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Overworks Engineering, Unit 12, Old Stanley Colliery, Station Road, West Hallam, Ilkeston (2026)

07/05/2025

It’s been a while since our last post, but we’ve been keeping a secret…a Land Rover shaped secret 😳 We didn’t even want a project, but this ex-military, Gulf war veteran 110 ended up here anyway. What started out as a quick ‘do the minimum to get it back on the road’ quickly snowballed into a full blown nut and bolt restoration. We’re documenting it in a very amateur way with some shaky videos on YouTube! #110

16/12/2023

R32 conversion into a VW Up! anyone? 👀

Just kidding….BUT, some manufacturers are good at parts sharing meaning upgrades can be done when parts wear out without needing to go aftermarket.

This 2015 VW Up! came to us needing a service, front brakes and replacement of the front wishbone lower rear bushes. Turns out that VW have used the same bushes as the mk4 Golf platform which means that it’s possible to upgrade to the ‘solid’ bushes as fitted to the R32, S3 and high powered Leon and TT.

It’s an easy job with the press and box of mandrels. Press the old bushes out - look how worn they are in comparison to the new solid bushes. Press the new ones in and refit the wishbones to the car making sure everything is torqued correctly. The solid bushes make for a keener turn in and more positive feel to the steering without compromising ride quality or noise in the cabin. An absolute no brainer of an upgrade and cheaper than replacing the wishbone as a whole.

Along with the service and new brakes job’s a good’un for this Up! for many more miles 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

10/08/2023

Having water leak into your car when it rains is annoying at best but can cause costly damage to interior trim and delicate electronics that are supposed to be kept dry.

If you’ve got a Škoda, Seat, VW, Audi, Porsche or even a Bentley fitted with a panoramic sunroof that looks like the one on this Audi A6 Avant then sadly it’s a case of when, not if, it develops a leak.

The pano roof is a fairly poor design, with plastic and aluminium components held together with small screws and the bare minimum of sealant. Over a period of time, the general flexing of the vehicles bodyshell results in the different parts that make up the sunroof moving relative to each other. This eventually causes the factory applied sealant to fail and water gets where it shouldn’t when it rains. You’ll usually find it in one or both of the front footwells.

If this is happening to you and you’ve done the easy check of making sure the sunroof drains are clear and free flowing, you’re probably googling and finding that there are various ‘quick fixes’ documented online. Sadly, these are mostly ineffective and the only way to permanently repair this issue is to remove the sunroof, strip it apart then reseal it properly with a decent amount of sealant in the right places.

Removing the sunroof means stripping the interior from the waist of the car upwards including all the pillar trims and headlining - not a two minute job.

Thankfully we’ve had a couple of good weather days so we timed it right with the booking in of this car. Interior stripped, sunroof removed, sunroof mechanism dismantled, cleaned, resealed, put back together and mechanically bonded for a couple of hours with the help a couple of g-clamps.

Sunroof back in the car and the interior put back in. Absolutely nothing visible to show for our efforts other than a bit of sealant on the joint between the plastic and aluminium on the sunroof and even then only visible when you look closely with the sunroof open.

BUT…next time it rains the owner can now be confident they won’t be coming out to puddles in their footwells. Job’s a good’un 👍🏻👍🏻

22/11/2022

We’ve recently sorted the rear brakes on this 2015 Audi Q3, which were pretty horrendously worn.

The inner pad on the offside rear brake was worn down to the metal backing, with no pad material left. Have a look at the pictures for the ‘step’ on the pad which allowed it to slot back onto the disc once removed - that shouldn’t happen!

The rear discs were the originals and the other side was heavily corroded on the inner face. Over time this corrosion chews up the pads and if ignored allows the problem to compound with excessive pad wear.

No harm done this time other than an awful grinding noise when driving. The Q3 has an electronic handbrake so the magic box of diagnostics is required to correctly set the handbrake.

A set of new coated discs with fresh pads and jobs a good’un 👍🏻👍🏻

21/05/2022

We’ve had this 2009 987.2 Porsche Boxster S in today for an exhaust swap.

The current owner bought the car last summer and it came with an aftermarket exhaust fitted with vacuum actuated valves to make it louder at the press of a button. Problem was, even in standard mode the exhaust was too loud and horribly drony at cruising speed.

Thankfully the owner was able to track down the original exhaust (the previous owner had it in their shed!) so today we removed the aftermarket system, including the vacuum actuator, which meant accessing the engine bay, then reinstated the OEM exhaust.

Aside from the challenge of 6 horrendously corroded fixings from where the aftermarket system bolted to the manifolds, all went well and the car is now back to how it should be, with genuine Porsche fixings and exhaust gaskets used.

The owner reports the drive back home as “one of the most enjoyable drives in that car…it’s only now I realise how bad that exhaust was”

So, a happy owner, a quieter car and a top tip from us - don’t mess with stuff, usually the manufacturer gets it pretty spot on 👍🏻👍🏻

#987

01/05/2022

Today we’ve had this tidy 2016 VW T6 Transporter in for some suspension work.

The current owner has only just bought the van but the previous owner had fitted a set of dreadful cheap coilovers just prior to sale.

