Road To Success with Benedict Fowler Mar 30, 2026

Bob From The Machine Shop on Bugatti, Mat Armstrong & Hardest Challenges

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Car

Bugatti Chiron

A Bugatti Chiron is a super-expensive, ultra-fast “hypercar.” It’s the kind of car that needs very specialized work to keep it running right.

Term

welding health and safety

Welding can be dangerous even if you’re good at it. You have to protect your eyes and skin from the bright arc and avoid touching hot metal.

Concept

Welding is a fabrication process used to join or repair metal components, often required in restoration and custom builds. In a machine shop context, “weld stuff” suggests hands-on work like repairing damaged brackets, patching metal, or fabricating parts to get a car back together.

Car

Lamborghini Gallardo

A Lamborghini Gallardo is a very expensive, high-performance supercar. The speaker is saying someone crashed one, which means the shop would be working on a serious, high-value car.

Part

aluminium

Aluminium is a lightweight metal commonly used in modern car bodywork and fabrication because it’s strong for its weight. Welding and forming aluminium requires different technique and equipment than steel, so it’s a meaningful detail for a shop doing metalwork.

Term

tack welding

Tack welding is like putting a couple of small “spots” of weld to hold two metal pieces together. It’s done first so they don’t move, and then you come back later to make the real weld.

Brand

Triumph

Triumph is a well-known British motorcycle brand. In motorsport, it’s part of the UK’s long tradition of building performance bikes.

Brand

Norton

Norton is a British motorcycle company. It’s known for racing history, so it fits the conversation about where motorsport talent and jobs are.

Brand

Jaguar Land Rover

Jaguar Land Rover is a big car company in the UK. They make cars and SUVs, and they represent the kind of major engineering jobs available in England.

Company

JCB

JCB is a company that makes heavy construction machines. The speaker is saying they were outside the JCB factory, which helps explain the industrial setting they were in.

Term

MIG welding

MIG welding is a way of joining metal using a wire that’s fed through a welding gun. The gas helps keep the weld clean, and it’s commonly used in workshops and factories.

Term

TIG welding

TIG welding is another method for welding metal, using a special tungsten tip. It can make very clean, precise welds, but it usually takes more practice than MIG.

Concept

difference between MIG weld and TIG weld

They’re both ways to weld, but MIG is usually faster and better for bigger jobs, while TIG is slower and more precise. For car work, that means MIG for speed and thicker metal, TIG when you need careful, high-quality welds.

Concept

rally cars

Rally cars are race cars built for rough, changing road surfaces. Instead of a smooth track, they race on timed sections of roads like gravel or dirt, so they have to be tough and grip well.

Concept

firefighting

Firefighting is when you spend your time putting out problems that pop up, instead of stopping them before they happen. It usually means things aren’t running smoothly.

Term

sandblaster

A sandblaster is a tool that blasts rough material at a surface to clean it up—like removing old paint or rust. People use it when they want metal to be bare and ready for repainting.

Term

welders

A welder is a machine that joins metal parts together. It’s used for repairs and making custom metal pieces in a workshop.

Term

aver nors

This sounds like a specific tool or technique machinists use. The transcript may have misheard the name, but it’s clearly about hands-on shop equipment.

Concept

CAD

CAD is computer software used to design parts. Instead of sketching and measuring everything manually, you build the design on a computer first.

Concept

cross-pollination

It basically means different creators team up so they can help each other reach more people. Instead of working alone, they share audiences and ideas.

Term

engine mount

An engine mount is what holds the engine in place. If it breaks, the engine can shake more than it should, and that can lead to extra vibration and other damage.

Brand

Volkswagen

Volkswagen is a big car company from Germany. The speaker is using it as an example of where someone could learn proven methods and information.

Concept

hands-on experience

“Hands-on experience” refers to learning by doing—working directly with physical systems, materials, and real manufacturing or repair work. The speaker argues that without it, engineers may rely on theory and “regurgitated” knowledge rather than understanding how metal and real components behave.

Concept

VAT

VAT is a tax that gets added to purchases. When someone says the bill includes “VAT,” they mean part of what you paid was tax, not just the work or parts.

Concept

YouTube drama

They’re saying they’re not trying to start internet conflict. They just want to talk about the car and get it fixed.

Term

bearing

A bearing is a small part that helps moving parts spin smoothly. If the problem is “just a bearing,” it usually means you don’t need to rebuild everything—fixing that part can solve the issue.

Term

PPE

PPE just means the protective gear you wear so you don’t get hurt. For welding, that usually includes gloves and a helmet so sparks and bright light can’t damage your eyes or skin.

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If you'd have told Bob that started the business

that they'd be working on a multi-million pound

Bugatti Chiron in Miami,

what would you have thought of someone telling you that information?

Um, I'd be confused.

Without that bit of welding,

basically the whole of the automotive YouTube scene

would cease to move.

You do everything to help get these cars

that the guys are building back on the road.

But which one of them did you meet first?

The first YouTuber was actually my Armstrong.

I went up and I just walked in the door at Mallory.

I was like, hi, I weld stuff.

Six, eight months later, I got a phone call

and he was like, hi, I've crashed black Lamborghini thing.

I was like, yeah, no problem.

And what is the difference between mig weld and tig weld?

Think of it as size.

Mig welding is big, tig welding is small.

Sharpie or a fountain pen.

You can speak about welding health and safety for hours.

Don't touch the glow and hot metal.

Don't look at the light.

OK, that's your welding health and safety.

Matte Rimac famously saying, you know,

you can't just do that in a garage.

Which is probably the worst thing that he could have said.

I wasn't really too fussed about what Matte said.

Just because they've got a piece of paper saying

they've been to university and read some books.

You know, while they're in university reading books,

I was outside fixing stuff.

Bob, all that resides on your Instagram

is one singular quote.

We do a bit of welding.

Yeah.

That is it.

But without that bit of welding,

the basically the whole of the automotive YouTube scene

would cease to move.

I think it would come into a halt like a gearbox cracking.

But in your own words, who are you and what do you do?

I'm Bob.

I'm a welder.

I moved from Ireland a few years ago.

And what do I do?

I'm a welder.

Well, I pretty much have a go at anything mechanical.

And that's how I learned how to become

what we're doing today.

Well, I don't class myself as a welder or an engineer

or this or that.

I'm just kind of a generalist with a lot of experience.

Well, as you'll find out today,

I spoke to your friend Kevin before you came on.

And he has told me a lot about your story.

But the recurring thing that comes up when I speak to your friends

or I see you mention it in your videos

is you will just have a go at anything.

You're willing to try and tackle anything.

You're willing to do anything.

And we're going to get into today how, why,

and where that kind of comes from.

But people obviously know you because of what I said in my opening.

You fix, you repair, you do everything to help get these cars

that the guys are building back on the road.

But which one of them did you meet first?

The first YouTuber was actually my Armstrong.

So I had heard about my Armstrong.

He'd been recommended to me by lots of people

to go up and talk to him, get on his videos,

get in his videos.

It doesn't work like that.

I know now.

I remember a very long time ago, I went up

and I just walked in the door at Mallory.

I was like, hi, I'll weld stuff.

Here's my number.

Let me know if you need anything.

And I walked out again.

Not knowing anything about Matt.

Literally never heard of Matt.

It was a recommendation from one of my friends.

And that was it.

Then about six, eight months later,

I got a phone call and he goes, hi.

I've crashed a Gallardo, Gallardo.

Lamborghini, black Lamborghini thing.

And I was like, yeah, no problem.

