- This week on the vlog, we're going to take a behind the scenes look at HPA Labs,
where we film our course material, what we're working on at the moment and
who works here.
G'day I'm Taz, from HPA, customer service manager and all around keyboardist I guess.
By popular request, in today's vlog episode we're going to take a look around the workshop,
see what's going on.
So we're located in Queenstown in the South Island of New Zealand.
Basically ended up here from a coin toss between Ben and Andre who didn't want to live in the
North Island in the two major centres there, Wellington, Auckland.
But really liked Queenstown and also Nelson.
So yeah tossed the coin and this is where it landed.
So it's pretty lucky for us that we get to work here.
So you might see behind me here that we've got Andre just preparing for today's
gold member only webinar lesson.
Today we're going to be covering an Ecumaster topic which is pretty exciting, we're going to
get stuck into more of those this year for you guys as requested.
This is Jono, what are you doing Jono?
- Going to Pak'nSave, you want anything?
- Yeah.
- Yeah, what do you want, afghans?
- A giant family bacon and egg pie, go halvsies.
- Oh yeah.
- Oh yeah could be keen.
Doesn't want bacon and egg pie.
So in the workshop here we have the FD3S RX7 project, the black GT86,
RaceCraft GT86, the SR20VE powered Nissan 350z and of course the black STi
you might have seen in the background before that's being used for today's webinar.
Yeah so the white RX7 just here, we've just got running recently, it's running Adaptronic
and the Turblown Borgwarner turbo kit as you probably know, we've covered previously.
And then the black GT86 which has just had some aero arrive today, a rear diffuser
and a front splitter.
Might be a spoiler or something there as well that's going to go on the car for the
endurance series coming up later in the year.
And of course the 3UZ's being rebuilt for that at the moment as well,
not too far away, couple of weeks at the most hopefully, otherwise we won't be
racing.
- About that.
- Not racing?
- Um na so it turns out that there's been a bit of a delay with the pistons.
- Oh yeah?
- [Scott] Yeah bro what's going on?
- Hey Scott, what are you doing?
♪♪ Hello darkness my old friend, I've come to talk with you again ♪♪
You can tell we're busy given the state of the workshop at the moment.
Brandon's been flat out today, although you can't see him, trust me, he's
flat out, probably having lunch.
And then the RaceCraft GT86 which was a little bit worse for wear the other week.
Andre had a bit of a misshift but it's coming together really nicely and quite quickly
considering the fact it went into the side of the bridge.
So could be worse and as far as things go we're pretty happy with all of that.
So here's the 350z that we get a lot of messages and emails about,
what it's up to at the moment.
It's just waiting on some wiring just because we lost Zac who we dearly miss,
we miss you Zac.
Things kind of went by the wayside a little and we're just working out a plan to
get that up and running soon and of course in the meantime we did purchase
the black 86 which we're using for endurance racing, which was the original
purpose for this SR20 powered 350z.
So also in the background there, you might see a 3UZ that's going into the FJ40 repower,
or BJ40 or BJ42 depending what kind of purist you are.
And the old 1UZ that died a fiery death at the hands of Ben at Teretonga
a couple of weeks ago, or months ago now.
Kind of not sure what to do with it yet.
It's a bit big to hand on the wall as a trophy.
At the moment we're still working on our fabrication room, we plan to move some
of the lathes and the press drill and the other equipment we have in there along with maybe
getting a little bit more so we'll do a bit more in house and create a bit more content
on fabrication for ETS from here as well as with Nigel over in Australia of course.
He likes to visit sometimes.
So here we are in the very much a work in progress, soon to be fabrication room.
We're slowly chipping away at this.
In the meantime Brandon's making use of the spare room for his rally car build.
I believe he's storing it potentially how he plans to drive it but I hope not,
I might be in the passenger seat with him, or possibly out the window by the
looks there but I'm sure she'll be fine.
Got a few tools in here.
Nothing too exciting, probably apart from the welders here.
Love a good welder, we just got a new TIG welder recently and have a trusty old
Lincoln Electric here as well.
So here I am in the studio where you quite often see Andre.
We'll run you through what's in this room.
We do some theory based tuning webinars from here, wiring, engine building
and then of course the course material.
So we use a mixture of cameras in this room.
Some for overhead shots, some for macro shots and then of course the one at the
end of the room filming Andre's face and the engine block beside him perhaps
if it's an engine building webinar.
So the room changes frequently.
