Indholdsfortegnelse for January 2020 i Street Machine

THE pro touring juggernaut that is the Optima Search For The Ultimate Street Car (OSUSC) hit Australia for the first time on 16 and 17 November at Calder Park. While events like Drag Challenge and Drag Week feature the quickest road-registered straight-line machinery, the OSUSC aims to find the best all-round street car in terms of performance, fit and finish, engineering and comfort. For the first Aussie competition, the class structure was simplified to be Classic (pre-1990), Modern (post-1990) and Fast Four. All cars had to have production tags, fully enclosed wheels and wear street-legal, non-competition tyres with a tread-wear rating of 200 or higher (meaning no semi-slicks). The Aussie OSUSC had four segments (motorkhana, drags, circuit sprinting and speed-stop), forgoing the 160km road rally leg done in America. Each…

IF YOU’RE one of the many Australians who own a new sports car, you should consider taking it to a racetrack. The track is not as intimidating as you might think. Not only is it the perfect environment to safely drive your car faster, but it’s also where you come to appreciate a good set of tyres. As well as being fantastic fun, the Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 is one such car that comes alive on the track, thanks in large part to its high-performance tyres. The ZL1’s Continental SportContact 5P tyres deliver exceptional performance on the road, and though they’re not track-specific tyres, they are more than capable of providing some fast fun. If you do plan on taking your sports car to a track day, there are things you…

A STAUNCH 60s-style gasser roars to life before lurching into first to noisily idle its way to the startline, leaving a dust haze from the uncorked headers in its wake. Hundreds of eyes eagerly follow its course, hungry for the anticipated display. Quickly, the lumpy idle becomes a bellowing roar as the tyres blaze into plumes of burning rubber. Backing up over the twin blacks that’ve just been created, the driver and wide-eyed passenger prepare for the launch before slingshotting off the line. Welcome to the reborn Chopped – ‘The Asphalt Era’! After a two-year hiatus, Chopped was back at the new venue of Maryborough Harness Racing Club in Carisbrook with its focus shifted from dirt and mud to tarmac and tyre smoke. Any entered car or bike that met…

LIFE is full of ‘what ifs’. The imagination can run wild with the possibilities of what might have been had circumstances been different at any point in history. What if the 1970s oil crisis or the ‘Supercar Scare’ had never happened – what would the cars we drive today look like? What if GM’s 1990s EV1 electric car hadn’t been scuppered by Big Oil? What if Hitler had won WWII? Or, on a smaller scale, what if Holden could have had access to 21st-century engine design, sophisticated fuel management systems and satellites in the 1970s? Muss Ayri’s LX SS hatch could well be the answer to that particular question, although we doubt that was on his mind when he first spied the LX in a friend’s shed. What graces these…

DAVID Smith and Cherie Baird led a convoy from Victoria in their ’69 HT Belmont survivor panel van and ’68 HK Monaro. The couple, who founded the HKTG Club of Victoria, made the four-day road trip with 15 other club cars. Hitting the road from Geelong, the first stop was Bombala, NSW. “We camped on the first night then made our way to Bathurst along the Monaro Highway,” David said. The crew cruised through Cooma, stopping at the Big Merino at Goulburn, before taking the scenic drive through Crookwell to get to Mount Panorama. “Everyone got out there on the track and had a few laps.” After an afternoon at the National Motor Racing Museum in Bathurst, the convoy set up their swags. They then followed the map through Mudgee,…

COMING into 2019, Harry Haig admitted his Drag Challenge preparation had been somewhat relaxed. “We were still putting it together on Sunday morning,” he laughed. “It hasn’t made a pass since we ran here against Frank on Day Five of Drag Challenge 2018.” Given he went achingly close to taking out the Overall win that year, nailed the Turbosmart Outlaw Blown class win and ran some epic mid-sevens, there was merit to his decision. The 1860rwhp twin-turbo 540ci Chev fat-block retains the twin 88mm Garrett GT47 snails that first made an appearance at DC 2017, running methanol at the track and pump fuel on the street. Day One saw Harry hand in an impressive 7.60@186mph to sit second Overall and at the top of the big-tyre cars in Turbosmart Outlaw…

