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Thursday, August 29, 2013

RevScene Summer Meet 2013


On August 24, Puyang and I took a day off to attend this annual RevScene Summer Meet; this meet consists of local automotive enthusiasts and their very own project cars. I am always astounded when I see the amount of work that is poured out on some of these cars. My STI is definitely unworthy of being showcased at these shows. However, there is really no competition, because if you truly love cars, you'd love every car just the way it is.

I purposely filmed cars that I have never covered in the past; that just tells you how many cars come to these meets. This is the fourth installment of the RevScene meets, so if you haven't watched the past three RevScene episodes, please take a look at our episodes list and enjoy some of the awesome cars in the past!

Monday, August 26, 2013

Final sprint of Season 3

We are back! We'll be airing the newly filmed 2013 RevScene Summer Meet this week. It's sort of ironic, but we'll be ending the summer episodes with this episode. There are only a couple of episodes left for Machine Zealots Season 3, I still can't believe it!

Here are a couple of screen shots of the upcoming episode.




Sunday, August 25, 2013

RevScene Summer 2013 Photos













The RevScene Summer 2013 episode will be aired soon, so stay tuned my friends!

Thursday, August 22, 2013

Summer break is almost over

We have been taking a summer break, catching up on a couple of episodes and getting our life in order. We are diving into some of the most exciting stuff we have ever done on Machine Zealots. Here are a couple of screenshots for some of the upcoming episodes!

Removal and installation of the Top Mount Intercooler.

Installing the Beatrush Pitching Stopper Mount.

Changing the rear differential fluid.

These episodes are completely finished, and each episode are about five minutes long, which means fifteen minutes of content coming! After these technical episodes, we have another three episodes to end the season, totalling eighteen episodes. That's right! I can't believe another year has gone by! Thank you so much for sticking around with us for so long. We'll be back on the air in the first week of September. We'll be finishing off the last three episodes in the weeks to come, and it will make time for some Season 4 episodes. If you haven't watched our drifting test video, one of the possible episodes, please watch it on our Facebook page.


We'll be attending the 2013 RevScene Summer Meet this coming weekend, so you'll be joining us when you watch that episode. I've also sent my downpipe to a welding shop for a second O2 bung; I'm planning on installing some gauges when Stage 2 is in effect.

Stay tuned guys, lots of exciting stuff coming your way!

Monday, August 5, 2013

One fully packed day

Puyang and I had the day off today, and we felt that it was a great day to clean and work on our cars. What seemed to be an excellent day ahead quickly made a turn in the opposite direction, I'll list them as I write.

We began with a very nice car wash and interior vacuuming. I took some extra time to clean off the gold BBS wheels from all the brake dust generated by the Hawk HP Plus racing brake pads. During the wash, I had my hood opened, and for some reason I placed my sunglasses near the hinge of the hood. Later when I closed the hood I crushed my sunglasses. Don't worry, the car was not hurt in the slightest, but my sunglasses on the other hand... (Disaster #1)

Puyang vacuuming the interior of his 2012 VW Golf GTI.

If you don't already follow us on Facebook, please do, we post mini updates on our weekly shenanigans and crazy banter. If you indeed follow our feeds, we found this very nice unpaved parking lot this weekend. It is laid with dirt, gravel, and rocks. The shape of the parking lot was very odd as well, and by odd I mean awesome, it looks like some of the twisty areas in rally courses seen in Croatia. Long story short, I took it for a spin and practiced some dirt drifting. It was so fun! It was so addicting that I wanted to do it again, so I've asked if you guys were interested in seeing a video of it. Most of you guys said yes, so we'll be making a video on the STI going sideways!

Some dirt that clung onto the wheels from the drifting.

After we've washed our cars, we took our cars out for a nice photo shoot to really capitalize on our hard work. You know, I was so addicted with the drifting, I attempted some tarmac drifting after the photo shoot too! However, the weather was so hot, the very sticky Bridgestone Potenzas clung to the ground like glue; I couldn't really get the tail out, just lots of understeer, sadly.






I really wanted to take advantage of this fantastic weather that the Lord has given us, so I wanted to do some modding and filming. The autumns and winters here are very wet; I mean rain nearly every day. The hood liner gets wet from time to time, and mold begun to develop. Today was the day I decided to just remove the entire thing.

Hood liner is super moldy!

Hood liner removed!

The hood liner is designed to keep engine noise to a minimum. You can do this research online, but removing the liner will not add any negative effects to the car. Check out the built rally cars and other race cars, they won't be sporting a hood liner. The hottest part of the car will most likely be the turbo charger not the front of the engine itself. (Observe the hood liner location.)

While I was removing the hood liner, I got clumsy and dropped one of the retention clips into the engine bay. Not like that little plastic clip could mess up my car, but I just didn't like the idea that I lost something in there. I looked around, and after fifteen minutes or so I found it. It was caught between the subframe and an axle. I got it out after a couple of minutes, poking at it when a stick. (Disaster #2)

There was still a couple of hours in the day, so I decided to get to my rear differential fluid change. As always, we were filming an episode as I was working on the car. I cut myself during this, stupid on my part yet again, and bandaged myself up; you'll see the bandaged hand in the video. (Disaster #3)

I bought a $10 pump to get the fluid into the differential, and that thing broke on the second pump! LOL.(Disaster #4)

If you have read everything up to this point, I applaud you, because as I'm writing this, I'm laughing on the inside. It's just too ridiculous. The story isn't over yet though. I finally get the fluid in there, everything seemed to be coming to a close. I got the fill bolt plugged up, and I set the torque wrench to the service manual's specifications: Tighten, tighten, bam. The bolt shears off. (Disaster #5)

O__________________O

At this very moment, the car is sitting in the garage waiting to be fixed. I have to give Subaru a call tomorrow to order the part. It will be around $100. What? For a fill bolt? Well, I didn't tell you the entire story. When you replace your differential fluid, you can either use a 30 mm wrench to remove the fill bolt, or a 19 mm wrench to remove a rear differential temperature sensor which is embedded into the 30 mm fill bolt. I didn't have a 30 mm wrench handy, so I went with the sensor route.

Oops. My mistake just costed me $100. Ouch right? Expensive mistake. :(

At the end of the day, did it suck? Yeah, pretty much. But I thank God that this day didn't get any worse than it was. I'm talking about losing a limb or something. lol...