And I sat beside a colleague at the time.

I was like, what's your name?

Matt Armstrong wrote down a phone number.

And she was like, is that the guy that we went up to?

I was like, oh, might be.

Oh, that's that YouTuber.

So I had to go up and have a look at the job.

And I walked in and like seeing this fellow with a

backwards baseball cap and a camera and a camera

stuck in my face.

And I'm like, oh, God.

I have no interest in this world whatsoever,

but we'll have a look at the car.

I've never really worked on cars before

because I come from the motorbike world.

And it was a Lamborghini.

And it means nothing to me.

It's just a car.

And there was a box section and a piece of extruded metal,

aluminium.

Yeah, I can weld all that.

It's no problem.

It took me about three days to do it.

The cost of this mouching is like, yeah, no problem.

We got stuck into it.

We did the job.

And he shouted out my business on the Sunday.

And usually with the welder lessons and stuff that we do,

we take in about two or three bookings a day.

And I've got about two weeks of work ahead of me at all times.

When Matt shouted me out,

I was booked up for about 11 weeks after that on the first day.

I'd never seen anything like it

because I'd fallen out of love with using any kind of social media

for marketing because I was working with Instagrammers

and influencers, that sort of stuff.

And you pay them a few hundred quid, they shout you out

and you get nothing from it.

So I doubted everybody.

I doubt everybody's following on Instagram when you see

they've got X amount of followers on Instagram.

It means nothing to me anymore

because I don't believe they're real a lot of the time.

And then when I looked at Matt's following on YouTube,

I kind of put me into that category as well,

thinking that I might give it a try and see what it does.

But I didn't even watch YouTube at the time.

I was so far removed from YouTube,

that was a year and a half ago.

And that's how we started working together.

I was like, OK, this is serious.

This actually works.

This guy is proper.

During the first bit to unpackage that,

is there's so many people that would be so afraid

to go and knock on the door.

And I'm not saying the guys would love me to probably mention,

don't all go and knock on the door anymore.

No, I think there's a hell of a team in there.

But that's a huge thing to do, you know,

and the amount of courage that it takes somebody to just go

and say, hi, it's me.

Like, people don't do that.

Like, who was it that convinced you to do that?

My friend, Dell.

Mickey's brother.

Mickey from his brother.

I can't even say my mate's name.

So, Dell, he's been here from day one

and he's just so helpful.

He's a great guy.

He's in a lot of our YouTube videos

and some of Chris's as well.

He's just a stand-up guy.

He's absolutely brilliant.

And he was ready.

He's like, get up there.

You need to go talk to me.

I was like, so lazy doing it.

I was like, I didn't want to go up.

It was just no one my priority list

because as soon as I see big numbers on anybody's profile,

I start to doubt them.

And I was like that for a very long time.

I didn't know who that was.

I literally never heard him up.

That wasn't the only mental thing

that was part of that opening segment though

because you also mentioned about the fact

that you hadn't worked on a car before

and that triggered something that your friend Kevin told me earlier

which was when you were back in Ireland,

didn't you go to an interview

about a specific type of tack welding

and you actually learned to do it

on the way to the interview by stopping off somewhere?

So, how I moved to England.

So, when I was born and raised in Ireland

and Ireland's brilliant for motorsport,

absolutely the best place in the world to be for motorsport

unless you want to get paid big money,

then it's different.

So, in England we've got Triumph,

Norton, Jaguar Land Rover,

we've got Rollinfield.

All the big manufacturers are designed here.

That's where you need to be

if you want to kind of live on the wages that you're getting paid

because I was building race bikes and competition bikes.

That sort of stuff in my free time and weekends

but I was also working as a maintenance man in Debenhams

during the day just to pay the wages.

So, I had two jobs at the same time.

That's what I was doing.

I was like, I want to do the full time,

I want a career out of this

but it's hard to do in Ireland.

So, I was like, I was working on the Ironman

at the TT.

You know the TT?

Yeah, I've driven the roads.

It's absolutely insane.

So, that's my game, Road Racing.

Road Racing, Irish Road Racing and TT,

that sort of stuff.

And I was at the TT

and I got introduced to Norton Motorcycles

in Derbyshire at the time.

And I was chatting to one of the lads

and I ended up snagging the interview.

I was like, can I come over?

I'm well, can I come over?

I want to do an interview.

So, they said, yeah, no problem.

So, what I did was I sold all my tools,

I sold all my bikes,

I handed the keys in for the flat I was living in

and just left.

I packed up my bag and my backpack

and the toolbox in the back of my bike.

And I rode to England.

I had no money.

I had nothing.

I'd like 70 quid or something.

It was just enough to get me there.

And I walked into the interview.

I said, hello, receptionist.

I'm here for the job.

She's like, are you here for the interview?

I'm like, no.

I've just left Ireland.

I've sold everything.

I'm here to stay.

And she's like, OK.

Have a seat.

So, while I was in June,

we were interviewing the HR lady.

The receptionist went into the boss

and told the bossman that this crazy lad from Ireland

was just after riding over.

It was the 6th of February

and it was snowing everywhere.

I've got a picture of it.

I was parked outside the JCB factory in Derby

because I'd never seen a building that big before.

I pulled in and I parked my bike beside her

and I was staring at her.

I thought, wow, I took a picture of it.

And I'll show you the picture after.

And then continued on to the interview.

Then after the interview was done,

I said, look, if I'm not the best welder,

I don't mind.

I'd like to stay anyway.

I'll work for free for a month.

Just, you know, I want the job.

I need to get good enough.

While I was actually on the way,

so I'm from the west coast of Ireland.

When I was driving to Dublin,

which is a four-hour drive,

I pulled into one of my friend's factories,

Dan Tynan.

He's working in a stove factory

where they had this specific type of welding

called MIG welding.

And I'd never MIG welded before.

I was always TIG welding.

So I needed to have some bit of MIG welding

to go through this interview.

So I pulled in halfway between my house and the ferry

to learn how to MIG weld on the way to the interview.

And what is the difference between MIG weld and TIG weld?

So there's a lot to it.

Think of it as size.

MIG welding is big.

TIG welding is small.

MIG welding is big and fast.

You get a lot done really fast.

And TIG welding is accuracy.

Think of a Sharpie or a fountain pen.

Yeah, that's a really good way of describing it.

But that is just the tip of the iceberg

when it comes to that stuff.

So much to it, yeah.

So most people get into that through an apprenticeship

or going to college or maybe an engineering degree

at university.

But your way in was basically forcing yourself

into a job.

And did you get that job from?

Well, I was welding a long time before that.

So I've known the equivalent of a GCSE in Ireland

is called a junior cert.

OK.

And I had pretty much left school by the time

I did our junior cert or our GCSEs.

I was out working as much as I could.

I'd never wanted to go to schools.

My mom would be catching me making off school and stuff.

And I'd be off work at the weekends

or my dad working at the weekends

or just wanted to work, wanted to work.

And I convinced my parents that I didn't want to go back to school

after our GCSEs, which is a big thing in Ireland.

You have to finish school in Ireland

or you're a bit of a social outcast.

It's a strange culture.

But I didn't want to go back.

And all my friends at school were a little bit,

oh, he's left.

He's a dropout.

He'll make nothing of himself.

I didn't really care.

I was just washing trucks on the weekend.

I was out plumbing with my dad.

My dad's a plumber, carpenter, builder.

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Why didn't you care?

Why didn't I care?

Why didn't you care so much?

Where did you get the tough skin from?

