162. Product Development and Manufacturing, 3D Scanning / Printing, Custom Parts w/ Connor Anderson

If you know how to work with the scan data and just understand kind of the design process that you need to work with and potentially allowing for tolerances here and there, like you can get amazing results. We did a strut tower brace for Andre's RX7, which is like 3D printed aluminum mounts on the top of the strut towers. And then I bonded like a carbon aero tube between them.

Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome back to the Minnoxide podcast. I'm your host, Harris, aka Minnoxide, man of many automotive aspirations, and I'm here with my very sweaty co-host, Dan, Mr. Gunnar Garage.

Working outside all day, so.

And today, this is one that's been a little bit of a long time coming. I think it's been a couple months since we had our episode with Andre from High Performance Academy. So I was like, it'd be kind of cool to get Connor Anderson on. So here you are, one of the instructors and also an engineer by trade, for my understanding. And yeah, go ahead and tell us a little bit about yourself, and we'll go from there.

Yeah, cool. Yeah, my name's Connor. Grew up in a little town in the North Island, west coast of New Zealand. And yeah, a lot of surfing and snowboarding and a bit of mountain biking and stuff growing up, but always kind of had a little bit of an interest in cars. Went to university up in Auckland for mechanical engineering. And during that time, that kind of interest in cars blossomed into somewhat of an unhealthy obsession, I guess, is probably how my wife would put it. And then, yeah, from there, I worked in product development for eight to ten years, I guess, kind of on the sidelines in some way of the automotive industry, but always wanted to really kind of, my interest was in motorsport or, you know, street cars and stuff like, but performance cars. Trying to break into that for quite a long time, but went through a few different jobs and kind of around all over the place. And then eventually ended up, you know, working for High Performance Academy as a technical tutor. So my current position, a lot of it is developing or making our course material, which is kind of the main stuff we do. So I'll write a course and then present it and then help kind of produce it in some ways as well. But we have a big team of talented videographers and stuff for that too. And we do some stuff with webinars for our members and obviously there's some YouTube content and stuff as well. Sure. Interviews at CMO or World Time Attack and things like that I've got involved with in the last few years as well, which has been probably the biggest learning curve for me, honestly, interviewing people live. But yeah, so that's kind of my position and where I'm at now, but I'm sure we can dive into it a little bit deeper of maybe the process to get there. Sure.

Well, one of my favorite things, so this is where I kind of discovered you before even getting to your courses on HPA, was seeing your interviews, especially at SEMA and just various events. So obviously you've been doing this for some time now. Do you have like a favorite side of the motor world? Like, do you like the Time Attack stuff? Do you like, like, what are your favorite things to, I guess, interview for?

Yeah, my favorite stuff to interview for would probably be things that I'm kind of more knowledgeable about because it definitely helps me kind of maybe guide the conversation a bit. I find it difficult, for example, if I'm interviewing someone at SEMA, I forget the guy's name, but he had done a really cool old Chevy truck or something with like an electric conversion, and I just knew nothing about anything of it. So the whole time, I was like just trying to figure out where we were at with what he was discussing, and that can obviously be difficult. But my passions in automotive would probably be, time attack was definitely something I'd been interested in for ages following the Narita Dog Fight blogs. I don't know if you guys are familiar with that, but that's a pretty cool, he posts some pretty cool stuff. Shawn Lucas, I think it is. Drifting, I was interested in growing up and kind of followed a lot of formula drift and the more kind of grassroot style stuff too. But since I've kind of more been in the performance automotive industry, I still like drifting, but I just haven't been as kind of interested in it, I guess. And then for me, old Japanese cars is kind of my soft spot. But I think I have a pretty broad kind of range of tastes, European stuff, Volvos and stuff as well. A bit of everything to be honest, but growing up in New Zealand, we weren't exposed to many kind of American cars, they're just not very accessible for us. So that's kind of a big patch in my knowledge, I guess.

While you're growing up and you're doing this stuff, and you're dabbling in automotive stuff, were you ever shooting any aspirations like, I want to make YouTube videos, how odd of left field is the interview stuff and being on camera now, was that kind of a shock to your system?

Completely. Anyone who knows me personally, I'm just not that guy at all. If you're in a high school class and having to do, I don't know if you guys did something similar over there, but like speeches or presentations or anything, it was for me, it was the worst part of it. It's like maths and science and stuff, and art and design was always great. That's fine. But yeah, anything on kind of presenting live or anything like that, it was just the worst. So I think it was probably about two months into my employment at HPA, Ben and Andre kind of said to me, hey, do you want to come over to SEMA with us and try your hand at interviewing people? And I was kind of like, well, for us to come to SEMA from New Zealand is a bit of a dream trip. So it was like, yeah, I've watched the content from SEMA for years. I'd love to come over and experience that. But the idea of actually interviewing people was just terrifying. And it still is to me to some extent, I find if I go to an event, the first few, I'm pretty nervous and it's a bit rocky, but then you kind of get into it and it's kind of easier from there. But I think I've learned a lot as well. I remember the first one I did at SEMA. I forget the guy's name, but I'm pretty short anyway, like five foot eight. And this guy must have been like six foot five or way more. So I was just kind of looking up at him with the microphone. And it was on this really cool car, a Hakosuka with like a Twin Cam L-Series in it. We didn't end up using any of the content from it because I was just a mess the whole time. I just was so nervous. I pretty much just blacked out for the whole interview, I think. And yeah, but then from there, you know, after a few more, you kind of start to get used to it. And luckily, Andre's been doing it for 10 plus years and he's really naturally good and kind of figured out this approach that works, a kind of a formula. And I, for the last 10 years, so watched so much of his content, I was pretty familiar with how he did things. And then for me, it was kind of just like, well, take that and then just maybe change it a little bit for my style or where my knowledge areas are, and then just apply that. And that obviously kind of works for the content we do, but it's always a developing thing as well. We're trying to kind of figure out how to do it better and stuff. So I don't get heaps of practice at it. Like I went to SEMA once about three years ago, been to World Time Attack two or three times. So sometimes there'll be a year in between going to these events and doing these interviews. So at the start, it's a little bit like, all right, I'll figure out how to do this again, I guess, and kind of just break the nerves and get into it.

So where does this all begin for you then, right? When did you start calling yourself a car enthusiast? Were you dabbling in cars when you were a bit younger? When did you start wrenching on cars yourself?

Yeah, a little bit in the teenage years. Growing up, like I said, it was more like surfing and snowboarding were kind of the big sports in our family. But my dad was always into cars and interested in a little bit of stuff with like air called Volkswagen's and stuff. We had a combi that was pretty cool, but nothing really like high performance or fast in any way. Definitely not fast with a combi. And there's some Beatles and stuff came later. But we're always interested in it. And I have an older brother, he's two years older than me. So we're pretty close in age and kind of good friends and have similar interests. And as with a lot of people, I think growing up with an older brother, they kind of can be influenced by them a lot. So my brother was getting into cars, and then you watch what he brings home and is driving and stuff. And it's like, oh, that's cool. And in New Zealand, we have a lot of access to like Japanese cars, very similar stuff to what like the Japanese market would be, because we had a lot of stuff imported. So there's a lot of kind of turbo subarus and stuff floating around that we'd use, because we're going up the mountain and stuff a lot in the snow. They were pretty handy, but we didn't really modify them too much. And to be honest, a little bit in my friend group at school and stuff, with a lot of surfers and things like that, it was kind of like almost frowned upon to be into cars a little bit, like the term in New Zealand and Australia would be like a bogan would. And in the kind of friend group I was in, it was like, oh, that's a negative thing, because all the cars driving around and that the car guys were into were really just like skylines and silvias, but maybe not as everyone knows them now back in the early 2000s with mismatch panels and stuff. And before that was really anything cool, it was just like, ah, that's, yeah, maybe not the best thing. But then, yeah, after that, so I kind of learned a bit from dad and my brother about, you know, doing oil changes and just the basic stuff, and there was an interest there. But then when I went to university and kind of was away from that high school friend group, I kind of realized, oh no, like, I'm interested in this. And I think there's kind of avenues of it that aren't so kind of cringe or bad taste, and there's a lot of guys doing awesome stuff in it. And there's some, while I was studying to be a mechanical engineer, I kind of was figuring out the technical side of the car stuff as well at the same time. And yeah, just in and out, wasting hours on YouTube watching car content and learning more there, while kind of going through my engineering degree and picking up some of the technical side of things there. And we had a few papers over that four-year course of university that were not just specifically on car stuff, but there was definitely some automotive stuff involved. And I naturally kind of gravitated towards that more. But I didn't think even at that point that it was really going to be a career for me. The automotive industry, and especially motorsport in New Zealand, is extremely limited. So for me, honestly, engineering was like, I'm good at maths and science, or good enough, I can go and do engineering. That'll probably get me a decent paying job, and then I can use the money for that to go on snowboarding trips. That's really where my thought was at there. And then it was like, while doing engineering, finding this kind of passion and love for cars, and it kind of, yeah, all just blossomed from there, I guess. And then it was kind of towards the end of it, started thinking, oh, this would be a cool thing to get a career in, if I can get there eventually, but it still really didn't seem possible. We had a Formula SAE team at the university that some guys I knew were in. And that's probably, I wasn't part of the team, and that's one of my biggest kind of regrets with uni, because looking back now, it's such a great kind of opportunity. But I saw their attention and time that they were spending on it, and maybe their lack of attention and time they're spending on their just papers and how their grades were kind of getting affected by that. And I was kind of like, well, I just want to get through this engineering degree so I can go and do more snowboarding. So going and doing FSAE maybe wasn't my priority, but looking back, it's like that was so much more important, that potential experience I could have learned there. But that's in the past now and it is what it is. But during the same kind of timeframe, we do our semesters at university and then we had to do work experience I guess over the summer holidays and stuff.

Okay.

And that would kind of, that had to be signed off as part of the degree as well. So I think it was about 800 hours and 400 of it would have been, was supposed to be practical, and then they called the other side professional. So you were supposed to really do it the first two years, go into a practical job, which could have been anything technical, trade related in any way, just hands on work. And then the next two, the next kind of following years, you do something professional where you are probably a bit more based in the office and doing a little bit higher level work, but very much at the university student level anyway. And I kind of did it the other way around. The first year, the local area I live in has a lot of oil and gas or petrochemical industry. I worked for a company doing that, and it was terrible. And I was straight away like, well, this is what I don't want to do. I know that. So the next year, I went just to a mechanic and said, hey, I'm interested in cars. I'm doing this degree. I need to get this work experience. And I worked for him for two summers. And yeah, just as kind of like doing manual labor, I guess, and just helping out with the dirty jobs and stuff. But after a while, I kind of got more experience and useful. You know, I took it from doing the oil changes and maybe like changing a suspension bushing more to like, now we're pulling engines and stripping engines down. I never trusted with putting one back together at that point. But yeah, just a little bit more kind of hands on. And I learned a lot, picked up a lot of like practical skills with it. Then I'm still not a real great on the tools. I'm a lot better behind a laptop than I am hands on, but I can kind of get myself into trouble and do enough to get by. But yeah, and at that same workshop, he did a lot of off-road work and like a bit of off-road racing stuff or more like mud bashing stuff in New Zealand. And then he also had a drift car and did a little bit of like local hill climb stuff as well. So I got a little bit of exposure to that at the same time, and that just sparked the interest more. And then I was kind of getting towards the end of the engineering degree, started getting project cars for myself and just tinkering a little bit more and stuff. Nothing too serious.

Yeah, what kind of cars were you getting at this point to tinker with?

