Rex_Kelway 11 Posted May 2, 2011 Alright Lads and Lasses? Rex would like to thank STR8E180 for creating a Fabrication specific section, it's a great addition in a world full of 'What's the best cheapest coilover' and 'How do u remove mah turbo 4 cheep' topics. The introduction of Rex. He's been working in the import industry for many years and for a few of SA's well known importers. About 10 years ago Rex started learning fabrication as a serious part-time hobby and after leaving His last job 2 years ago, He decided to try and make a go of the self-employed route. He's sure this will be controvertial but while His father is a sheetmetal worker by trade, Rex Himself is completely self taught. Engineering, Design and Fabrication are his reason for existence, sounds lame doesnt it... Most of His fabrication projects are limited ultimately by customers budgets but while this means the complexity often isn't high, Rex's obsessive compulsiveness means no matter how simple, it shouldn't be anything lass than perfect. Even if the piece will never be seen. So He'll throw a few in this thread, and hopefully keep it updated if He can be arsed. BUT! While it's no secret Rex is technically a business (no matter how small), In the interest of fairness always check your forum sponsors! Without them NS.com wouldn't exist. Anyhoo enough crapping on. Rex Kelway sucks... SR Stainless intake hardpipe Exhaust Rex built for His old AW11 MR2 S/C Few manifolds mid-build Custom front pipe and screamer that went into a 1G Celica Manifolds, heatshields and dump pipes for RB26/RB25 Pretty Basic rollcage in Rex's Rallysprint KE70 Turbo setup for Rex's 180, eventually... RB25 Manifold I/C pipework and cold air feed Couple of manifolds Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Dori31 34 Posted May 2, 2011 why does rex write in third person? or is this guy narrating your life for you? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
AnDyStYLe 1 Posted May 2, 2011 Such quality work!!! Subscribed Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
STR8E180 2,214 Posted May 2, 2011 He's sure this will be controvertial but while His father is a sheetmetal worker by trade, wow my old man is a sheety by trade as well tried getting me into it as well but i was more attracted to the boiler maker trade good work mate Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Rex_Kelway 11 Posted May 2, 2011 I have a feeling STR8E, as this thread goes on you'll find we have a lot more in common Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
AnDyStYLe 1 Posted May 2, 2011 WTF? Rex's asian? Lol Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
STR8E180 2,214 Posted May 2, 2011 Rex would like to thank STR8E180 for creating a Fabrication specific section, it's a great addition in a world full of 'What's the best cheapest coilover' and 'How do u remove mah turbo 4 cheep' topics. dont speak to soon mate http://nissansilvia.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=489534 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
tim.duncan 0 Posted May 2, 2011 Always admired your work Rex! Keep the pics coming! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
AnotherS15 0 Posted May 2, 2011 Will be in contact t soon to discuss a future project!! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
aym23q 5 Posted May 3, 2011 WTF? Rex's asian? Lol LoL kemp Is Asian? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
X Kyle X 0 Posted May 3, 2011 rex does awesome work Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
NM35 0 Posted May 3, 2011 I have a feeling STR8E, as this thread goes on you'll find we have a lot more in common Are you hitting on Asians now Rex? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Barbie princess 1 Posted May 3, 2011 what does rexy boy charge for SR Stainless intake hardpipe? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Rex_Kelway 11 Posted May 3, 2011 Sorry JDM:180, Rex's doesnt discuss that stuff in an open forum. He classes that as outright advertising which is not allowed Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Drunken Monk 9 Posted May 3, 2011 hey Rex, do you do much custom suspension? extending LCA's and that sort of stuff? i'd be interested in some pics of that if you had them =] Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
blaq-boi 0 Posted May 4, 2011 nice stuff t-rex. cant wait for the next batch of pics. can you make them a bigger size next time? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Rex_Kelway 11 Posted May 6, 2011 Another installment. Rex thought instead of just posting a pic of each jorb perhaps He would elaborate with a brief description and a few more pics of each. A simple one. Mounting of a base mount seat as low as possibe (without starting from scratch) on some Sparco two piece rails rails. Note the shape of the floor in an S13 means that if you mount the seat the 'easy method' it will be quite high. So with a little work you can go about 25mm lower but the position of the inner rail will bend the mounts so they need gussetting but in such a way that they can slide unimpeded. Some bits and pieces on some car. Rex built a non-divided Expreme type manifold w/ external wastegate and screamer. The Tomei dump-pipe needed to be adjusted and reinforced as the tail end of the MFR front pipe fouled on the body. Intake pipework and intercooler 'hot-pipe' along with AFM bracket and a basic filter heat sheild. KE25 Corolla Half RollCage built to customers design. It uses an X-brace across the door opening but without the front legs. The door bars had to be treated as if they were any other reinforced rollcage mounting. They feed into the kick-panel sheet section which on the KE25 is a major steel section tied directly into the suspension mounts. Personally Rex would've liked to have seen the backstays and the rear quarter brace feed directly into two proper 'nodes' at the top outermost corners and at the opposing edge of the upper door member. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
inmans12 0 Posted May 6, 2011 Some really nice work! Custom seats mounts have given me ideas how ill takle r32 gtr seats in my gazelle. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
TRIPOD 5 Posted May 6, 2011 damn dude! your work is pretty shmick! love seeing your updates in any of your threads Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