THE most inspirational Drag Challenge entrant has to be Matt Carey and his stout BLWNQUAD VZ SS ute. Out for his second crack at Drag Challenge, wheelchair-bound Matt uses custom hand controls to pilot the race-ready ute. Matt has placed in the Top 10 in K&N Dial Your Own both years, chalking up seventh place this year with a final 0.1244sec off his 11.22sec dial-in. And he does it all without a trailer. If that’s not enough, Matt also took out the tinware for the Longest Distance Travelled this year, thanks to his parents Russ and Jen, who towed the ute 4800km one-way from Tom Price in WA to Calder. “It takes them five days, but I fly in with my partner, son and brother, as there’s no accessible accommodation…

WARICK Meldrum has absolutely no issues upsetting purists. He stuffed a Barra into a VP Commodore for Drag Challenge 2017, before taking it to another level by putting the same Ford mill into a GM cult classic, a 1967 Chevy Camaro. For 2019 he’s taken aim at the Mopar crowd, pulling that same donk out of the ’Maro and throwing it into a 1969 VF Valiant Regal. “It’s not like I was worried about what people thought before, so why stop now!” he said. The FG XR6 Turbo donk still bears the factory crank, cams and head, polished off with some ARP bolts and studs, Spool conrods and Ross Racing forged pistons. The manifold has been upgraded to a drool-worthy 6boost item feeding a new Precision 76/75. Warick shared the…

DRAG Challenge 2019 was Chris Palfreyman’s first stab at the event, bringing his Barraswapped XD Falcon all the way up from Hobart. Chris built most of the car himself at home, with the basic combo comprising an FG Barra with rods, pistons and custom cams, force-fed by a 94mm Garrett GTX 55 controlled by an MS3Pro Ultimate. The mill is backed by a two-speed Powerglide with an SDE 4000rpm converter, sending power to a nine-inch rear end with 40-spline axles and 3.7:1 gears. Chris hadn’t really had a chance to put some proper R&D into the car when he fronted up to Calder Park for Day One, but by the end of the day he’d handed in a PB of 9.14@160mph. The real drama began on the road to Mildura:…

UNDOUBTEDLY the beefiest entry for 2019 Street Machine Drag Challenge was Geoff Stone’s 6000lb (2700kg) 2000 Nissan Patrol. Geoff raced an HQ Monaro Doorslammer in the late 90s to early 00s, and was keen to partake in the Drag Challenge festivities, but the VP Commodore he was building didn’t work out. Not to be deterred, Geoff changed tack, sliding the VP’s built L98 backed by a 6L80 six-speed with 3000rpm stall into his daily. “The Patrol ran 15.2sec at Heathcote two weeks ago, and it’s been on a diet since,” Geoff explained on registration day. “I’ve changed it to 2WD, taken off the winch and replaced the bullbar with an alloy one. I’m hoping for 14s, but I’m just here to have a fun week with my mate Guy and…

THE loss of our locally designed and built rear-drive V8s still stings, but there is a glimmer of hope for future generations of street machiners after WhichCar.com.au brought a brand-new ZL1 Camaro to Drag Challenge and stomped out low 11s. Converted to right-hand-drive by HSV, the factory-supercharged muscle car packs a 640hp 6.2-litre LT4 Gen V small-block, 20x10 and 20x11 wheels, new-generation Magnetic Ride Control suspension and a 10-speed auto. The beefy 305-wide rear tyres meant the Camaro had to run in Outlaw Blown, and the sight of a brand new $160,000 HSV wearing drag radials in the pits caused a few raised eyebrows, though it was clear the near two-tonne two-door needed the fat, sticky rubber given the immense hooch it had under the aluminium bonnet. WhichCar journalist Dan…

A GREAT stance is the key to a good-looking street machine. Taking a stock drivetrain and chassis, getting the height right and filling the guards with the right-size wheels and tyres is a sure way to transform your ride from amazing to exceptional. The trick is to start with wheels that match your intended build style. For example, if you’re going with a nostalgia theme, 20-inch billets probably won’t look right. Once you have the wheel style sorted, it’s time to research tyres. TYRE TECH THE specifications of a tyre are stated on its sidewall. These number and letter combinations denote the speed rating, the diameter and the ratio of the sidewall height to the section width. Section width is the dimension across the fattest part of the tyre, not…