Probably the main one I got was I got a 260Z 2 Plus 2 before the prices kind of went crazy. And being the 2 Plus 2, it was a bit cheaper as well. But it had like the L28 and a big R200 diff, and I put some coilovers in it, but it was super rusty. And I remember I got a little bit of bodywork done, and the guy basically said to me, he's like, hey, you should just sell this thing and get another one. That's a bit better. And yeah, I did, which was a good move, looking back. And then, yeah, years later, I ended up getting a 240Z, which was a lot tidier, but still not, definitely not mint, and it's still not mint. One day it will be, but it's one of those kind of long-term projects. Few other like Volvos and just weird stuff in between, but those are kind of the main ones that I'm interested in. But yeah, and that's kind of about the end of university, I guess. From there, I kind of moved in to product development, not in the automotive industry. And yeah, just went into the professional world and got humbled really quick, I guess. As a university student, it's pretty easy to come out and be like, oh yeah, I know how to do all of this. This is good. I'm great. And then you come in to the real world and you're like, oh wow, a lot of that stuff doesn't apply, or you've just got to learn how to apply it. Yeah.

So product development, anything fun at all, or what are you building?

Yeah, a little bit. To be honest, at the start, because I went to university in Auckland, and my wife at the time was actually in Sydney doing performing arts stuff, I didn't want to go from Auckland to Sydney. I'm just not a big fan of cities. So I just went to Dunedin, which is a little South Island kind of town in New Zealand. I did a lot of surfing and worked for a company called Fisher and Piker, which you guys might know, they make like dishwashers and washing machines and all sorts of stuff like that. They're a pretty big New Zealand company. But I wasn't interested in the product at all, but it was interesting to work for a company that did mass production of something and work in a team of engineers developing the product. And yeah, I learnt a lot in terms of working in a team environment like that, but also things like quality control. And I actually went to the factory in Thailand and did some stuff over there. So I kind of got to see it all happening. And at the time, I kind of... It was just my job, but I wasn't overly interested in it. But some of the stuff that I learnt there in terms of product development and quality control has actually been valuable knowledge that we've been kind of applying to some, a bit of a little side projects product developmental parts that I've been working on with my brother through our kind of little business called Ando Engineering. So even though at the time, it didn't seem like that interesting or useful for a career in motorsport, kind of rounding back it has been quite good. But we can maybe touch on that a little bit later on. And then, like I said, my wife or girlfriend at the time was in Australia, and there was definitely no performing arts work for her in Dunedin and New Zealand. So I made the move over to Aussie, and we lived there for a few years. I worked kind of in the automotive industry for a company called Yakima, who is actually an American brand. Okay. Yeah, they make like roof racks and bike carriers. Yeah. Yeah, so they had kind of, the company that owns them had bought a company in New Zealand called, who made roof racks and stuff, and it had all kind of, after the big earthquake that happened in Christchurch, God, like 10 years ago now, it had moved to Australia, to the offices over there. So I worked for them, and that was kind of interesting, because there was a few, not concept cars, but early release cars that would come in for us to like design fitting kits for the roof racks and so on, and that'd be in that camo that new cars get wrapped in, so you can't really see. And it was kind of like, oh, I feel like a little bit, I'm in the automotive industry now, but yeah, it was kind of still wasn't really it, I guess. And I again, from that job, I went to China to their factory, and this whole time I'm using CAD and 3D printers a little bit at that point. And then the next job, I got kind of introduced to 3D scanners as well. So I was still learning valuable skills that I'd be able to apply later on, but at the time it just, it wasn't really like performance automotive or anything. And I was going around to other local businesses in Australia. Now they have a bigger market and industry for motorsport stuff. So I was going around talking to people, kind of like looking for potential other jobs in that industry. But I was kind of falling on to that same trap that I know a lot of younger people fall into, where it's like the job listings or if you're talking to them, they're interested if you have five, three or five years of experience in the motorsport industry. But if you don't have that, then it's really hard to break through. It's like, well, I can't get that experience because no one will give me a job. Right. So I was starting to kind of find that be a bit of a battle. And I ended up moving from that job.

Real quick, I have a quick question for you. So how old are you then?

Now I'm 32. Okay, so you're not much older than me.

Okay.

Yeah, at that time I was, maybe 25, something like that. Yeah. Sure. Yeah, I moved from that job into another one, designing tow bars. So again, like kind of in the automotive industry, and it kind of seemed like to a lot of my friends, I was talking to us, are you designing tow bars? Like, that's not very interesting, but it was actually really good, because I'd go out every week, I'd scan a new car, like the new Ford Ranger or something, I had a 3D scanner, I'd scan it and then I'd bring it back and put it in my CAD software and design this tow bar, and then design a jig for it all to be made and stuff. And same thing at the time, it was kind of like, you know, it's not race cars, but I'm still learning all the stuff that designing weldments or like subframe structures later on and designing jigs for them that it would all be kind of useful. I just didn't really know it at the time, I guess. But yeah, and at the same time, I think, well, coming towards the end of that is when COVID happened. And my wife at the time was a, she was teaching Pilates. So Pilates studios all kind of shut down. And we were kind of not enjoying living in Australia too much. So we were thinking, well, from here, maybe we'll move to Japan, maybe we'll move back to New Zealand and just try something else. But yeah, COVID happened and then her job was kind of, yeah, the Pilates studio shut down. And so she got offered a job back home in New Zealand. So we're like, okay, well, we'll do that. We'll move back to New Zealand. So moved home to the little hometown that we're from, and there's obviously not really any motor sport or anything around there. The closest racetrack is three hours away, and everything's kind of club level anyway. But yeah, so I started, at that point, I was kind of self-employed, just running a little business where I was essentially just contracting to a few kind of local businesses, and actually Fisher and Pike, who I talked about before, just doing some kind of remote design work and stuff for them.

Okay.

A couple of little jobs. And at the same time, I also started importing some cars from Japan. It's something I'd kind of played around with earlier on when I was young. My dad did a little bit. But yeah, nothing cool. Well, cool, but nothing fast. Just mostly like K cars and stuff, like little Suzuki Carries and stuff or local farmers, which are a lot of fun and really cool. But yeah, I definitely couldn't afford bringing in Skylines or Silvia's or NSX's or anything like that from Japan. It was just like, yeah, cheap cars. But I really battled with the like being a, I don't even want to say it, but I was in some ways like a car salesman, and it just wasn't me at all. I was so worried every time I sold a car about, that they'd be getting, you know, a good experience with it or whatever, and it wasn't going to come back. And that's probably not the approach you want to take for a car salesman. You've just got to be like, yeah, cool, sell that one, move on to the next one. And it was just like, yeah, kind of found it unenjoyable. And at the same time, we were getting a lot of laws in New Zealand coming in around import charges and stuff for emissions. And that took a lot of the profits out of it, the very little that I could get anyway. So it was like, oh, this isn't really worth the time anymore.

I was going to ask if how much of a pain that is importing into New Zealand, because here it's, there's a lot of red tape here as well.

Yeah, it's changing quickly over there, right, as well, a lot of that stuff.

So yeah, it's a little, what's the word I'm looking for? Volatile.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it would definitely be a scary industry to be involved with at the moment over there. But for a long time in New Zealand, it was relatively easy to bring cars in from Japan. We had a lot of the same cars here, so and it's all right hand drive here anyway, so it's not really any issues there. There's a rule for, I know you guys have the 25 year rule there. For us, it's 20 years, but we can bring in newer cars some 20 years old. They just have to comply with a few more things, but if they're over 20 years old, there was pretty much no rules. That's where like all those K cars that came in, after a certain, if they were younger than 20 years old, I think that to comply with some frontal impact standard stuff, which obviously for a little Suzuki Carry, there's no frontal impact kind of anything. Like if you get in a crash, it's not going to be good. But if they're older than 20 years, fine, no worries, which doesn't make any sense really, but that's fine. So yeah, I was kind of mostly bringing in older than 20 year old cars, but then they brought in the emissions charge, which could have been, you know, if we talk about if you're bringing in, I don't know, a Supra with a 2JZ, for example, it would be like four to five thousand New Zealand dollars, which may be two and a half grand US extra on top of what you're already paying. So if you're only making a few thousand dollars on a car, then your profits just gone straight away. So yeah, over COVID, the prices of everything over here just went ridiculous. So it was really weird, and it's kind of starting to correct itself now a little bit, but it's still, everyone who thinks that the, you know, the days of buying cars really cheap from Japan and getting this really cool stuff for a lot cheaper and importing it, those days are kind of over. And I still get a lot of friends asking me, oh, I'm really keen to get an RX-7. Like, how much does that cost out of Japan? And it's like, just go find a local one that you can check out. It's not worth the risk and the, it's not gonna be really cheap.

Yeah, it's not as cheap as it was earlier. I remember looking at importing a RX-7 like four or five years ago. Like it was dirt cheap compared to what it is now. It's, yeah, I think you can get like a right-hand drive one for, I think it was like 20,000 USD. Something, it was like a good one. Do you guys do smog or emissions testing over there, by the way, for vehicles on the, like, not new vehicles, but like, you know, every year or something like that? Okay, you guys want to share with us?

So no smog or emissions testing really, but we have like what we call a war in a fitness, and that's a yearly thing for cars over the year 2000, or cars 40 years old now is a new rule that's come in, or it's every six months for anything in between that. So I've got my daily drivers, a little EK Civic, I think it's a 97. So every six months, I have to go to an inspection center kind of place or a mechanic, and they will do a war in a fitness check on that, which is basically like, are the brake pads all good? Suspension bushings, ball joints in their play, are the tires good? Yeah, check the seat belts and the lights, and just basic stuff like that.

Oh, we need that desperately.

Yeah, I was like, if you saw the stuff we have run around or roads here sometimes, it definitely needs an inspection.

Yeah, the few trips I've done to the states, I've been surprised with what you guys can get away with. So yeah, at times it's annoying, but having lived in Queensland, Australia where they don't really have that, unless you're transferring registration between ownership or different states in Australia, I saw so many cars driving around, like company vehicles as well with like bald tires and stuff, or the radio station my partner worked for had some jeeps, and I jumped in once to drive, and on the brakes it was just like shuddering, and I was just like, this is a company vehicle.

That's a jeep feature, standard.

But yeah, I think it's a good thing, as annoying as it is.

Can you get cars back and forth between Australia and New Zealand? Pretty easy, though. Is that just like a quick deal, or is there still some problems?

No, it's really the same as going between any country.

Oh, really?

Okay. If you import something to New Zealand, then you need to have a ownership certificate thing. I can't really remember how it all works. It's been a little while. But yeah, and it's going on a boat regardless. It's a three-hour flight from here to Aussie. But yeah, it's going to need to be shipped over there, and then the import things in either direction. It's just the same as if it was going to the States, really, or just be a little bit cheaper for the shipping. Sure.

Okay. So I do want to touch on real quick, obviously, with the 3D scanning and product development and all that stuff. So before we get into that, you did mention a trip to China earlier. Is there something special about how they operate when it comes to production? I've always heard that they just have that stuff down to a science over there.

So it really would depend on what factory you went to, what area you were in. My experience in China was, the factory we went to was okay, it was fine, but it wasn't anything that I was blown away by. But when I went to Thailand for Fisher & Paykel, like years before that, I was like, oh wow, this is... Like we couldn't do this good in New Zealand, because there was a whole lot of drama when Fisher & Paykel eventually shut down the rest of their manufacturing in New Zealand and moved it over to Thailand. And I completely understand it from the jobs and stuff leaving, and that's obviously terrible. But in terms of the quality of the product that they can make there, it's like the factory there was amazing, and the people were doing an amazing job, and how it was all set up to run, and everything was great. And I'm sure certain places in China and so on would have great setups as well. But it really just depends who you're working with and where they are. And it depends a lot as well on what you're doing and expecting from them and how you're communicating with them and going through your own quality assurance processes and stuff, because they're more than capable of doing it right. But if you're not asking for it, they're not going to spend the extra time and money on their side to make it happen.

