so time for another workshop update i think it looks a bit different to
the last time still got the m4 on the lift making good progress on that um
i'm quite excited about this because uh probably going to be the first the first
thousand horsepower car that i've been involved in uh in building i guess um and we've got some cool
ice engine works blocks that have arrived to mock up downpipes with and this will be
the first project we use these on these are like lego but for exhaust fabricators we've
talked about these before but you might not watch that video so yeah they're pretty cool
that's going to help with that justin's car's here he needs to repair his slave cylinder again
after a fairly disastrous brand's hatch time attack less said of that the better i think um and
then the minis in sub frames back up we got the power flex bushes in the lower arms so that's what
i basically stripped it all down for in the first place um they're gonna be it should hopefully
drive like a totally different car because the old bushes were totally shagged so it's got
all new ball joints in a and outer ball joints but everything else we're keeping the same so
standard shocks are spring standard brakes i want to try and not go too crazy with mods to
start with um just kind of drive it around bite and park or cadwell or something and
and then kind of do it a bit bit by bit sometimes i think if you do too
many mods all at once you lose some of the enjoyment of modifying and building a car
because you kind of make too many changes and then you run out of stuff to do
sam's car is the skyline is really close to finish now um well finished but i mean like kind of
uh done as far as we're concerned it pretty much just needs plumbing up now
so we're gonna get some cool pro gold fittings and lightweight lines on that
no progress on k20 astra i'm not sure when there will be sugar to find time and motivation to work
on that one i was motivated to start with and then i kind of got distracted by other things
bought a new car which you'll see soon hopefully um and then other than that we've just been
getting through yaris systems we have i can't believe how much that's taken off really um
like we've always sold quite a few exhausts for different you know various models but the yaris
stuff really seems to have taken off it's just the market is just growing so big so quickly and
um yeah i mean we genuinely can't keep up with it yeah there is just you know me matt and jake doing
fabrication and um jake tends to do all of the fabco stuff silencers and mandrel bends and things
um so yeah it's uh it's a bit tricky in terms of figuring out how we're gonna keep up with that i
guess you might have to grow a bit which you don't really want to do but you might have to um and
we've got a down pipe still to come for these as well we haven't even made the jig for the downpipe
um and i think there's quite a few people after those as well really um and we've also got the
single exit system that phil wanted that's with a cat in the tailpipe we've still got that to jig
and finish one thing i've been meaning to do for ages is rejig the mqb downpipe so that's audi audi
s38v and then mark 7 and 10.5 golf r we made these originally like three and a half four years ago
now um ran out of flanges and just never made any more for some reason i just kind of never
restocked it it's because they have like a couple of very specific mantle bends that we've just
like every time the three inch tooling has been on the bend i've ever just forgot to do it or
um what have you so we've got it done now we're going to get this re-jigged and get another batch
of these in progress because these were actually quite popular we sold a few of these so i'm
keen to get on with that and then the other one is uh gtr downpipes we've re-jigged or not re-jigged
but originally we used like a big billet flange on the gtr downpipes and it made them quite expensive
like a thousand pound a pair like a 500 pound downpipe um but this time we're just going to
go with a laser cut flange and then form that oval to round transition ourselves
it seems like in the gtr world there's people that don't like that because they think you know the
welds break or whatever but the worlds don't break if you know they're welded correctly so
i guess uh we'll prove some people wrong with that i bought a cordless grinder it's quite cool
it's been a minute to bow on for ages and finally got around to it i haven't really used it much
yet oh i've got some bits for the van for a while since well since the van's been back on the road
i've had problems with charging the battery but i can't work out exactly why
the battery's just been going flat i put it down to the fact that the battery that was
on it had been flattened two or three times and i thought maybe it wasn't in the best
condition anymore so put a new battery on it and it still was draining it's got like half an amp
um constant drain on it which is like borderline what you'd want but still not enough to flatten
it over a week i mean only again i only really do short journeys but um hopefully a new alternator
is going to fix that because i think it might be over charging it's something i can try at least i
mean they're not mega mega money um and again the one that's been on it's been on 150 000 miles and
then i also need a new lift pump because uh it's starting to get very noisy now i noticed it when
warren was here and we were doing the mapping um but yeah it's starting to get super noisy so yeah
got a genuine bosch lift pump um so yeah kind of drain the tank down and probably get that fitted
soon and another exhaust manifold gasket because anyone that's had a high power
highly strung diesel well z19 specifically they do tend to blow sometimes it's
one of the disadvantages of this gasket or this flange is that the diesels do tend to run quite
high manifold pressure and temperature and it's a challenge to keep this end of the gasket sealed
so there's basically only one bolt in this corner here there's one bolt here and one bolt here
the same on both sides but this side which is kind of uh it just it just always seems
to end up blowing after a while a warrant had problems with it in the past and you know i'm
experiencing it on my own van now i've done about 1500 miles but it wasn't a genuine gasket i put on
so i've got a genuine gasket now and hopefully it should last a bit longer but again this is
like some of the things to do with like research and development you sometimes have to try these
things and drive them around for a few thousand miles before you figure out what goes wrong
um but yeah other than that i think that's about it that's about all we've been getting on with i
mean it doesn't sound like much but it it it's a lot you know it's quite a lot of work going
on with the mini and the bmw um and sam skyline plus all the other stuff we've been doing i'm
sure there's other stuff i just can't think what it is a lot of mandrel bends um a lot of silencers
yeah i've hopefully got a new car to show you soon