NOW THAT I’M OFF MY PS, I’D LIKE TO DO AN LS CONVERSION. I’VE ALREADY GOT AN LS2 STROKED TO 406 – I’M EVEN THINKING ABOUT TURBOCHARGING IT QUINN Calcopietro has always preferred the look of older cars, and has coveted the HQ-WB models in particular since he was six. His dad Angelo is a Holden man, having owned a heap of Calais and Statesmans and currently with a WM in the shed with only 20,000 kays on it. Now, Quinn continues the family tradition with this very tidy HZ sedan. Great-looking HZ, Quinn! Thanks! Initially, Dad found a pretty original HJ, which I thought was for me. I was a bit upset when I found out it was for a friend of his who was looking for one! But…

ROD HAYLOCK LX HOLDEN TORANA “I HAVE owned my Torana for eight years. It started as a licensed, fuel-injected 304/TH700/banjo diff car. The first thing I did was replace the diff and old front discs with a new disc-brake nine-inch and VT-style front discs. I also replaced the carpet and soundproofed the floor, replaced the rubbers, and installed a B&M shifter through the console (that was no walk in the park!). My good mate Tom Toovey then convinced me to LS it, so we removed the old motor and ’box, smoothed the rails and bay, and stripped the LS and 4L60E, adding reconditioned heads, some port work, a Howards cam, a new Moroso sump, a custom crossmember and Tuff Mounts. The car was then transported to Shannon at Tune Corp…

AN XC Falcon sedan isn’t a small car, so if you want to run eights in one you’re going to need plenty of grunt. Mark Connors, owner and engine builder at Ultim8 Car Fit in Albury, knew exactly what the answer was when customer Damian Allitt asked for a tough engine combo for his XC streeter: cubic inches. “When Damian first came to us, he had very specific requirements for power, and we weren’t sure a factory block would handle that in a street car,” Mark explains. “Initially he was hoping for around 800hp, but he ended up wanting to push 1000hp and add nitrous, so we rang John Kaase in the USA.” This big-inch powerhouse is based around an aftermarket Ford Motorsport block with a 4.5in bore, stuffed with…

WE HAVE featured Lennard Vidot’s blown big-block HQ Monaro coupe (SM, Oct ’13) and since then he hasn’t just been sitting around polishing all the trophies from the show-winning Quey. For the past four years he’s been building this ’68 Dodge Charger, and it’s a much different animal to the wild methanol-fuelled Holden. “I got it out of California,” says Lennard. “It was an old drag car and it had a half-’cage and gutted interior. It was a 440 four-speed, and I could have just tidied it up and put it all back together, but I wanted something that was reliable, stayed cool in traffic, behaved and did everything it should.” At this point most people would be thinking along the lines of a late-model Hemi out of a Chrysler…

KRIS EDWARDS > WYONG, NSW BACK in the August ’19 issue, we explored some of Kris Edwards’ history with cars, touching on the influence of his parents Colin and Jenny and the strong bond they shared building and racing all manner of cool rides as a family. After Colin passed in 2000, Jenny and Kris have continued to immerse themselves in the shared passion, bringing a third generation into the fold to cement the family tradition. 01: BOOM! Kris’s father Colin was a keen speedway racer for many years, and his blue humpy sedan ran a triple SU-equipped 186 stroker donk backed by an M20 four-speed and welded banjo diff. “This pretty heavy crash back in 1976 was the beginning of the end for Dad and speedway racing,” Kris…

HOT ROD GANG 1958 > CRAZY KIDS... LIVING TO A WILD ROCK ’N’ ROLL BEAT! BREAKDOWN VEHICLES: 1932 McGee/ Scritchfield Ford roadster, 1932 Henderson Ford roadster, Barris ‘Ala Kart’ Ford Model A roadster pick-up, 1958 Ford Custom 300, 1958 Lincoln Premiere, Harley-Davidson Hydra-Glide, 1954 Arnolt-Bristol Bolide STARS: John Ashley, Jody Fair, Gene Vincent, Dub Taylor, Helen Spring, Dorothy Neumann, Steve Drexel, Claire Du Brey, Lester Dorr DIRECTOR: Lew Landers ACTION: Old-timey hot rod street racing with a backdrop of awesome period cars in 1950s Santa Monica and Hollywood PLOT: A young heir to his late grandfather’s fortune juggles a double life to pursue both his hot rod and musical dreams while not blowing the terms of his inheritance AVAILABLE: YouTube, DVD TWENTY-odd years ago, I stumbled home from…

