LouDen Motorsport Review - MR2 Mechanic Brisbane, Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast
Hey Everyone,
Just wanted to do a write up on Louden motorsport who I have used for everything from minor to major major work on my two AW11’s. One of them is supercharged with a SC14 and the other is a 4AGTE turbo build.
If any of you in QLD are looking for a mechanic that knows both AW11 & SW20’s inside and out Dennis is the guy. While he might not be close being in Toowoomba if you are located in Brisbane, Gold Coast or Sunshine coast it’s really worth the drive to get Dennis to take care of any work you are looking for.
Being our cars are unique and especially the AW11 not many mechanics know them very well and so you end up paying for their time just to work out how to do the job, what would be simple on some cars turns out to be a pita on ours. This is where taking it to someone like Dennis will save you time and money as he knows the cars inside and out.
While I wouldn’t say you would drive to Toowoomba for a basic service, Dennis’s services would be best utilized for doing things such as the below.
Suspension Upgrades
Brake Upgrade’s
Replacement Bushings
Turbo / Supercharger Replacements
Major services
Custom Work such as W2A intercoolers, Oil Coolers
Electrical Issues
Now I will give you an idea of what services Dennis has provided for my two AW11’s to give you an idea of the scope he can cover.
First is my grey SC14 AW11. This car has seen him a couple of times in relation to the SC14. First one was when I wanted to change the SC14 I had on the car to another rebuilt one, he was able to get this done for me in a weekend and swapped over the blowers for me. Anyone that knows a SC14 install on a AW11 knows how little room there is in there and it can be a real pain in the arse to do, wasn’t an issue for Dennis.
Not too long after I got it back I tightened the belt on the blower a little and unfortunately had the tensioner bearing go, either from old age or I tightened up the belt too much. The belt came flying off and also took out the belt running the A/C and Alternator. Dennis drove down that week with a trailer he had hired and picked up the car for me knowing it would cost a fortune to tow it up there and finding someone here in Brisbane that could fix it without charging me a fortune would be impossible. You see with the SC14 setup there is no way to change the belts without actually taking out the SC14 on this car.
Now my second AW11 is one that I can almost say Dennis has rebuilt the entire car, when the car came to him it wasn’t in a good way, even after being at another mechanic before him which left some things worse off than when the car was taken to them. This car would have tested the patience of a saint, there was not one single thing on this car that had not already been played with modified in some way and pretty much 99% of all the work done by the previous owner was bodged. At every turn as Dennis went through the jobs he would hit bodge which had to be rectified. I am sure he could write a book on how bad this car was, but after persisting with it he has delivered back a great example of an aw11 turbo.
Below is a list of some of the tasks he tackled with this car to give you again an idea of the scope of work he can provide.
The very first thing taken care of was a huge rust spot in the boot, was around 50cm long by about 10cm wide, you could see right through the floor. He took care of that as the first order of business.
After that was a total ECU re-wiring using a new loom, car is running EMS Stinger ECU. (This was done already by the previous mechanic it was taken to, but the job was done so poorly that it needed to be re-done) Prime example was that the takko in the car as it reached 4000rpm would start to go backwards and all over the place. Dennis worked out that this was because the wiring from the CAS to the ECU wasn’t shielded. This was confirmed to be the issue once Dennis had installed a fresh loom from EMS and the problem had gone away. So he is capable of dealing with electrical issues as well.
Next task he took on was to replace the springs and suspension which were beyond rooted in the car. He fitted a nice set of Koni Yellows on top of Eibach springs and also had to source a set of read struts as the ones on the car appeared to be from an 86 aw11 for whatever reason. While he was at it he installed a twosrus bushing kit throughout the car.
After the suspension came the installation of a W2A intercooler, using a frozen boost cooler and a heat exchanger from a GT4 mounted up the front of the car. Again Dennis created mounts for the intercooler and heat exchanger, ran pipework from front to back and installed the water pump. Again just an example of the different work he can tackle on these cars, it’s not just limited to changing stock parts out for other parts and is quite capable of doing full custom install work.
Now we needed to move on and address aging rubber on the fuel lines, we had a couple of failures in this area with the car and so Dennis arranged and fitted new fuel lines. Knowing the car I was paranoid about the oil and water lines going to the turbo which he also replaced.
Like everything else in this car the brakes were also really bad, they were in need of a complete rebuild since the car was going to be used as a track car. So Dennis took care of removing the brakes and having both front and rear discs machined, callipers re-kitted and installed some brand new pads I bought from twosrus. At this time I also decided that since he was doing all this work on the brakes might as well throw in braided lines. Again previous work done on the car challenged him at every turn, but as he has always done he took it in his stride and got the job done.
Now back to electrical again, I wanted the ability to see oil temp, water temp and oil pressure in gauges in the car. Dennis was able to fit a set of lovely analogue gauges where the stereo used to be and made up a nice bracket for the gauges to be installed into. He carried out this complete install as well as removing all the old stereo stuff.
Now we were getting very close to completion when the alternator in the car packed it in, Dennis took care of that to not long after the starter motor died. Again he took care of that and had the car back up and running. The car came home in Sept.
We took the car to the track the other weekend and spent maybe 40min on the track nonstop, this is when we could really see the work Dennis had done, it drove really really well, Aaron came up to a corner and braked really hard with no hands on the wheel and it didn’t pull to the left or right and just kept its line. When I dropped the car off to Dennis it would be all over the road, when accelerating it would pull one way and when braking it would pull another, floating all over the road it was shocking, it’s come home in a ton better condition than when it was dropped off.
The only things Dennis didn’t play with on this car was the motor itself and the turbo, I really wish I had the money to have been able to get Dennis to do an engine rebuild on this car as the condition of the motor is a little unknown but is driving well and the hope now is the motor will last the distance and am in the middle of doing some things here myself to try and help in that area such as a decent catch can, another breather on the cam cover, bov etc.
While the above is more a summary of the work carried out I really haven’t included much about the obstacles he had to overcome from the work done by the previous owner, it seemed with each job which should have been simply was made evidently harder due to the bodge work done before. Be it from bolts tightened up so much he had to weld metal to them to get leverage to parts installed the wrong way making access a pita, the list of things he came up against was huge and yet he was able to overcome them all.
So I guess the purpose of this testimonial is to let AW11 / SW20 owners out there in the Brisbane, Gold Coast, Sunshine coast area that Dennis is around and is possibly in my opinion one of the best all round mechanics for our vehicles in QLD. He is able to tackle a huge range of jobs and I don’t think there would be much he couldn’t do. If you are like me and have been stung before owning a somewhat rare car by mechanics not familiar with the cars and you want to take it to someone that knows the cars inside and out and wont rip you off then Dennis from Louden Motorsport is the place.
Sure it might be a little bit of a drive, but knowing your car is in good hands and you won’t leave with your rear end hurting is well worth the drive. Below are his contact details.
Louden Motorsport
Contact: Dennis Neagle
Phone: 0428916949
Email:
dennis.neagle@gmail.com