A Serve Of Rice Please

I’ll admit, I’ve always been on the hunt for some of these reservoir sock covers for a while now, particularly a set with “Mazdaspeed” embroidered on them, But I could never find them. However, during a recent search on Ebay I found a new set in production from Npower. It only cost me $20 to my door too. I’m happy with the purchase, they are cheap, well made, and they spruce up the reservoir a little.

You can purchase these suckers from here.

Day Three

Today was a pretty busy day, i needed to source a thrust bearing through work which proved to be a bit of a headache.

Anyway, I got a phone call on my lunch break … it was the missus, and some boxes turned up for the car.

So I get home with the thrust bearing, grab the boxes, get dressed into something suitable (note shitty old shorts and a singlet) and head off to Dahtone at Wethrill Park.

I get there, take the boxes out and immediately start unwrapping them. The Npower headers and BPI flow stack arrived!

The Npower headers, look brilliant! they really don’t look like a cheap $350 extractor off Ebay, they seem to be crafted well and everything lines up quite nicely.

The ports aren’t the best but who am I to complain for the price? The inlets are bigger then factory so if there would be any effect, it would be minimal.

First thing i did was to check if the header sealed onto the block, i was so into it that i forgot the gearbox was out of the car! i thought they didn’t fit, haha, But all good.

Heres some pictures of the factory headers for a comparison.

I took some snaps of how the engine bay now looks, wires everywhere, pieces missing etc.

Moving onto the flow stack, now i thought these piece would be a lot less sturdy than what it really is, It really is a hard durable OEM like plastic, it should finish off the intake nicely.

No, thats not a doughnut!

While the tailshaft were lying around, i thought it would be a good idea to take a picture of the spline.

The left is the manual tailshaft, and the right is the automatic, you can see the Auto tailshaft has a larger OD.

And to finish it off, a picture of the clutch mounted to the engine.

Tomorrow the upper intake manifold will be finished, the gearbox and diff should be mounted and, well probably more, so stick around.

Beatrush Number Plate Bracket

So in the 28th, I was woken by a pleasant surprise! It was the courier with my Beatrush number plate bracket.

I ordered this on the 22nd of January from “335laile” on Ebay Australia. They are Beatrush, all the orders come out of their own factory, they are not a vendor of Laile/Beatrush, these guys are the real deal.

http://myworld.ebay.com.au/335laile/

This number plate bracket is different in design to many others, normally the offset number plate brackets are mounted to the front tow hook, (or baby teeth as some like to call them). The Beatrush number plate bracket mounts on the reinforcement bar.

Due to this design, the Beatrush number plate bracket is a lot more stable then the tow hook attached counterparts.

They have really got this product right, it is over engineered for its purpose, and the quality is second to none.

Above is how the item was packaged, and below is what it looks like out of the box.

Beatrush quality isn’t cheap, this piece is advertised on Ebay for $70 + $40 shipping.

Some may say that this is too expensive for a simple number plate bracket, however having the cheaper variants and having the hassle of needing to tighten the single bolt every few days became very annoying. The positioning of the tow hook variants aren’t as nice as the beatrush bracket either, finally, you don’t need to keep the baby teeth on with this bracket either!

Wild Weekend!

Midday, Saturday the 9th … I set out on a journey to Jannali, to pick up that RSR exhaust that I won on Ebay.

40 degree heat and no aircon dont fare too well I must say, but it was all worth it when i layed my eyes on this beautiful work of japanese engineering.

Exchanged words with the PO, and went on my way back to the Liverpool region.

 My main concern was that the exhaust was designed for the stock rear bumper. Considering i have a Mazdaspeed A-spec rear lip, I was pretty sure the positioning would be off … and I wasn’t wrong, But hey, I wasn’t planning to use the same setup anyway.

Anyway, lets take a look at the condition of the RSR.

As you can see, the rear of the piping has been rusting for a while

No Biggie! we are scrapping the piping anyway.

The muffler is still extremely shinny, which is great!

I took off the stock exhaust and compared it to the RSR setup.

Another thing i noticed was that the silencer was welded on to the exhaust, I was worried that it may have rusted itself in somehow.

It was difficult to remove, but it has now come out thankfully.

Heres a picture of the badging on the pipework, I will be relocating this on to the top of the muffler.

And finally, a few pictures of the exhaust mounted.

I’m not happy with how the exhaust sits, but it doesn’t matter much as Adan and I will be designing a much less restrictive exhaust.