How did we get here? (Patreon)

Thought I'd kick off with a quick little post explaining how this all started.

This is my '88 S13 Silvia, not quite my first car, but the first one I ever really worked on. I bought this car on June 5th, 2011 when I was about to turn 15. I knew from the very first day that this was going to be a huge moment in my life and I very quickly got started on the first few mods.Fast forward a few years, and a few terrible choices later while I matured and figured out what I really wanted to do with it, I set out to really make this car my own and so I pulled the engine out ready for a new transplant.

Shout out to my mate Lewis, been there with me since day 1.

The engine I decided to put in it was a relatively unknown little gem called the FJ20ET. It's a 2.0L 4 cyl turbocharged Nissan motor that came fitted in the DR30 Skylines and traces back to race pedigree where it was developed as a 2.4L race motor for the 240RS rally cars.At the time there were only about 3 S13's in history with this engine swap, but I wanted to make mine something nobody else had tried so I stumbled across a set of 2.2L pistons and began the process of boring the engine, making it the only FJ22ET swapped Silvia in the world.

Unfortunately things did not go to plan and due to some faulty pistons and a VERY bad tune, the engine ended up destroying itself and so for the past 3 years it's been at the shop being completely rebuilt, new pistons, even bigger bore taking it to just over 2.2L now, and a fresh ECU and tune.

But where is HERE?I'm originally from Auckland, New Zealand, but shortly after finishing University I moved back in with my parents to live on the family farm in rural Northland. After years of gentle manipulation I convinced my father that we needed to build a workshop, and so that's what we did.

Finally I had a place to work on the Silvia. No concrete floor at this stage but that would come later.

After a few years of mucking around with this place, we ended up with a pretty good setup and this was when I realized I really liked this sort of thing, and decided to start my own garage, called 'Tofu Garage', but that was taken, so then I called it 'Tofu Garage EXCITING'

I had a few teething issues with the name, and so after a few years I changed the name to 'Tofu Auto Works' and here we are.And if you were reading this whole thing going, "What is this Silvia? Why does he never post anything on it? Where are the Mx5's and the Stagea?" So like I mentioned, the Silvia rejected its heart transplant and had to go back to the shop for a "quick rebuild mate, couple months tops" - circa 2019 and so I decided to pick something up in the meantime to keep me busy. Enter what was at the time, an incredibly cheap beginners car that nobody would ever get mad at me for modifying. Hehehe

This was still years before I would even think about starting a YouTube or Instagram and so while posting regular updates on my build thread on DriftWorks which at the time was still a thriving community, I got started on what is now known as my Cyberpunk Mx5.

And that pretty much catches us all up to when I decided to make a start on YouTube back in 2020 and now here we are.I'll be doing a few brief recaps of the build threads as patron exclusive posts, but if you want to go back to the old days of the internet and checkout all of my build threads on Driftworks, follow these links:

Silviahttps://www.driftworks.com/forum/threads/backyard-build-fj-s13.267069Mx5https://www.driftworks.com/forum/threads/cyberpunk-mx-5-build.273250/Stageahttps://www.driftworks.com/forum/threads/widebody-gtr-stagea-build.286742/