To be like, they're wrong.

I'm happy with what I'm doing.

I'm right.

I don't know.

I don't know where that come from.

I suppose a lot of it from my parents.

I remember when my mom, she always had

like a quirky fashion sense

and just a bit like, I can do what I want.

And she always encouraged it

if that's what you want to do, you do it

and side everybody else.

So I look probably a little bit like that.

She's a cool woman.

So have you got a lot of the values that you've got today

because of your parents?

Do you gravitate towards what they did

and kind of picked up the lessons from them?

They did or are you the complete opposite?

You pick and choose.

There's some good bits.

There's some good and bad bits.

But I think a lot of it is like pragmatic learning.

I watch another people mess up and kind of go,

right, don't do that.

Don't do that.

And then these people are kind of doing something I like

or presenting values that I kind of think are beneficial

to the success or being a better person

and trying to follow that.

You know, honestly, hard work that just general good things

and then try and stay away from the other bits and pieces.

But yeah, my work ethic from my parents,

like my parents are seriously hard workers,

they separated when I was a teenager

and they always stayed working.

My mom was working the full time,

my dad was working full time,

but he used to travel a lot for work as a builder.

And whenever I was off school, say weekends,

long weekends, summer holidays, Easter, whatever,

I was with my dad working, building something.

I had a job when I was 14, driving diggers

on a building site that he was working in.

And then there was no working on the building site,

so I was put into a field collecting rag worth out the hay.

I remember this, this is like stuff you couldn't get away with now.

I was 14 years old and I was given a JCB3CX.

He used to point it up the hill and put it into drive,

jump out of the cab, run around the front,

and then start picking the weeds out of the hay

as it was going at the hill.

I sat in the bucket like, oh, I'd be crazy,

but that's how you learn.

But I literally, I think my first day at work ever, I was four.

I went to work with my dad.

No, he wasn't like a beast to me,

he made me graft rent and he was just working

and I was just puttering around the place to just keep myself occupied.

He asked me to move some tiles out of the way

while he was putting some skirt and board on or something.

And I moved all the tiles.

He paid me £25 a pound of tile and I bought an actual amount of it.

So it's that kind of like work and reward thing.

So that's why it works out.

It worked the way I do now.

But the values we get in us are installed in us from our earliest years.

That is what forms us.

How long was it after your parents separated

before you moved to England?

I think it was probably about six or seven years after that.

I think it was 25, 26.

She didn't move as a direct result or anything like that?

No, and there's no direct reason.

I just wanted something more interesting to do

and I wanted to do something interesting and cool.

You can make money in Ireland.

If you wanted to make big money, you can get involved in tech.

You can get quite a million a year just doing an average tech job in Dublin,

but I didn't want that.

At the time, my idea of hell is sitting behind a desk

and I did not want to do that.

So I just wanted to make things.

I was fascinated with motorbikes, fascinated with British engineering,

fascinated with anything that was going on over here.

I just wanted to get into it, get stuck in.

Didn't really have a direction.

Didn't really think I'd ever own my own business or anything.

I just wanted to be interested in the thing I'm grafting at.

And what was giving you that fascination of engineering?

That very much comes from my dad.

My dad used to race rally cars when he was younger than that.

He had all the magazines and stuff in the attic and I found all the magazines.

I was fascinated by them.

I used to collect Land Rover magazines.

I was obsessed with British engineering for years

because my dad lived in England for years

and he respected British engineering or what it was.

Any tools I had made in Sheffield written on it,

I used to have a tool collection in the corner of his shed

and then we'd say if the car broke down,

we used to live like 40 minutes from the nearest town to get parts in.

That's how rural we were.

If the car broke down, you had to fix it.

There was no excuses.

There was no, oh, that's not the right way to do it.

You had to get it mobile to get a town to fix it.

And the thing was, in Ireland, it's not as easy to get parts and stuff, is it?

Because everything's like five days rather than 24 hours

because most stuff comes from mainland England.

So, did that mean that you ended up having to actually make things?

When you're saying fix things,

do you actually mean also making things work rather than having the part?

Yes.

Just do what you have to do to get it working.

Now, it kind of sounds like a group of absolute object poverty.

There's nothing like that.

It was just what Western Ireland was like.

It was when things did go wrong, you'd have to use your imagination.

You'd be stuck miles away from a shop

or even if we were out building somebody's house or a boiler broke

or you're out on...

We used to work as...

Some of my dad's a fantastic plumber.

I used to go with him, binding pig farms.

And we'd get a phone call in the middle of the night

where the boiler's broken down

and all the bonnets start going under the sows for warmth

and they get crushed and killed.

So, that would happen to all over the farm

and they'd lose their whole stock.

So, we would go and get the boiler going.

Of course, it could be two or three o'clock in the night

and you go, right, I don't have any parts.

There's no shops open.

What do we do?

You'd figure it out every time.

You always get something going, you have to.

And that's where the imagination comes from.

That's why I said I'm a generalist.

I can kind of put my hand to anything because you had to.

Take us through the period of time then.

You've come to England, you've left Ireland,

you've got all those skills,

you've got all those bits that make you up

and you've walked in the door and you're getting that job.

In your head, you're not even trying to get it, you've got it.

It's just how they give it to you initially.

Take us from there to being outside the machine shop

that we're at today.

How did that happen?

She said that entrepreneurial,

I'm going to start a business side of you.

He wasn't there when you were in Ireland.

How did you get from A2B?

I take a lot of inspiration from the fellow

who used to work with in Norton.

His name was Stuart Garner.

And a lot of stuff happened within that business

that a lot of people are not happy about.

But that's a whole other conversation I'm all going to.

But watching that mentality,

I'd never seen a businessman like that before.

And then I started to understand,

I was like, oh, that's what business is.

And then I was like, the things that can come from it

and what you can do for other people as well.

And it was just, it wasn't inspiration,

but it was an understanding of what could be.

And then I was kind of starting to realize

that I'm not an employee.

I used to, not war with my managers,

but I sometimes...

Struggled to conform to that way of doing things.

Was it logical?

Yeah.

Standard processes and standard operating procedures

and stuff is like the right way of doing things.

I'm like, well, I can skip all these stuff

and get it done anyway.

And that's how my mind works,

because I just want to get to say,

I'm proud of the class, right?

It works, get out of the door

and just produce, produce, produce.

And then so my mind doesn't work like that.

I go into it.

If I went into a workbench

and I have to make the same thing

over and over and over again,

I just go crazy.

Like three days of that is my maximum.

And then even now,

I think I could probably do a day

of normal factory work before I'd go insane.

Many of you might not know this,

but away from the recordings that I do

in my van studios,

I've actually got a digital marketing agency.

Now we specialize in a lot of automotive clients,

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So how long did it take you to realize

that from the job that you described

when you went in and the receptionist

went into the bus and said,

I think we've got higher this case.

Where is that stove?

Yeah, it was,

I don't know the timescale,

but there was a few managers that went through Norton

and I fell out with every one of them

because of either their leadership style

or the disrespect in the employees

that were working with them

and just generally just not good.

And then I always found myself back

in the leadership role again

because I was not good at that job.

I was not good at that job.

So what happened was I moved there,

I was okay at it,

and then I become quite good at it.

I'm making the petrol tanks,

I'm making the frames and doing the bits and pieces.

And then I became a team leader

and then I became like the manager of the workshop.

And then I got demoted because I was terrible at it.

I had never seen a building this big.

Never mind a random one.