Like most things in life, you get what you pay for when it comes to suspension and cheap definitely doesn’t mean good. Sadly the ride quality of the van was shocking - crashy and bumpy and generally very unpleasant.

The owner had sourced some original equipment suspension so off came the crappy coilovers and on went a set of OE springs and shocks.

The end result being a van that drives like it should and fitted with quality suspension components that will last. A text from the owner received when they got home:

“Feels like a different van. Brilliant. Thanks Tom”

So our tip for the day - fit decent suspension, you’ll be thankful for it 👍🏻👍🏻

23/04/2022

It’s all about the gearboxes at the moment, with yesterdays job being a DSG oil and filter change on this 2012 Seat Leon.

Modern cars are tightly packaged so where is the gearbox oil filter housing? That’s right, underneath the airbox and battery. So out with those and it’s easy to find.

The oil, although fairly clear, was quite dark in colour meaning it was definitely ready for changing.

Fresh oil and filter (not to mention a new drain plug!), the magic box of diagnostics used to ensure the oil is at the right temperature before carrying out the specific level procedure and jobs a good’un.

The owner reports the car driving much smoother now with the almost seamless gear changes that DSG boxes are known for 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

02/04/2022

Todays job has been a service, brakes all round and gearbox service on this 2010 BMW X3.

It’s fitted with one of first of the excellent ZF8HP 8-speed automatic gearbox. BMW reckon the oil is good for the lifetime of the gearbox whereas ZF, the manufacturer of the gearbox, think differently and recommend an oil and filter change at 70k miles under normal conditions.

At nearly 110k miles the change was well overdue as evidenced by the colour of the oil we drained out, which is quite a lot darker than it should ideally be.

This is an example of ‘only genuine will do’ when it comes to replacement parts. These gearboxes are fantastic but only when serviced with genuine ZF parts. Not cheap, but totally worth it. It’s a little scary to look inside the gearbox with the filter off (which also doubles as the sump) so the last thing you want is for something to go wrong in there because you’ve skimped on parts.

Once back together with the correct fill procedure carried out utilising the magic box of diagnostics, the car was handed back to the customer in a much better state than when it arrived.

So our tip for the day is don’t skimp - use the right parts and your car will be the better for it 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

23/03/2022

‘Always replace in pairs’ applies to many things on a car.

A good example are the front springs on this 2016 Audi A1. The offside had snapped about 3 inches from the end at the top of the spring, well up inside the suspension turret.

See the point of failure on the third picture? Then have a look at the nearside spring on the sixth picture. See the visible corrosion on the coil and then compare the two springs side by side in the seventh picture. The corrosion is in pretty much the same place as the point of failure on the broken spring.

So we can say with some confidence that the nearside spring wouldn’t have been long for this world and would have failed fairly quickly.

By replacing the broken spring and proactively and preemptively changing the spring on the other side we’ve sorted the problem and saved the customer the further hassle of another broken spring. Not to mention the potential dangers that broken springs can pose.

That’s why replacing in pairs is always the right thing to do - it’s not your mechanic trying to screw more money out of you, but instead they’re actually saving you the danger and hassle of a further failure.

This Audi is now back on the road with a pair of new springs working as they should 👍🏻👍🏻

07/01/2022

Any sump plug fans on here?? 👀 Nope, didn’t think so.

The job of the sump plug is to allow you to drain the oil when you want to and to keep the oil where it’s supposed to be the rest of the time. It is an often overlooked item that should be replaced with a new one every time it’s removed. There’s some metallurgical science behind exactly why, but what’s important is that if it’s refitted and it fails, the likely consequence will be a destroyed engine.

The first picture shows the metal tin that contains pretty much every sump plug that we’ve changed since starting the business in 2016 - one day we’ll sit down, count them, sort them into manufacturer order and post a picture up for the true fans 🤘🏻

But for now, the other pictures show a fresh sump plug being fitted to a 2013 Audi A3 that we had in for a service today. Fitted and torqued up properly, it’ll now be good until the next oil change.

So our tip for the day…change the sump plug when you change the oil. They cost a couple of quid and could save you thousands 👍🏻👍🏻

02/11/2021

Yesterday we had this 2014 Audi A3 8V in for a full service.

Our full service includes a pollen/cabin filter, the job of which is to thoroughly filter the air that gets drawn into the HVAC system so the occupant doesn’t get bits of debris blasted into their face by the blower. Some filters are carbon activated too, meaning they’re designed to filter harmful contaminants from the air before it enters the car.

They’re usually pretty straightforward to replace but are sadly often neglected, just like on this car. It can’t be made out on the picture but this filter was a genuine VAG filter, date stamped ‘2015’ which meant that it had long stopped doing its job.

If your car is smelly inside, the air coming from the blowers is fusty or there doesn’t seem to be much power from it then a top tip from us is to change your cabin filter. It’ll make a noticeable difference 👍🏻👍🏻

Overworks Engineering

07/05/2025

16/12/2023

10/08/2023

22/11/2022

21/05/2022

01/05/2022

23/04/2022

02/04/2022

23/03/2022

07/01/2022

02/11/2021

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