THE classic board game Monopoly has spawned countless family feuds over the years, as well as dozens of themed versions of the game.From Star Wars to The Simpsons – not to mention plenty of car brand-themed boards – there’s more flavours of Monopoly than beer. The latest version of the new Ford Monopoly game now includes a bunch of Aussie Ford metal, most notably an XY GTHO Phase III as one of the six playing tokens. The board itself also features an XD Falcon Sundowner, Country Squire wagon, 2016 Falcon FG X and, again, an XY Phase III GTHO. We shared the news that our Aussie battlers had made the cut for the prestigious game with our Facebook followers. Paul Williams – I’m guessing they have a mechanic’s workshop instead…

HAVING created quite a buzz in the USA with his previous two builds – KAMARO (SM, Sep ’10) and KAM NOVA (SM, Nov ’14) – Rob Zahabi of Rides By Kam wanted to go next-level with his new build. “My Camaro and Nova attracted plenty of attention in the US,” Rob says, “but judging-wise they were never in outright contention. Competing against the big guns in the US taught me that you get points for custom one-off stuff. The harder something is to do, the more they reward you. Using off-the-shelf stuff costs you points.” All of which made the build strategy for this incredible 1970 Dodge Challenger very clear: change as much as possible, custom-make as much as possible, and limit the use of ready-to-go stuff. Even touring the…

BY CRIKEY, does Jovan Batar’s XE cut a mean profile! If you ever needed an illustration of the phrase ‘tough streeter’, you couldn’t go far wrong with a picture of this beastly Ghia. And even though it has a Summernats Top 60 position to its credit, you can rest assured that it’s not all show and no go. There’s an intriguing and tasty surprise hiding beneath that subtle reverse-cowl. In order to explain how FATXE came into being, it’s best to start with the story of a totally different car. “When I was 16, I got an XP as my first car,” Jovan explains. “I took it off the road in 2009 to do a V8 conversion and fit some updated running gear, but I’ve decided to start from scratch…

IF YOU’VE ever visited the SEMA Show, or even if you’ve got a mate who’s been, you already have some appreciation of the scale of the place. But even then the numbers are staggering. For starters, there are 2400 exhibitors doing their best to flog products to the 71,000 potential buyers in attendance. There are also roughly 3300 media representatives to cover the action and bring home news of the hottest automotive gear. If that sounds like a lot, remember that there are over 3000 new products to check out, to say nothing of the 1500 or so demo cars in and around the Las Vegas Convention Center. Around 161,000 attendees (more than the population of Cairns) come from more than 140 countries to check out the 1.2 million square…

WITH a camera in one hand and a beer in the other, I couldn’t think of a better way to celebrate the HT Holden turning 50 than riding shotgun in a Monaro as the power pedal hit the floor. More than 150 survivors, restored and ratted builds travelled from across the country to the Sunshine Coast for the second annual HKTG Holden Nationals. The four-day shindig began on Friday night, where the HKTG Holden Owners Club of Queensland started the party at the Aussie World theme park for registration and a couple of cold ones. On Saturday morning, the Glasshouse Mountains Sports Club hosted the hordes of old Holdens. Entrants lined up in rows, bonnets popped for onlookers to admire the many rebuilt originals, a salute to the survivors. Monaros,…

IT’S undergone quite a few changes in the 21 years he’s owned it, but Shane Platts’s VH SL/E Commodore is still his first love. Like all first loves, it has ripped out his heart a time or two, but it’s a bond that’s tough to break. “I bought it with my dad back in 1998 when I was 16,” the West Australian says. “The paint was shit on the roof, boot and bonnet, so we just ripped into it in the shed. Neither of us had any idea how to paint. Dad had some painter friends and we sort of did it over the phone, asking questions. We repainted it in the original blue and silver and I drove it around like that for a couple of years.” It was…

1 HARRY HAIG – 1972 HOLDEN HQ KINGSWOOD – TIME: 30.258 THE Big Dawg took command on Day Three, running the only four-second pass over the eighth we saw this year, and he never let up. A donated lifter from the Szabolics team fixed the HQ’s only major gremlin of the week. 2 BRENDAN CHERRY – 1987 HOLDEN VL CALAIS – TIME: 30.845 BRENDAN Cherry started the week with a new fastest mile-per-hour at Calder, and then ran a string of low fives at the eighth-mile tracks. A 7.61@184mph on Day Five was enough to put the DC veteran into his highest ever placing. 3 DANIEL SZABOLICS – 1971 HOLDEN HQ MONARO – TIME: 30.896 DAN Szabolics’s Monaro ran the quickest and fastest pass…