I had 22 lads working for me

and I was just the hardest working person there

and I didn't understand that

if you're the manager,

you should be the least important person

if you're doing your job right.

Everybody else should have their processes that they follow

and everything should be getting done automatically.

That wasn't in my head yet.

So I kept getting demoted

and then hire somebody else with more experience.

But the place was ran

like a building on fire all the time.

If there's one thing I can do is I can firefight.

I can fix problems now

and when there's chaos, I'm alive.

I love chaos.

I love solving problems

when everything else is going wrong.

So that happened a lot within that business.

So that's when I'd come out on top again.

So it was kind of like the hire guy

that was better than me at organizing stuff.

But then the other part of the business might be falling over

and that would affect our side of the business

and then that guy would get sacked.

I'd be put back in place.

That happened like four or five times.

And it got to a point where

I just couldn't see a future there anymore

and my hard work was firefighting all the time

and the better I got at firefighting,

the less planning was done within the business.

That makes sense.

And then I was just burning myself out all the time.

And I just got disillusioned at the place

and then I was thinking,

I thought back to an idea I had when I was 21,

when I was working in that debilance place

because I wanted to sandblast a motorbike frame.

So the nearest sandblaster was like an hour and a half drive away.

So I can't bear striving down there.

So what do I do?

Bike bought a sandblaster.

That's just a waste of money.

I have no money.

But if I put it in the local petrol station

and put a coin meter on it,

then people can come in and put a coin in it

and use the sandblaster for a few minutes.

That's a mental idea.

I'll think of that.

But I was too busy drinking and shagging at the time

to do something with it.

So...

As Kevin has told me,

don't worry, everybody will get into that.

I'm getting nervous.

So that was the idea.

And then I could add more bits to it and more bits.

And you can put a sandblaster

and you can put a welder and all that.

You just put coins and it used the machine

and then drive away again,

which would have worked over in Western Ireland

because you're breaking trailers

and farm equipment and stuff.

And they might not have whatever it is,

but every farmer's a welder, as I say.

So that was the general idea.

Now, I was off...

Me and Kevin used to do a lot of international motorbike trips.

We'd just jump on our sports bikes

and just hammer across Europe somewhere in any direction.

And we'd gone off down on a trip down through Eastern Europe,

down into Bosnia and stuff.

And we got caught in a minefield

and one of the conversations we were having

while we were dragging our bikes into the literal minefield,

we weren't meant to be there.

It was a total accident.

But one of the conversations we were having

was telling how disillusioned I was where I was working.

And it would be cool if I actually went

and did that idea with the coin meter and the sandblaster

and just make it a bit bigger,

get a lean-to or something

and put the machines under it.

And then we came up with the idea of a gym membership

in an enclosed workspace.

And instead of people paying per hour,

they just pay a monthly gym membership

and they come and use mills, lades, welders,

that sort of stuff.

And it formulated into a bit of an idea.

I was like, yeah, that's a pretty good idea.

And then I came back from the holiday

and I was living in a small apartment

and nodding him at the time.

And then I bought a book,

a business plan for idiots or something.

I can't remember the name of it.

Kevin still has it, actually.

And then Kevin came over about two or three months later

and for a night out,

and he walked into my sitting room

and he'd seen that I'd scribbled the entire business plan

in Sharpie on the back of my bedroom door.

And he's one of your best friends from all over?

Yeah, we know each other since we were teenagers.

We used to be in bands.

So he went to university.

I used to hang out at university

because that's where all the girls were.

Well, he moved over first.

I followed over about a year and a half after.

But yeah, I'd scribbled the entire business plan

for the machine shop out in the back of the bedroom door

in Sharpie.

And the book was lying on the ground

and I was trying to read this, but I can't read.

I can read text messages and stuff,

but as soon as the paragraphs and stuff,

my mind just glitches out.

I don't like it.

But I'd got through a lot of that book

just trying to figure out what business plan means

and why you need one and that sort of stuff.

So I'd sketched it all out in the back of the door

and then he was like,

oh, Bob's actually serious about this.

And then we started talking about it.

And I'd just sit there and just waffle ideas

and throw ideas out.

And Kevin just sits there and just like types everything out

and then just we just run through it again.

We delete all the mad ideas and keep the good ones.

And they're developing pretty good so far.

So it's been an interesting journey.

So pre-meeting the other guys, the other YouTubers,

which is quite funny because what you described in,

you kind of gravitate towards people that are like you,

that live in carnage and chaos

and constant problem-solving.

It's quite funny because maybe you were destined

to go and knock on that door at Matt's

because they are people.

You know, I don't know a group of people

that live in more carnage, more unsureness

and more problem-solving than Chris and Auto Alex

and Matt and Mark McCann.

And it's the way it is that that is what it is.

The whole channels are built up essentially

on problem-solving.

So it's like you've actually found your people with that.

But what about the people that first,

before that came into the machine shop,

did the concept of I'm going to make a gym membership

for using equipment, did that work?

Was that a viable business model?

Longest short of it is no.

It didn't work.

It's still not dead.

I'm not advertising any more gym membership stuff,

or memberships for the workshop anymore

because what we had was a lot of people

with a romantic idea in their heads, but no commitment.

And they're like, I want to do this.

I want to do that.

It's going to be great.

I watched this TV show and this guy did this.

And then all of a sudden, they've got a bike at the end of it.

That's great because that person that you're watching,

that's his full-time job.

He has to get that bike to us, or to stand standard,

to put it out on YouTube and then succeed from there.

Whereas a lot of other people have jobs during the day

and they've got other commitments.

They've got family.

They've got this and that.

So they're pottering down like once a week.

They come in by the time they're set up.

They're kind of ready to go.

I need to weld.

Bob, how do you weld?

I'm like, here's the machine.

Here's the sentence.

I'm busy.

I need to go.

That kind of stuff.

And then there's no confidence.

But we do the lessons as well.

The lessons are still going.

They're really, really popular.

My naivety was skill set because I came to England

expecting British engineering to be.

British engineering being everywhere as I grew up

kind of thinking it would be, but not knowing

that there's not really any British engineering anymore.

Not hands on the way I thought it would be.

I thought everybody would have a machinist coat on

and know how to use avernors.

But there's none of that anymore.

It's all CAD.

It's all computer based.

And then you get parts manufactured in a different country

and assembled here.

So the actual making things has left the country.

And I wasn't aware of it because I had been working

in the industry for six, seven years

before I started the business.

Or six years before I started the business.

I was just kind of like expecting there to be more hands

on people and more people with the thirst for learning.

But that's why I'm not going to kill off the membership.

I'm just going to change it in the future.

What I'm thinking at the moment.

And build it into like a YouTuber studio

because YouTubers are a lot more firefighty

but a lot more tenacious, a lot more brave

and they're thirsty to learn things.

So I want to keep the machine shop

but primarily just for YouTubers.

So the YouTube studio.

This is, again, it's all theoretical at the moment

is something that we're working towards.

And it's very much an idea in my head at the moment.

But I do believe that it's going to work really well

because our whole game plan is cross-pollination.

Just help everybody.

Every YouTuber that's out there,

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A blimmin' lot.

Especially the route.

There's a new one popping up every week in the rebuilding cars

because people are inspired.

Exactly, yeah.

And Matt inspires them and Chris inspires them.

And all the people out there are just buying stuff

and putting it back together.

I'm fascinated by it.

The skillsets out there are just not there.

And our whole game is teaching us.

And then YouTubers are the right kind of people.

They're self-motivated people.

They're hungry to learn.

And that's the kind of people I want to work with.

