today for March 30th.

Just had the Alpine VHub Pro swapped out with the US version and I'm much happier now. The Full-Speed iPod controls are extremely quick and with the Alpine Bluetooth Car Kit, my system is complete... for now... Only pain is that those damn americans are more paranoid about you watching movies on the ICC screen. Instead of just pulling the handbrake up like normal (or short-circuiting it), I now have a sequence of handbrake & brake pedal to unlock the video playback. Annoying, but since it's a tad illegal to drive with it playing vids I'm sure I can cope... Will take some pics on the weekend.

A belated birthday wish for the "MASTER" for this past Saturday... And another big Happy Birthday to Geea for today.

I've been "off the grid" the past few weeks while my Dad was in hospital, but I'm back home now. Rob ran a night cruise recently and the next date on the NSW Cruise Calendar 2008 is Sunday 30th March (big motorsport month ahead). Details will be posted next week.

Just to follow on from what I posted the other day... since I'm in Roseville (CA, USA) this week I went to an Alpine dealer yesterday and had a little chat. End result - I bought the US-version with a Full Speed iPod cable and will swap it over when I get home in two weeks time. I'll update my audio upgrade thread with pics once it's done.

I have the VHub Pro in my baby. See Black Beast get an Audio Upgrade. Yes it's a couple of years old and doesn't have the "flashy screen output" that we are accustom to these days, but it does the job. The connectivity kit they sell to hook up the VHub to Ford ICC works great, which means you can still use the ICC as normal if you want. My recommendation would be that if you want a VHub Pro, get the US-version of the VHub Pro. The reason being is that you get a dedicated Full Speed iPod Interface on the US model, but the non-US one doesn't have it for some stupid reason. I have a non-US VHub Pro and it treats the iPod like a CD changer, so searching through playlists is very slow. The Full Speed iPod Interface on the US VHub is supposed to be much quicker and smoother at this. The main thing that annoys me is that you can't have one cable to do both iPod audio & video. So if you have a video iPod and want to watch vids off of it through the VHub Pro, you have to have a second interface cable for the iPod and it's just a plain A/V passthrough (just like a 3rd party DVD player or carputer). So you have to swap cables and then control everything from the iPod. One thing I'd love to do is replace just the screen in the ICC with an Alpine touchscreen and have it integrated with the VHub Pro. As a whole, I do like the VHub Pro. The seemless ICC integration kit was a huge thing for me, since most other solutions either had some "dodgy connect kit" or required an extra screen to be installed. It does what I want, sounds great and gives me plenty of expandability for whenever I have to make my car "child friendly" (or install hater-vision!). That said, if I could grab a US-version of it... I WOULD just to get Full Speed searching!

Very kewl setup there, Ghia! Well done! I didn't want to sacrifice my spare wheel, so I went with the option to lose some boot space. Still plenty of room left for my big cricket bag or golf clubs. They just cop a LOT of reverb now...

Unfortunately the VHub can't do audio & video down the one cable. This is the only real thing I hate about my setup... Music via the audio cable is controlled through the VHub's orb. It's slow scrolling through playlists and artists, but I get around that by making a "Driving Songs" playlist and that keeps me rocking on down the highway. Wish I had the US version of the VHub Pro, because it has the Full-Speed iPod Interface. Video is via an A/V passthrough interface and that's all it does. No controls from the orb, so you have to grab your iPod to control it. Very annoying, but given that you're not supposed to watch videos while driving I'm okay with it. Overall I'm very happy with what I got. Could it be better? Of course it could, but we all can't live in a perfect world... yet!

I have to be a MAYBE now. Got a last minute call-up for a seat at the cricket tomorrow. If it's still pissing down (as per the forecast) and the game is cancelled, I'll be there with my 2100 watts of sound pumping!

They've severely cut down on the number of public days at the moment to 1 or 2 per week, but this is mainly due to the winter weather. I certainly hope that this rumour is unfounded, as the whole tourist industry of that little town would collapse if they killed of the public track days.

I'm planning to go there as the finishing point of my post-"2009 Ashes Tour" drive from Monte Carlo through the Swiss Alps and into Germany. Some favourite Top Gear roads to drive... Verbier... San Bernadino Pass... Davos->Stelvio...

Excellent! I get to go for a spin just before I fly off to the US.