MILK-13 1 Posted May 6, 2011 Rex is a guru. I'm subscribing Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Hengsta 1 Posted May 8, 2011 Even though I hate this third person speaking!! Rex's work is awesome! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
OMG20Q 0 Posted May 8, 2011 Rex my man... Hats off to you sir. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
CalebS15 1 Posted May 8, 2011 Excellent quality work, looks great Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Beau J 0 Posted May 9, 2011 why does rex write in third person? Agreed, whats up with that?. However great work. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Rex_Kelway 11 Posted May 9, 2011 One for the 'dwyfterz' or whatever the hell you lot want to be called. This is Rex's method for mounting ye ol'e hydraulic handbrake. Its a sheetmetal box section that is welded onto the tunnel providing a decent mounting pad. Each of these are built specifically for the owners preferred position and angle. One even wanted to relocate the original handbrake to the passenger side. The black car had the lever modified so it would work reversed into an upright position. A few more pics of the stainless lobster-back style exhaust Rex built for His old AW11. The driveway of some trucking joint destroyed the stock exhaust so Rex took a massive Tanabe muffler designed for a late model MR2 and fabricated the pipes from the factory manifold back. This was actually Rex's first lobster-back project. The thing sounded fantastic far better than He'd hoped. Funny thing is that although the lobster-back style of pipework takes far, far longer it is actually nice to work with because the segments can be adjusted for different curve raduii but most importantly bends can be formed in three dimensions. Another basic rollcage, this one was installed into a well known SA drifter's SR powered KE70. Its only a CAMS spec basic 6-point full cage, again built down to a budget. Worth noting is that with the mounting feet Rex tries to take in more than one piece of sheetmetal or more than one plane in the chassis. All Rex's full cages are built very tight and tied to the chassis with swaged gussets to both the A and upper B pillars so even a basic roll cage adds to the chassis. Surely someone must want a nice comprehensive rollcage built? This was His first twin-scroll/divided housing manifold build, it was bulilt for a T67 to go onto a 1J powered Cefiro. He's not sure what ever happend to the car though. A few basic slut bars including a batch of 10 Supra braces built for the Toymods lads. They're built from structural grade aluminium with stainless end plates. All up they weigh around 1kg. Rex tries to keep the bar as straight as possible as they are a compression loaded item where a bend introduces a failure point. Sometimes though with the height of the motor and lack of clearance under-bonnet a shaped bar is unaviodable. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
mitch bucannon 0 Posted May 9, 2011 Quality work Rex! I like the handbrake mounting pads! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Drunken Monk 9 Posted May 9, 2011 hey rex, ask rex why he has chosen to make that style of slut brace, compared to the solid style that Ultra racing make? would have thought the less pivot points the better. and if you make this sort of brace, do you make the lower arm braces like castor rod braces? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
booostin 4 Posted May 9, 2011 Jesus, you got some skills Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Rex_Kelway 11 Posted May 11, 2011 fyjosh, Rex builds the bolted braces because after this many years cars eventually get a little 'out' be it through damage or whatever and a little adjustment can be built into the bolt holes to allow for all sorts of dimentional variations. Strut braces are designed to tie the towers together so that the cornering force pusing the outer tower into the engine bay is resisted by the opposing tower. The surface area clamped by the bolted joints takes an extroadinary abount of force to rotate as it is. Given the upper plate is secured to the top it transmits the force directly down the bar in a rather than attempting to fold it at the bolted points. Lozenging of the towers in the vertical plane is another matter all together, while the bolted joints may pivot under lozenging of the towers this type of load will also twist a solid brace quite easily. Its a combination of strut and guard braces that will resist the lozenging of the towers. Jesus, why cant Rex just give a simple answer... Anyhoo another batch: Quite often Rex gets jobs to replace/rebuild/rework some intercooler pipework. On the S13 below the intercooler was just sitting loose in the front so Rex fabricated some mounts to keep it there and replaced the original medley of ill fitted steel pipes. He also built the basic legal oil/air separator tucked into the corner The difference just decent pipework can make: From this: To this: As a side note, Rex actually built a manifold for this thing to try an experiment with an old Ex-Subaru WRX TD05. It actually makes just over 200rwkw and the tuner said it probably has 240kw of potential in it. Not bad for an old turbo that can be had for less than $200 s/h... Pipework for an RB20 VL conversion. The major difficulty was working around the fan clearance as can be seen by the double kink at the shroud. Headers for a mates 4AGZE into TA22 Celica conversion. Not performance headers at all, just built to do the job as the TRD ones didn't fit. A fair bit of work from another Celica: Reworking the actuator on the Ford throttle so it can be 'pulled' from the opposite directon. The plenum is not Rex's, but he did have to repace the front end, throttle flange and cable bracket. Oil Catch can built from salvaged speedflow gear. Also mounting of the coilpacks and bracketing of the leads. Heatsheild protecting hydraulics. lobsterback dump pipe and Intake pipe from 200mm K&N down to intake diameter. At first Rex thought it looked silly but eventually He grew to love it. He wants to do one for himself... Intercooler pipework, tucked away where no one will ever see it... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Rolled Cambers 75 Posted May 13, 2011 Hi Rex, let Rex know I'm loving his work. +1 More pics, btw tell rex to get bigger images? Im interested in seeing the beads Share this post Link to post Share on other sites