Indholdsfortegnelse for December 2018 i Street Machine

16-17 NOV, ADELAIDE, SA Adelaide Auto Expo, Wayville Showgrounds, Goodwood. Visit adelaideautoexpo.com.au. 17 NOV, CARRUM, VIC Beach, Chicken & Cars #2, Charcoal Chicken, 1A McLeod Rd. Search Facebook for more info. 17 NOV, DECEPTION BAY, QLD Cars For A Cause, Market Square Shopping Centre. Email rohanrobertson07@gmail.com. 17 NOV, COBURG, VIC Downshift End of Year Meet, Coburg Drive-in Cinema, 155 Newlands Rd. Visit downshiftaus.com. 17 NOV, HOPPERS CROSSING, VIC Car Meet For The Farmers, Grab A Kebab, Old Geelong Rd. Search Facebook for more info. 18 NOV, CASTLEMAINE, VIC Castlemaine Coffee Cruise, Castlemaine Market Building. Call 0412 276 772. 18 NOV, ERINDALE, ACT Torana Nationals, Vikings Park. Visit torananationals.com.au. 18 NOV, MEREDITH, VIC Old Skool Street Cars, 21 Wilson St. Call Leon 0407 871 151. 23 NOV, BALLARAT, VIC Ballarat Rod…

IT’S AN age-old story: ‘I loved car x from a young age, always wanted one, but could never find the right time to tackle that long-dreamt-about build.’ This wasn’t a problem for David Jones, the justifiably proud owner of this sensational ’68 Camaro. David was a man with a plan and plenty of patience, just waiting for a great ’68 to come along. Back in 2006, sensing that decent donor cars were quickly evaporating, he pounced on this one when it popped up even though he wasn’t quite ready to do anything with it at the time. “Dad not only loaned me a big chunk of money to buy the donor, he also came with me to pick it up from an Adelaide-based importer,” David says. “It was probably the…

NINE-hundred-and-thirteen horsepower – no blower, no turbos, no giggle gas. This 440-cube small-block is all natural, yet stout enough to push Pat & Kasia O’Shea’s heavyweight XR Fairmont down the quarter in the mid-nines with monotonous regularity. And if consistent mid-nines isn’t enough for you, during the recent Willowbank Winter Warm-Up it ran 9.20@145mph! Pat and Kasia are the driving force behind Pat’s Pro Restos, a Queensland shop that has turned out a string of show winners and SMfeature cars – with another 14 builds currently on the go. Pat originally bought the XR 15 years ago after writing off his 10-second XR ute (SM, Jan ’05). But the purchase of a new house and relocation of the business forced him to sell it not long after completing a full…

AS THE mastermind behind Adicted Performance, Victoria’s Danko Knezevic spends his days building high-horsepower machines to tear up drag strips and burnout pads. So it’s little surprise that his own Ford Capri happens to be a seven-second monster churning out nearly 1700hp. It was a rather underwhelming car when Danko first got his hands on it 20-odd years ago, painted in a typical 70s brown and sporting just half the cylinder count it has today. Being the speed demon he is, Danko quickly gave the old donk the flick in favour of a 4V Cleveland, which was good for a best of 10.6 down the quarter. “The car was so loud after the Cleveland conversion that I’d have to shut it off at the top of my street and roll…

THERE ARE only two things I love more than reminiscing about old-school street machines: Learning that a particular car has survived, and discovering that it’s still in the hands of the original builder. When a teenaged Graham Horne went hunting for an HR wagon back in 1983, little did he know that it would spawn a 35-year love affair with an EH that is not likely to fizzle anytime soon! “I was 18 and keen to get an HR as my first car,” Graham says. “But I couldn’t find a decent one, so I brought home this EH instead. It was the best $500 I’ve ever spent.” That was a fair amount of coin back then, and landed Graham the type of EH you’d expect from a then-20-year-old car: pretty…

