One of the many random things I do is make prototype electronic circuit boards, using a CNC circuit board router.

It takes blank boards with a full copper coating, and mills out a channel to leave the conductive tracks where they’re needed. It also drills all the necessary holes, cuts the finished board to size, and can do double sided boards.

There’s a bit of a process to convert the files and set it up, but essentially you can design a PCB using various software packages, and quite quickly have an accurate prototype made for testing.

It’s not a cheap way to do any large quantities - but compared to sending a design away to be made using normal production processes it’s quick and effective.

This air compressor was frequently failing to shut off when it reached full pressure - causing it to blow the safety relief valve.

Upon inspection it was working properly, but I noticed that it was cycling on and off faster than it should.

Turning on the air valve caused a lot of water to blow out, so I suspected the tank hadn’t had the condensation drained for a long time!

The compressor also had a lot of oil on it, probably caused by spillage or over filling.

Moving the compressor made it obvious that the tank was quite full of water!

After draining several buckets of very nasty looking water, a thick oil sludge started coming out. Obviously this had built up over some time, after leaking through the compressor due to wear or over filling.

Hopefully draining the tank will stop the problem with the cutoff switch, and at least give the compressor a lot more air capacity!

S15 Silvias (200SX) come with a six speed gearbox, which is very nice to drive with - but is not as strong as the previous model’s five speed.

In racing use with engine performance modifications the six speed is prone to breakage, so sometimes it’s best to change to a five speed box for reliability.

The gearbox, clutch, flywheel, tailshaft, gearbox mount, gearbox bolts, and even the exhaust bracket are different - but they can all be sourced from the previous model Silvias.

In this case we also installed a twin plate clutch, and the new gearbox has been rebuilt and strengthened.

Many Japanese import cars are hard to find with a manual gearbox, so often it’s best to buy an automatic car and convert it to manual.

This one is an S13 Silvia with a CA18DET engine.

The auto to manual swap is fairly straightforward as long as you have all the bits and everything comes apart easily.

Of course this time things didn’t want to come apart easily, and some of the parts were missing!

The conversion requires the removal of the automatic’s pilot bushing from the engine’s crankshaft, and its replacement with the manual version.

No matter what I tried, even using a newly purchased tool for the job, the pilot bushing wouldn’t come out of the crank.

In the end I had to weld a plate onto it to allow the puller tool to get a better grip!

Eventually it was all done, the car now manual, and there was a big pile of leftover bits!

This place has been a bit quiet lately, after I’ve been busy moving house and having no internet access for a while!

There are a few updates to come, and some interesting projects in the pipeline