The Lab is a light engineering & automotive/repair fabrication company specializing in Nissan 300ZX Z32s, Nissan Navara V8 conversions & carrying out mild to wild modifications on almost anything owned by someone wanting special attention to detail & high quality workmanship.
Owned & operated by Glenn & Christine Hodges, Glenn has over 12yrs experience in the aircraft servicing & repair industry & has been working on cars & selling car parts professionally (as well as a few outboard motors, some marine equipment & some farm bikes) for over 30 years.
The Lab was founded in 2010 & we operated from a modest unit in Tawn place in Hamilton, we have since relocated for the short term while we try to enjoy the early years with our little girl, a return to a larger building is in our future plans.
One of the best things we offer is on the spot quick thinking & solutions to problems other places may struggle or not even be able to solve, This ability is demonstrated fairly well with our little Nissan march racecar that now holds ~650hp & AWD, a fairly serious upgrade from the factory layout!
TIG, MIG, arc & gas welding, lathe work (up to 320mm diameter max) & general fabrication done on site with access to virtually unlimited machinery via sub contracting.
From basic maintenance to complete engine rebuilds, making a letter box through to a full automotive restoration/rebuild, The Lab can help you.
Please feel free to check out our extensive albums on out Facebook page or view our brief descriptions of notable projects listed here (we will be adding more very soon!)
Contact Glenn directly on 027 2789691 
So how quick was the march with just under 450Kws at the rear hubs in RWD format before she broke the gearbox twice and we went to 4WD?
This in car footage with Steve Millen behind the wheel shows it was no slouch at all :)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=rz3jgIdhka8
Steve Millen drives the crazy V6 TT Nissan March!!!
www.youtube.com
The Lab Limited and HRC Events teamed up to run some hot laps in special cars with special drivers to raise money for Leukaemia & Blood cancer New Zealand. W...Woo Hoooo!
Two milestones here...
Actually three milestones here
Youtube channel monitized (a couple of days ago)
2500 youtube subscribers! Thank you guys!
I've earned that first cold drink at thee racetrack!
Now I don't actually have that $5 yet, you have to reach a certain value before Youtube/adsense will pay out, but it's there in theory.
I'm not forgetting these things came about with help from you the followers & subscribers, Nicholas, Richard , Al + Woody from The Skid Factory
On to the next goal I guess, might have to be somewhat bigger than a cold drink at the track - just to make things more interesting for us all :)
Coming in hot!
Day three of our Leadfoot weekend will premier on our Youtube channel at 7PM tonight!
This includes two runs in the 52 second bracket thanks to our gun driver Paul Radisich, taking us to three out of four runs being faster than our best run last year - we must be doing something right!
Cheers to Craig Brock for the image(s)
It's OK the Gloria is getting some attention 😊
I'm nearly done with mounting the new seats and yes it's been a time consuming job!
Also if you are bored tonight day two of our Leadfoot videos premiers tonight at 7pm
We love our Link ECU and all the features it has.
This is a screen shot from a log file of one of the runs up the driveway at Leadfoot, I've made it really simple in case you're not really into this sort of thing :)
Every vertical line on the chart across the horizontal axis represents five seconds of time elapsed.
The vertical axis is in three charts, top is eng RPM, middle is throttle position, bottom is speed as measured at the right rear wheel (accuracy not confirmed but should be close give or take 5%)
From this we can see the peak speed was around 140kph
Zero to 100kph takes just 2.5 seconds.
There is a gear calculation log but you can see easily based on revs and speed pretty much anything below 100kph is second gear and above is third.
The little monster climbs the hill with just two gears!
We did try a launch in second gear to reduce gear changes but I felt it was a bit hard on the clutch and requested we didn't do that again 😂
We can see that a slightly higher rev limit or different gear ratios would have helped with times but also there is STACKS of power there with full throttle only used a minimal amount of time.
There's a LOT more data I can look over for areas of improvement in the car, there are a couple of things that have caught my eye already :)
Pretty sure that's a bit of air under that front tyre!
Nexen Tyre NZ
cheers Ian Moss for the great shots!
Some shots a grabbed from my cell phone while out and about, some shots people have sent in to me, if you have photos you would like to add please let me know and I will get them in there :)