So are you doing anything currently on your side projects? Are you producing anything or developing anything?

Yeah, yeah. So like I mentioned, my brother and I are now kind of doing a little side project with a company we're calling Ando Engineering. We've got a little website set up and stuff for it, but he has a project car. It's a Volvo 240 wagon. Not again in any form like a performance car from the factory, but they're kind of cool and charming in their own way. And good daily drivers as well and surf wagons and stuff for our boards. We always kind of liked station wagons growing up. But so they come with a red block engine in it. It's just like a 2.3 or 2.4 four cylinder or two litre in some cases. And there is a later generation of that same engine that had a 16 valve head rather than the eight valve single cam that came on most of them, that you can swap on to like the old turbo engine. The newer engine bottom end is kind of different in it. It's just not as, doesn't work as good. But you can swap that head on to the old turbo bottom end. They're super strong. I think that's like forged crank and rods and stuff on the factory. But yeah, and relatively big displacement four cylinder compared to, you know, most stuff in New Zealand. That's 1.6 or 1.8 or maybe 2 litre.

You said that one was 2.3, correct?

2.3 or 2.4, yeah. It's kind of in that weird in between spot there, I think. But in the right hand drive car, the engine slants over. So the header as it comes out has to pass right by the steering column and the brake booster and everything there. So there's not really much space for the turbo manifold and turbo placement. So there wasn't really, there's a few products on the market, but nothing that we were really kind of like, oh yeah, that'll work. That seems like the best way to go or really just happy with it. So we kind of like got to the point where we just decided to make our own product there. And it was basically, I did a 3D scan of the engine for him, sent it up to him and he actually learned how to do CAD or 3D modeling through the HPA courses, which is kind of like a roundabout way. So that's, but yeah, with a little bit of my help kind of over the shoulder because he was basically modeling this tubular exhaust manifold, which isn't the easiest 3D modeling kind of first project that you do. Most people just do like a little bracket or a sheet metal part or something very basic and like a tubular exhaust manifold and working with 3D scans and stuff is not entry level stuff, I would say. So it helped him out a little bit, but he did a lot of it himself and, you know, had this 3D scan of the engine and the engine bay and then the turbo position. And then it's kind of joined the dots from there and work in the constraints that you have and designed this tubular exhaust manifold. And then it was kind of like, well, how are we going to get it made? Are we just going to make one of them? At that point, to be honest, if you're going to kind of, you could fabricate one or you could 3D printing metal is becoming surprisingly accessible now, and maybe be a couple of thousand dollars to 3D print one and stainless from like a Chinese 3D printer. So we're kind of thinking about that. And he was more on the page of like, I think there's a market for these. We've done a really good job here. I think this is going to work really well. Yeah, we and I think people would be interested in if we made a product. So it was kind of like, OK, well, the other alternative is to invest some money in a tool for die casting and out of China because it's not really affordable to do anything like that in New Zealand. So we went to a manufacturer and kind of made communication with what we want to do and made, you know, we had our 3D model and made some technical drawings and put tolerances on them and all the stuff that I had kind of learnt from my earlier days. And my brother invested the money to get the tool made. And then now we're kind of at the point where we've had, we got samples made. I fit them to the car. He actually just got the car running and did some street tuning with it recently. And we've got all the first batch of off tool parts made. And at the same time, we kind of got carried away, I guess, and did an aluminium intake manifold and plenum and like a little CNC billet machined coil bracket to adapt R35 coils as well. So because it's a distributor engine, so kind of bringing it into the modern era with coil on plug, with smart coils, and his one has a Haltech R3, Nexus R3 running it, that he's just wired it all in and tuning it himself as well.

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So yeah, it's been quite a cool project, and I think if those products aren't live on the website now, they will be very soon. But there's a whole lot of information. If anyone's more interested in that on the kind of like website, we wrote a bit of some blog posts on the material selection and the design process there as well. So it's been a really cool project and kind of a way for, I mean, him to obviously get this awesome part and then produce something that would be available to people trying to do similar projects. But a cool way to put my past experience to work a little bit as well, and then him learn a lot of new skills. And he learned as well wiring and tuning through the HPA courses.

So that's really funny how that all worked out full circle.

A roundabout way that it all worked out really good. And yeah, I think that's the second or third, maybe fourth car now that he's been tuning. And it's pretty awesome to be able to do all that yourself. And yeah, it's pretty rewarding.

The main question comes to me here is, so what's special about this platform? Is this like, is this a popular platform over there? Is there power to be made? Is this going to just be a street car or?

Just definitely, yeah. Answer the first question. It's probably not a popular platform in New Zealand. Probably more so over in the States, obviously Scandinavia with the Volvo stuff. Yeah, it's not super popular or well known, but it is a really cool engine. It's not the best four-cylinder, it's not gonna compete with a turbo K-series or anything for efficiency, but it's cool and it works in that car. And I mean, it'll, people in Scandinavia with that kind of setup have been making, yeah, big numbers, I'd say, anything from four or 500 up to like a thousand on real serious stuff. So for an old engine, it's pretty good. This is a street cruiser. That's a bit of fun. The car's really tidy, you know, silver Volvo wagon that just looks like a bit of a sleeper. And now it makes cool noises and hasn't been on the dyno yet because my brother is like a marine engineer, chief engineer working on ships. So he works month on month off. So when he's home between juggling kids and all that stuff, he spends his nights or little bits of times during the kids' nap time in the garage working on it. And yeah, I think it'll probably, depending on the boost that he wants to run, just sit around 400 horsepower or so, which would be plenty of fun in a car like that. On New Zealand roads, which I should probably add, nothing over 500 horsepower really works that good here unless you're on the highways. Most of our roads are windy mountain roads, sort of potholes and stuff everywhere, so.

Sounds like Detroit. When you... So are you with, at this time that you guys are scanning and developing this stuff, are you with HPA at this time too? Are you able to use... Did you guys invest in 3D scanning equipment? Are we able to do that through HPA?

That was at HPA, just at work. He... My brother lives in the North Island. He packaged up a cylinder head and sent it down to me. I scanned it all and then just share the file with him and went from there. So we were using the scanner that we have at HPA, but since then, we've kind of been doing a lot more work with 3D scanning and stuff at HPA, and it would be just as possible and quite accessible to, for, you know, to buy a personal 3D scanner now, because they come down in price so much and just do that work at home by yourself. It's really not any specialist equipment. The scanner, the main scanner we have in our workshop at HPA is pretty nice. It's a P03, and it's, I think they're sitting at about $6,500 at the moment. So it's like a pro-level scanner. It's definitely not the most expensive scanner you can get, but it's a fair investment. But now with like the recent stuff we've been testing through HPA, like the Iron Star Vega I had recently, and some other Iron Star stuff and RevoPoint stuff, those scanners that are under $2,000 are like amazing, or just super helpful for like any personal grassroots kind of level projects. And if you know how to work with the scan data, and just understand kind of the design process that you need to work with and potentially allowing for tolerances here and there, like you can get amazing results. Yeah, a lot of the guys with these cheaper scanners that have been coming into HPA take them home and scan something on their project car at home, or their jet boat in some cases, and designing parts that work great with just entry-level scanners now. So yeah, it's pretty cool to see where it's all going.

Yeah, that's the perks of working at certain places, right? I know my dad, he used to be the manager of a feed mill, and we would go and use the shop equipment all the time, at Welder and Cutting Torch and all that stuff. So it's pretty convenient.

Yeah, definitely. I mean, probably the big perk of working with in terms of the tools we have at HPA is we've got like a dino, which most workplaces probably won't have a dino. And we've also got Andre, who will not tune customers' cars or people who rock up on the street and be like, hey, Andre, can you tune my whatever? But he helps us out a little bit with our personal project cars and stuff. So that's pretty awesome to be able to do all of that at work. And we've got a good workshop there with a lot of tools and stuff.

So, well, it's a good way to get content right and make content without going out and buying a bunch of cars and doing it that way. So I think that all works out for everybody differently.

On the back to like the production side of things, one of the things you mentioned earlier was kind of like material selection. So given your background, and this is something that we've even talked to people in Detroit about is material selection is so key when it comes to production. Did actually producing the product, did it have an influence on what you chose for materials or not as much? You just chose the material and just hoped it worked out?

No, no, definitely not. I won't butcher this too much because I know Tyler did like a massive blog post on our website thing about the material selection process. And it's not something that I got into too much of him, but there's obviously all different grades and types of stainless. And some of them are great for working with heat and exhaust manifolds and the likes of that. I can't remember. My laptop's there. I won't Google it. We can maybe show it or something, but I can't remember exactly what the material he went with was. But yeah, that comes into play in it. It's also something that with all the design projects that I do, the material and the manufacturing process that you're going to use need to be considered as early as possible, because that's going to guide your whole design process. And if you don't think of that, and you can design or model whatever you want in CAD, you can make something super elaborate. But at the end, if you get to a point where you're like, cool, well, I've designed it, now I want to make it, and there's no possible way you can make it, then it's just a waste of time. Like, cool, you've made a pretty looking picture on your computer, but what are you going to do with it? So design for manufacturing or DFM is like something in the HBA courses that I've developed for this CAD stuff. It's like an idea that I really try to drive home. It's like, consider the limitations, but also the advantages and the flexibility in the manufacturing process you're going to use. Consider what you have access to local to you, what you're going to be able to afford. And then the materials play into all of that stuff as well. Like, there's no point designing something to be, you know, that can only be made from machining aluminium or something if you need it to do a certain job, that it's going to need to be steel or titanium. It's just like, there's a lot of trade-offs and things that you've got to kind of think about. And ways that additive manufacturing and 3D printing, like becoming more accessible now is opening the door up to manufacturing certain designs with more exotic materials as well, that I think a lot of people maybe don't realize how accessible it's getting. And we've got a 3D printing course for HPA coming out, like in the next two weeks, hopefully. And it touches on, you know, normal 3D printing stuff with plastics and so on, but also some different materials and how people can use that on their project cars. And it doesn't need to be in canal or anything and be like crazy expensive and be $15,000 for a part. Like, you'd be surprised what you can get done for a couple of hundred dollars now. Yeah, and it's really opening the door to just crazy designs and different things you can do as well, if the additive stuff. So in terms of what I'm excited about, like in the automotive space at the moment, and design and making parts, a lot of stuff around that is really cool. The additive side of things is opening the door to some awesome stuff.

Well, one of my favorite channels to watch, and this is actually, I think it was in Mark, who was telling me about this, was he really got me into Superfast Matt. Like he does so much with 3D printing. So a little bit of context, Stan. So he's making this streamliner, right? And basically he'll 3D print molds, and then he'll put all these things together, and then he'll basically, for example, he did some carbon fiber stuff out of this mold that he 3D printed. So you can get these crazy custom shapes and all that. But anyways, it's been super fun to go down this rabbit hole of learning about 3D printing. So you guys don't currently have a 3D printing course, though, right? Just 3D scanning?

3D scanning and 3D modeling. But yeah, like I said, so the 3D printing courses is all but done. One of our videographers is just putting the finishing touches on it now, and it'll be it'll be live.

OK, very excited for that one.

