Stagea Progress (+ Patron Exclusive Behind the Scenes) (Patreon)

So this update is mostly to cover what happened in the latest video as well as the extra bits I've been able to finish in the couple days since then. There's also a couple behind the scenes updates on a past and future build and some changes to the plans here. Starting off with the Stagea, we finished shaping the rear fender and in shaping that I noticed that the 3D printed sideskirt pieces were deformed and just not good enough. They were the last remaining piece from my original batch of 3D printing and I though maybe I'd let them stay but nah, not worth it. So I printed off a new pair of caps, tore off the old ones and and glued them in place.

With the new sideskirt pieces, because they were printed in one part I'm actually going to try and skip the bodyfiller step and just sand them down a little bit and build up some heavy build primer straight on the plastic. Mostly just out of curiosity. But with those done for now I can start finishing up the details and getting the rear fender ready for primer. (I think these photos were taken before swapping the sideskirt piece over.)

To recap the main discovery from the latest episode. After about a week of printing, and another week of sanding. I discovered that this front fender is not symmetrical with the other side, and sits about 25mm higher as well as 10mm further out. This would mean that when sitting on flat ground, the drivers side fender would be flush, and this side would have a huge arch gap.That's obviously not acceptable and I thought about a lot of different methods on how best to tackle it and came back to 3D scanning. This time I scanned the completed drivers side mould (the one with the flares and bolt recesses) and then I'll be using this scan to 3D print a single use mould so that I can make an exact mirrored copy out of fiberglass that will let me shape these plugs in order to make my final fiberglass moulds.

This is a new scanner and software that we're testing out and so I didn't really film any of the learning process, but I will be covering remaking these fenders in a future episode. Since it's going to be another batch of printing though I'll probably focus on getting moulds made for the rear fender first and by the time that's done this fender will be ready.That more or less wraps up the Stagea so on to the cool behind the scenes stuff. There's a lot of reading but I put in some pretty pictures too to distract you. TLDRs at the bottom of each.

The first thing I want to talk about is actually some incredibly bad news haha.I generally have my next 3 or 4 builds already planned out. What made my next build different was this was the first time I was teaming up to work with a build on someone else. This was a collaboration I was really looking forward to as it was with some artists that I've followed for a long time and absolutely love their renders. 

We started brainstorming this idea around the middle of 2022 and after a lot of back and forth settling on what sort of build we were going to make, we then looked at which cars would be a perfect fit. I reached out to a lot of companies and actually managed to negotiate my first ever sponsor and they agreed to cover all the suspension for the build including arms, coils, linkages etc... I had also found an engine builder that would be willing to sell me the perfect engine swap for cheap and had contacts to a company that made performance parts for it. In short I spent most of my free time for the past 2 years planning this build, reached out to countless companies, and drove nearly a full day to buy the car which I will say was not cheap. This was the car we chose, an RA63 Toyota Celica.

Admittedly not the best looking car, but that was deliberate. When I pick a vehicle to build, I generally try to pick the less popular or ugly cars as anybody can buy an S13 Silvia or an Rx7 and make it look good. I like the challenge in taking an ugly car and making it look cool.The plan for this car was to make a road legal race car. We were planning a full build, engine, suspension, interior, and of course a completely custom body that would be replacing almost every single panel on the car.We went through a few stages of design and I was sent a few sketches and initial renderings of what they were cooking up, I can't show the full render but to give you an idea of the silhouette:

It was going to be awesome. Very similar to the Mx5 with a sort of Mad Max meets Cyberpunk style, but much more refined and at the same time, much more aggressive. But unfortunately this was as far as this project went. While going over the designs and discussing what we liked, what needed changing, what would be possible while keeping the car road legal etc... After almost 2 years of working together, we sadly realized that we weren't really aligned on the vision for this car and so they decided to pull the plug and carry on with our own ideas. I bought this car to do this specific project, with these specific artists, so once they pulled out there wasn't really any point in continuing it. So I had to apologize to my sponsors and everyone whos time went into this project already to let them know that it wouldn't be happening. 

