It’s a rant I tell ya and as this is my website, this is my place to do it - if you don't like it then find something
different to read !!!!
I love my car and think that Lee Noble is a brilliant engineer but as with enthusiasts of any car there is always something
you have to tinker with or make better (although 'better' is often a matter of opinion!) In my case it seems that some fellow
owners shared that view and liked the things I was doing. So Noblemods began. I thought it would be fun to earn a few crates
of beer and help fellow owners change some things about their own cars along the way. I could drop it all tomorrow there really
isn't much beer in it to warrant the work involved sometimes to be honest. I defy most to want to sit in your 'garage' on
a cold night for hours at a time for the equivalent of less than £5 / hour just for the love of it !!
The tuning and motorsport industry will always be full of opinions on how to do things properly but ,as in many walks of
life, profit often becomes the driving force. I was determined to enjoy Noblemods as a little hobby-exercise for fellow owners
but not by taking the piss with pricing. If someone else makes parts for Noblemods I put a bit on top for playing postman
and answering endless e’mail questions and to cover fuel costs of picking things up. Not at all like how I run my core
business - just a fun thing for like-minded owners. Unfortunately a number of owners with opinions based on little or no knowledge
have rather spoiled the fun for me and I can’t be doing having petty squabbles with people who comparatively know bugger
all over an internet connection . This is supposed to be fun for me !!! I don’t need Mr ‘Know-little’ giving
me advice or comparing my products when they have no idea what they are talking about or get seduced by expensive variants
and then feel the need to justify their ridiculous expenditure.
At the end of 2006 I decided to log off the Noble forum in the UK for a number of reasons. Most of what gets taken for
gospel is a load of rubbish and reports of various upgrades are rarely true or frank reports of an owners experience. No-one
seems to mention the horrendous bill they got from a garage for remedial work that was far from remedial or they ended up
getting fixed elsewhere. I witnessed people paying c. £15000 for engine builds (it’s a Ford for Christ’s sake!!)
with oil pissing out of the coolers, dodgy boost curves from a ‘top‘ mapper, accident damaged cars, broken wheels,
2nd hand fuel pumps being sold for more than new cost - but you never hear it in their reports. I was actually genuinely
surprised that so few owners knew anything much about cars (despite claims to the contrary) - instead I found plenty of ‘cheque-book
wannabe racers’ !!! There’s nothing wrong with not being or wanting to be too involved in the mechanics of it
all but when you profess to be the font of all knowledge and give advice and all you are actually doing is talking bollox
then I don’t want to be part of that clique. You know nothing…sorry to burst your bubble.
My background is rallying. I can build you a championship winning rally car from the first bolt to the last - whether you
have the ability to drive it to victory though is another matter !! I am not limited by being a specialist in only one field.
I am as happy welding an FIA roll-cage, designing a gear linkage or custom making parts to solve problems. I can manage the
full logistics of your motorsport season, I can help you develop your driving skills - but I am not averse to getting specialist
help outside of my abilities. I research things to death and I can confidently say that you are not getting the latest 'snake-oil'
product from me. If I am not happy that I would have the products you order on my own car - and I’m ultra picky - then
Noblemods doesn't sell them either. Simple.
Let me regale you with a tale of an exhaust I designed for my car a few years ago which - to cut a long story short - worked,
and bloody well too! Nobody had come up with a design on the same lines as mine before. There’s a lot more to a design
than the ‘it’s a few bits of bent pipe, how hard can it be’ mentality.
Anyway, Mr X who works for a factory approved outlet (well it was at the time) was bunged a few reddies to check my car's
fuelling on a rolling road local to him (he wasn't supposed to do it but it's obviously good pocket money for him!) Well,
long story short, his eyes popped out of his head when he saw the power / torque my car put out. He had a fiddle with the
map but couldn’t get more than a couple of horsepower more out of her. Mr X suggested that if I wanted even more power
then 'we could further preload the wastegates on the turbos' I thought we'd left such agricultural methods back in the
Cosworth era of the 1980‘s ?! Needless to say I didn’t take him up on his offer.
So, fast forward only a couple of months and surprise, surprise Mr X comes up with an exhaust that looks pretty familiar.
2.5 bore pipes, separate silencers, same pipe run blah blah. So we've been working on Nobles since day dot and we've just
suddenly decided to play with exhausts have we ? Er...a bit coincidental isn't it? I wouldn't mind so much but this joker
never gave me credit for the design and actually pooh-poohs my one !!!!!
Ah well there were always going to be plenty around ready to be relieved of their £3000+ After all more expensive means
more powerful doesn't it? My next exhaust will be around £6000, now form an orderly queue....
Apparently my intercooler is under scrutiny by the great and knowledgeable internet forum !! The new twin-core intercooler
that’s being bandied about as the latest ‘Emperors Clothes’ has the most ridiculous end-tank design on any
intercooler I have ever seen, bar none - someone needs a lesson in flow dynamics !! 2 cores will of course take less time
to heat soak but rest assured they 'will' heat-soak and they will take longer to lose that heat. So, chop your I/C box up
to get it to fit and then - wait for it - mount the thing so that the cooling elements are not even facing what
little airflow there is and not a fan in sight. Matt F may have pulled out of the Noble market and left a few people
a bit bemused but at least he never sold rubbish gear. Anyway time to get your cheque books out again ladies
- 'of course it will be well proven in daily usage conditions and make more power - this way sheep - baaaa baaa !