A VETERAN of every five-day Drag Challenge event so far, Brendan Cherry has run with several very different cars over the years, from his original turbo LS HQ Monaro, to his elite-level big-block HK Monaro, and then on to a VL Calais he originally shared with his mate, Josh Ploeger. Running the 572ci big-block and BorgWarner S480 turbos from his HK coupe in the big-tyre VL, Brendan and Josh have been creeping up on the combo since debuting it at Drag Challenge last year. Heading into the 2019 event, AliPwr had freshened up the engine, and they’d upgraded to a Holley Dominator ECU package, plus Brendan had knocked their PB into the 7.7s, so hopes were high he would get his red hat this year. Straight out of the gate…

WAYNE Cartledge’s Barra-powered Cortina was looking like a fierce top-runner in the XR6 Turbo Developments Six-Cylinder class, running 9.09@148mph on Day One at Calder and a 6.42@113mph to sit third in class at the end of Day Two. However, things went sour on Wednesday, Wayne’s Corty coating the track in smoke after a serious failure. “It burnt a piston pretty bad, and I suspect it was due to an injector letting go,” said Wayne. “It’s funny; we broke the diff and auto last year, so this year we fixed those and then the engine finally let go.” Fellow competitor and good friend of Wayne’s Danny Bresciani hit gearbox troubles with his R33 Skyline on the same day, so Wayne generously decided to harvest the ’box from his stricken Cortina in…

ROCKING a wicked drag rake, Bruce Christian’s Nitrous-fed, 383ci Chev-powered 1973 FJ40 Land Cruiser belted out its first SM Drag Challenge in square-bodied style. Slotted into the K&N Dial Your Own class, the Cruiser ran stout 11sec passes and towed a trailer throughout the four seasons of DC 2019. Underneath, the FJ sports a bunch of late-model 70-series parts, as well as a TH400 with 4000rpm stall and 4.11 diff gears. The true challenge began for Bruce on Day Two in dusty Mildura. Bruce ran a squirrelly first pass, which subsequently slowed further runs in a bid to avoid a repeat of facing the wall in the deep end. “I also fried the clutch in the LSD,” Bruce said. “So I bought a $400 second-hand diff in Mildura, in case…

MOST combatants taking on the gruelling trials of Drag Challenge come into the week with some form of strategy to make it through the 1500km of road driving. Switching fuels, tyres, tunes and so on is common, but pulling off an entire blower set-up between tracks is a Drag Challenge first. This is something Charlie Attard had planned well in advance with his 1970 LC Torana, and, as he explained, the daily procedure is not as arduous as it may sound. “It takes about 45 minutes to swap it over from the blower back to the normal carby set-up, and we’re pretty good at it now,” he said. Believe it or not, the reason for the blower removal is actually to keep things simple. “We run meth with the blower,…

CANBERRA’S John Whyte had the closest thing resembling a bona fide sleeper in Turbosmart Outlaw Blown at DC 2019. His 1950 Chev Fleetmaster sedan looked ready for a rockabilly cruise-in, but is actually hiding a completely re-thought drivetrain and suspension package. The 5.7-litre LS1 mill runs mildly worked heads and cam on an otherwise stock bottom end, controlled through a reflashed VY Commodore PCM brain-box and paired to a 4200rpm SDE converter and a four-speed 4L60E transmission. The big news for 2019 was the 42mm turbo hanging behind the driver’s headlight. “My wife gave me the turbo for Christmas,” John laughed. “It is my daily driver at home, so I don’t want to break it or run faster than 11s, because I don’t want to have to ’cage it. I’ve…

QUEENSLAND’S Ben Taylor brought his sweet ’67 Camaro back to Victoria for another tilt at Drag Challenge, once again running in Haltech Radial Blown. However, his event started in almost the worst possible way on Day One at Calder, when a huge fire engulfed the Butternut Yellow F-body’s engine bay while on the startline. “A fuel line popped off and it went straight up,” Ben said. “We got it straight back to the garage at Calder and started tearing it down to see what we needed to fix. We didn’t come all this way just to give up.” Accepting a 20-second pass for the day, Ben and Rob Armstrong began a mad 24-hour thrash to fix the pony car and stay in the game. Luckily the 88mm Pro Mod snail…