Yeah, it'll be cool. And with all of this stuff, I came into maybe we can circle back to that a little bit of how I ended up at High Performance Academy. But when I came in, it was starting with the 3D modeling course. And then from there, it was kind of a surprise in some ways of how well that course went and how interested people were in it all. And then we kind of have leant into that a bit more and did the 3D scanning course and then the 3D printing course. And we're diving into some composite stuff. I know Andre talked to you a little bit about that in the last podcast as well. But a lot of the stuff just all goes hand in hand with whatever you're working on on a project car. And you can tie it all together like so well with you start by 3D scanning something and then you bring that into your CAD software. You do your 3D modeling and then you maybe 3D print a prototype. And then from there, maybe it's a fabricated part or maybe you're using computer-aided manufacturing and running a CNC machine to make it or you're just routing out patterns to make a plug for composite molds or something like that. So it all ties in so well and like the entire project timeline and the design process through it. All of these tools kind of have their place in it. And yeah, it's really cool to see that and see people also using it, the knowledge and applying it to their projects and using all these kind of new technologies that, like I said, so accessible now. Like 3D printers you can have at home now. Just so good. We have ours at like in the workshop, our main bamboo lab one just running pretty much 24-7. Whether we're printing stuff for content or for the HPA project cars or doing like little personal jobs and stuff as well. It's like me and the other guys that use CAD and they're just like fighting each other before who's going to be printing something next. It's awesome technology to be using.

Can you get into 3D printer at a pretty reasonable, for something that you would use to print usable parts? Because I know they have some pretty entry level stuff. Or is it all just on the material you pick? Or do you have to have a fairly decent machine? Like what would be the cost of entry for something like that to make parts?

Yeah, for sure. So, the material is like a big player in it, obviously, in the properties that that's going to give, along with whatever you're designing it for, and the application you're trying to use it for. The printers, not all printers can just print any material, obviously, and we're generally, if we're just talking about FDM or FFF, which is like the normal 3D printer that you'd see that is laying down the plastic filament and building it up in layers. That would be the materials that you can use are going to be, in almost all applications, a thermoplastic. So essentially, it's a plastic that comes in a solid filament form, it can be heated and then laid down, and then it'll solidify again as opposed to a thermoset or something, which is like what a resin would be when it cures, or the epoxy in carbon fiber, for example, when it get exposed to too much heat, it'll just break down. So thermoplastic, polymers, and then there's obviously a whole lot of different ones there. So the most basic material that everyone prints with is PLA, and that is great for prototyping. You can also use it for some end-use parts. It just depends what you're trying to do. I know when some people have them for like little interior brackets and stuff, and they live in Texas or somewhere really hot, the PLA won't really stand up to higher temperatures over 50 degrees Celsius. I got it. I don't know what that is in Fahrenheit, but hot. And it'll melt and deform and stuff. So that's like becomes a limitation, so you might step up. And there's still with... So the temperature that you need to actually melt and print the part gets higher and higher typically with the amount of temperature that the final part can then withstand. So PLA needs a relatively low nozzle temperature to be able to print it. It's really easy to print. It's good. But then if you step up to something like nylon, polyamide, that's a really good material for like in terms of a thermoplastic, for abrasion resistance and toughness and stuff. But it's also got a pretty good, depending on what type of nylon you use, a pretty good thermal resistance as well. And... But the problem is then like a really entry-level printer that might be $500 to $1,000. Maybe it's not going to be able to get the nozzle temperature high enough, consistently or reliably enough to print a material like that. And then if you have like a nylon with carbon fiber reinforcement in it, which we use a lot for, if we want more stiffness in the part or more temperature resistance, the carbon fiber in those filaments is really abrasive. So it will damage the nozzle as it comes through. So you need like a nozzle that's harder wearing, so that increases the price and things like that as well. So I would say like there's some good options out there under $1,000, but we have a Bamboo Lab X1E, which is very similar to an X1C, and that New Zealand dollars was like four and a half thousand, maybe US dollars, I think it's under three grand. They've just come out with new ones as well. Not saying that's obviously a significant amount of money for most people, but there's plenty of other options out there from that supplier or other suppliers that are cheaper and can do a good job. And yeah, I won't get into the kind of side of things where people don't like Bamboo Lab because it's a Chinese manufacturer or whatever. I know that can get a touchy.

I got into those Reddit forums. They were intense, to say the least.

Yeah, it's just like when we started the 3D printing course, there's a lot of people who like 3D printing for the side of things of just like the 3D printer. They just love the 3D printer, and they want to modify it and tinker with it and tune it and do all of the stuff. For us, it is a tool to be able to make car parts. And it's just a tool to, yeah, so we can build our project cars. There's some interesting stuff around tuning the printer and setting it up to do the best job. But we have got plenty of other stuff going on where we just don't want to be playing with the printer. It's important to us to have a very easy set and forget set up in the workshop where we can design a part, go and print it, and we know it's going to come out right the first time, and then we can use it on the car. And hopefully, if we've designed it right, used the right material for the application, then it should last and do a good job. So to kind of round back and answer the initial question around end use parts, is that accessible? I think it is, it just depends what you're doing. Obviously, an engine part or something in the engine bay is gonna have a lot more demands on it than something in the interior of a car that's just holding some switches or something like that. But I've done a bit of work recently using third party manufacturers for SLS, which is like selective laser sintering. So it's similar to middle 3D printing, like using powder bed fusion, it's called. So you have the bed of powder and essentially a laser sintering the plastic together. And then as the build platform drops down, it coats the powder on it again and it builds up the next layer. And that's still thermoplastic like with the FDM, but it just gives better properties really in the print. And it allows you to have a little bit more flexibility in the design. But we did some for Marku's AE86 actually, just adapting some Gen V ITBs. We did a like part of an intake manifold for it, just out of a plastic, but it is nylon reinforced with glass. And we haven't got to try it on the car yet, but the thoughts is that that should for an NA race car, it's got a beams engine in that car, so two litre, four cylinder, three SGE. It should be capable of withstanding that, and that's a race car for him. He tracks that car and competes in it as well. So, yeah, the plastic stuff can be used on the engine as well. It just depends the technology you're using again. And like I said, I used a third party manufacturer for that part, Proto Tech, actually. I think who are based out of Canada or the States, and they did an awesome job with it, and it's quite affordable. Like the part ended up being a couple hundred US dollars kind of thing for like an intake manifold that in the past would have probably had to be CNC machined out of aluminium or something and been horrendously expensive, or you would have fabricated something, and maybe it wouldn't have ended up being quite as good looking. So yeah, there's possibilities there as well. If you don't own a 3D printer yourself, a lot of these manufacturing services can print parts for you with technology that you know, an SLS printer is usually a couple hundred thousand dollars. It's not something you're going to have at home, but you can still use it.

Well, it's funny you mentioned that we got one in the back right over here.

Well, yeah, like you said, I don't think people realize that if you've already gone through, like anybody can have access to CAD software, right? And then, you know, the 3D scanners, or even if you need that farmed out, there's people that will come scan something for you. And once you have the file of this part, you can email it to all kinds of people and you could have them ship from all over the place. There's I've seen, you know, 3D printer farms where they just have everything kind of several machines running, printing random things for people all over.

Yeah, so now there's lots of opportunities there and different ways you can go about it.

You're probably going to need to ship your car soon or know somebody that will. And as someone who used to work in freight logistics, I understand the difficulties of finding reliable transport, especially when trying to make it to rallies, racetracks or the warehouse to hide your Corvette because you're going through a messy divorce and when she says everything, she means everything. Anywho, Nick Shearer is the proud owner of SureThing Logistics. Having traveled much of the country with every type of vehicle you can imagine, he's got the experience and reliability that you want to ensure a safe journey for your pride and joy. If you want to find out what it takes to ship your vehicle, go to surethinglogistics.net, fill out the intake form, and be sure to let him know I sent you. Let's get back to the show.

I've done a few metal 3D printed parts recently as well, just through these manufacturing services, and they come out great and they're cheaper than you'd think as well. Aluminium and stainless parts we've done. For some project car stuff, we did a strut tower brace for Andre's RX7, which is like a 3D printed aluminum mounts on the top of the strut towers. And then I bonded like a carbon aero tube between them, I guess. And yeah, they're 3D printed aluminum strut mounts, and they kind of had this cool lattice structure in them that you just could not machine because it would just take ages or just basically be impossible and extremely expensive or just impractical. So yeah, being able to do designs like that and get it 3D printed, you know, out of a material like aluminum for things like that, which a strut tower brace is, this is like does have some performance benefit obviously, but it's mostly a cool aesthetic piece in the engine bay, to be honest, and like it's great. And after we did that and Andre just posted it on his thing, it's like heaps of people are like, that's so cool, like, where do I buy it kind of thing? But it was like, yeah, you can just, with a basic 3D scanner, take a scan of the engine bay, or you could even do it with measurements, design something in CAD, go get it 3D printed, using one of these manufacturing services, and that's a project that you can do very easily to get like a one-off, really cool looking part that is just gonna be, if you compare it to one of the old, like original strut tower braces that you'd see on an RX7, not saying some of the old Cusco ones or something aren't cool in their own way, but it's just like a completely different level of design and part how it's made, and it's really, really impressive, and you open the bonnet and see that, and people are like, how do you even make that? And it's like 3D printed metal. It's pretty easy, actually.

Yeah. So are you, what's the most complex thing that you've designed or 3D printed before? Something that's just taken forever to work on?

Um, I don't know, we did a... As part of the 3D printing course, I kind of try to show in the course as like a practical demonstration as we work through a certain topic to be able to give people something to relate to, like a real part on a real car that can be used. I did this merge collector, just a four to one merge collector, with a 3D printed out of stainless, 316L stainless, which is pretty good for exhaust stuff, or naturally aspirated cars anyway. And that was pretty cool because it's like a four to one merge collector. I can send you some photos, and it kind of twists around in like a vortex shape as it collects the primaries into the tailpipe, I guess. And I'd seen a few of them that people had been fabricating on Instagram and stuff. And it's like, that's cool, but I bet it would have taken them so long to do that and cut and notch all the tubes and bring it together and then take it. And then it's so hard to like take well down into the collector and stuff as well. It's like, if anyone would be trying to make and sell that, it would probably be extremely expensive just because the amount of time it would take to fabricate it. And you're also like just limited on what you can fabricate. And I'm not saying that fabricated merge collectors aren't great. They obviously work really well, and some people can make some amazing stuff. But I kind of had this idea of this project of, well, I'll make something that would be very difficult to make any other way. So it's got a vortex, and it's got this kind of webbing. And I built into it the spring hooks for like the slip joints and everything. And it's all just done. And then basically, I just model it, which is easy enough. And then send it away to get 3D printed. And it just, the machine does such a simple job of it. It's not difficult for the machine at all. You know, like, it just sees, breaks it down into the slices and sees the images, and the laser melts the powder together. And you get an awesome part back at the end that just could not really be made any other way, or it would be extremely expensive and difficult too. So that's kind of like a project that I quite liked, and I want to do a few more of those and test those in the future.

So I'm a novice, and by novice, I mean, I know nothing about this. Is 3D printing metal available at home quite yet, or is that something you still have to get sent off?

Definitely something you get sent off. So yeah, metal 3D printers. I can't think of the company's name, but there was a company trying to do something for like, I want to say affordable, but still like thousands of dollars. And there's a company called Mark Forged, which do the like a filament style FDM printer, but they use a metal filament, and they can do that. So they print it and build up the layers like a normal 3D printer, but then it's using a metal filament, and then it gets heat treated and stuff afterwards to kind of merge all those layers together. But even still, that's a very expensive printer that you would not be using at home. So I think at the moment, metal 3D printing is definitely like send it to a manufacturer in an industrial setting to get 3D printed. But hopefully in the future, we can have one in the workshop and yeah, that would change the game completely. And maybe that's possible in 10, 20 years. Maybe it's not. I'm not really sure.

Yeah, well, like I know some companies or more OEMs are starting to adopt a lot of 3D printing. For example, the recent Cadillac. First of all, I don't know why Cadillac is trying to compete with Rolls Royce. Let's just address that real quick. But it's like a one of 300 vehicle and they're doing all this crazy custom 3D printing. You know, with metals and all this stuff. And yeah, I can't even imagine something like that being available to the consumer. But one of the other things you mentioned earlier was like carbon reinforced stuff. Are you using that quite frequently in some of your own projects as well?

