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HPA Labs - Dyno Cells / Workshop / Studio Build

senbilcock

New member
Joined
Mar 23, 2015
Messages
2
Location
Queenstown, New Zealand
Hey team,

I've been a long time lurker of The Garage Journal and was encouraged to do a build thread on our workshop project by Mr Build-Threads.com himself "anth". So here I am. I hope you enjoy it.

A bit of background, I run a company called High Performance Academy and we teach people how to tune EFI systems via online videos, live webinars and forum support. Think training on performance and race engines.

For the last two years myself and my business partner have been "shopless" hiring studios for filming, borrow dyno bays, shooting video in our garages and generally being nomads. This gets old pretty quickly and was seriously slowing the growth of our business. So we decided to take the leap and get a dedicated space.

Enter HPA Labs!

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We signed the lease on a 400sq meter (roughly) workshop in Queenstown, New Zealand. Why Queenstown?, basically it's the most beautiful part of New Zealand.

Here is a video tour we did for our members - https://vimeo.com/122627452

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This is the future home to a Mainline Dynolog 2WD rolling road chassis dyno. We will be removing the shelves. Need to sort out extraction among other things.

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Next door in the old commercial kitchen we will be running a Mainline engine dyno, hopefully two if everything goes well.

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This tiny little room used to be the pantry. We are going to turn it into a dyno control room come video editing bay. It gets pretty cold down in Queenstown so I think we will spend a bunch of time in this room as it will be easy to heat.

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This is Andre, when we arrived we didn't have anything so this work bench left behind by the last tenants was pretty handy.

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This is the main workshop area. Needs some floor work, some paint. A hoist and some work bench space.

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The back yard once a upon a time was landscaped. But now is in need of a serious birthday. Not a priority at the moment.

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The workshop also has an apartment attached where I'll be living as a cost saving measure for myself and the business :) Looks a bit like a Breaking Bad crack den at the moment.

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There is a wash bay in the front yard. Which could come in handy (just bought a little off roader)

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We also have this storage over the dyno cell area.

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Here is a floor plan for those of you who work better this way.

It's been a pretty busy time at HPA taking this on, I'll try and get back here to answer any questions you have any update the build as much as I can.

I think the next job is to make a list of the changes we want to make and make a plan to start ticking it off.

Let me know if you have any questions, advice or comments :)
 
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anth

Well-known member
Joined
Jun 26, 2007
Messages
438
Location
Australia
Yes, finally! So glad to see you guys make a thread, can't wait to see what you'll do with the space, looks like a fantastic starting point (although not quite as epic as the SketchUp file you showed me last year!). Queenstown is definitely on my list of places to visit when I get myself over to NZ.
 
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