Tofu Auto Works

Little patreon exclusive version of the 10 minute recap without the annoying YouTube music. This is the last Stagea video, I'd do more but I just don't see how I can milk this project any further, I'll be announcing the next build pretty soon here on Patreon before anywhere else

Since it's been about a month since I've seen any of my cars and I never actually posted the images from the final photoshoot before I left, here's just a dump of all the photos I grabbed of the Stagea right after it was finished.

After 2 years of hard work, in this episode we'll wrap up the last of the unfinished areas, drop the whole car off for paint, and reassemble the completed car. I hope you enjoy this series finale ahead of it's upload this weekend on YouTube. Once again using Patreon's captions feature so fingers cro

At long last, it's finally time to reveal the colour for this Stagea. I know some of you were already probably expecting this and I had a handful of people guess it already. I wanted to pick something from Nissan's OEM lineup that was unique but also quite classy. It was a toss up between this and 2

So another month of solid progress, I started off with the widebody mould that I had to remake. In the last update I had made a new plug and was working on smoothing it all out to make a new mould from. I got that all finished and polished up and then was ready to remake the mould. While I was doing

Quite a lot has been going on the past month. You'll have noticed I dropped the every 2 week upload schedule on YouTube while I focus on actually wrapping this build up, and since we're still a little ways off I'll get you awesome patreon supporters up to speed. So catching up with what I went over

See previous post o_o

I would use the Poll feature but that doesn't let me add any photos. So you guys decide, should these GTR hood vents be left as carbon fiber or colour matched to the rest of the car? Carbon Fiber: Pros: - Cabo fibah - Looks like every other GTR - Nice contrast Cons: - A little tacky - Looks like eve

In this video we finish off the last few remaining areas around the car to get it completely ready for paint. Timestamps: 00:00 - Intro 00:15 - Marking out rear quarter panels 02:07 - Cutting rear quarters 04:05 - Welding rear quarters 06:01 - Dent repair 10:00 - New rear lip 12:09 - Finishing bodyw

Been getting a few hours in on this Stagea in between seeing family this holidays. The main focus for me has been welding up the rear quarters properly and making sure that the wheels have room to move under the widebody. If you've seen any widebody install then you'll be familiar with the process.

In this video we make a start on the primer, getting the bodykit ready for paint.

We've officially moved out of the fiberglassing and mould making stage of this project and on to final bodywork and primer. I spent this past week block sanding down all the fiberglass parts and prepping them for primer. I'll be doing all the priming in stages as my shop isn't big enough to do them

After years of work, the very last mould is done and so these kits are finally available to buy! If you are interested in getting one of these kits, email me at chris@tofuautoworks.com. These come as an 11 piece kit. Initial pricing is $6,500 NZD + shipping but prices may increase based on demand, s

Quick little update while I finish up the next video. I really tried to build myself a buffer so I could do all this off camera and not have yet another mould making video but coupled with a trip to Japan and other things, that didn't end up happening. So continuing from the last episode / update. I

So I've actually been over in Japan for a little bit these past couple weeks hence the radio silence on here, some cool stuff I'll get into in a future post. But after I got back I immediately got stuck into this rear lip. So in the latest episode I showed making the prototype from the 3D printed mo

Finally on to the very last piece of this widebody GTR conversion, the rear lip to tie the full kit together. For this project I once again roped in my mate Stan who has helped out with a lot of the CAD for this project and designed and built this first prototype rear lip entirely in CAD then reprod

So before I drop the video either tonight or tomorrow, here is the latest update on the Stagea. In order to finish off the kit and have everything look like it works together, this car has been needing a rear lip / rear diffuser, whatever you want to call it. The main thing it needed was to bring th

I feel like at this point all of my posts just start by default with "sorry for taking so long" haha. I've been busy. I guess we'll start off just with all the photos of getting up to date with the Stagea, finishing off the widebody moulds and making and fitting the completed over fenders. I'm about

(I still have to make a thumbnail for this but while I do that you might as well enjoy it a few days early) We're done with the moulds!! This is the final mould making episode of this build series and also the last video I'll be putting up on making the widebody. We are now officially done with the

For this video, I wanted to do something a little different from my usual uploads. If you saw my recent post, you will know that I've been hard at work on the next episode, as well as a lot of extra work behind the scenes. It's been almost two years since the start of this build and so I thought I w

Even with all the fiberglass orders that I've had come in lately I've managed to find time to get some solid progress on the last of these widebody moulds. In my last post and video we finished off the front fender mould, leaving us just the front bumper extension and sideskirt moulds left to go unt

More work on the Stagea. In this episode we finish up the plug made from the 3D printed mould in the last episode. After that we make a new mould from fiberglass that will handle mass production. Huge thank you to High Performance Academy for welcoming me on board as a new affiliate! I encourage you

Back to the Stagea after a quick break working on the Mx5, in this video we fix the front fender by 3D printing a single use mould from a scan from the other side, and then recreating a perfectly symmetrical fender out of fiberglass. Enjoy the video.