A little bit, yeah. It really depends on the part.

There's a PC shelf back there that was 3D printed and made for a work project. That is carbon fiber reinforced. I would rip it off the wall and bring it here and hold it up for everybody to see, but I don't want to do that.

Yeah, it's really impressive, like the stuff that you can get in quite a hobbyist level printer. But I will just say that some of the filaments that you get that have carbon fiber in them, the purpose of them is to one, so you can say, oh, it's carbon fiber, and then two, to make the kind of surface finish that it looks quite good. It just makes a better kind of grainy surface finish on it that is, you know, like just feels a bit better and looks like a bit of a better part, because they're using like a milled carbon fiber powder in the filament. And in some ways, that kind of works as a reinforcement, but it's completely different to like long filaments of carbon fiber to reinforce something. So in terms of the mechanical properties, yeah, it does increase the stiffness depending on the one that you use. Like if you've ever 3D printed a carbon fiber nylon part and you drop it on the bench, it'll kind of make a ting noise, like a metal part almost, whereas like a sounds funny, but like a plastic part will make more of a thud or something. And that noise that you hear is obviously like the sound reverberating in the part or whatever, and it indicates how much stiffer it is to some. Like it's a very basic, cheap kind of easy way of doing it, but it does show you. And if you get one of these plastic carbon fiber reinforced printed parts and you flex them, you can tell it's really stiff. But there's kind of levels to it, I'd say. And it also does help with the thermal properties as well with carbon fiber or glass reinforcement. But there's like, again, I mentioned Mark Forged before they have a continuous fiber 3D printer, which will basically, I think it's got like two nozzles on it, and it'll be 3D printing the plastic down, or they call it onyx, but it's nylon essentially. And then it'll run around whatever kind of path that you put in it, and 3D print, like, a fiber of kevlar or carbon or fiberglass down, and that obviously has a lot better, you have more control over it, but it has better mechanical advantages to it as well, compared to like a milled carbon fiber that you'd see. But there's some aerospace-grade filaments that have carbon fiber in them and short strands that do a lot better than the powdery stuff. There's kind of just levels to it, I guess. Sure. Yeah, yeah.

Touch a little bit on composites as well. That's something you've been dabbling with.

Yeah, my whole, this year for me has just been a deep dive into it. Because I guess before I, you know, I grew up around surfing and in surfboard factories where it's all fiberglass and laminating. So I was kind of aware of everything. And then working at HPA, one of our main mechanics, car builders, Brandon, has done a lot of stuff with carbon fiber as well. And we made some parts for our staff race car, which is a Honda City with a Integra Type R engine. We can maybe talk about that shortly. It's pretty cool. But we made like a carbon fiber front clip for that and some parts, like there's a roof on that and just other bits and pieces, a diffuser for the main SR86 race car and just other stuff. So we've been playing around with it a bit, mostly wet layup and a bit of vacuum bagging. But then we're obviously diving more into like resin infusion and some pre-preg stuff a little bit as well. But yeah, so my kind of background with it was familiar and a little bit of practical experience, but definitely not an expert. And that kind of happens sometimes when we're making courses. So we want to make a composite course, and I'm kind of taking the lead on developing that course. But so if we don't have that knowledge in house, we will bring in someone from outside who is like an expert in the industry. And we might talk to a bunch of different people. We might have one main contact. They might help us write the course, or just come and do some practical work with us, and so on from there. So there's a lot of kind of research and distilling knowledge that goes into making these courses, where if you are going to teach a topic, you need to be kind of five steps ahead in terms of like the level of knowledge that you know about it. So the composite stuff's been really cool though, and yeah, again, it's surprising, like the type of stuff that you could just do at home, and how good a result you can get. And we are about to pull a bonnet off our, sorry, pull a mold off the bonnet, or hood, sorry, for you guys, of our CRX race car downstairs in the next week, and then like infuse a part, make a carbon fiber bonnet out of that. And yes, it's pretty awesome stuff, and it's a lot of practical work that goes into it, which is where a lot of the, I think the cost of carbon fiber parts comes from. But again, like if there's people at home that are just keen to like roll their sleeves up and try it out, like it's awesome what you can do with a little bit of knowledge on it. The composite stuff is kind of funny though, because when you get started out, it's like wet lay up, hand lamination, resin infusion, vacuum bagging, pre-preg, and then it's like twills and planeweaves and spread toes and 3K, and all this different stuff. And then the epoxy resin, polyester bond lister, and at the start I was like, oh, what does any of this mean? Like I kind of get it, but there's just so much fundamental knowledge that some of it is applicable, and some of it you need to know to then apply it into a practical kind of scenario. But a lot of what we're doing is kind of breaking that down and being digestible. Because at the start, it can be overwhelming to say the least. So yeah, it's been a big project in that area, and super interesting, and obviously composites are amazing for what we work on with car stuff. The mechanical properties to the weight of them is just pretty unmatched, I guess. But the manufacturing process is just quite specific and involved. So it's just something that if you learn that, kind of opens the doors again to a lot of parts that you can make for your car to make it really light, or even just look really cool.

That's cool. I'm convinced that the car people aren't going to be happy until everything is 100% made of carbon fiber. So yeah.

Well, it really makes you kind of start doing one part, and then you're just like, I could do that one too. And then before long, you're kind of like, my whole car could be carbon fiber. It wouldn't make a difference because it's a street car, but it'd be cool.

Are you familiar with Nelson Racing Design by any chance? Do you follow them on Instagram?

Sounds familiar, but I'm not sure.

I know he had a show on Netflix, I think, a few years ago now at this point, but currently he's doing like a massive hood for a Viper, like a Gen 5 Dodge Viper and all carbon fiber, right? So I've been like keeping an eye close on that because it's super cool to me. But okay, so obviously there's layers to this. Are you consulting with someone to learn on this stuff for the course then? Or I guess, where did this itch come from?

Yeah, it's definitely been an idea for Andre and Ben and just High Performance Academy to do a concert course for a long time. But we never had the in-house knowledge there to really do it to the level that we'd want to do it. So yeah, we're consulting with a guy in New Zealand who has been practically in the industry doing it for ever, like a long time, doing industrial stuff with fiberglassing, but also making car parts for a lot of the... I don't think he sells them through his own company, but for some other places that are selling carbon fiber car parts out of New Zealand. He makes a lot of them. So yeah, heaps of practical experience, but just not necessarily the guy that would be wanting to sit down at a computer and write the course and then present it. So that's kind of where I step in, I guess. And having done mechanical engineering at university and done papers on composites and stuff, I guess I have the theory to be able to understand that and then translate the knowledge that he has in practice to be able to present it as a course. But there's lots of other sources for the knowledge as well, not necessarily just him, whether it's reading. I do a lot of reading of like, sometimes not the most fun, but like university, what would you call it, articles or papers around certain things. And a lot of them are kind of from FSAE teams and stuff on like concert design and stuff. So like the other week, for example, I was reading and doing all this research on, it's called classic laminate theory, which is just like, if you want to design concert parts at the high level, it's in some way a step that you go through to then be able to work from using like computer simulation from there. But that's obviously not something that we're going to be teaching in our course. But for me to be able to understand something like that, it helps me get a broader picture of it to be able to then get the information that's needed for the course at the right level and explain it well for people to understand as well. So yeah, it's just kind of the strange kind of thing that happens behind the scenes of HPA to make sure that the information that we present in the courses is 100% accurate. And yeah, we're kind of talking, being an authority on something, but it takes a lot to kind of get to that stage. And some of it's easier, obviously, if it's a CAD thing for me or 3D scanning or 3D printing, that's kind of my area. So I don't need to do as much of the research.

Okay, since this episode, I went ahead and bought myself a 3D printer. It's been super fun watching what's basically Silly String turn into something strong and usable, and I've gone down rabbit holes of understanding various materials and learning just how strong a 3D product can be. Turns out, it can be very strong. So when I found out that HP Academy is about to drop a 3D printing course, I was pretty excited. Getting into 3D printing is relatively inexpensive and super easy. Mine was like about $800 and I got printing within 30 minutes of getting home. I also went ahead and joined a group called 3D Printing Car Parts on Facebook, and I've seen some pretty awesome solutions for classic cars and tools and whatever else. Anyways, this is one of my new favorite courses from the High Performance Academy, and you can get it for 55% off using code Minnox, or go ahead and use the link in the description below. Let's get back to the show.

But certain areas, yeah, it just requires a little bit of a different approach. And yeah, if that means we're presenting it, but we're leaning heavily on people who have a lot of those, that knowledge in the industry, then that's the approach we need to take to get the product right in the end.

Well, for example, like I've spent hours this week watching the aerodynamics course for some of the highlights I've been doing from Andre's episode. And it's like, you guys literally brought in somebody who worked for a Mercedes F1 team as a lead aerodynamic, I think it was lead. No, but he was an aerodynamicist in some regard while they were winning championships. Like if you can't, like talk about outside talent, like that's as good as it gets, you know what I mean?

Like, yeah, yeah. And Kyle, who we're talking about is like, got a PhD, I think, in aerodynamics and stuff. Like even before that, he's already a super smart guy. And then the experience at that high level and at that high level and winning is obviously makes him, yeah. He's allowed to teach people about it, basically. You don't need to question what he's saying, but at the same time, he's like distilling it down into a grassroots or club level approach that you can take that doesn't necessarily need to be like CFD and wind tunnels and everything. So he's using this knowledge that he has at the highest level, but still making it relatable for people to be able to actually use it at home. And like I've watched a couple of the modules of that course, but I don't have heaps of time to like take the other courses. But I interviewed him. I'm not sure if the interview is live, but I interviewed him at World Time Attack last time we were there as well.

I watched that video. Yeah, I think it is live. I'm pretty sure that's the one I watched.

Yeah, he's wearing like a bright orange shirt.

Yeah, I believe so, yeah.

But his company is JKF Eero. But yeah, and basically, again, I'm not an aerodynamicist, but he filtered down the knowledge to a level that I could understand, but it's still mind-blowing, like really clever guy. So it's cool to have him involved in stuff, and be able to talk to people like that about the stuff, and then hopefully apply it to our more basic level cars. Well, anything is going to be basic compared to an F1 car, but.

Have you guys ever gone to be like, okay, you have a meeting, you're like, we decided we're going to do this course. So and then you start doing the research, and maybe trying your hand at it. Have you guys ever abandoned any projects? And be like, okay, none of us can do that. No thanks.

There's a few kind of courses that have like half ridden or completely ridden behind the scenes, sitting in a bit of a vault that we have that maybe just need a little bit more to be finished or something. Or we've been working with like a outside person who, you know, life just happens and whatever the excuse is and the course doesn't get finished. I think it would be fine for me to talk about it, but we have a carb tuning course, carburettor tuning course, and that's been going on in the background for years. And there's been different people from outside coming and kind of writing bits of it, and then some of it being done in-house. But obviously, most of HBA in-house stuff is all EFI guys. And the carb tuning stuff and the experts on that are just outside of what we're usually doing. And that's definitely been a work in progress and a bit of a battle to get through it. And still, I think our general manager, Will, has had on his goals for the last month. Every week, it ticks over. He's just got this goal for the week of talk to a human about the carb course, because he's just sending emails and stuff and just cannot get hold of anyone to kind of work through the rest of it and get it out. But again, there's a market for it, and it will be quite a cool and useful course in the end when it comes out. But certain things like that are a battle.

It's kind of a dying art, right? That whole carburetor deal. It's like rip it off and put a sniper on or do something like that, I guess.

Yeah, yeah, but there's always gonna be guys that still wanna keep doing it.

