Rebuilding a car is not expensive – doing it properly is expensive!

July 5th, 2010

In the past I have done a number of large jobs the the Suicidal saph, usually to simply keep it running and ensure I dont have to worry about it not stopping before it hit a movable object or something like that…. At the time I was doing relatively little modifications and spending a few hours working on the thing here and there and never really got the car running 100%. I got myself a reputation as a bodge artist over the forum due to the number of engines blown up etc etc etc and dont think I will ever live it down to be totally honest with you.

However since then I have spent a long time stripping the car down, cleaning off all of the underseal to provide a proper inspection of the state of the cars chassis, am getting the front wing replaced and the ful car repainted. It is getting a totally different Engine which will require a completely different under bonnet configuration, the gearbox is being cleaned up ready for going back in as is the prop shaft. The Rear differential is being upgraded to a better one for the purposes I have in mind, and the exhaust will need to be replaced.

In terms of the suspension, over the past 18 months I have been collecting new hubs, new bearings, new anti-roll bars and new bearings, add onto this the 4 pot calipers and bigger brakes, vented on the rear and the car is going to be pretty well specified when it is complete.

Sure I could have thrown another £20 engine under the bonnet and had it on the road running again very quickly – but that was getting monotonous and instead I decided to build the car I want rather than the car I had got together over time.

Driving Tests – The most Nerve wrecking test of my life in 2004

May 20th, 2010

I passed on the worst driving test I have ever taken!

I took 3 – the first one I missed a unmarked crossroads (I was in an area I didnt know), the second one – To this dayI have never driven better – but failed cost the examiner was still adjusting his mirror and blocked my view of the kerb and he thought I was to far away from it turning left.

The third one started really really well – The exhaust started to blow on the way to the exam, I thought great – got there and ran over a nail outside the test centre, so had to put the spare tyre on.. and it got worse! This was where the Suicidal Saph got her nickname from…

They ask you two questions at the start of the test, I will never forget them.

Q 1
Examiner: Please show me how you would check the power steering fluid level is at an acceptable level
Me: I cant
Examiner: Why Not?
Me: It doesnt have power steering
Examiner: Oh, How would you check if it had it.
Me – I explain.

Q 2
Examiner: Tell me how you would know if there was a
problem with your anti lock braking system
Me: It does not have ABS, but if it did have ABS it would be through a warning light on the dashboard.

At this point I was thinking today cant go anyworse….. I look like a cocky sod who is driving an old car with a blowing exhaust (Which he could have refused to take me on the test because of, but he was nice and let me take the test…) And then as if it couldnt get worse it did…..

I drove most of the test, a nevous wreck and making jokes about how some people would pay a fortune for an exhaust that sounded like this (Trying to likeable), at one point he asked me to come off the roundabout at the third exit, of which I went around the roundabout twice as I hadnt heard him due to the exhaust….

My two maneuvers went wrong – I touched the kerb both times, reverse around a corner and reverse park. Had to do an emergency stop (Unprompted) due to some kid running into the road and basically drove really badly. At the end of the test I am almost in peices and the guy asks me the question:

Examiner: Ok that is the examination over, how do you think you did?
Me (Now stuttering from nervous energy and disappointment): Awfully, I touched the kerb in both maneuvers, went around the roundabout twice and……. (Cut down to save my fingers)
Examiner: Yes that is true, Do you think today you were worth of passing the driving examination?
Me: Not a cat in hells chance.
Examiner: Today you have been successful in your driving examination
Me(disbelief): Are you having a joke??
Examiner: No, I dont joke about such matters, would you like to know why I passed you?
Me: Yes
Examiner: Whilst you may have made a number of mistakes on your test, you still drove with confidence, used your mirrors and did not pose a risk to other road users at any point. Now what is the first thing you are going to do once you leave the test centre?
Me: Buy a new exhaust!

With that he got out of the car, my mum got in the car and asked what happened – I told her somehow id passed – to this day I dont knwo why he passed me.

Day to day Life

May 20th, 2010

Well a lot of people dont quite realise how a website developer will earn a living, let alone an Internet Marketing expert. Well for a long time I have been thinking of writing another work related post, however at the same time this is a personal blog about my modding and writing about work is not what it is for. However Rules are there to be broken….

Firstly I will start by discussing what a website developer will do to earn his living… and then go into the similarities between a website developer and a Internet Marketing expert. A website developer is the person who you will go to to make a change to your website, and reasonable guys can be found in the UK from as little as £15+vat an hour on a freelance basis. The usually specialise in a single specific programming language, PHP, .Net, ASP and may have other tricks up there sleeve such as Javascript and Flash. A web developer will often throw funky technological terms at you such as Ajax, jQuery and web 2.0.

