Category Archives: Zen Garage

Need For Speed: The Run Launch Event


Exotics outside, exotics inside, beautiful people and tunes a pumping, there was a buzz on entry.


CD DJ, note F430 outside too.


We made a bee-line straight for the booze (as you do).


Swimsuit Edition on the big screen? Nice.


Convertible 911 in Automatic, one of 2 cars on display.


It was a packed event, people just kept on pouring in throughout the night.


At one point these 3 guys in hip hop atire (apparently from some talent show on TV, X-Factor?) broke out into a dance. Serious?!


Spotted this gorgeous Maserati Gran Turismo S outside, we had to leave the party momentarily to check it out.


One entire wall was reserved for gameplay.


Interestingly the R35 GTR was the car chosen for all contestants.


Tate and one of the NFS promo girls.


Tate told me there was an F40 upstairs, turns out it was a Testarossa (another one for the Tate wall). I hadn’t checked out upstairs as I hadn’t broken the seal yet, but it turns out Scuderia’s stock pile of cars were all crammed in hard a level above the party. This is where the party’s at!


Testarossa, so much retro goodness.


We bumped into Photographers Kory Leung and Matthew Everingham upstairs, car guys hanging around cars, that makes sense right?!


This gorgeous creamy 964 was tucked away in the corner, what a car.

Last night we were invited to the Need For Speed: The Run Launch Event which was held at Scuderia Graziani on Crown St. East Sydney. If you’re a car guy that’s ever driven down Crown St. you’d know of Scuderia Graziani, a brightly lit head turning showroom loaded with exotics.

We made speedy way through horrible Sydney traffic in Tate’s beaten up Suby complete with asthmatic blow off vale. Maybe it was only speedy because we were cracking jokes all the way, and scaring John, who had never set foot in Surry Hills before in his life (he was freaking out!).

Having our Zen Garage Forza Motorsport 4 launch still fresh in our memories we were keen to check the event out. Comparing the 2 events was inevitable, but it proved difficult as both events couldn’t be any more different to each other.

Where our event focussed primarily on drivers and driving (the main attraction being the Xtreme Sim Gear simulator set-ups which helped to blur the line between driving a real car and playing a computer game), EA Australia’s event focussed on living the dream. Objects of desire, baller lifesty

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Boys & their Toys


Parrot AR.Drone.


This amazing thing is controlled by your iPad. It has cameras all over it, the idea is to watch the ipad to control it, and not watch the actual drone itself (spy camera anyone?!).


It’s amazingly stable in flight. I was crap at controlling it, but Anoop was awesome (hey it’s his toy!).


So awesome!

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Getting out there


Last weekend’s NINJA meet @ Zen Garage.


From Estonia with love!

Zen Garage is slowly, but surely getting out there. Here are some links to sites which have hooked us up over the past couple of days:

On GamePlayer: http://www.gameplayer.com.au/forza-4-launch-event-at-zen-garage/
On 7TUNE: http://www.7tune.com/event-forza-mortorsport-4-night-at-zen-garage/
On Ryan’s blog: http://www.nohatnoplay.com/zen-garage/
On Xtreme Sim Gear’s web site: http://xsimgear.com.au/shop/index.php?route=cms/category&path=3
Linked off Speedhunters + Canibeat.

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Dayton’s S13


2-tone goodness.


Stripped out, how I love it.

Dayton our lovely beer man (he’s a brewer at The Malt Shovel Brewery) came around to Zen today in his rally prepped S13. I love cars like this, gets me excited. Although his visit was a few hours ago now, the all too familiar running rich fumes pouring out of his Kakimoto exhaust are still fresh in my mind. More on Zen Garage.

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Zen Garage video by THA TITH BROTHERS


We had THA TITH BROTHERS attend our Forza Night last week at Zen Garage and they’ve pumped out this amazing video for us. Love these guys (3 brothers), Kim used to be in advertising/design but he makes more money for a living driving trucks, but he loves getting into video, and it shows. It gets my blood pumping!

View more of their videos: THA TITH BROTHERS

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Donations at Zen Garage


JDM toys donated by JDMST member ban_die. (so rad!).


Evo photograph donated by Matthew Mead.


Rad 911 poster donated by JDMST member Andrew Mel.


Oh and the radical son Tom from Hell On Wheels dropped in, turns out he lives literally down the road!

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Zen Garage Forza Night

We put the space to the test again last week with a Forza 4 industry invite only night. 2 hardcore race sims were set up, fridge was stocked with James Squire and we had about 42 people attend, everyone hung out till very late which was awesome. So happy that people didn’t just come, get bored, and leave! I saw a lot of mingling going on, so great to see people meeting new people, having a Friday night beer and playing games too.

All photos by Matthew Mead, more words and photos on Zen Garage.

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Zen Garage logo wall

So awesome right?!?!

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Deathtrap Project V2 Donor Bike


Fuji Feather.


Lovely headbadge features mount fuji and feather logo + stamped “Made in Japan”.


Moustache bars!


Alloy Suntour 7-GT rear derailleur.


French made Huret front derailleur.


And shifters.

Last week I found this vintage Fuji Feather on eBay. I put a bid on it, and won it for $56 which I think is a bargain (56 is my house number too!).

I’ve since done some research on it and from my finding’s it’s about as old as I am. From the mid 70’s. It’s got a Suntour 7-GT rear derailleur, one of the first derailleurs to feature alloy bits and it’s also got Huret parts on it, a French brand I’d never heard of before. Unfortunately it’s got 27inch wheels which makes converting it to a single speed a little harder than a new 700c with a rear cassette. I might see how I go keeping them. I have a spare 700c wheelset too so I’ll also test to see if the brake pads will come down enough to make the 700c wheelset work.

She’s heavy but she rides lovely, even with a flat front tyre. Brakes well too. Work on the motorised conversion starts ASAP!

Posted in Bike, Zen Garage | 1 Comment

Zen Garage online shop


Brought my cheap eBay lightbox set-up to Zen Garage today in preparation for the online shop images.


Test shot.


Call to action banner for the homepage.

I’m using Opencart for the shop. Tried Magento, killed me it’s ridiculously crap, totally unintuitive. You can check out the empty shop here: http://zengarage.com.au/shop

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