And if I can get them into my workshop

and I can teach them how to spray a car

or I can teach them how to weld

or I can teach them how to use a machine.

And I've got 10 or 15 YouTubers a week coming

and then they promote my channel

and it all grows cross-pollination,

just growth in every direction.

That's the goal at the moment.

Now, we're obviously going to talk about

the Bigatti Chiron. Everybody would murder me

if I didn't bring it up.

So we're going to get into the Chiron.

We're going to get into Miami.

We're going to get into all of that because there's so many things

that I think must have felt so alien

knowing about your background.

But can we just have a stopgap?

If you'd have told Bob that started the business

and thought about putting a vending machine

in a petrol station car park to use a sand blaster

they'd be working on a multi-million pound

Bigatti Chiron in Miami

in like a few years time.

Genuinely, what would you have thought

of someone telling you that information?

I'd be confused.

More than I would have thought. Why?

Genuinely, Bigatti Chiron

it's cool

but it's not bolts and washers and a bit of aluminium.

It's nothing special.

It's really nicely made.

I've worked at a lot of supercars now

and they're all

you can find something questionable

on every one of them

on every supercar I've worked on

but that Chiron is

perfect all the way through.

And because it's perfect, it's the easiest one to work on.

Really?

So in the way that you said when you first

met Matt, you were unsure

because you'd worked with influencers in the past

and they're not an influencer

but as a creator, many people are the creators

but we know what you mean.

When did you actually get that

Oh actually, he's legit.

I know exactly what's going on.

Is that when the workshop was booked up for 11 weeks?

The day after the video went out.

Really?

Did that change your perspective?

Did you suddenly then have an open mindset

to kind of everybody else again?

Or were you still quite closed off?

I'm super skeptical of everybody all the time.

I don't know what it is

but you meet somebody, you shake your hand

and I'm instantly weighing you up.

Did you shake my hand properly?

Did you look me in the eye?

And you're just weighing somebody up all the time

and it's probably a bad habit of mine

because I'm like, I just source people out all the time

and...

Why is that?

Is that a protection method?

I don't know.

I don't think it's that deep.

Have you been burned hard enough to feel

that way is my point?

No.

I don't believe in all this trauma stuff

that people are going on about these days.

Life is hard.

Stuff happens that is not ideal

in everybody's life.

One person is saying,

oh, this happened, that's happened.

She happens to everybody.

This stuff happened in my life.

It's not been ideal all the time.

No, just stuff.

The worst things have happened

in other people's lives.

When you speak about this to other people,

you go back to any war

where young lads have had to run over

a wall into a hail of bullets.

That's trauma.

That's very different

to something that

appearance broke up or whatever.

Fine, it happens to the majority of people.

I'm not really worried about that too much.

That sort of stuff.

But with them,

just weighing people up and assessing people,

it's more of a

how to maybe

find...

It makes sense,

but it's usually learned from somewhere.

It's normally learned from somewhere picked up from somewhere,

because it's all these bits

that kind of make up who we are.

But what I love is the baguette.

It's just nuts, bolts, washers,

just a car because it's

disarming what a baguette

should be.

It's great, but you're also disarming it

at the same time because it is just made up

of parts, pieces,

and it all comes together to make this

crazy object.

Did you have...

Was it just full excitement when you got the opportunity

to work on it? Because there's been a lot of comments

like, what if that went wrong?

Or what if that caused that to happen?

Have you got any fear or risk-sensitive side

of you to be like...

No.

It's nuts, bolts, washers.

When I found out I was

going over, I was like, that's a cool idea.

I got excited for the opportunity,

but I wasn't going to have any fear of this car

because I didn't know what was in it.

I had zero information,

so I started putting my feelers out.

I knew that this engine mount was broken,

so I started ringing everybody I knew that

I'd worked in Ricardo, because we could see

the Ricardo stamp on the casings.

Ricardo was on the open cul-ville,

a few minutes away.

So I started ringing other people I used to work with

in Norton who had worked at Ricardo.

I'm like, do you know about this?

I'm trying to get some insider information

which they absolutely did not give me.

Yes.

And found out that it's the same aluminium

that's used in pretty much every gearbox ever.

And I was like, okay, that's fine.

I know what the material is.

I can weld it.

If there is any chance of

anything being designed weird,

like there's a whole thing on everyone

in the comments of, that is a fused part.

It's designed to break.

I've held it in my hand.

It's just not.

I've seen a million of these things,

not a million of these engine mounts,

but a million things like it.

It's just not designed.

There's no fuses.

It's usually a fuses like a thin piece of metal

that is designed into the casting

to break along those fracture points.

It's very rarely, rarely used,

and it definitely wasn't used on this thing.

If it was used on this thing, I'd have a very different outlook

on how I was going to repair it.

There was obviously the video which you've used

in your opening video the other day

explaining how you actually remade that part.

Matt used it in his video,

which is Matteo Rimmack famously saying,

this can't just be done in a workshop,

which is probably the worst thing that he could have said.

How much did that video

genuinely spur you on

knowing that you kind of had that gold as well?

I wasn't really too fussed about what Matteo said.

We're all humans.

Just because they've got a piece of paper

saying they've been to university

and read some books.

While they're in university reading books,

I was outside fixing stuff.

We both have education in that sort of stuff.

If they say, I'm an engineer, I've been to university,

that immediately makes me doubt them.

I doubt every mechanical engineer

I've ever spoken to until they prove themselves.

I don't trust them.

It's all theory and no practice.

You have a mechanical engineer

that's been to university, a set of spanners.

You can barely change a tire on a bicycle.

They're not to be trusted

as far as I'm concerned, in my opinion.

When Matteo said that,

I was thinking, look, he's been told,

he's gone to his lead engineer.

And he said, lead engineer,

he's, I'm strong, going to be able to fix this.

No chance in the world.

That's what he's saying, because he's

designed this thing,

the lead engineer designed this thing.

It has to be done a certain way, a specific way,

all the rest of the stuff that he's learned

from

theory, from reading books, from

following other processes, like in Volkswagen.

He'll probably get some information

from Volkswagen, a Porsche,

who's built on top of university, university.

I think university is a really bad thing for engineering.

I genuinely believe university

is a bad thing for engineering, because what you get

is teachers, teaching teachers.

So you're allowed to go to university,

you'll get his university engineering degree,

and you'll come out and you'll do two years

in the factory somewhere, and then you'll go back in

as a teacher, and then you just regurgitate

the same stuff over and over

and over and over again, and that just happens cycles

over teachers, over teachers, over teachers.

At the end of it is you're allowed to let young

people coming out with

regurgitated engineering information

that don't have any hands-on experience.

They don't know how metal works, they don't know

how it fatigues or breaks or snaps.

I mean, all these

YouTube comments saying that this engine mount

should have broken on purpose.

I'm like, I've fixed a million vehicles.

I've never seen it.

Is that because they're not applying it

to something that's in their life?

So a lot of the guys that come in to you,

or they're coming into the workshop or want to learn,

they've probably got something that they need to fix,

whether it be a car, or they've got a project,

or they have a

something they want an outcome on.

So like, they'll see the results

of the thing they make, they'll see it snap,

they'll see it break, they'll see it slip,

they'll see it not fit, they'll see it whatever.

Do you think that's where the difference is?

Because it's not that you don't get hands-on

in university, right? Is it just because you don't

see the kind of result of what you've done?

Yeah, so it's

there's tens of thousands of types

of metal.

They all have numbers, and they all behave

in different ways, and they all have different strengths

and different qualities, different

stuff about them.