TO MAKE low-profile tyres fit (while maintaining the same overall diameter of the original tyres and without resulting in excessive tyre width), the diameter of the wheel can be increased one, two or even three inches to compensate for the lower cross-section tyre height. This is called the ‘Inch-up Principle’, or ‘Plus One’. It achieves the desired performance improvements of low-profile tyres by providing a larger footprint, for quicker steering response, better cornering, faster braking and overall improved handling.…

WE’D LIKE TO SUPERCHARGE IT! THAT WOULD BE EXCITING – AT THE MOMENT SHE’S A BIT OF A NAN’S CAR DACODA Endacott has fond memories of growing up amongst her dad’s bevy of HRs. Her love for the late-60s Holden offering was cemented at an early age, and, through the encouragement of her car-crazy family, Dacoda has grown to become a valuable part of Mudgee’s automotive architecture as a qualified spray painter. She tells us about her trade as well as her neat HR Special. What was the allure of painting? I realised with all of the cars that our family owns, someone should learn how to paint them. I have good memories of Leven Smash Repairs from when I was a kid, as Mum and Dad’s cars were painted…

20 DEC, CRANBOURNE, VIC Classic & Rod Club Cruize Night, Cranbourne. Call Sam 0407 020 200 or visit classicandrodclub.com.au. 20 DEC, GLASSHOUSE MOUNTAINS, QLD Sporto’s Car Meet, 902 Steve Irwin Way. Search Facebook for more info. 21 DEC, WETHERILL PARK, NSW Greenway Muscle Cars & Bikes Christmas Show, 1187 The Horsley Drive. Search Facebook for more info. 21 DEC, LAWNTON, QLD Barnies DecemberFest, 757 Gympie Road. Search Facebook for more info. 28 DEC, GEELONG, VIC Geelong Charity Mega Meet, Harvey Norman Waurn Ponds. Search Facebook for more info. 28 DEC, LIVERPOOL, NSW Harry’s Café De Wheels, Shop 1/20 Orange Grove Rd. Search Facebook for more info. 28 DEC–01 JAN, COOMA, NSW Holden FX/FJ Nationals, Cooma Showgrounds and surrounds.Visit fxfjnats.com.au. 29 DEC, CRAWLEY, WA Classic Cars & Coffee, University of WA.Visit…

Write to: Your Stuff, Street Machine, Locked Bag 12, Oakleigh, Vic 3166 or email streetmachine@bauer-media.com.au. Make sure you include your address (not necessarily for publication). Keep it short and sweet! BOOST JUICE I’M SURE you guys already have more stories than page space, but here’s an idea: octane. Given the price of fuel and the way it escalates as the octane goes up, and the fact there’s always a few octane booster bottles around, maybe a story on how effective they are? How many octane points does the juice actually go up when you add an octane booster? Is it worthwhile to buy 95 and a bottle of booster rather than 98? Or 91 and three bottles of booster? Can you octane-boost a diesel? In real-world terms, on a relatively…

AS THE price of classic tin soars, the chances of finding a good, clean base for a project dives. This means you sometimes have to jump on a car for sale, even if it isn’t exactly what you want, so you can beat the hordes of other punters wanting one. It also means taking a gamble that what you’re about to pay a king’s ransom for isn’t a complete basket case, which is the situation Queenslander Niko Prommnitz found himself in while chasing down a boyhood dream after a late-night text message. “One of my mates sent me a message about an HK Monaro with fresh paint for sale in Ipswich,” says Niko. “It was about two-and-a-half years ago when Monaros were going crazy and selling as quick as they…

I RECKON most of you didn’t know what kind of car this was at first glance. A ’49-’51 Mercury; maybe an early-50s Chev or a Hudson? Not even close. In fact, you’re not even on the right continent. What you’re actually looking at is a 1962 Mark 10 Jaguar. Even with 19 body modifications, you can easily argue that this heavily customised example built by Queenslander Dave Williams retains its original elegance. In fact, you could even say he’s improved on it. It doesn’t matter which angle you look at the car from, there isn’t a single bad line or hiccup in the smooth flow from front to back. He’s got the stance just right and managed to do so using standard Jag suspension with just a couple of rear…