I wont name the artists as I'm sure they had their reasons, but I do want to thank the potential sponsor of this build, Techno Toy Tuning. T3 are an amazing group of people and their support with small builders like myself is so deserving of respect and even though I wasn't able to work with them on this build I will do my best to work with them again in the future. TLDR:Spent 2 years planning a build with some artists I have followed for years, they ended up pulling the plug, leaving me without a build and losing me my first ever sponsor. Techno Toy Tuning are awesome and I love them.

So with that ugliness out of the way, I want to move into the second bit of behind the scenes goodness. This one on a slightly better note, even if it starts off terrible.

This is my S13 Silvia:

You can tell it's a Silvia because it's on a trailer."Tofu has a Silvia?" I hear one of you ask. Yes. This is my Silvia, I've had it for about 13 years, the past 4 of those years it has been sitting in a shop being "rebuilt".Once again I wont name names but in short about 6 years ago (probably even longer than that) I started this FJ20 engine swap, an almost unheard of engine that came originally in DR30 Skylines and S12 Silvias. It is considered by some to be the engine that lead to both the RB20 and SR20.I put in a lot of work on this car, redoing just about everything I could get my hands on.

The story is, after finally shoe horning the engine into place, welding up my own custom mounts and everything, we go to fire it up and it runs like absolute garbage. We take it to this engine builder who disassembles it and shows us the pistons are toast and we have to order replacements. (The engine was sold as a turn key package even though the pistons were completely destroyed, the ECU didn't work, and the clutch was so worn it wouldn't even engage) As is the rule of building cars, replacements means upgrades. And so instead of just getting another set of 40 yr old pistons, we found a set of pistons that would convert this engine from a 2.0L to a 2.2L and that wraps up the past 4 years.

This car has spent the past 4 years sitting at a shop being completely neglected by one of the most criminally inept engine builders in the southern hemisphere, and so a week ago I thought to myself "you know what, after 4 years I'm starting to think maybe he's not going to finish that engine build." and so we finally just went in took it back.

What makes this absolutely fantastic news, is that for the first time ever this car is in the hands of someone who should actually be working on engines. Even if it is just in his storage shed for now.

This is the same engine builder that I had lined up for the Celica project, so I was glad to be able to still work with him on something. He also builds a lot of race cars and I do regular fiberglass work for him as well. So I'm very happy that hopefully in the next few months, we'll have a running car back and I'll be able to do a little bit of work on it.

A very important thing to note about this Silvia.This car is my personal build, I've had it since I was 14 and it holds massive importance to me and when I work on it I want it to be fun, not for work. This will not be like my other YouTube or Patreon builds, there will likely be parts of this build that I don't film or film in a more relaxed manner. And most importantly, I'm not making this build to make anybody happy but me.I spoke a while ago about a Patreon exclusive build. This was going to be that build, but now that the Celica has been cancelled I'm not sure what I will be doing. I've debated a lot on whether I even share this build on social media. Silvia's have some of the most toxic fanbases full of people that scream if you build anything more than OEM+. I know for certain that building this car the way I want will get me a lot of hate from a very vocal minority, and that has been putting me off sharing it. But I think in the end I will make my car the way I want, and just have to delete a few comments and block a few more trolls. My plans for this car are honestly pretty simple, quite a lot of off the shelf parts, maybe only 1 or 2 custom pieces, but I just want to build the car that I've wanted for the past 13 years.And lastly as a bonus to everyone who has read through this absolute wall of text. This will be my final year in New Zealand. I've decided that the end of this year I will be moving off the family farm and looking at starting up a new workshop in Japan as this is something I've wanted to do my whole life and if I keep putting it off I may never get there.TLDR:My S13 Silvia that I've owned nearly half my life is finally getting it's engine back up and running and I'll be doing a little bit of work to it in the near future as a fun, personal, build.