And then there'll be tens of thousands of different types

of aluminium as well. And I see

people bringing in random stuff to me.

I've broken this, we had a piece

after Lagonda recently, from 1930

or whatever, really, really early Lagonda.

And he was like, this is

he opened up a bubble wrap and handed it to us

very carefully, obviously, this thing is priceless.

And I was like, and I was

looking at it, I flicked it, I got a file and just filed

the edge of it. And I could tell what aluminium was.

Not to the number, but I could

tell

how it's going to weld, or what type

of issues I'm going to have.

Just by the feel of it.

I know that sounds absolutely insane, but it's

just like anybody, you put a race car

driver in and send them around the track,

you go, I need more preload or I need more this or I need

more that, you get a feel for these type of things.

And if you hand me like an old triumph

motorbike casing, and

I know, as soon as somebody says

I've got a 1960s triumph to weld,

I'm like, I know what I'm going to get involved

with here now, because it's going to have oil

soaked through the porous casting for the last

you know, how many years has been set up?

I know that I need to soak it

in petrol before the night before, then

I need to wash it down with some degreaser to get the petrol off

to get the oil out of the casting and then I know

that I need to use a 447 rod

not out of education, but out of

I've messed it up so many times

or got it wrong so many times or

failed so many times and

what everybody thinks are so clever

and genius, everybody is calling me

all these names on YouTube.

I've got it wrong

so many times. I have

messed things up so many times

just an unimaginable amount of times.

I've been lucky enough to do it under somebody else's compass

the amount of times my dad has nearly tried to kill me over

things I've messed up like

and things I've messed up at Norton

things I've messed up in other people's garages

and I'm sorry, I've just cost them

thousands of pounds and just messing up

well, I've done that. I've done the messing up

I've done the

I've made the mistakes and I've got

stuff so wrong so often

I now know if somebody brings me something

and I can feel it and rub a file off it

and kind of get an understanding of what it feels

like I can kind of go yes I can do it

or no I can't do it or

I can try it and it might work

but there's these risks. It's just no new job.

And that comes from

also being surrounded by the right people

right and you're trying to put those skills

those touched field tactile

points over onto people that come

into your workshop so just to touch

again because it's always bob from

the machine shop but then I

really wanted to get across what the machine

shop is does the touch and feel

of that business and what we spoke about

today is the fact that the business start

with this idea of having people

coming in through the door paying a

membership and being able to use the equipment it quickly

then turned into everybody asked you for your help

you started charging for your help you then offer

your services out and you're now going to go down the route

basically being able to have the machine

shop as an additional studios that all

these people that require help all the time

and that coming in and putting hands on

it all sounds pretty

straightforward like a well oiled

machine but what struck me is a couple

of videos before the

recent couple of obviously taken off at

the back of all the interest of what's going on with the baguette

you actually uploaded

a video which was saying

I've screwed up

I'm in some debt with HRC

oh dear

was that

something that raises your stress up a little bit

when it gets to like paperwork and going through

all that kind of stuff and having to solve those

kind of problems or do you deal with that in the same way

you deal with the gearbox do the same

same way as I deal with everything else I'm

like in this mood all the time like

when I'm on camera I have to try and

like speak up I'm just relax

I was like chill and I wake up in the morning

my day goes like this I wake up in the morning

I feel so anxious

I nearly get sick this is every morning

in my life that I wasn't expecting that

yeah yeah and it's not in my head

my head is chill my head is calm

but my body just feels like it wants

I want to puke when I wake up in the morning I want to get sick

since I was a teenager I don't know what it is

tried to go to therapy figured out

it just happens and I take no notice of it

I genuinely take no notice of it

I just wake up I feel sick I'm like alright come on

get out for it just wait for my body to

get going as soon as

I'm doing something it's gone

it's absolutely gone just don't think about it again

and then I'm just chill

I'm calm and you could walk in and just say

you know the local town's on fire

everything's gone wrong

and I'm like here we go

it'll be fine

we'll fix it it's easy

I'm just like when I got the news about

the HMORC thing I was annoyed

I was annoyed

so what had happened

naively

I'm not a business owner

I'm still learning it's a thing you never

really complete is it you just learn it every day

I had the machine shop and I was teaching lessons

about the machine shop

and then I didn't want to go fat register

because so much paperwork and you have to have

20% of everything you earn back to

Batman and I was like

it was war with the effort I didn't want to have

the extra effort of receipts and

all that tedious stuff that I

have to do every day

so I split the business in half and we had the world

shop or the world school and the machine shop

we taught world lessons with this

and then we did the memberships with this

I was from the same building

and using the same equipment that was the issue

so there was no clear

definition or divide or down the middle

that was the issue

my relationship ended with

the accountant that I was working with

and I got a different accountant

and I had

some things I was concerned with

so I ran and passed him he highlighted that

it's called artificial separation and it's highly illegal

and everybody knows this

so I was like right what do we do

we go back through everything they've earned

over the last two and a half years of doing this

we collect up all the fat and all the receipts

and everything because I wasn't fat registered

I wasn't really diligently keeping receipts or anything

so I collected what I could

and then our total bill came to

something like 32,000

pounds in VAT

and

he was like just ring them up because it's better

if you go to them because if they come to you

you're in trouble I'm like fine

I was like hi I've done this

I'm very sorry I'm being honest

what do we do about it

and they were lovely

so the extra money is actually

the interest they charge

on effectively the longer payback

so they gave me years and years and years to payback

and the whole total is like 38 grand

which is a drop in the ocean in business terms

because we're turning over

like 250,000 now or something

and it's manageable the amount that I pay

off every month is fine

but I want to pay it down faster so we started a series

on YouTube

and it's changed the business

overnight like everybody's just going ho

and they all want to support me and they want to support

the business and they love what we're doing so we got

we have pirates coming from all over the country

getting posted to us we fixed them

we filmed me fixing them we put it on YouTube

I fixed a barrel from an old two stroke

aerial British motorbike

it's over 100,000 views like

on it and who has interest

in that they just like see me watch

they like to watch me fix things

which I find fascinating because

it's just me fixing things the only thing

that is different is there's a camera pointed at me while I'm doing

and he keeps asking me questions and I'm like

I don't enjoy being on camera I'm not sure

if you can tell

so I have to stop what I'm doing and explain it

to the cameraman and then

he makes a beautiful edit

beautiful edit and then he'll put it on

people love us so it's that

and now we're going on to the Bugatti stuff kind of doing the same thing

with the Bugatti stuff it's just going strength to strength

we're 21 videos now

115,000 subscribers

it's crazy it's crazy

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and does your mind go to where that could go?