WHILE most entrants made the road trip to the nationals in the same steel they competed in, 74-year-old Kiwi Gordon Merrett put his 1969 Kingswood on a boat! With a factory 5.0-litre, Saginaw four-speed manual and Salisbury diff, the HT is one of two special-ordered wagons built with Monaro drivetrains. “It’s rare for these options to be fitted to a Kingswood,” Gordon said. Apparently two sales reps wanted Monaros for business trips, but needed the space of wagons. The cars were built at Sydney’s Pagewood plant, with full Monaro running gear and Sports Pack features. As a member of the Early Holden Club of Auckland, Gordon was in Oz celebrating 50 years of Holden when he found the car listed in the Trading Post. “I bought this car in 1998…

THERE isn’t a tougher test of a car’s mettle (and metal) than running the insane five-day gauntlet we call Street Machine Drag Challenge. This is the Le Mans 24-Hour for street cars in Australia in terms of both prestige and endurance, as entrants prove who has the quickest and fastest street cars in Australia in between racking up more than1700km on rural roads. This year we had a last-minute itinerary change, with Swan Hill having to be dropped from the Day Two schedule. As many entrants had already booked accommodation in the area, we made the Swan Hill startline our mandatory photo stop and moved Day Two’s race start at Mildura’s Sunset Strip back to 4pm on Tuesday, before returning there on Wednesday. Huge thanks have to go to the…

1 PAUL TURNER – HQ HOLDEN – SPREAD: 0.05228SEC RIGHT up until the trophy call, it was anyone’s game in the unpredictable K&N Dial Your Own class. Top spots were in a constant state of flux over the five days, but in the end it was ex-competition drag racer Paul Turner who was crowned 2019 K&N DYO champion, in his HQ sedan. The first-time DC contender finished the week with a tight 11.373sec on his 11.396sec dial-in, for a tiny 0.05228sec split for the week. 2 TOM WRIGHT – HG PREMIER – SPREAD: 0.05865SEC RUNNER-UP in DYO was another first-time Drag Challenge entrant, Tom Wright, behind the wheel of his bronze turbo-fed LSX HG Premier. Tom finished the week 0.05865sec off his 11.193sec dial-in. 3 STEVE…

DANIEL Szabolics’s epic twin-turbo big-block HQMonarobrokethe Street Machine Drag Challenge ET and MPH records twice on Day One of DC 2019, knocking out two epic 7.35@197mph passes to pip the previous record set by Frank Marchese at Swan Hill in 2018. “That was unreal; I’m still shaking a bit,” said Daniel back in the pits after his first pass. “I had to steer it through the top end, as the track was a bit challenging today at 197mph. I think I actually pedalled it, so Frank will probably yell at me once he sees the log.” Powered by a Dandy Engines-built Dart Big M 632ci tall-deck big-block, the HQ uses twin 94mm Precision Pro Mod turbos to make over 2500hp at the hubs on 28psi, controlled by a FuelTech ECU.…

RUNNING in the Haltech Radial Blown class, Chris Kaarsberg’s LX Torana sedan was impossible to miss in the pits thanks to its epic green paint and super-clean engine bay. The fluoro-green four-door monster has been in Chris’s stewardship for nearly 25 years now, progressing from a tough 11-second 308 combo to late-model GM small-block power. The 388ci Dart LS Next living under the Torry’s bonnet is filled with good gear like a Callies crank and CP slugs, while Precision 62/60 turbos blow the good air and a Holley Dominator ECU controls the show. Running E85, the LX makes approximately 1300rwhp and has run in the fives over the eighth-mile at Kenda 660 events. “The Shaun’s Custom Alloy intake was the only one I could get that fit under the bonnet,…

ONE of a clutch of Barra-swapped 80s Falcons running in the XR6 Turbo Developments Six-Cylinder class, Glenn Richards’s XE sedan is a real sleeper at first glance. “I purchased the car from out near Shepparton,” Glenn explained. “The previous owner had done a rotisserie job and fitted the stock BA XR6T Barra. I purchased it, got it engineered and finished off. It has valve springs, head studs, a log exhaust manifold, Proflow intake, upgraded fuel rail and 2200cc injectors on E85, a Haltech plug ’n’ play ECU, and the factory BA GT35 turbo.” Behind the four-litre twin-cam is a stock Tremec T56 six-speed manual operated by a Mantic twin-plate clutch, while a nine-inch with 3.9 gears and a Truetrac centre lives out back. An 11.57@121mph over Calder Park’s quarter-mile on…