CALDER PARK 16 NOV SM Drag Challenge 25 NOV Rowe Memorial 15 DEC King Of The Hill calderpark.com.au Phone (03) 9091 0777 SYDNEY DRAGWAY 16 NOV Full Throttle Friday 18 NOV Sunday Street Meet 21 NOV Race 4 Real 22 NOV Smoke n Skidz 24 NOV ATURA Championships 28 NOV Race 4 Real 05 DEC Race 4 Real 12 DEC Race 4 Real 14 DEC Full Throttle Friday 19 DEC Race 4 Real sydneydragway.com.au Phone (02) 9421 0700 WILLOWBANK 17 NOV Test N Tune 24 NOV Test N Tune 28 NOV Test N Tune 01 DEC Jet Cars 02 DEC Dash 4 Cash 07 DEC Diesel Assault 08 DEC Test N Tune 12 DEC Test N Tune 15 DEC Test N Tune willowbankraceway.com.au Phone (07) 5461 5461 HEATHCOTE RACEWAY 18…

01 GOING MOULDY GONE are the days when there was a stray VL Commodore parked on every street corner. Good cars are hard to find, and quality used parts are even harder. But Rare Spares has come to the rescue with this reproduction door moulding kit to suit VLs. Anyone who’s tried to remove factory moulds while keeping them in one piece will know it’s a job and a half, so we reckon there will be plenty of demand for these. They come in a set of four and will give your car that crisp, sharp look, no matter whether you’re going for an original factory finish or building a wild streeter. For more information, head to rarespares.net.au. 02 TAKE A STAND WORKING on your engine shouldn’t mean you have…

WE MET Dani Richardson and Smokey Two, a Beat The Heat BA XR8 Ford sedan, while racing at the Ararat Hillclimb. Dani is a former youth worker and high-school teacher who is now employed in Victorian Emergency Services. She’s keen to make a positive impact in her local community through the Beat The Heat program, which helps country-based young folk gain life skills by helping out with a fleet of track-prepped rides – some of which they also get to race. Tell us more about Beat The Heat. As volunteers from emergency services, we use our Beat The Heat race cars to show young people that we’re approachable. They can link with us to volunteer on the cars and also compete in them, therefore gaining skills that come from working…

WIN!  WIN a Mothers gift pack, containing a bunch of awesome gear to make your ride looks its best. See www.mothers.com for details; contents may vary. Send your photos of fun with cars to: Sunday Too Far Away, Street Machine, Locked Bag 12, Oakleigh, Vic 3166, or email high-resolution images (1mb+) to: sundaytoofaraway@bauer-media.com.au . Please send copies of prints as we are unable to return your photos.…

JASON Waye from Tuff Mounts is no stranger to engine swaps that walk on the wild side. For Street Machine Drag Challenge 2017, Jason built a VS Commodore ute powered by a Ford Barra turbo motor that has run deep into the 10s. His Tuff Mounts business sells engine mounts for just about any mainstream car and engine combo, too. Jason’s latest project could be his most exciting yet: a Ford Barra motor into a Fox-body Mustang. “I was talking to Richard Shumack from Haltech at Summernats 31, and we had the idea to put the Ford six into the Fox-body,” Jason says. “We know interest in the Barra is growing overseas, and the Fox-body is a hugely popular race car, so we want to keep it Ford and offer…

WRITERS’ ROCKETS I’VE BEEN meaning to drop you people a line for a while, but the Blowin’ Gaskets article by Carly Dale (SM, Nov ’18) resonated with me for a couple of reasons. Like Carly, I’m easily distracted by easier jobs, in my case, around the house or even just getting caught up chasing parts at swap meets instead of spending the time in the shed. Or alternatively, the age-old curse of time and money! The other aspect of the article that caught my interest was what cars were in Carly’s shed. Having read this mag for a number of decades it’s always interesting to see and read about what cars you lot have. From Geoff Paradise’s ’57 to Bob Kotmel’s HG ute, I’ve enjoyed seeing what they’re up to.…

SINCE Rob Godfrey and TOYTON won Street Machine Of The Year in 2008, it has been customary to sneak up on the winner and surprise them with the trophy. So when the votes had been tallied and Ben Judd’s gorgeous EH wagon had been declared the most popular street machine of 2018, we needed to come up with a way to stitch him up good and proper, so we reached out to paint-and-panel maestros Glenn and Jason Coburn at Exclusive Customs in Sydney’s south to help us out. Ben is the proprietor of Judd’s Auto Repairs, and his brother Simon (who was instrumental in the build of the EH) owns Elite Custom Interiors. The Coburns reasoned that if they invited the Judds to their workshop one Friday to discuss working…

