25.11.09 - I have broken my golden rule of not letting water cooled 911s into the workshop!  This GT2 project is the most radical looking car I have seen for a while!  It should be a lot of fun.  I am not moving over to the dark side (watercooled) though...

20.11.09 - Here is a great photo of a 996TT that we setup for Classic Adelaide.   The shock and spring rates were changed to make the car more drivable on the limit.  With just a setup and brake pad upgrade it was more predictable and gained two seconds a lap around the test track...

Driving like this saves a lot of tyre wear:)

03.10.09 - After we turned this car into a 934 and started to develop it, we seemed to have a few troubles with the dog box.  It was finally sorted by getting rid of the Hargett shifter and installing a Fabcar one.  It has now been sold on to its new owner in Adelaide who sent me these great photos. 

Click on them to enlarge:

24.09.09 - My flat fan motor is being stripped to check it out because it has been sitting for a while.  I have decided that it needs to be twin turbo again and I can remove some weight and gain some more efficiency by changing to a water intercooler (NB - for sprint events).  I never liked the manifolds either so they will be changed and I am going to add a 'drive by wire throttle' to the ITB setup somehow... 

I don't know why I can't stop fiddling with this car and just be happy with it! 

25.09.10 - Just a quick update.  We are booked out for the next 6 months (only I hope!), so we will be able to only supply parts for a while!  The main priority is to finish all of the existing projects before we start on a 'no compromise' 911SCRS replica gravel rally car and yet another rally replica - an Audi E2 Quattro Sport which will be set up for a bit of fun and possibly a few time attack events.  

They weren't the best handling car but they did have the best sounding engine!  This will be a huge project and involves cutting 320mm out of the body shell, re-raking windscreen and adding wild body panels.  We are doing a modern interpretation and are collecting the last few parts.  We have a 20v 2.3L dry sump motor on the bench and just need to decide whether to use a Subaru 6 speed dog box and DCCD active diff or just use a modified Audi based drive train.  The Subaru box will be easier to get dog change gear sets from Albins or Modena so I am leaning that way...

I never get tired of this video!

17.09.10 - How to set your Porsche on fire in one easy step...

It is easy, don't do any preventative maintenance!  I recently did a service on a Carrera and noticed the fuel lines have deteriorated to the point that they were about to fail (see photo).  You could only really see the damage when the hose was flexed and obviously with a torch because it is tucked away in a dark corner.  The wiring looms are getting a bit old and dodgy too.  There is a lot of heat in the engine bay which makes the wiring insulation quite brittle and prone to failure.  It doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out that a fine mist of fuel above a hot engine could end in tears...

A little while ago I did an insurance repair on a nice looking C2 turbo look 911.  Some numpty had wired in a big stereo incorrectly into the front fan motor which caused the fan to run at low speed all the time.  Eventually the poor old fan seized, the wiring melted and car became an inferno while it was parked in a city car park!  That car looked really good when finished but it wasn't fun job for me. 

That is roughly when I implemented the 'no subwoofer policy' in the workshop.  Not long after another roller-raver 911 turned up with the owner wanting more power and performance.  This car had every eBay accessory you could think of and the back seat had been replaced with a subwoofer box, the boot with amps.  Luckily there was no strip lighting under the car!  I guess I am a purist with a racing background so my solution would have been to remove the 400kg of sound gear, tweak a few things and focus on making the car fun and fast to drive.  The customer had other ideas so I did what was asked, but when the job was done I felt like I'd sold my soul.  Now, if you have a big subwoofer, we are just not going to get along...

05.07.09 - I can now CNC port 911 heads!  Yippee!  That will save some time!  The port design that seems to work well is a digitised version of one of our 'tried and true' hand crafted ports.  I have made some improvements to my flow bench too so I can more accurately validate any changes before the engine goes on the dyno.  I had a bit of a fiddle and now the flow data can be captured by the dyno's datalogger... 

23.05.09 - We are bringing a 20ft container back from the US (LA) in August with some Porsche parts inside.  At the moment it is not full but I would really like to upgrade to a 40ft so I can bring in an aerobatic wing at the same time.  The wing we are bringing in is only 24ft long so there will be a lot of empty space in the container!  That means that we need to sell some space at a cheap rate for a car or two... Contact me if you are interested...

The wing is for the Z2300 that we are building and modifying here as an unlimited class aerobatic plane.  Our version started life as a Z2300 but has been extensively reengineered with a prepreg carbon shell over the fuselage, a full carbon airfoil tail and engineering changes to the fuselage.  There isn't much left of the Laser so it is more of a modernised Rebel / Raven! (Wayne Handley's Raven pictured above.)  It would be no surprise to those that know me that the Lycoming AEIO540 engine is highly modified too!  More details later...

20.04.09 - Well, we have a new website.  The other one was getting tired...

We have also completed another 911 project!  This time is is a 3.6 conversion on Motec with the engine put as far forward as possible for better handling, a G50 torque tube added and a genuine C2 body added, C2 interior including electric heated seats etc. The car ended up being quite light so it screams along and is great fun to drive!  I like the feel of narrow body 911's but this one is headed south to its new owner...