do you accidentally slip into like

when you were thinking about I could do this

at the local petrol station

are you now like fully like oh hang on a minute

we could do this with this channel

we're helping all the guys out

are you still trying to stay grounded

to having the main business as the kind of thing

ticking as well

erm

it's hard to get my mind to kind of go

oh it could be this because

I was saying that to Matt

when I was over with him

I honestly don't know what my motivation is

I don't desire to have a big house

and a fancy car and a

do you know what I want? I want a farm

or I want a bit of land with a load of animals on it

that's what I do want

and so we're at a motocross track

and a race track locally so I can go race on

Motwakan's place

but erm

I have no interest in like Rolexes

or Gucci bags or any of that stuff

I'm just not into it

I like fixing things like

I like helping people and fixing stuff for them

and helping people get out of problems

and when I teach somebody how to do something

it clicks and they get a little smile on their face

and like that's rewarding for me

that's what I like doing

if that makes me money

cool because more money you have

the more freedom you have and that's what I like

I just like being free

why don't you think

you've got the desires for some of those things

is that just the way that you're brought up

just constantly working to kind of live

rather than want those things or is it just

that you've had so many years of enjoyment

and happy experiences and good people around you

that you kind of get way more pleasure out of that

than anything else

simple answer I don't know

erm like

I'd like eventually

I'd like to buy a lamb or something

there it is

to kind of

and then I'll drive it

this isn't cool

I don't enjoy it

don't care what

anyone says that sits opposite me

in this van

every single person still wants a lamb

it's an absolute

it's a toy isn't it

it's just kind of like you have made it kind of money

but is the embarrassment in that

there is like a little bit of the fact that you do want it

because you're so humble behind it

you don't want to seem to be having those flashy things

but now you've got like oh hang on I could fix that

up and I could do that to it and I could do that to it

and hang on a second my friends have now got them so it's like

I don't even know how to fix up a carousel

I hate work out cars

yeah if somebody says oh there's this cheap lambo

here but you have to buy and put it back together

I don't know

I'll save it till I buy one

exact opposite of what the audience thinks you'd be like

yeah

do you find that about

do you always like to do the exact opposite

of what people probably expect

not intentionally like the thing is

they can't guess what I want because I don't know what I want

but you still help everybody out

by fixing this it's not just Matt it's also

Auto Alex, Mark McCann, Chris

you've done stuff for so many

so many people did it just cascade

off the back of going and knocking on that door

at Mallory Park one day

and I think it's just

when I

go and

say if I go

have a look at a vehicle

say if I go up to Matt tomorrow and Matt gets me on camera

he explains the story and he goes

is that a problem?

