This car had obviously run over something hard, and it had caused a fair bit of damage!

The first clue was that there was no oil in the engine!

After removing the cover plate under the engine the damage to the sump was pretty obvious:

The driver’s side engine mount (the metal bracket) had been snapped in two:

The steering rack had some pretty serious damage. It’s amazing that it still worked!

The whole front crossmember had been bent up slightly on the impact side and was twisted due to the steering rack being on the front of it. The red line shows the approximate angle the steering rack should be at. Fortunately the car’s chassis was still straight.

One of the control arm bushes had been damaged, and the aluminium cover plate / brace was fairly bent.

The sump, engine mount, crossmember, steering rack, and control arm bush were replaced, and I was able to straighten the cover plate and it all went back together smoothly.

This car had come in for other work, but I noticed that the engine mounts were both broken!

They’re a bit of a pain to replace in car, but by lifting the engine up as much as possible and disconnecting a few things it’s just doable.

Fortunately I had a spare set of engine mounts handy

My turbocharger based home built jet engine has been running with a combustion chamber way oversized for the turbo.

A while back I bought a couple of large turbos from some sort of earth moving equipment. Apparently the original engine had four of them!

I plasma cut a flange to bolt onto the turbo, and welded a short piece of 100mm exhaust pipe between that and the outlet of the combustion chamber.

A new air pipe was made up using 75mm aluminium intercooler pipe and a CNC cut flange, which should give really good air flow from the turbo to the combustor.

The oil plumbing needed a couple of minor changes, and the whole setup was bolted onto the test frame.

I’ve found that the usual leaf blower starting setup won’t work with this turbo, so I’ll need to sort out a better leaf blower or mechanical starter.

This thing should make some serious power (noise!) when it’s up and running

Years ago I built a jet engine as a bit of an experiment, using mainly scrap metal and various leftover car parts.

Every now and then I drag it out and try some new parts or modifications.

It’s based on a small turbocharger from a Mitsubishi Starion, and currently has a combustion chamber from a Rolls Royce Dart turboprop engine.

Last week I took it along to an event called Dorkbot (http://dorkbot.org/dorkbotsyd/), which is a monthly gathering of people interested in electronic / mechanical / scientific art performances, displays, and experiments.

I fired up the jet engine, made a lot of noise - then gave a bit of a talk on how it works, how it was built, and what I have planned for it in future.

The second presenter on the night showed information and video from an installation artwork / experiment he did in California, where an earthquake simulator was set up in the middle of earthquake territory and was used to display amplified real time seismic activity from the whole state!

The event was a lot of fun, and definitely worth going to if you’re interested in all manner of crazy experimental things!

I just hope I didn’t offend the neighbours too much with the jet, and they’ll have me back to show some of my less noisy projects

For anyone interested in home built jet engines, have a look at this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pTUeuEv8Uc

Also check out this very serious backyard jet: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VX5U8DlBzzk

This car had a bit of a history of overheating.

It was taken to a workshop and had the head gasket replaced, but it continued to overheat. The workshop kept fixing the symptoms (blown hoses, etc) but not the cause!

By the time I saw it the head gasket was leaking badly and it was most likely that the head was damaged - making another head gasket replacement unlikely to be successful.

I sourced a replacement engine with half the k’s on it and swapped it over.

After a service, a bit of a tune and a general checkup the new engine was running nicely - and no more overheating!

This car had been making a clunk sound on acceleration for a while, and the owner had bought a set of upgraded Nismo engine mounts.

Installing them involves unbolting the old mounts, lifting the engine up to get them out, then slotting the new ones in place before lowering the engine back down and tightening everything back up.

It’s a pretty simple process but the access is very tight, and it’s not usually possible to lift the engine up quite enough to get the mounts out (or in) easily.

This is the easy one:

While removing the left side mount, the source of the clunk became obvious!

This mount is under tension when the car is accelerating, and over time it has been pulled apart, allowing the engine to move around excessively.

The new mounts will make it a lot quieter and more solid!

This car was making a nasty knocking noise from the engine, which sounded like it could be pretty serious.

After checking out the top end and having a good listen around I found that the noise was coming from the power steering pump!

That’s a lot easier to replace than the engine

Another job to do on the same car was replacing the fuel pump.

The pump is inside the fuel tank, and is accessed through a cover under the carpet in the boot.

Once the cover is removed, there’s another plate that unbolts from the top of the fuel tank and has a cradle to hold the pump and fuel level sender.

The owner had purchased a larger fuel pump which was already installed on a standard cradle, but the fuel level sender had been damaged in transit.

I just needed to desolder the cable on both and swap the good one onto the new pump cradle.

Because the new pump has its fuel pickup a bit higher in the tank I adjusted the fuel level sender to read empty a bit earlier.

This was another small item in a long list for a car I’ve been working on for a while.

The first step was to fix a fault causing the airbag warning light to come on. It seems to be caused by a poor connection to the airbag module in the steering wheel.

After checking and cleaning up the connector it seems to be ok, but time (and bumpy roads!) will tell.

The next job was to install a Blitz Power Meter - which uses the speedo signal from the engine computer to monitor the car’s acceleration, and by knowing the car’s weight, the engine power.

It needs to be wired up to power, ground, and the speedo signal. The easiest place to do this is at the ECU (engine computer) in the passenger kick panel.

That’s it! Now to actually test and calibrate it