“I NORMALLY run my orange Plymouth ’Cuda, but it is in being restored, so I figured I’d bring my daily driver,” said Andrew McLellan. That daily just happens to be this beastly 5000lb Jeep Cherokee SRT8 with 6.4 litres of Gen III Hemi under the bonnet, along with an Edelbrock supercharger. Thanks to its 4x4 drivetrain and blower, Andrew was running in Turbosmart Outlaw Blown, spinning up huge 305/35/20 drag radials at each corner. “The TVS2650 supercharger runs 6psi, and I also have an aftermarket interchiller fitted to keep intake temps low,” he said. “I’ve also fitted an aftermarket exhaust, so it makes 368kW [493hp] at all four wheels. I’ve found launch mode makes it quite doughy out of the hole, as it only has 1800rpm on board when it…

WITH his brothers in tow, Drag Challenge virgin Casey Thomas brought his well-travelled XC Falcon to the table, racing in the Pacemaker Radial Aspirated class. An IT man by trade, Casey shipped his big Aussie barge to the Mother Country while he worked there, racking up plenty of miles across the UK. Returning Down Under in September, he thrashed on the car to get it ready for his Drag Challenge tilt. For the past six years, the ’77 sedan has run a 400 Cleveland donk, stroked out to 434 cubes. Over Drag Challenge, Casey used a FiTech EFI system, but has since opted for a Barry Grant Dominator carb atop a hard-to-find CHI high-rise manifold. CHI 3V heads round out the package. At the rear wheels, Casey has managed to…

DAMIEN THEORISES THE WINDSOR DONK IS GOOD FOR AROUND 520HP WITH A 100-SHOT OF GIGGLE GAS PEOPLE building street-friendly machines specifically to take on the gruelling trials and tribulations of Street Machine Drag Challenge is quickly becoming commonplace, and Damien Kemp’s 1966 Ford Fairlane fastback is a prime example. Famous for piloting his outrageously cool 1000hp Funderbolt gasser, Damien decided to build something a bit tamer for Drag Challenge, while still keeping that 60s flavour. “I pulled the Fairlane out of a desert in Arizona, which is why it has that real sunburnt look,” he says. “I built the car ready for last year’s Drag Challenge, but then my son was born so close to the event that it just didn’t work out.” Damien converted the car to right-hook using…

WE’VE all been there: despite our best intentions, projects can stall and lay dormant. It’s not always through lack of time or money either; at times it can simply be hard to find the spark to reignite the passion for these projects. In the back of my mate Grant’s workshop was one such project that had been in deep-freeze for the best part of a year: his bare-metalled ’69 Rambler. The big four-door had been parked up after blowing out a head gasket on its now partially stripped 290ci V8. Grantley had more than a few project cars on the go; the old AMC just had to wait its turn. So over a few celebratory brews one weekend, a few of us took it upon ourselves to help get things…

01 GOLD STANDARD KEEPING the heat down and the horsepower up is always a struggle, but heat-wrapping and shielding is one of the pain-free ways of keeping a lid on those unwanted temps. Mishimoto now offers a killer new range of heat-shielding products, including this gold reflective self-adhesive sheeting. Made from metalised Polyamide polymer laminated glass cloth, it can withstand temps of up to 454°C, and can be cut to size to fit any firewall, fuel cell, floorpan and just about anywhere else you need to stay cool. You can find out more at mishimoto.com.au. 02 LAYING DIMES SOMETIMES a tool comes along like a ratcheting spanner and you wonder why it took so long, and then other times a tool pops up that makes you wonder if it’s actually…

FREE ENTERPRISE A ROBBER pulled a gun on a bank teller and manager, saying: “Give me all your money! I need it to set myself up in a trade or profession. I need initial investment to cover the overheads until my cash flow is established.” The bank manager turned to the teller and said: “You’d better do what he says; I think he means business.” E Nishall-Capital, email INDECENT PROPOSAL MY WONDERFUL girlfriend and I had been dating for over a year, and so we decided to get married. There was only one little thing bothering me. It was my fiancée’s beautiful younger sister, who was 22, wore very tight miniskirts, and usually didn’t wear a bra. One day my prospective sister-in-law called and asked me to come over to…