that's all I'll say

easy

and it's almost like

I feel like I should be like oh no

YouTube drama

it's not in me to kind of go it's not drama

it's just a piece of metal I can put it back together

so it's

I'd like to think it's very easy to work with me

when they get on the phone

they know that I'm going to come up

I'm going to look at it I'm going to go away get what I need to do

or what I need for the job

I'm going to come back I'm going to do the job

they're not going to have to interact with me they can do what they want

they can work on the other end of the car

and I just take care of this car

this corner I film it

and I hand them the raw footage after and I go away

and it's just simple

a lot of

a lot of welders

have

an attitude of kind of

going oh it's making things sound complicated

and when you get a

a tradesman or a mechanic

oh yeah well it's going to cost you

that kind of there's a bit of that mentality

a lot of welders

and

I think that's probably the difference

with working with me I think that's why

I am kind of everywhere because I'll just turn up

I'll fix the job I'll go away again it's just easy and simple

that's what I like to think about anyway I'm unsure

well you say that you're not the kind of person

that would have been wanted to have actually

been on camera and kind of been in front of the lens

and I can't help but

stereotypically think

although most of the things with you are the exact opposite

but growing up where you did

in that part of Ireland

how you

describe your friends kind of some of the

different factories you work with

what have your friends and family

been like

you suddenly appearing on the screens

like how have they kind of taken that

absolutely ruthless

yeah because you had quite a ruthless early

twenties right like your friend Kevin told me

about the fact that I mean when we arrived here

the door handle into the toilet was actually

on the other side of the door and he told me

that what popped up used to do

all the time is when they go out

on nights out and you were like the last one in

the last thing that you do before I go into bed

was change the handle

on the washing machine from one side to the other

right fridge the hinges on the fridge

so when they come down in the morning trying to get the milk out

the door won't open because

so you had a pretty wild like early twenties

yeah that's a mild story here so we won't go

into them so those guys

are they supportive

behind the ruthlessness yes

yes and the core group

of machine shop we are savage to each other it's like

it's like

probably a slightly milder jackass

but it's always pranks it's always just like taking

a piece out of each other

like since I've become

mildly famous like I just get ribbed

all the time and I have to join in

otherwise you just get upset and

what you don't even if I get upset it just gets worse

take me through that because obviously

a few couple million people

millions of people

see you in a video and I call it the

bulking effect as well like Robert talking about it

I don't think people realise that sometimes

one view could be six family members

on a sofa and it's so

many people that have eyes

on you how has that impacted

then your life obviously being around

the guys when we're talking about that but like

if you walk into a petrol station these days

now with them I like

is it really often yeah it's quite often

to a point where I've started changing my clothes

as I'm like because I've

got these hoodies I've been living in these hoodies for

for six years and now

I've got a black

hoodie with nothing on it and I'll just

have my hood up and I was walking and

pay for my fuel and back out again because

you'll get stopped and

so there's people out there and they recognise you

but they won't ever say hello

it's usually just the phone

the phone is up like that and then

they'll take a picture but haven't turned the flash off

and then you catch them

that happens a lot

but a lot of people won't ever speak to you

but once one person starts talking to you

two or three people will come with it as well because

they'll see somebody else is doing it and then

you're in a petrol station for 10 minutes

taking pictures with people which is lovely

it's absolutely lovely

but I have no idea what to do

it's very kind of amazingly very uncomfortable

I don't mind it because everybody's so nice

I so supportive and they always

say I love your work and all that stuff

and it's really nice to meet people

well I remember

the first time I was asked for a signature

and

somebody handed me a program at OGP

and they were like Bob could you sign that for me

I just picked it up on my right hand

and he opened the page for me and handed me a marker

and I just held the marker like I'm gonna fist

I just wrote Bob in capitals and I was like

I handed it back to them and my mate was like

Bob you're right handed

I was like sorry I panicked

I didn't know what to do

it's just so alien weird

and I just fix stuff in a shed

like I'm dirty all the time

and it's really cold and I just like well

So is it a positive and negative

impacts on your life rather than all positive

I will say all positive so far

all positive so far

I've not had any negatives the YouTube

community

extremely supportive and helpful

so far that I know of

Do you get triggered by comments

because I noticed in your videos you've almost tried to turn

some of the comments of like

you can't do it that way it's gonna shop

into a thing literally like that on screen

and then you'll reply to

disarming people from commenting

essentially do you disarm them

because it bothers you to see those comments

or just because it makes for a better video

I disarmed them out of

I knew they were coming I didn't want

them to turn into a thing that somebody like

like this whole

the Bugatti engine mount everybody

saying that it was designed to break

yeah so

somebody made that comment first I don't know who that person was

and then another person read that and then commented

it and commented and then it just turned into

a thing and all across all the social medias

that part was designed to break

nobody has seen this part

I've seen it Matt's seen it

yeah two or three lads here have seen it

Kevin who

you were speaking to earlier on the phone he's a mechanical engineer

he's seen it none of us

can even

like see anything about this big part being fused

want to say fused designed to break

like it's just not a feature in the

in the build but it's everywhere on the internet

so we knew

the stuff like that was going to come and then

if we didn't address it

it would turn into a whirlwind

would just get bigger and bigger and bigger

so what I did was address those things

first to stop them becoming

effectively a meme that makes sense

very logical

very thought out

it's unbelievable because you love the world of chaos

yeah I can see you bring it all into

line in terms of logic for situations like that

I kind of think you have to be

but I think it is also a bit of a defense mechanism

being like well thought through

let's do this the right way

let's do this the proper way I can see that coming out in you

but what has been a job

other than the Big Atty if you say we risked off

all the names you do things for

what has been the hardest piece of works

even though you've got that mindset of

that's alright with it

what's been the one that's gone

well actually we will do it

oh I don't know

usually if I

I've got a good understanding of my skill set

and as I said I've messed up so much stuff before

that I know what I'm getting into

if I think if there's an absolute

percent chance that it might not work

I'll just say no

or I'll explain it to the customer

I'll say like this might not work

these are the reasons why

do you still want to go ahead with it

that's what I said to Matt

before seeing the part I was like

this is 50-50 this might work this might not work

if it's not going to work I'll just tell you

don't use the part

and he said

no problem because we've worked together for so many times

that he knows if I say something

I'm not just waffling I'm not randomly talking

I'm like this is how

this is a little land

so a lot of the jobs that I take on

there's very little risk in it for me

because as I said

I've just messed up so much stuff I know

what's going to go right

but you don't have one that kind of sticks out for more to Alex

or from Matt or Chris that was like a real pain

not really

not pretty easy what was the pain

when I was over in Miami

this is one that kind of sits

look at that his Irish friends now Kevin will be like

oh you're in Miami

you were born in the west coast of island land

when I was over there I had to

cut the front leg off the chassis

to straighten it

the video would be out soon

but I had to do some really dodgy stuff

because we were working in a paint shop

of course I need a metal shop and I didn't have anything

so I'm just on the ground like beating this bagalli part

into a piece of concrete

with a piece of steel rebar

like it's just

what I made it work because it's all I had

I had nothing else it was 8pm

all the shops were closed and I was like I need to make this work

and it was just like I sat there

I felt shame like I was doing this

like this is not my quality of work

or I didn't have the stuff around me

there's no

it's not down to the workshop

that we were working in

because it was a paint shop they had like sanders

and bits and pieces

but I needed vices

and presses and hydraulic presses

and furnaces and all sorts of stuff

I just didn't have anything around me so I had to make do with what I had

so I had a blow torch and a big hammer and a piece of rebar

and I was just making it work

that was a real headache and I stopped

at one point halfway through that

and I was just like turning the camera off

and I was just there I was like what am I doing

this is not going to go well

so it does get to you

it was a figure of

I went away and I had to drink water

I came back and I just got back into it again

because if things get to you

I don't believe in burnout

because I've been burnt out

probably the majority of my life

what were the people who called burnout

it's a mindset

and it does get to me and I do get to a point

within the burnout

where I stop being able to work

or function properly

but I do

recognise it and then I kind of go

right just stick to what you're good at

stop trying to push further

and then finish what we need to do

and then take a break

burnout is not a good place to be

or if you've been it enough you kind of learn

how to manage it that makes sense

so you don't do the problem solving bit

within fatigue and burnout you just do the bit

that you'll do automatically

automatic stuff it's all about recognising

but if you're sitting in burnout for long enough

you just start to get used to

and learn how to deal with it

and how to not mess up because when you're doing the problem

problem solving burnt out you mess things up

you get it wrong you know it's like working over tired

same idea

what are the things that people

get wrong when an amateur

that's having a go at doing a car rebuild

comes in they want some lessons

what's the first thing they're pulling you over

to show them in the workshop

it's usually

they get lost

they look at the entire

project they look at

I need to build a bike or I need to fix this car

and everything's just overwhelming

and it's just a simple conversation

with them we go

it's not a car

it's a bearing

you're working as a bearing as a tire on it

or as a wheel and as a tire on the wheel

it's baby steps

take a little bite at a time do this

just block out the rest

of the project stop thinking about it

do this bit

just do this bit and they go

stop

just cut them down stop do that

I'll be back in five minutes and then they do that

and they start rolling again and you don't even need to

go back to them it's just that kind of a slap

in the face of thinking too much

they just get flustered

when I'm working on something and

there's a lot to do

the first thing I do is go to the job I don't want to do

really annoying

really time consuming technical

awkward horrible job that I think is going to go wrong

because once if you start on the easy

jobs and work towards it the job becomes very

very long

you're staying at that all the time

do that first

that's what I always tell everybody do that first

stop thinking turn your brain off and take

that break it down into ten steps

and just pop up that bike

that's what I say mental

mental blocks are the biggest challenge

I see with people

that's really interesting do you think when you're teaching

people in those lessons then you're teaching them more

how to get over the thing in their mind

rather than how to do the actual job with their hands

because that will come from experience right

hugely so I teach

aluminium tig welding that's one of my most popular

classes

when you go to college a typical aluminium

tig welding course is about 11 weeks

and most of that is

probably health and safety

and theory so

I just throw out all the theory

because you can't read a book about

learning to drive you have to get in the car and do it

so I throw out all the theory

and I go through the health and safety that you need

you can speak about welding

health and safety for hours

but don't touch the glow and hot metal

don't look at the light ok that's your

welding health and safety ok

grass them up on the right PPE and I sit down

I say have you read about

or have you learned anything about welding

and then they start reaming off all this stuff

that they've read on youtube

I say or they've watched on youtube and I'll say

that person that taught

you that on youtube is getting paid

per minute ok

so it's within his interest to fill you

full of crap ok

get out your head as soon as you

get out your head you'll be able to weld sit them down

that says melt the metal stick the rod in it

and move three steps yeah

I'll do it I'll get them to sit down

I'll hold their hands yeah

and then I'll let go ok and then

they're welding within about five minutes

then we've got four hour class and it's just

repetition in different positions

and by the end they're not brilliant welders

they are not brilliant welders but they can stick

metal together and I

put them on the right path

and what I say four hours to learn how to do it

16 hours of practice you'd be where you want to be

so get them

four hours facing the right

direction knowing the stuff only the stuff

they need to know off they go

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About this episode

Bob from The Machine Shop talks about how a knock-on-the-door attitude and hands-on welding skills turned him into the go-to fixer for creators like Matt Armstrong, Auto Alex, and others. He explains his DIY learning path (including learning MIG on the way to a Norton interview), why he distrusts “theory-only” engineers, and how chaos-fueled problem solving shaped his business. The conversation covers the Bugatti Chiron job, his skepticism of internet claims, and the stress of running a workshop—plus why his YouTube approach helped him recover from an HMRC VAT issue.

aluminium bearing CAD cross-pollination difference between MIG weld and TIG weld engine mount firefighting hands-on experience Jaguar Land Rover JCB

Bugatti Chiron Lamborghini Gallardo

Original notes

Check out Tweak: https://www.tweakuk.com/He has one quote on his Instagram. "We do a bit of welding."But without that bit of welding, the entire automotive YouTube scene would grind to a halt.Bob from the Machine Shop is the man behind the fixes you never see coming. The Irishman who sold everything he owned, rode to England in the snow with £70 in his pocket, knocked on Mat Armstrong's door without knowing who he was, and ended up in Miami rebuilding a multi-million pound Bugatti Chiron — a car he openly admits he has no interest in.In this episode Bob sits down for the most in depth conversation he's ever had on camera. We get into how he really met Mat Armstrong, what it was actually like to work on the Bugatti with Matteo Rimac saying it couldn't be done in a workshop, the £38,000 tax debt he went public about, why he hates working on cars despite being the man every automotive YouTuber calls when things go wrong, and the thing he deals with every single morning that nobody talks about.This one is different. Don't skip it.Don’t forget to subscribe to our channel for more exciting content about your favourite shows and celebrities. Hit the bell icon to stay updated on all our latest episodes👍 Like, Comment, and Share this episode. Join our discussion in the comments sectionCheck out Tweak: https://www.tweakuk.com/🔗 Follow Us:Instagram: @Roadtosuccessofficialpodcast@benedictfowler

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