2004 Melbourne micra meet

WOW what a success and what a weekend!!!

This was the best weekend I've had all year! This was our first major micra meetup in Australia and the atmopshere was brilliant! 11 keen members turned up in total making it superb for micra-related conversation and also offering plenty of variety for members to admire in other cars. I think the photos speak for themselves, everyone was having a ball all weekend and I think would jump at the chance to attend another large micra meet such as this one.

A MASSIVE THANKYOU to everyone who went out of their way to make this possible! This kind of thing would never happen without all the keen members.

In Short and hope I have not forget anyone:

• Vix and Dan: For being kind enough to be my personal tour guide around Melbourne to save me lots of time getting back to the motel quickly!
• Evade for helping with a lot of the initial organising.
• White Knight, Matthious and GeoffW for going to the effort of travelling such long distances to make it.
• Vix/Dan, Mike from OZECHO, Mipcar and his friend, Reverb, Trev, Evade, Alpine Micra for all providing excellent local knowledge and a great cruise around some great spots!
• Trev for organising the Monday dyno day.
• All members who attended and helped out making the atmosphere and photographs so unique!
• White Knight for shouting the Vietnamese entree on Monday for late lunch haha.

A lot of new friends were made during the trip, connections that will be ongoing now, and it will be funny to be able to put quite a few faces to the member names now.. This meet I think has spurred everyone on for many more bigger and better meets. So if you missed out on this one, never fear, they are only going to get even better.

Saturday 10 July - The convoy and initial meetup

This meeting began with S-Shortcake, mighty_cg13de, mattthious, GeoffW and Brendon meeting at Parliament House just before 11am. Unfortunately mighty_cg13de was unable to attend Melbourne, so he got to meet some other members and compare vehicles before the convoy pressed on heading for Melbourne.

Shortly later the group stopped for a bite to eat at Albury KFC. Although running slightly behind schedule, it wasn't much later that we met up with another 4 micras waiting for us to arrive at McDonalds on the Hume Highway just North of Melbourne. The members who met up here were evade, White Knight, mipcar, Alpine micra and Vix. Everyone talked for a fair while and decided to head to a nearbye Kmart carpark for some quality night photos to be taken under lights.

Next we headed for dinner at a local Italian restaurant. Everyone relaxed and talked talked talked for the next 2 hours or so. A beer or two was well received after the long day of driving! Unbelievably, the waiter at the restaurant asked us what the occasion was. After I responded a "car club meeting", he asked "which car?". I said "The Nissan Micra" and was stunned as he almost fell over with shock! He said that he was a mechanic for a Nissan dealer and serviced a micra earlier in the week! Then he couldn't believe that there was actually a Nissan Micra club in Australia. That was the highlight of the dining experience.

The plan was revised to assemble at 11am the next day and everyone split and checked into their respective hotels/motels.

Sunday 11 July - The gathering and cruise

11 cars in total fronted up at Albert Park for the main meetup which was impressive for really a first major meet. The weather was great apart from a very chilly wind which was blowing pretty hard and threatened to slam opened bonnets shut!

Most people had already met the night before, but additionally Reverb and Trev showed up and met everyone. By this time everyone was having a ball just eyeing off all the cars and discussing all things micra-related. I organised individual photo shoots of everyone standing by their cars and luckily the photos turned out excellent!

Evade

S-Shortcake

Vix

Alpine Micra

Mipcar

White Knight

Matthious

Trev

Brendon

Reverb

GeoffW

Once the wind had part of the group hiding in their cars for shelter, we decided to set sail for a day of cruising. Many thanks to the excellent local knowledge of mipcar, Vix and her boyfriend Dan, Trev, OzEcho's Mike, reverb, Alpine Micra and evade, we made way around several of Melbourne's scenic lookouts going through all kinds of towns and suburbs on the way. The cruise was excellent, especially for a visitor like me who doesn't know Melbourne, we really saw some great spots and views.

After a thoroughly enjoying day behind the wheel and talking to other members, we stopped in at an inner-city pub for a quality bistro-style meal and a quick beer. The food was fabulous and the conversation even better. Everyone simply seemed to get on so well and discussion around Monday morning's planned dyno runs began!

Monday 12 July - Dyno day

A big thanks to Trev for organising this dyno time at EFI Dynamics. Owner/Manager Errol Taube was more than happy to squeeze us in and gave us all a group discount. We had a ball and the best thing was that finally I witnessed firsthand a group of micras with different modifications all get readouts on the same dyno - so some clear conclusions could be made about modifications and their effects etc.

Setting the standard on this dyno a couple of weeks earlier, Reverb's turbocharged k11 pulled an impressive 99.1Kw at the wheels on only 10psi boost. Reverb had 16" wheels also, which would have made the readout slightly reduced, so we were all very keen to jump on the dyno, let Errol take a look at our cars and see how they went.

Sadly, supercharged White Knight was found to be running dangerously lean, so a run was avoided in fear of killing the internals. The car is now getting some urgent extra fuel sorted by way of larger injectors and upgraded fuel pump. This car should be very impressive once this is done, it was a shame not to see it lay down a dyno run, but in a way a good thing and it will only come back even faster and healthier once its fuel is sorted. There is a lack of dyno's in Tasmania and this dyno analysis run was actually intended to make sure the car was running ok, so it really paid off and was very much worth it.