Recent content in Posts on Exhaust
This is the first thing I see when I wake up. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 I've been volunteering at a heritage railway as a track walker.
That job…
I have a workshop .
It's nice, and it's also fucking cold in the winter, and cold most of the year after the sun goes down too.
Sometimes I want to stay inside in the warm, and I don't want to work on my desk because there's not much space left after a keyboard, mouse, two 27" monitors, a cat cushion, and a cat. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
…
I found a Network SouthEast map from about 1991 on eBay.
It's neither rare nor expensive, so I foam mounted it.
I also clear-coated it with a rattle can of picture varnish to make it UV-proof and wipeable. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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TL;DR: test your power selection switches. 
 This is my Clarke 151EN.
I've written about it before . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 It's an…
So I mounted a radiator in the wrong end of a Rover P5 .
That left a couple of things to deal with before I got sidetracked onto mountain bikes for some months.
Actually, there are at least six things to deal with, but a couple of them which I felt like dealing with at the time.
I do things in the order I feel like doing them; that's what keeps the motivation high.

 
 
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 Todd Daniel Snider - October 11, 1966 - November 14, 2025 
 Aimless, Inc. Headquarters is heartbroken to share that our Founder, our Folk Hero, our Poet of the World, our Vice President of the Abrupt Change Dept., the Storyteller, our beloved Todd Daniel Snider has departed this world. Where do we find the words for the…
This site is pretty fast. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 Obviously, this is mostly because I used a static site generator to build it.
That static site generator is called Hugo, which I spoke about before .
It is always going to be much faster to send an HTML file over a socket than it is to render an HTML file for each request based on some thing read…
OK, so I built my dream bike from back in the day.
Building it was fun!
I liked the fact that I completed - really completed - a project in a month, and it would have taken less than that if I wasn't waiting for various postal services.
Riding it is fun too!
I didn't plan on buying or building any more bikes, because I had the bike I always wanted, which I love.
I like projects.
You may have noticed.
After the Proflex 854 was done, I took on another 1990s bicycle project.
More on that soon. 
 One of the most fun things in the Proflex project was taking sad-looking parts, and making them happy again.
Sometimes that was just a quick de-grease and polish.
Sometimes that was multiple evenings after work. 
 And so, here are some…
Oh, you didn't think I'd stop there , did you? 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 I know, it looks nice.
But there were a few things bothering me. 
…
I usually say yes to stuff. 
 I haven't always been this way.
Some part of me still says "absolutely not" immediately to anything new.
These days I understand that these words mean there is a fear which is wearing some imagined matter of principle as a skinsuit, and that I should find that fear.
And when I say "yes", I like to say "yes, let's set a date to do that thing right now",…
Sometimes, my projects fail.
Actually, they often fail, but usually in a recoverable way.
This was not recoverable.
Not because of the gasless-to-gas conversion (this worked fine), but because the welder I did the conversion on was fundamentally broken. 
 It turned out that "creates an arc and deposits material" is not the same thing as "actually has enough power to weld two bits…
This is the driver's seat from a 1985 Toyota Supra. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 I acquired two of them in almost perfect condition apart from a layer…
You alright there? Me too. I've been busy. 
 Previously, I wrote : 
 
 and anyway nobody said that the radiator must be at the front of the car. 
 :) 
 My thoughts are like wild animals.
Sometimes they're exciting, sometimes they're cute, and it's best not to leave two of them in a room with only each other to feed on. 
 For example, let's look at the boot of a tatty…
I know what you're thinking. It's something like "Lewis, a Rover P5's prehistoric rear axle will explode if you put 350 horsepower through it ". And you're right! 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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…
These are Rover P5 leaf spring perches, which aren't actually from my Rover P5. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 These weld to the axle and have the…
I built a welding cart. It was fun and it kept me out of trouble.
It probably should have been my first project when I got the welder, and it wasn't.
Maybe it could be yours though! 
 I built a welding cart because of this: 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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This is my MIG welder. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 I wrote about it briefly when talking about the time I lost the plot. 
 It's a Clarke 151 EN,…
I like my workshop's speaker. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 It is a Bose SoundLink Mini II.
It's small and it makes plenty enough noise to fill…
If your digital level looks like this... 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 ...then I can show you how to calibrate it.
If it looks…
So like, Google Domains . 
 I liked Google Domains.
I had a bunch of domains registered there.
I registered them with Google Domains because whatever Google's faults, they have an outstanding record on security, because they hire some of the best people in the world.
It was a very well-designed, easy-to-use service that did what I wanted it to and nothing more which is exactly the…