The ICC put ALL cricketing nations on notice after what happened in India. Anyone who steps over the line is to be reported immediately to the umpires on the field and the match referee. Doesn't matter if it was a millimeter or a mile, go there and you're gone. They laid down this edict because Ponting never put in a complaint over the October incident despite having a mountain of evidence to back it up. This time Ponting didn't have much choice once Harbhajan made it obvious to everyone in the stadium that he went after Symonds. The umpires were already making moves to step in when Punter got in Harbhajan's face. Anyone who saw the guilty looks on Harbhajan and can read lips knows that he immediately started apologising to anyone within earshot. Sachin got him to rethink that line as he got called over to the two umpires, which is when "The Wall" got constructed. I was working in India during October when all this monkey nonsense began (but couldn't go see a game) and although the locals enjoyed the vigour used by their team in battling us Aussies, most agreed that it got way out of hand. They pride themselves on being tough, but honest folk. Unfortunately the near-religious status placed on that team means that mistakes "never happen" and damn all those who dare accuse their heroes of such transgressions. I'm sure Harbhajan is a great guy off the field, but that cold hard fact is that everyone was on notice so there is no excuse for his actions. On a side note, do you reckon umpire Benson has been in this scenario before? He immediately shielded his mouth so we couldn't tell what he was saying. Big Brother really wanted to know what was being said... dammit!

Having spent most of the last five days at the SCG, for the most part this was a very special match. Yes, there were some very dodgy decisions made... and yes, Harbhajan looked like he "crossed the line" again (note that he was officially warned over the exact same racial outburst at Symonds in India a few months back)... but from a pure cricket perspective, the game itself was epic. The opening hours of day one were bowler friendly with six aussie wickets disappearing (could have been more). Then when the wicket flattened out we saw 995 runs scored between both teams in their first digs with three century makers (Sachin's knock was priceless to watch). This brought us to the fourth day where on a wearing pitch with some rain about, the Aussies fought hard to put on 269 runs and set up a classic final day's play. Most people at the ground thought Ponting should have declared after Hussey scored his ton, but as it turned out the nasty turn on a fifth day SCG wicket was tailor-made for Pup's "last throw of the dice". As for the "cricket politics" now on full display today, unfortunately this is sounding all too familiar for the sub-continent powers (India, Pakistan & Sri Lanka). I can fully understand the bitter taste of having lost the match due to some awful umpiring, but that's cricket so to speak. But the chance to chuck a hissy-fit was just too good for the BCCI to pass up. The real issue is that people don't take responsibility for their actions when they get caught. The "Asian Block" have loved waving the stick at Australia & England in the past few years for what they call the use of "aggressive tactics & mindgames" to win matches... but as soon as they get caught doing exactly the same thing and then taking it well beyond that level, up comes "The Wall" with huge denials and boycott threats thrown in for good measure. I'm all for a hard, fought contest. But when you act like Sreesanth did during the Aussie tour back in October, that was embarassing for a lot of Indian cricket lovers. Gee, I wonder who started all this monkey nonsense... oops, I'm sorry... the BCCI said that it never happened... Former test spinner Gavin Robertson said it best on Fox Sports News earlier tonight... "there are so many ways to get inside someone's head when you are playing cricket by focusing on your opponents mistakes and the level of pressure being placed on them to not screw up (remember that cricket in India is a religion). All this is okay and has been the accepted norm for decades. But the moment you take it to a personal level, then that is just not on." In this day and age with all the media scrutiny, you'd think that sooner or later someone put their foot in their mouth with an open microphone to capture it all. Oh wait... that was Warnie's infamous "can't bowl, can't thrown" sledge at Shane Watson... nope, sorry... some idiot in the production truck left a cameraman's mic open on live TV...

Hmmm... didn't realise that Expensive Daewoo were selling BBQ's in the engine bay!

I'd join ya, but I'm "too exhausted" and a tad sunburnt from five days of glorious test cricket watching @ the SCG. Maybe next time...

Hmmm... the Jackhammer... I remember an episode of Pimp My Ride where Mad Mike put two of those suckers into a van. Good lord, did that thing have some serious bass coming out the rear!!!

I saw a Black GTP last week with the GT Stripes... the big stripe was red with smaller mercury silver ones. Looked interesting for the second that I saw it, then it was gone as I sped down the Pacific Hwy.

Putting in two Rockford Fosgate T1 10" Power subs was probably a bit of overkill, but the sub box in the boot looks so much better with two subs in it than one. The bass is just awesome and even with the sub volume turned down you can still feel the "gentle reverb" rumbling through the car when a decent bass track is playing (hmmmm... Prodigy!). A single T1 sub is more than sufficient for most people... but for me I had a little too much much to burn... The Ford ICC Screen is okay and is usable for most people. Given that you are not supposed to display video on it while driving, I was not interested in installing another screen up front. At least now with the VHub Pro I have to option of adding headrest screens (or hater-vision) and any other A/V source when it suits me and it'll just work.

When you use the iPod Audio cable, it is all controlled from the VHub Pro Orb and plays music perfectly. When you use the iPod Video Passthrough cable, it assumes that it's just a generic A/V connection (like a DVD player). So you have to grab the iPod to control the video playback. Unfortunately, they didn't use their brains at Alpine and make an iPod cable that does both.

Here's what I did back in September... The Black Beast gets an Audio Upgrade I fair bit over your budget, but damn it sounds so freaking awesome...