My computer’s power supply fan has been a bit noisy on occasion, but the other day I walked in to use the computer and could smell the unmistakable hint of electrical “magic smoke”.

On inspection, the computer’s power supply was too hot to touch, and definitely the source of the smell!

The fan had just stopped working - and obviously there’s no thermal shutdown in the power supply…

The old fan was a 140mm unit, but I have temporarily fitted a 120mm fan I had sitting around to keep it running until I can find a proper replacement.

The moral of the story is that it’s worth paying a bit more for a good quality power supply!

This car had a whole list of things to do, and is going to be a very nicely set up track car that’s also usable on the road.

The main things added were power steering, some serious chassis braces, and a new ignition system that should work better at high boost levels.

I also removed the air conditioning to save some weight, made up an intake heat shield, installed a larger swaybar, race seat, fixed up the two stage boost controller, and sorted out a few cosmetic items.

This is what the engine bay looks like after painting the cam cover, installing the new ignition system, power steering, and the intake heat shield:

Underneath the car there’s a new swaybar, a diff brace, and this rather massive chassis “butterfly brace”

It bolts on over the original chassis rails, then the “wings” link the two. It looks pretty impressive, and being all stainless steel it won’t rust!

The only issue is that it reduces ground clearance a bit, especially in the middle where the brace has to clear the exhaust.

This one was pretty quick, just swapping a noisy and leaky power steering pump for a good one.

It was making some pretty bad noises, easily mistaken for serious engine trouble!

Swapping the power steering pump is fairly straight forward, apart from the ridiculously tight banjo bolt holding the pressure hose on.

It’s also a good idea to flush out the old fluid and refill the system with fresh stuff.

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