So a bit of a mixed update as I'm working on both of these builds simultaneously at the moment. Starting off with the Mx5. In the last post I had made the first of the two greebles for the front bumper. The second side followed the same process and I was able to finish it up pretty quick. My goal or

Woah, two updates for 2 different builds in the same day. I'm a mad man. Anyway I wanted to drop this in here since I figured I might as well get you fully caught up on everything in the shop right now. So let's go back to the Stagea, we'd 3D printed 2 separate sets of over fenders for it only to le

A little late on this update. I've really been putting in some hours so haven't had a chance to come through and edit up all the photos but I wanted to at least catch up with the Stagea. So for a quick recap of the latest episode, we finished off the split flange for the rear fender mould and then w

Following on from the last update, I finished the polishing on the plugs and added the flanges for mould making. Went around all the edges with filleting wax to round over any sharp corners or overhangs. After applying 5 layers each of TR-900 Mould Sealer and TR-910FD Mould Release Agent, the gelcoa

In this episode we finish shaping the rear fender plugs and make the first 2 parts of the widebody molds. Enjoy the video. Products used in this video: (in order of appearance) Tooling / Plug preparation: Prestec 2093 surface primer (sealer) Soft filleting wax TR-910 Liquid mold sealer TR-900FD Liqu

In this episode we focus on the rear overfender and get the first layer of primer on in preparation for mould making. Timestamps: 00:00 - Intro 00:12 - Removing the old sideskirt pieces 03:11 - Fitting new sideskirt piece 10:34 - Refining door gap 16:39 - Trimming door handle 17:57 - Sanding sideski

So this update is mostly to cover what happened in the latest video as well as the extra bits I've been able to finish in the couple days since then. There's also a couple behind the scenes updates on a past and future build and some changes to the plans here. Starting off with the Stagea, we finish

It's back! So first off thank you all for the wait, I know it's been a while. I've been trying to keep you up to date with the build but fully admit that I haven't been posting here as often as I'd like, and the honest reason for that is I just haven't made as much progress as I hoped. There have be

So a fair bit has happened the past couple weeks. I started off by printing a new front fender as well. I decided it was going to save me time with the filler if I had a better starting shape so here are the two side by side getting glued together. Now the only remaining printed parts from the first

So after a few more attempts and weeks of trial and error I reckon Stan and I have finally solved the issue with the 3D prints warping. Before I go into the real technical stuff, here are a few picture of the learning process starting with an attempt that was far worse than the originals: You can se

Hope everyone had a good x-mas and you're all enjoying the break. It's been pretty nice having a few days off but I'll be getting back to work on this Stagea soon. In the last episode I briefly went over the 3d printing and fitting the parts, and so I'll go over it all in a little more detail here.

We finally move on to the second side of this widebody and in this episode we make a start on assembling and test fitting the 3D prints. These parts have been printing off in the background for the past couple months. Unfortunately I ran into some issues with warping and so I have to re-print the re

Back to work on the Stagea after a fun break with the Mx5. In this video we finish off the first side of the widebody by prepping the moulds, laying the fiberglass for the new fenders, then trimming and fitting them to the car to wrap up the first side of this widebody.

So back to the Stagea finally. I was able to finish the upcoming video early so once that's finished rendering I'll upload it here but in the mean time, here are the photos I took along the way. Starting off with sealing and release agent-ing the moulds. Because the gelcoat and finish on the moulds

Just barely managed to finish this one in time for my regular upload but here it is, ad free for all you awesome supporters.

First off wanna start these things like I usually do, apologizing for not posting anything for like 2 weeks. I was putting in crazy hours the past few weeks to get the entire first side of the car moulded and haven't had the time to go through and edit all these photos as well. (over 1000 photos I h

Quick note for my Patrons regarding getting your names up on the two-post. In short, I got scammed haha. I took a chance on a second hand vinyl cutter because I didn't want to just write the names by hand since my handwriting is pretty terrible and you deserve better than that. I've been waiting for

Just a quick Patreon only update on what's been going on in the shop this week that wont be in the videos for a little while. I've finally got my 3D printer set up, it's a Elegoo Neptune 3 Max for anybody wondering. It's one of the largest home 3D printers you can get with a 420 x 420 x 500mm print

Sort of a shop update for what's been going on the past week. I'm working on the next video which I'll hopefully have up next weekend if everything goes to plan. My goal for the video is to make a start on the moulds. Started out this week by marking out where all the bolt holes were going to go on

So a little late with this post but I wanted to put up an extra post to go along with the last two videos that I've uploaded over on my YouTube channel. In Episode 18 of the Stagea build I got up to the first pass of primer to give me a good indicator of where I was at in terms of shaping the kit. T

Enjoy this early access Patron exclusive video, completely ad free. This is my first time uploading on Patreon's native video player so we'll see how this goes. In this episode we take the first step of replicating the fenders on the other side by 3D scanning the completed widebody plugs. Huge thank

This video brings us up to date. From this point onwards I'll be making sure that the videos available to my patrons are uploaded ahead of their release on YouTube and will be completely ad free. When I can, I'll try and post these quick build thread style updates in the weeks between episodes (for

The last few pieces of this kit have finally been finished off and so here is how the car sits now, ready for primer. Now that it's all back together and on the ground it looks absolutely menacing. I never could have anticipated that it would come out this well. I feel like you can really see my gro

So a little overdue for an update on this one since I've been really grinding the past few months trying to keep these videos in a regular upload order. So the last post on my this Stagea I showed running into those issues with the plaster and so having to start again with the filler. I did a fair b

Working on the Rear Fenders. - Sta-GTR build: Part 17 (YouTube)