Vy commodore

[Wade]

If your into custom fabrication, you’ll probably know it doesn’t take long for surface rust to kick in and can sometimes be difficult to clamp and or hold things in place. So I thought I share some tricks. This product is American based, but essentially you put some on a clean rag and wipe it over what ever you don’t want to rust while you take your time fabricating and working away. Lasts for up to 7yrs. Also this little tool is a game changer for holding things in place

[Wade]

Another tool I personally love is the bench grinder. I can do a lot of things with it. And there relatively cheap these days. You can see via the pics my assortment of cutting/polishing compounds and wheels. Generally the colours of the sticks will tell you what grit and metals there good for. Another little trick I’ve found. You’ll get a build up of compound on what ever your polishing. Use wd40 to clean it off. And then use window cleaner for the final wipe down thank me later. You can also use a good quality automotive grade clear coat if you don’t feel like re polishing everything, every 6-12months or so. Using cheap clear coat may lead to yellowing ect. The polish in the tubes is alloy polish and also works great on polishing headlights, so save the $100+ that those headlight restoration kits normally cost and just buy a tube of this.

[Wade]

Another great use of it, is sharpening drill bits. I remember many years ago being at tafe and my teacher saying, you’d be surprised to learn how many mechanic's don’t know how to sharpen a drill bit. Drill bits get expensive especially when your throwing them away simply because there no longer sharp. Another great thing about learning how to sharpen your own drill bits isn’t just the fact you save money but you can also shape and sharpen them as you want. Say for instance you need to un-pick a panel and need a spot weld drill bit. Yeah I know there expensive. But you can actually turn a normal drill bit into one just by making it more shallow . Another big money saver. Spot welds make up a huge percentage of our cars these days.

[Wade]

You can save yourself money and time from having some gasket paper and a shot peen hammer. Just place the gasket paper over what you want to re produce and lightly tap the edges with the shot peen hammer and perfect re placement gasket coming up. I can make so many new gaskets from 1 roll and the roll costs about the same as buying just 1 pre-made gasket online

[Wade]

Bolts and markings. Every bolts should have a marking on the end of it. Those markings could be just lines or numbers ect, but they signify there strength. So keep that in mind when working on cars. Last thing you want, when replacing seats and you can’t find the old bolts is to reach into your bolts bin and find that grade 4 bolt that fits. I’d hate to be you in the event of an accident . So be safe and use the right bolts. Another handy tool is a thread pitch gauge. There kinda like feeler gauges but for bolts. So if your ever looking for a particular bolt grade and thread pitch now you know

[Wade]

Some other things I’ve learned over the year with soldering jobs. When working on pcb’s or pcms, ecu’s ect, it’s easy to lift tracks if you apply too much heat. Rule number 1. Always strike when the iron is hot. I generally get everything I need ready and then go make a coffee. Don’t place the iron on the solder but rather place it on the legs! Once you see the solder drop and solidify use this tool. Not sure what it’s called but I call it the super sucker. It literally sucks all the solder out. Making a cunt of a job an easy one

[Wade]

Got around to welding the lower intercooler bracket and smashing some m8 rivet nuts in there.

[Wade]

Chucked the printed turbo up in to have a look and start figuring some stuff out. Needs to come back a fair bit and up slightly but obviously can’t with all the stock exhaust still bolted in. There’s more room in there than I initially thought.

[Muncie]

Had good success on mine welding the schedule tube to cast manifold i got paranoid of cracking so pre heated everything migged the joint then blended that all in with tig afterwards.

6 months of abuse and its held up fine.

I'm interested to see how your map sensor feeds in as im wanting to do the same thing.

[Wade]

I don’t think the oem cast manifold will work now. It tappers down the further back it goes, and I really need it to sit up higher. I had great success years ago when I welded a cast iron dump pipe from an sr20. But yeah I’ve started ordering what I need to just go ahead and make my own log style manifold.