The only thing I can think of is in the power sports world, because a lot of that is carbureted. I mean, a lot of EFI stuff now, but there's still things that were well into the 2000s that were carbureted.

Yeah, and I don't know, it's really not my area, but some of the circle track racing and stuff you guys have, I'm sure certain classes require it to be carbureted and stuff. So yeah, it might not have the future that EFI has, but there's still plenty of guys that are into it. And yeah, it's cool when an old classic street car shows up with carbs, and they sound a certain way and stuff. So yeah, I get it. But yeah, like there's a reason I went EFI and ITBs on my 240Z and ditched the carbs, and I haven't regretted it at all.

So yeah. I do want to touch a little bit more on the carbon side of things, because that's always been something that's so mysterious to me, just because again, I haven't gone too much down the rabbit hole. But like, let's say I'm making a hood at home out of carbon fiber. Like, how many layers do I need for it to be? Is the answer as many as you want? Like, what's the reasonable, like, how crazy do you have to get with it so it's actually strong, I guess?

Yeah, that's such a good question, because it's something when I was going through the course where I was like, this is going to be a question people have. And I wrote a module the other week about it, of like determining the layers of reinforcement that you're going to like want in your laminate. And it obviously depends on so many things to do with it, because obviously like the geometry of a part, if it's a hood with different forms and stuff in it, if it has more forms, generally that's going to add to the stiffness of it. So maybe the laminate you can get away with is thinner, and you use less layers of carbon to get the same stiffness as like quite a big flap on it, for example. Or maybe you have, you're including the bracing underneath, and then that's going to contribute to the stiffness. And you can use core materials like an infusion mat or something in there to provide some structure, and that thickness that that adds will then also provide stiffness. So there's a lot that goes into it, and there's not really like a golden kind of rule that you can apply. Like I talked about before of like classic laminate theory and like computer analysis is like at the high level. They might be doing that, but there's just absolutely no need to be doing that for a carbon fiber hood, for a project guide, any type of like grassroots or club level. So some ways that you can approach it is obviously doing research and seeing what a similar part is made of. I know in the composites industry, some products will be bought from competitors like bicycle frames, for example, and they'll cut the end off and they'll use a torch to burn the resin out of it, to expose like the dry fibers, and then they can have a look at what reinforcements actually been used in it to like reverse engineer it. So like approaches like that, obviously not something that you want to be doing if you're at home, just trying to make a bonnet for your car. Some of it comes down to as well like matching for a bonnet, you try to match the material thickness of the original part, because otherwise if you think about it, if you think about a fender, for example, and it kind of has that return flange where it mounts under the bonnet of the car, and there'd usually be three bolts or something securing it under there, the mold surface of the fender is going to be on the outside of the fender, like that outer face is what's going to be the mold surface that you pull the part out of the mold. But the actual mounting surface against the car is going to be the backing surface for the part when you come to make it. So if you make the part thicker, it's essentially going to space the fender up off the car more and more. So if you don't match that one millimeter or I don't know what you guys 16 gauge, 18 gauge, would you call like sheet metal panels? I don't know.

Yeah, we go by gauge. We dabble with millimeters too.

So if you don't match that one or 1.2 or 0.9 millimeter thickness of the original one, then and you make it like three millimeters thick on your laminate, then the panel is going to be sitting millimeters off where it originally was, and that might add up over a whole part, and then your panel gaps are just terrible because it and nothing really fits together. And that might be okay for a race car. But if you're trying to make a really nice carbon fiber fender for a street car, for example, then you need to consider something like the thickness of the original part. So to bring that back, like if you look on a CompCert or Carbon Fibre Suppliers website, and they're selling 240 gram 2x2 3K twill carbon fiber, it'll probably have a consolidated thickness listed that might be like 0.3 millimeters. So if you think, okay, well, if I'm using four layers of something with 0.3 millimeters consolidated thickness, then I'm going to end up around 1.2 or something like that. Obviously, that's going to change depending how you make it and vacuum bagging and any core materials and stuff you use. But that's one approach you can take. Some people, as a general rule of thumb, will compare it to like a carbon fiber stiffness to the equivalent thickness of like an aluminum part, which so maybe if you're thinking, okay, I've got steel fenders on the car and they're one millimeter thick for it to have the same kind of strength or stiffness and the aluminum part, it'll be thicker. So for the carbon part, it kind of needs to match that. So there's a lot of different ways you can look at it. The, just to kind of round that out, I guess the layup that we're going to use in the carbon fiber bonnets that we're making for the CRX soon is going to be on the outer skin. It'll be one layer of like a 200 to 240 gram, two to twill. And you use that twill because it looks really nice on the outside. And then backing that up, some people will use like a infusion mat or a core mat, like Lant or Soric, but we're going to use a double bias or a biaxial, two layers of that, which will be about like 300 grams each. And then we're going to back it up with another layer of like that two to twill that we started with. And that's going to bring us to a point where we should be at about like 1.2 millimeters thick. And then we're also going to have the bracing of the part. So we're going to do two molds with one of the outer skin, one of the bracing, and then basically after they're cured, we're going to bond them together. And that bracing will, you know, provide a lot of the stiffness to the outer skin anyway, like that's the purpose of it in a normal hood. So yeah, lots of things to consider there, but I will say that a lot of the time when people are making carbon fiber hoods, like a company who makes carbon fiber parts, they'll know from experience, but the first articles, I guess you'd call it out of a mold, are often a trial of, this is the laminate we think is correct, but we won't know till we pull it out and go, oh, that feels a bit flimsy and weak, and we'll bulk that up, or, oh, this is probably overkill, and we can trim that down a little bit and save some weight and money in the layup as well. So yeah, there's a lot that goes into it, and unfortunately, it's not just an online calculator where you can be like, I want to make this part. What layers do I need? Yeah.

I thought you had one. Oh, no. Okay. So obviously, that's like a hood. But let's say you're making some, and this might be something you address in the course too, but let's say you're making something like a rear wing where there's way more force on that. Is that something that's even possible to DIY at home reasonably?

I think it is. But again, it might be some kind of trial and error. And I know they use like a wing is a little bit different because it has like, it might have a core material in it or it'll have like wing spars, like a skeleton in the wing that run widthways along it and all sorts of stuff going on on the inside. So yeah, wings are tricky. I think, okay, maybe a wing might not be something really easy to do at home. I'm sure there's people that have done it. But something like a splitter is like a carbon fiber splitter is something that you could do at home, and there's still a lot of force on that. And typically you'd use like a foam core material in it. And you would make that foam core material and shape it how you want it and then make your tunnels in it maybe as well, if you're going to have tunnels. And then from there, you kind of like, you wrap it in your carbon and then bag it and infuse it from there. But yeah, hopefully that answers the question.

No, it's just, it's not exactly a necessarily easy topic when you start getting into the more advanced stuff like that too. Like a hood, no big deal. Some fenders, who cares? But when you start getting into stuff that's like really functional, it's a whole different story.

Yeah, suspension arms, like anything at that higher level of stuff, wheels, like carbon revolution makes, you know, carbon wheels, and anything like that is just, there is a lot of calculations and simulation stuff that goes into stuff at that higher level of like critical members. Obviously, there is danger in a wing breaking at high speed. Oh yeah, we've seen that happen here. Yeah, arrow is still, I would say, kind of like a middle ground, maybe between like that and like a stress member, like a suspension arm. Like if a suspension arm breaks, or a wheel breaks, you're probably definitely crashing. Whereas if a wing breaks, like maybe. But I don't know, and then if like a fender or something breaks, like obviously you don't want it to, but how critical it is for the application changes and the approach you need to take changes. But we kind of preface all our courses that involve any type of fabrication, construction or design is like, if you are unsure, well, one, make sure that you're testing anything you're doing in a safe environment, because it's not just about like your workmanship, but the quality of materials and everything you use as well. And then it's like, if you're at all unsure that what you've designed or made is fit for purpose, talk to someone who will know, like an engineer or something like that, who has experience in the industry, because yeah, it's just not worth the risk. Yeah, and there's a lot of legalities around it and stuff, depending on where you are in the world, of what parts you can use and stuff. So yeah.

Well, I know like the EU was talking about like, oh, we don't want, we want to ban carbon fiber. I don't think they're ever going to move forward with that, but it's like, come on, you can never win. Why? Because of climate stuff. I don't know. You think I read the article, Pam?

Yeah, I think a lot of it's around like the, like, what is even the word? The environmental impact of the parts, like carbon fiber is not great. The manufacturing of it probably, but also like trying to recycle it or anything isn't good. Like I mentioned kind of earlier when we're talking about 3D printing, it's using like the epoxy resin or the polyester resin or whatever. When it cures into a polymer is a thermoset polymer, so it's not like recyclable. When it gets, you can't melt it down and reform it. It just crumbles basically and degrades with heat. So you can't really recycle these parts, I'd imagine. So it's quite a cool area that I've been interested in is like the flax fiber reinforcement. I know some people in the kind of car scene don't like it because they're like, oh, we're burning tires and fuel and stuff anyway, let us just have our carbon fiber. But the flax fiber stuff is really cool. And there's a company called Bcomp, like biocomp sets, I guess, in Europe doing some really awesome stuff with flax fiber reinforcements. And they're using it on like front bumpers and GT3 cars and some rally cars and stuff now, like AMG GT3 cars. And I've seen it on some Skoda rally cars. And the part that it kind of results in is like this dark kind of rich brown color composite part that I think in certain applications, especially for like classic cars, looks really cool. I don't know if you guys are familiar with like Tuttle Porsche. You probably, everyone's probably seen, Chris Harris recently drove online in a car called the 911K. Yeah. So that's a Tuttle Porsche. And the 911K has like a flax fiber backing on the seats in it, the intake manifold, the steering wheel, a couple of other parts, I'm sure, but that flax composite stuff, I think, is really cool. It's definitely not at the kind of mechanical properties of carbon fiber or foreshort of fiberglass as well, but it's still a composite and it still has benefits over like purely metal parts in some applications.

Okay.

Yeah. It's a different alternative that works in some applications. And I think in Europe that leaning into that stuff quite heavily as well.

Well, I think we've kind of danced around a long enough. How did you end up at HPA?

Yeah. God, where did we get to? So I was doing a little bit of work for myself.

You have some contracting for others.