The lights remain the same because they're screwed onto the ceiling but yeah the
cameras shift around depending what we're doing.
Today for example Andre is actually filming in the Subaru so a lot of the camera gear
and lighting is in there with him today.
Here we also have the trusty Honda B18C which we do plan to build at some stage
but it's become very handy for doing our live free introduction to engine building
webinars with.
So it's got pride of place in the corner here with some wires.
They don't make it go, it needs a bit more than that but you get the idea.
And also part of our FA20 build lives in here which we will eventually add to the
Practical Engine Building course.
So this head, is asked about often.
It's a Toyota six cylinder out of a Landcruiser, Toyota Landcruiser
funnily enough.
It was sent over from a drag racing team in the UAE for Andre to develop for them a
couple of years back but after shipping it all the way to New Zealand they actually decided
to use a different power plant so we've just got it kicking around here,
the block's upstairs and it looks awesome behind the camera so why not.
So with the workshop out of the way, let's go upstairs and take a look what's
up there.
So we've got quite a bit of upstairs storage as well on the mezzanine.
She's pretty chocker at the moment, racing tyres, biscuit, lot of use for that
on the lake in the summer, parts off the 86 that we'll have to put on some sort
of wall of shame or glory or I dunno what you'd call it, at some stage.
And an odd collection of gearboxes.
I've never actually thought about it but I'm not sure why we have so many gearboxes.
So the building here was actually originally used for catering so big roller doors for
rolling the trucks in, four bedrooms which are now two offices and two bedrooms,
two bathrooms, kitchen, bathroom and then, kitchen, bathroom?
Kitchen lounge and then an office upstairs but let's go take a look at the office.
So this is the most important room in the office and this is Pedey, who doesn't want
to be on camera.
What are you up to Pedey?
- I'm just working and doing nothing of any interest at all.
- Good man, good man.
So we've got a simulator set up here, so need to tidy some wiring etc on it
but it's basically a RaceTech seat and a platform we've got through RaceTech
as well.
An Occulus Rift, a computer to run it, a screen to see what you're doing
and some Fanatec gear.
This is Ben, you might recognise him from some films such as this one.
What are you doing Ben?
Where are you going?
- I'm just going back downstairs to do some work.
- Oh yeah yeah.
He's working from the jet boat this afternoon I believe.
- I took it for a little blast down the river.
- Yeah nice, nice, living the dream, living the dream.
So this is the main office, the upstairs office where all the cool people hang out,
plus Morty, probably hear him in the background.
Everyone's out at the moment, pretty busy.
Apart from old mate Luke.
See what he's working on, just over the shoulder nice and creepy.
What are you working on Luke?
We are currently working on, or I am currently working on episode seven
of the vlogs so that will be out before you see, no after, before, before you
see this one, before.
- Before yeah man yeah.
So you're looking at the past right now.
- Yeah the past, this is what the past looks like.
- So we got little Morty here in his own desk essentially.
He sounds unhappy but I promise you he's the most cared for dog ever.
So yeah this is my desk where the magic happens.
We'll take a look and see what's on the screen, what we're working on here today.
Oh it's the AEM CD-7 carbon display and tuning course package giveaway.
That young Jono who you met earlier on the way to Pak'nSave possibly, has put together
for you guys so if you haven't entered, you should.
So yeah now we're downstairs in the main hallway, a couple of offices, couple of bedrooms
if you get tired during the day.
We'll see what's happening in Ben and Andre's office.
And Nora's.
Hello Nora, how's it going?
- Good how are you?
- Not too bad, what are you working on?
- I am working on some Facebook pages
- Oh nice, nice.
- Confidential.
- The important things of the day.
Almost forgot one of the most important things in the workshop here which is the
Mainline dyno in the background here.
It's a 4WD hub dyno.
I believe it can take up to about 2000, 2500 horsepower even.
Nothing we have here is going to reach that sort of power level any time soon
but we're future proofing you know.
Bring on that 2000 horsepower endurance build ay?
So I hope you enjoyed the wee look around here and that we covered everything,
that answers all your questions about where we produce the course and webinar content
for you guys.
If not, if we missed anything, pop it in the comments below and we'll do our best to
answer there.
Next week we're going to look at Brandon Barry's KP61 Starlet, Toyota Starlet
rally build and see what he's got going on there.
If you enjoyed that, make sure you like, share and subscribe to catch the next
episode and any future vlog releases.