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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Nearly four years ago, I bought a fifth-generation Ford Fiesta for £600 .
Since then, I mentioned that it passed an MOT,
and then I didn't say much about it after that.
Inexplicably, it is still alive and I still own it;
it recently went through its fourth MOT with me. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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On and off over the last few weeks I have been migrating this site from a Django app written by me to a static site generator called Hugo .
If you don't recognise at least one of the technical words in the previous sentence,
then you won't find anything interesting to read here.
But if you find anything that is broken on here, it's probably something I broke during the migration, and…
I found myself at a rare loose end this weekend,
fuelled by waiting for things to show up for the next stage of the Rover P5.
And then I was gently reminded of something I put on the project pile. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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I know what you're thinking. It's something like "Lewis, a Rover P5's prehistoric manual gearbox will explode if you put 350 horsepower through it ". And you're right! 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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This was my Rover P5's engine. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 You'll notice that it's not in the Rover P5. 
 So, the workshop build was…

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 A fully-dressed LS1 V8 engine weighs exactly 215 kilos. That is 474 Freedoms if you are from the United States…
I now have a workshop. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 Which is to say I've been busy . 
 Inside that workshop, lives…
This was my rocker cover. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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…

 
 
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All of my neighbors are all up in arms 
About something they saw on TV 
Some politician got busted for something 
That won't make much difference to me 
Now I'm sure it's all true and I'm tired of this too 
But I can't pray for some guy to fall 
I say let all these people do what all these people do…
This was my turbo. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 It is an IHI VJ9, and it is also ancient worn-out junk that…
I originally planned to fold this into the upcoming "turbo" part of the rationalisation series, but there are parts of that which are still not complete, and are entirely out of my hands at the moment. Also, the heat shield turned into a multi-weekend mini-project in which I learned some things, so maybe you can too. 
 This was my heat shield. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
…
I had an overheating episode in 2020. It was not fun. It lacked so much fun that as part of the 323 GTX rationalisation subproject I wanted to give the 323 GTX some bonnet vents. Actually, I don't think bonnet vents would have saved me in that situation, because it dramatically overheated at low speed, but still, that scared me into doing as much as I could to keep it cool in every situation.
In part 1, I spoke of things being either old or badly modified, and those things being targets of my 323 GTX "rationalisation" subproject. The hard pipe between the intercooler and intake manifold was both of those things, though the bad modifications offended me most. Because I am an idiot (also, because I didn't expect to be writing about any of this in detail), I didn't take a photograph of…
This was my air filter. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 It has "Mazdaspeed" written on it. This would be…
This is my 323 GTX's new intercooler, next to its original one. The new one is a work of art with a 60mm core made by Pro Alloy . The original one is old, weird and inefficient. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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Cars age differently these days, and by "these days" I mean "the last two and a bit decades".
Cars seem to transition to "old terrible car" much more slowly,
and also go through the trough of no value to "classic" much more slowly too. 
 What brought this to my mind, and exhibit A in my study, is Onslow's Cortina in Keeping Up Appearances . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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This was my desk chair. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 I wrote about it before . 
 When I wrote about it before, I mentioned my concern that…
This is a top link from the front suspension of a Rover P5. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 This is part of the "rebuild the entire front…
This is my desk chair. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 It is a front seat from a 1990 Vauxhall Astra GTE, bolted to a subframe made from steel box…

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 The easy, snarky post would be "it's the current year and there are still systems out there that can't handle non-ASCII characters",…
Here are some things that happened in my life recently, none of which really merit their own post. 
 
 The Shed passed an MOT. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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…

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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TL;DR: Use imapsync with DavMail . 
 So my subscription for Office 365 (or whatever it's called these days) was due for renewal in January.
I only ever used it for email on my domain.
Given how increasingly hateful the Outlook web client has been in recent years
(worst among them was when it randomly disabled the ability to send plain-text email for some time),
and my general…
Rail Alphabet is beautiful. It was everywhere on the railway network for decades; for people over a certain age, it is a typeface that says "railway" almost as surely as a double-arrow symbol does, and as surely as " Transport " says "road". It was so ubiquitous that one could associate that typeface with railways even if you do not know it is a distinct, single-purpose typeface - a fact I only…

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 By Jessica .

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 This is my brake servo. 
 I removed it from the car as part of the "refurbish the brakes" subproject of the…