Yeah, a bit of contracting and stuff. And I ended up through a contact of mine doing, well, actually before, like just before, well, when COVID had happened, I had an interview with Ben from HPA while I was still in Australia. And I think he started the call online with, and it's funny, something else is kind of interesting. He sent me a note that he'd made about me on his phone or something from like five years ago the other day that was like, oh, seems enthusiastic, but like keep an eye on him, but not yet kind of thing. But he started the interview with like, I'm not going to hire you, but I just wanted to like have a chat. So I was kind of surprised to be honest when, you know, I applied for a job listing that they had, and it said, oh, we're going to have an interview. And I was like, oh, wow. Like, I don't know. Yeah, it's just pleasantly surprised. But I was like, that would be really cool. But I don't think I'm really experienced enough for the job yet anyway. And basically, that's how that interview went. But I had done hands-on stuff before, like I talked about working for the mechanic and a little bit of my own stuff. And obviously, there was some kind of interest there in the science side of things that I was an engineer, and I was doing some CAD stuff and using this technology as well. But he kind of said, cool, like, let's just keep in contact over the next few years and just see how things develop, I guess. But you just don't have the experience that we really need now because Andre has stretched pretty thin with everyone. And I was kind of like, oh, just bring me on board and Andre can teach me everything and I'll be great. Like I can learn. I've done a degree. And it was like, he doesn't have time to teach you run anything. We just need someone to hit the ground running. So completely understood. So again, I was kind of battling up against that wall of like, well, I don't have experience and I can't really get experience through applying for jobs because it's just hard to break through that kind of barrier. So a little bit, I was like, I'll make my own experience, however that might look. And I had the 240Z at that time. It had just been stored in a garage in New Zealand. I bought it. It was an automatic car and I bought it, which is one of the only reasons I could afford to buy it. So I was like, I'll move back home to New Zealand. I will make some content on YouTube of manual swapping this car. And I went through the suspension bushings and just gave it a tidy up and did some other stuff. And I didn't really know what type of content I was trying to make. It was, you know, this is five years ago, so everything's changed a little bit. And the way I'd approach it now would be completely different. But I just made some content, figured out how to talk to a camera, which I still don't know if I've really figured out, but it's always a learning thing. And again, I wasn't naturally that person to do that from the beginning. And then, so I manually swapped the car, made a little bit of YouTube content, just through the Ando Engineering channel. This is really old stuff. If anyone wanted to watch some cringe content of me struggling away by myself. And then at the same time, yeah, I had another contact, and I was doing this kind of just general contracting engineering work, but a job came up where they were doing some ADAS testing, so Advanced Driver Aid Systems for Nissan. They were, I think I can probably talk about all this now because the car's released and everything. But basically, for a sign off for the car being sold in New Zealand, they needed to test the lane keep assist and everything on New Zealand roads. So, they got that, it was a Nissan Qashqai, I think, and then they had like a Mazda, a little Mazda competitor car as well. They had a similar system in it. And we had those two cars and two drivers and two engineers, I guess, which was me and another guy to sit in the passenger seat. And we basically spent three weeks and just drove all over New Zealand, like zigzagging back and forth, just testing the system on public roads. And I just had a laptop on my thing. And if any time anything went wrong and the driver had to kind of like catch it or do something, I'd just write a note in the computer. And we had like V-boxes and cameras logging everything at the same time. So it was really just capturing all this data for the engineers at Nissan to review. But that was pretty cool. And then from that, at the same time, the guy, one of the test drivers that I was talking to, and these were like vehicle dynamics engineers, guys in their 50s or so, that had worked at Ford, like developing the Mustang, did a bit of work on the GT40, the Ranger Raptor, stuff like that. They're vehicle dynamics engineers that have spent their whole lives like test driving and things like that. And he was going from that job to then go to a place in New Zealand called Southern Hemisphere Proving Grounds. And the Kiwis might kind of know it more so as like Snowpark or Snow Farm. So it's basically like a winter vehicle testing facility that we have quite close to here in Queenstown, just on the Crown Range. It's not very good. Well, it's actually, it is great, but the problem is the weather in New Zealand isn't very good. So we have, like if we have a bad snow year or something, the facility up there gets affected quite a lot by it. If there's no snow, they just can't do the testing. But it is, I think, one of the only winter testing facilities for vehicles in the Southern Hemisphere. So if someone's, like OEM's timeline ends up where they need a test at that time of the year, waiting for six months till the Northern Hemisphere ones are open just isn't an opportunity for OEMs, because it's so much money. So they ship cars down to New Zealand and do the testing there. And there's like, there's big ice kind of rink things there. They have like split mu surfaces, they call it. Constant radius, which is just like a big circle that you do donuts around, big like snow flats and handling courses and all sorts. It's a really cool place. And, you know, you've got at the time that I was there, which I'll get to how I got there, but there was like all these prototype vehicles from Tesla or Lucid was there, Rivian was there, just companies like that. And all sorts of stuff. And then there'll be tire companies there as well, like testing tires. So we were doing tire testing and he was basically, this test driver was moving on from that role to do some tire testing there and he said, hey, I need someone to come and just help me change tires and like set up the car before it goes out for each run. And I was like, well, sounds great, like I'll come and give you a hand. And then it kind of turned into like, well, you might as well jump in the car with me every time we go out for a test run to do zero to sixties or they call it like lateral G-force test, which is basically just doing like big drifts down this big field of snow. And this is like work and tire testing. It was just the funnest thing ever. And then they have a handling course, which is just like a snow rally stage. And we're testing all these different cars on different tires basically. And he was like, well, if you come out with me for one run, when we change the tires, you need to be in the car for the next run. So the weight of the vehicle is the same and all the data adds up. But then at the end of every run, he was like, you have a drive, tell me what you think. So I was like, I came here to just change tires. And now I'm doing tire testing on the snow, which was basically just doing doughnuts and drifting around. And yeah, trying to set the fastest times on the little V box to see what tire was the best. And then he'd come back and write some notes of what he thought, give us kind of like subjective opinion. And then there'd be some objective stuff where it was like based on the data as well. And while he is doing that, I changed the next tires and then we'd go out again. So did that for a couple of weeks. And then while I was down here, I went into the workshop and had a chat with Ben at HPA. And at this point, it was just like, hey, like this is what the workshop looks like. There's no, there was no real like talk of employment or any work at that stage. So went back up home, more contracting stuff. And yeah, just kind of, and then that was kind of all drying up with the companies I was doing it with, and everyone was trying to bring it more in house. So it was coming to an end, and I was like, oh, okay, well, this is, you know, nothing's really been happening. And like it was a pretty hard time to be honest, but there's like I mentioned earlier, the area I grew up with, there's a lot of oil and gas jobs. So being a mechanical engineer, I went and had a few interviews at like local places and got two job offers out of it. And I was kind of at that point where I was like, I've done these jobs in the past that I haven't really enjoyed. And I know if I go into this job then in six months, I'm probably going to be pretty over it. I've got some work on my CV now, which like every job I've been in has been like two years, and I've just been jumping around. So it's not going to look good if I keep doing that. But this is kind of the only option I felt like I had. But anyway, I got to this point where I called, well, my wife Lauren, a shout out to her for this, I guess, was like, you just call Ben again, just say like what he says kind of thing. So I got on the phone to Ben and I was like, could I just come down for the winter and I'll sweep the floors in the workshop? You know, this is at like 28. And I had all this work experience and a degree in engineering and I was like, I'm just going to go be a workshop hand because I just don't want to do whatever else I'm going to do. I'll sweep the floors and I'll just help with the race cars or whatever over the race season. And at the same time, I'm going to do my Avalanche training course for night snowboarding and maybe I'll just go be a snow instructor because I'm really not enjoying the engineering work that I'm doing. And we're talking on the phone, he's like, we spent a lot on the racing last year. We're just trying to tone it back and do more of the courses and stuff this year. But do you use CAD? And I was like, yeah, every day. That's what I've been doing for the last 10 years. And he's like, ah. And at this point, I'd been kind of forcing myself to talk to a camera through YouTube. So I kind of had a bit of experience there. And he knew I could turn a wrench on a car a little bit. I could present to a camera. And I said that I knew how to use CAD. And he was like, do you want to try to make a CAD course for us? You know, just as like a contracting thing. So I spent the next couple of months writing a CAD course for them. And they just kind of like, you know, under a contract kind of set up. And then they're like, we know you can present to a camera, so come down and spend a couple of weeks here and try to present the course. And if that works out, like, that's cool. And if not, because they'd had people come in before who couldn't kind of present the technical stuff that they knew, yeah. Otherwise, we'll get one of the in-house guys to present it. So I came down, helped a little bit in the workshop, like, presented the course, which was a learning experience, just reading off a teleprompter and doing all of that stuff and just hanging out with the guys. And there's a couple of bedrooms at the workshop, so I just lived at work. And then I guess after a while, it was kind of like, well, okay, I know Anjay talked to you about this, that the culture fit around HPA is almost more important than the actual skills that people have. And it was like, I guess I'd proven myself that I had some skills. I had a little bit of experience, but I was just keen to learn. I fit in with the culture, and I'd kind of made the effort to make it all happen. And eventually from that, Ben kind of said, hey, Howard, Lauren, my wife, like to move down to Queenstown. And it was like, had you asked us six months ago, in a heartbeat, it would have been yes, but we just opened a reformer Pilates studio back home, and it was going really well. So we're like, I can't do that, but I'm not going to say no to this job because it's been the dream for years kind of thing. So over the last three years, it's just been back and forward between Queenstown and the South Island, and then our home in the North Island, and making it work. But yeah, it's been pretty wild. And yeah, but like I said, it was just a long kind of path to get there and some kind of like hard times where I was like, so unhappy with what I was doing. And then when I got there, there's obviously like days where you're standing in the studio by yourself for the most of the day, talking to a camera by yourself and with the teleprompter. And that's a bit of a battle in itself, at least for me anyway, just reading words off a teleprompter. And that was a big learning curve. And it was like, at the end of the day, it was still still being the dream job. And it was being like, it had just remind myself on those hard days as well, that like, I'm here doing this. And at least I get to walk out the door and walk back into the workshop around a bunch of race cars and cool stuff and cool people. But yeah, the in front of camera stuff isn't necessarily my favorite thing. And I think I've just got used to it enough for now that it's been all good. But the rest of the job's been awesome. I mean, it's kind of my job to learn and just do cool projects.

Right, yeah.

So I can't complain too much yet. It's been pretty awesome.

Well, how's that old phrase go? It's like the worst day at the best job is still better than the best day at the worst job. You know, it's like... So I totally get that. Like, so yeah, no, it's... Especially like just talking to a camera solo. I resonate with it. I think anybody can resonate with that one, but it's part of getting it done. So I get it.

Yeah, yeah.

That's pretty awesome how that worked out though. That's... To have wanted it for so many years, that's pretty awesome. So then, how long have you officially been a part of HPA then, like beyond the contracting standpoint?

Three years, like as an employee now. So yeah, pretty much being on, I think. I came down in the winter three years ago. And yeah, it's been a crazy three years as well, because like my wife and I, we got a seven month old baby girl now. So that's been crazy. We got married and then like bought a place down here, opened another party studio down here. And it's just been wild. And we've definitely not made it easy for ourselves. So we're just battling away through all of that at the moment, kind of in the thick of it. But it's been good. And like Andre and Ben and just like the workshop and the guys that we get to work with. It's awesome. And what they've built is really cool. So they definitely look after us a lot as well. And we get to do some pretty cool stuff. I think, relatively small team, like it was about 10 to 12 for most of that time. And recently we've expanded a little bit to, I think, about 17 now. But for the small team that we have, I think what we get done is pretty cool. And then, you know, they are, I think we probably have the best Christmas parties out of any place I've ever heard. Because we all mountain bike and stuff and come summertime. And then most of us kind of snowboard and do things as well. So, yeah, big mountain biking trips as a team and. I'm out on the boat doing some wakeboarding and stuff like that. And yeah, that's cool, going to all the events and the racing and stuff, getting exposed to everything. It's really hard to be exposed to like high level motorsport stuff, even just working at like a local mechanic. You know, you're not going to be around like Hollinger sequential gearboxes and all the Motex that we have around and stuff. So it's been pretty cool. And then Andre is like a wealth of knowledge around what he knows and then a lot of other stuff too. And then there's some other guys that work for us that are really good at what they do too. So you're just kind of in this environment where just try to soak it all up and learn as much as you can. And I think what I spent 10 years learning beforehand and then what my knowledge has done in the last three years of working at HPA has just been like, it's a completely different level. Can be like overwhelming at times, but yeah, you just try to like take it all in and stuff. And it's pretty good. So done a lot of theoretical stuff over the last few years, but hopefully in the next few years to do some more practical stuff as well. Sure. Cool projects. Yeah.

By the way, if Minnoxide has a mountain biking get together party, I'm out.

I was about to say, no, no, no, no.

Yeah. The boat one though, I'm down for it. Let's do that.

Yeah. I was like, that was one of the things I was thinking about when Andre was mentioning like culture fit and all that stuff. I'm like, if for whatever reason, something ever opened up for me to move to New Zealand and be part of team HPA, I'm going to sit out on all of that. I'm not the physical specimen for that quite yet. Maybe, I don't know, we'll check back in a year. Maybe I take on the own liking.