However on the other hand you will find a good Internet Marketer will rarely cost less than £35+vat an hour. Yes more than double the cost of your web developer, But why the difference? Every change a Internet Marketer makes is carefully thought out, considered with the overall goal of providing you with more traffic and better sales. If we drill down into Internet Marketing further to an SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) Consultant, you are looking at a highly trained individual who has a background as a web developer, however rather than just specialising in one of the server technologies (PHP / .net / ASP) he specialises in all 3. Your SEO Internet Market is looking to improve the effectiveness of the code, using a number of tools at his disposal including measuring averaged page load times to a high amount of accuracy and improving the codebase. All of these changes are under the hood of your website.

The other skill an SEO has, without even considering what he is doing is to put keyword densities into the things he writes, for example in the 508words of this blog post, I have used the following keywords specifically on the whole page (includes meta).

SEO: 9 occasions
Internet Marketing: 10 occasions
Web Developer: 6 occasions
Website Developer: 7 occasions

Now I have had to check this manually after posting for the occurances on the POST page (not the general overview) and update the post – as its late and I have both my Internet Marketing and Website Developer duties in the morning.

Add this to the fact I have also used these keywords as the post tags, and written this post at 1:16am in the morning after a long day, you can see just how easy it is for a SEO to outrank a web developer at Internet Marketing. However I do have the advantage of a number of SEO tools over the web developer – and I am giving some of them away free at Web Developers Toolkit

Just a Small Update

March 18th, 2010

Well, so far I havent posted for quite a while, mainy because I have been busy with the day job of being a SEO Consultant, as well as becoming a father, this left a little time left for getting some of my tools together and building anything. However I have a few tough projects I want to get finished this year.

The MythTV Build has been progressing well, however I need to crack out the welder, practise my welding and merge some metal together to make this case – that and get some good pictures with my camera.

Now onto the other projects, Since I last posted the Annoying Azura only went and passed a MOT, and has had someone else try to take possession without my consent (thieving cunts), the Saph is still in its stripped down state awaiting me finishing off its underside and moving forward and getting it painted.

Well thats it for now, will update again soon

Building A MythTV Recorder

August 31st, 2008

Many People Love finding excuses as to why they have built Setups based around MythTV, many of them due to its free open source license, wanting to experiment with building there own video play – a number of the reasons I have read about are as follows:

  • Want to use old PC Hardware as a Tivo
  • Want to have more hard disk space than a commercially available PVR
  • Family Love the MythTV Interface

Well my excuse is as follows – Its because I want to! The machine will have the following use:

  • Used to run mythtv backend
  • Used to run mythtv frontend
  • Local domain controller for home domain
  • web server for home network – including mythweb

The primary function of this machine is Mythtv/file storage, and it will be located underneath my television, so must be quiet, compact and in fitting with our existing Home entertainment equipment.

From here you will see the steps of the work I undertake to build this system. From taking the base case, stripping its contents and building up as a Via Epia Based PC.

Running Report for the Suicidal Sapphire

April 13th, 2008

The Suicidal Sapphire is most probably – one of the best/worst looked after sierra’s around. For one it has me to care for it/break it. Since purchasing it in 2004 almost every mechanical part has been replace/uprated. This car has to have one off the most often swapped engines within the fsoc, with the count currently at is at 2xCVH, 4xDOHC. Amongst this time i have replaced/uprated almost every component, with the only original mechanical components on there being the steering wheel, pedals, handbrake handle, and the steering shaft.

http://image.nh-hosting.co.uk/cars/sierra/GLX/J131PNB/pic00001.jpg

Engine Dead Again

August 20th, 2007

well its died and been replaced again – i will get around to putting some pictures up on here soon.

Diagnosis of the problem – car drove well – felt really good at above national speed limits, parked up idling fine, started it 4 days later (i know use a crap fiesta diesel to get to and from work) and it sounded like a bag of spanners being thrashed about a tin toolbox!

well it had snapped a conrod – as i found out it had lunched a con rod :(

So after the list of 4, and ford fair rapidly approaching i chose to shove the spare 8v twink in there i was going to use for something else (Coming Soon to a blog right here) so i took stock of what i needed

  • New Clutch Kit – This one had a release bearing that was sqeaking and basically just needed replacing – and i thought i may as well get a full kit for when i do the 2.3 anyway ;)
  • Inlet Manifold Gasket – I store engines without any manifolds to make them take less space up in the shed ;)
  • Exhaust Manifold Gasket
  • sump gasket
  • Standard service items – Oil Filter (have loads of oil spare – remember the leaking one from below ;) ) Spark plugs – coolant etc