Well, maybe you just got to move to Queenstown and that'll be the answer. You kind of have to if you live here, it's like, what else are you going to, well, work on cars, I guess. And there's a lot of racing and stuff around too, which is cool. But in saying that it's not like we go on these work trips and they make us like pedal up the trails. It's like usually a shuttle or in some cases, it's been like a helicopter to the top of the mountain and then mount a bike down. So yeah, it's pretty kind of easy.

Well, you're always researching too, every time we go somewhere, what could kill you life-wise?

Oh, they have nothing lethal in New Zealand.

Oh, really?

New Zealand's good?

Oh, okay.

Yeah, it's like the perfect country to live in. You guys have like nothing poisonous over there pretty much, right?

No, we've got like one one spider like got a white back, which is just like a relatively tiny little spider that if it bites you, the worst that could happen is like you maybe lose a finger or something.

Oh, he's out. No.

Other than that, but you might see one of those like once a year, maybe. And other than that, there's no real like predators or anything. There's some sharks, but nothing bad.

I'm a land mammal, so that's okay.

Yeah, it's very safe here in terms of like insects and animals and stuff. And then like also, especially in Queenstown, like the crime rate and stuff here is pretty non-existent.

Oh yeah, we forget about the human animals too.

Yeah, it's all around pretty safe.

Whereas every time we go to Texas, I'm always checking the bedsheets for black widows and stuff. Like those can make you just like talk a little funny, but... Well, I think, was there anything that we kind of missed? I think we're coming up on a... It's got to be like the two-hour mark at this point, I imagine. It's dark over here, I know that. Well, before we pop our usual three, I have one super important question. Obviously being, with your wife being into Pilates, do you have a super strong core then? Do you do Pilates?

I do it a bit, but not as much as I should. It's one of those things where I prefer to go mountain biking or something. But in saying that, I 100% back the business and the product that we've built, and what she does with her team there is crazy. And a lot of the HPA guys have been dragged along there, and it's humbling, to say the least. Like, I've been fairly active my whole life, but you go to a Pilates class, and there'll be a 50-year-old lady next to you, just making you look so stupid, because they're just like there all the time. And it's probably got to be one of the best things for you, but it hurts. Put simply, it's just sore, but she'll be like, I'll be like, oh yeah, I need to be going more, because my back's been a bit sore or something, and I just need to strengthen up and do all this stuff. So, and then she'll be like, it'll be 9.30 or something at night, and she'll be like, yeah, I booked you into a class at 6.30 in the morning. Like, yeah, I said I wanted to go, but like, okay, I guess I'll go.

Maybe that's what we should be doing on the side, is just doing these random adventures. Maybe, dude, we should do a vlog, us attempting Pilates is not gonna be, it's gonna be the most hysterical thing ever.

Yeah, it'll be entertaining. It's brutal is what it is. Yeah, we got like the reformer Pilates machines, and they're just torture devices pretty much. It's just like, yeah.

Definitely when you go into your team meeting after this, definitely be like, yeah, we'll just talk about Pilates for an hour.

Yeah, an hour, yeah. Yeah, Lauren will be stoked, but good publicity. If anyone's in Queenstown, hustle and flow. Hustle and flow Pilates.

On that note, Dan, do you want to pop the usual three and see if there's any Minnesota goodbye topics after that?

Sure. So at the end of every episode, we like to ask our guests to pick three cars. I need a track car, a daily driver, and a show car. You have an unlimited budget. You can build whatever you want out of carbon fiber.

Yeah. No, that's hard. Because like I said at the start, like I think I have a, I think people around here, and like Andre thinks of me as especially just being like a JDM guy. And my answers probably will be that, so I shouldn't really argue too much of that. But I do, I love Porsches and German cars and stuff as well, but my soft spot is Japanese cars. And to be honest.

What's your favorite American car?

Oh man. I don't know. Like I kind of prefer like the really older stuff. Like I like the idea of like a lead sled is like what I'd call it. I don't know if that's what you guys would say, but like an old Mercury coupe from like, I don't know. Is it like 50s or 60s or 40s or something? But just like on the ground, real ratty. Something like that maybe in terms of like American cars. But honestly, I'm a pretty simple man when it comes to like the three cars I'd choose there, even if it was an unlimited budget. A lot of people would probably be like, I guess, Ferraris and super expensive stuff, but it's just not really my interest at all.

It's kind of all over the board. You'd be surprised.

Really, yeah. So I think my three cars, and I already have kind of two of them, but obviously, if I had an unlimited budget, they'd look a lot different, but there'd be a rear-wheel drive Corolla in there. So probably not an AE86. I love AE86s, but do you guys know, like do you have KE70s in America? So the generation before an AE86, and they have a very, very similar floor pan to an AE86. Rear-wheel drive, four-cylinder Toyota Corolla. I had an AE71 when I lived in Aussie, and it was like a $3,000 car, and it's the best favorite car I've ever owned, hands down. Like, I'd even maybe preferred it over owning my Datsun, my 240Z, which is completely different ballpark price-wise and everything. But K70, but I'd probably make that my daily, and I'd have one of the the wagon ones. Or like there's a panel van that's a two-door wagon as well. That's pretty cool. But they're just small little station wagon from the 80s. I'd have a 4 AG in it. So probably maybe a black top or something. And it would be like daily driver car. That's pretty fun that there's a lot of rain in New Zealand. So I could slide around a roundabout or something on the way home if I needed to. Not really appropriate for the family at all, but I'll just leave the family car so the wife can drive it. Maybe something like that. But my day to day just drive to work, go to the supermarket, go home or whatever. I think Corolla, rear wheel drive Corolla station wagon, K70. But maybe stitch, you can cut out the floor of them because they're leaf springs from factory, and you can stitch in the sedan floor, which is like coil spring. So I'd probably do something like that. And then the race car. The race car, ah. So this is going to seem just silly to people again as well, but I'm just going to say a civic because I was never like, I was never the hater on Hondas like a lot of people are, but I was also never interested in them growing up. And then I had an experience in a few good ones at just racetracks. Sure. And they just work, they're good, they're fun. I follow a lot of Time Attack stuff and like, at a tax scuba, which is like the main American one at scuba circuit. One of my favorite cars that I've seen built in the last few years is the Ems Machine Works Cayman, which is like this GT4 Cayman that's been cut up, and it's about as crazy as you could make one. They cut the whole front end and back end off and made these like subframes, and it's just wild. That's in the naturally aspirated class at scuba. And it's probably like a million dollar build. It's just wild. That's got, I think, the third or the second fastest record and the fastest car is an EG Civic with a K24 in it. That's like pretty wild, but compared to that car, it's very standard. I think it's kind of hard to argue with them, and they're just fun. I don't know. Around, especially a lot of the driving we do in New Zealand, it's like probably more lower speed stuff, especially on the road compared to what you guys are used to and just windy roads and stuff like that. But in terms of a race car, yeah, probably just an EG Civic. And I know you said unlimited budget, but it's a lot less stressful running a car like that than running something like crazy. Like, you know, so maybe that. But and then for the show car, that was the last one, eh? Yep. Yes. Yeah. I don't really have any interest in show cars, but I'll just kind of say that's like a really nice looking car that I could also drive on the street. That is just like to the tee done, would be the 240Z and kind of how I want to build it. I don't know if you guys are familiar with a guy called, or son of Cobra. He's like actually a surfboard maker, but makes some amazing composite parts and stuff as well for all sorts of people based out of California. But he builds these BMW 2002s, or like the little old BMWs, and they're just completely carbon fiber. And just the style he does it in, the stance, the wheels and everything on it, just that style, but with a Datsun 240Z, would just be, that's basically like what I want to get to in the future. Like kind of singer, singer Porsche-esque in some ways. Like really just nice, works really good. You can hop in it, drive it, but it just looks amazing and classic. But to be honest with those three cars, I could almost change any of those three cars into the position of race car, show car, daily driver in some extent, and it would still work, I think. But yeah, part of me wants to say like 997 GT3 RS and I don't know. I almost said, you know, like a Hakoska Skyline, like the old 70s Skylines. Yeah. They came in a station wagon, which a lot of people don't know. It's like a really rare thing. And one of those is a daily driver with like an L series, just like an L28.

Are you switching up on me? Is that what I'm hearing?

No, no. Still going with the Corolla because the 240Z kind of covers that base.

Have you seen the Ronin 240Z? By any chance, like the full carbon one?

I think I might have. Is it?

So it's made by that guy I mentioned earlier, Nelson Racing Design. Or is it Design Again Design? Yeah, pull it up because he did a whole crazy series on that. It's ridiculous. I think you would appreciate it if you looked into it a little bit.

Yeah, there's a few. Well, there's a lot of wild 240Z builds out there and some really cool carbon ones as well. And part of me kind of like wants to, I wish I just had three 240Zs for each of those things, because I could probably build one to tickle those boxes, I think, but got to mix it up a little bit, I guess.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, on that note, where can everybody find you?

High Performance Academy, I guess, is the main bit to see most of the work I do and the other stuff we do at High Performance Academy. Andre talked about it obviously all in his podcast, but we're on Instagram, YouTube, and then our websites. Probably the best place to find our stuff. And then personally, my Instagram that I'm kind of doing with my brother is just Ando Engineering, so Ando Engineering. There's some kind of past stuff on there that I did, and then some future stuff coming as well with the little bits and pieces and products that we're going to be working on over the next few years, hopefully. But yeah, just the majority of things is High Performance Academy and CompSense courses coming soon, hopefully, and more cool projects. Sweet.

And just real quick question. So the CAD modeling, which other courses are you like, mainly you?

Yeah, so I've done-

Mostly for my own knowledge later.

Yeah. So I've done the CAD modeling course was the first one I did, and I'd love to go back and reshoot it because I just, you know, you look at the first thing you did and you're like, ah, I could present that a lot better and stuff now, but it is what it is. Sure. CAD modeling course, 3D scanning and the 3D printing one, which is coming very soon to kind of round out that little combo. I did a course on motorsport plumbing systems.

Okay.

So making braided hoses and hard line and everything really for the main plumbing systems on the vehicle. We did a little quick one on wheel, like wheel fitment and selection of wheels. And it was kind of a surprising one to me actually, riding that course because I thought I was, I'm pretty big into my Japanese wheels and stuff. And I thought I was a bit of an expert on it all. But with the research we did for that, and kind of looking down the manufacturing route and stuff, and the influence a lot of that has over the wheels. And then when you put them on the vehicle, we did a lot of stuff around like scrub radius stuff, and yeah, some other stuff. But like the stiffness of the wheel and the actual effect that that really makes, like on the suspension tuning and stuff like that, it's quite interesting. So the wheel fitment course, I did a course on braking systems, which is really good. And that again, massive amount of information on brakes and some really cool stuff that you can apply to your own car there too, because it's people get brakes wrong, maybe more than anything, I think. Just in choosing master cylinders and specing brake systems for the car and going with big brake, off the shelf, big brake kits that just don't really work properly. So yeah, we made a cool calculator kind of spreadsheet based system to be able to spec a braking system for your car and pick all the components and experiment and then kind of some plots to show you how it all works and stuff. So that was quite cool. I think that's it. Plumbing, brakes, wheel fitment, the CAD courses, the composite courses coming. There's probably something I've missed there, but yeah, that's the bulk of it. Sure. It's a lot of information. I kind of take big deep dives into certain topics and then move on to the next one. So yeah.

Well, awesome. Well, Connor, thank you very much for making this happen. This is a good time. Dan, thanks for existing and we will see you all next time.

Yeah, cool guys. Thanks for having me.

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