Well surprisingly the company i went to did a brilliant job and got all of this in for me at 1 hours notice! – now all i needed was the sump off the old engine as the replacement was from a 4×4 i stripped – and the sumps are different. if i get the sump we would be up and running in 10 hours (ha!). so i stripped the engine bay down – lifted the engine out and o…k theres a 50p sized hole in the cylinder block – so No.3 conrod has snapped – nice effort – starts inspecting the rest of the engine – and find a fist sized hole in the other side of the block – on the joint with the sump, There goes my trip to ford fair :(

knowing i want this car on the road as quickly as possible i sort out another sump – from stoke – about a 30 mile detour from my journey home to hyde in the evening and so i dont particularly mind this, plus i get to have a car chat with phil again ;)

Ok so i gets home – and cleans ups the rather filthy sump and fits it to the spare engine – and it goes in on the saturday – now all its waiting on is me replacing one metal plate between the gearbox and the engine (got to drop the gearbox :( ) and hook up the starter motor and the car will run again :D

Watch this space – i now have the spare cylinder head i needed of the old engine – am just looking for a spare 2.3 bottom end ;)

And Another is dieing – what next?

June 6th, 2007

Suicidal Sapphire – Where do we go from here once again there appears to be a slight gremlin inside the engine on the SS, on a cold startup every morning we are getting a shedload of smoke when I give it some gas, so now im no longer a student, have some(read small) money what are my options for a straight bolt in engine conversion without too much chassis modification? Car: Ford Sierra Sapphire 1992 Engine: currently 1998cc So what exactly are my options – I have decided i want more traction and am going to make one small tunnel modification to allow me to fit the 4×4 system to the car – but what exacty are my engine options, and lets keep this as we like it – cheap and ford!

  • Option 1 – Fit another 8v
    to put it simply – no – had 3 in there, good solid engine till they die for no apparent reason
  • Option 2 – Fit a YB (Cosworth) 16v Turbo
    As much as i would love to do this – i would not want to ruin it with the 4×4 system, what a amazing engine, oh and costs are a rather large issue. Whilst this would give me a fun 200 bhp – for a minimum of a grand with that amazing kick of a turbo – i think im gonna have to drop this due to costs – and my preference to not ruining one of these great engines with a 4×4 system (sorry cossie 4b fans)
  • Option 3 – Fit a 2.9 V6 BOA (Cosworth)
    This has to be one of the cheapest ways to 200bhp – get a BOA in a old granada – rip the car to pieces for hte engine, exhaust and other bits – sell what you have left and end up paying around the 200 quid mark for 200 bhp This is the way I will most likely go down – as it is a nice considerable hike in horses, theres lots of resources out there (and soon to have another – watch this space).
  • Option 4 – fit a hybrid 2.3 8v in there
    Another great idea – take a scorpio 2.3 bottom end, mate it with the ever so easy to find in my workshop 2.0 8v cylinder head, hey presto a 2.3 8v hybrid. Pro’s can use most of what i have got Cons’s Expensive way to get the horses
  • Option 5 – Fit a Zetec
    No Thanks

So I will be going with option 3 – watch this space for further updates coming soon as i source all of the parts on the shopping list, including the actual shopping list Nate

My New Websites

May 2nd, 2007

As part of the constantly evolving life of Nathan Hall – I am in the process of creating a number of websites for different purposes, but dont worry i havent forgotten about this blog, there will soon be a topic on converting a sierra to rear discs, as well as adding in the Anti-lock Brake System onto the car.

Ok – Here are some of the other sites i am currently working on: Click Discount – Provider of Coupon and discount codes – This is a website which I have designed as a bit of a dabble into helping others out, whilst earning a small (read miniscule) amount of money. It works by me providing companies with a link to there online shops, when a visitor clicks on one of my link a cookie is stored on there computer and i get paid a percentage of any sale during a set period . In return i get access to discount codes, coupons and money off codes for the website and provide them to my visitors.

Cheap Telly

January 16th, 2007

Now I dont normally like making personal reccomendations, as if someone else has a bad experience they normally blame me, however recently my TV Brok (awww bless), so I had to order a new one. now we are all busy, and the convenience of buying online is always a plus for me, so I started searching through listings when I got a project dumped on my desk at work. Cheap Telly sent me the tv I wanted – at a very reasonable price (some could say unresistable) and It is now set up in my room looking good – I would definately recomend them, service A+, product A+

What more can I say other than go and buy one! ;)

and heres a nice easy banner to click on for you as well

Cheap Telly