THE street is the great equaliser. On a sticky, well-prepped quarter-mile drag strip, chances are the car with the most horsepower and dollars under the bonnet will win a heads-up race, but on an eighth-mile track with a surface that approximates street conditions, it really is anyone’s game. Tunnel Vision’s King Of The Street event is all about taking the street racing philosophy to a safe, controlled environment. The event is held on the Ballarat Airport runway over an eighth-mile distance, and is open to radial-tyre street cars only. While the track is prepped up to the 60-foot mark, it is a long way from racing on a dedicated drag strip with full prep. Organised by Jason Ghiller from Melbourne’s Tunnel Vision Turbocharging and good mate John Colaidis, along with…

IT’S America’s biggest automotive torture test: Hot Rod Drag Week. With 400 entries for this year’s event sold out in six minutes, there’s no disputing its allure, but while it may be popular, Drag Week is hardly a carefree cruise. Five days of racing, 1000 road miles, and whatever else the racing gods may throw your way see to that. This year, the weather forecast told us we’d have a hurricane bearing down on us – just to make things more interesting. Foreboding tales of Hurricane Florence were pouring from every news channel and radio station in the south-east, and since the route this year would take us from Georgia, through the Carolinas, to Tennessee and back, it would be a game of cat-and-mouse with a potential Category 3 hurricane.…

THERE’S something pretty fulfilling about being able to work on your own vehicle. None of us aspire to poor-quality work though, and unfortunately when it comes to the body side of things, it can be fairly easy to get flustered and just give up, or worse still, do the old bog ’n’ flog. This is the first in a series of tech features in which we’ll delve into some of the more technical aspects of metalwork, from rust repair to customisation. This is not necessarily a ‘how to’, but rather an insight into the world of automotive metalworking. As the saying goes, there’s a hundred ways to skin a cat, and it’s much the same with metal. While the basic principles of working with metal will always remain the same,…

ROHAN Hutson, owner of this tough blown ’55 Chev, reckons Street Machine Drag Challenge is the best week of the year. “It’s a bunch of like-minded enthusiasts all there for the same thing,” he raves. With Rohan positively gushing about the event within the first 30 seconds of our conversation (it was like he was reading from a late-night infomercial script!) you just know this fella can’t wait to go fast and have fun at DC 2018! This will be the Victorian’s third crack at Drag Challenge, and this time around his classic-cruiser Chev has been given a few tricks and tweaks. “It was a factory V8, one-owner, 71,000-mile car,” says Rohan of the Chev, which he’s owned for a decade. “I put a tough small-block in it and it…

WHEN Ian Wright took ownership of his HT Holden he didn’t have any intention to create the sleeper you see now. He just wanted a nice reliable cruiser that his wife could drive, but after having a few beers with some mates a new plan was hatched that would see the humble HT turn into a real rubber-hater. In place of the factory 186, a throaty LS1 now resides in the engine bay, while a 4L60E with a 3000rpm stall and a HiLux diff sporting 3.58:1 gears send all that extra power through tiny pizza-cutter rear tyres. At least he’s still got the factory mudflaps to catch all the burnt rubber! Ian loves the unassuming nature of the car, going to big lengths to keep its accidental sleeper status in…

THEY say the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, and 18-year-old Brock Chisholm is living proof. Brock’s dad is a Holden man through and through, and Brock’s own sweet WB One Tonner shows that he’s been taking notes. What cars has your dad owned? He’s got a VE SS now, but had a pretty neat HZ back in the day – he still has pictures of it. From hearing him talk about his car, I’ve always liked the idea of owning something similar. Now that I’ve got one, I’m liking the old stuff even more. How did your Tonner come about? Through a casual car conversation Dad had with a friend of a friend. They mentioned they knew of an old Holden that’d been sitting in a shed for…

DEATH-DEFYING A MAN in Bulgaria drove trains for a living. He loved his job; driving a train had been his dream ever since he was a child. He loved to make the train go as fast as possible. Unfortunately, one day he was a little too reckless and caused a crash. He made it out, but a single person died. Needless to say, he went to court over this incident. He was found guilty, and was sentenced to death by electrocution. When the day of the execution came, he requested a single banana as his last meal. After eating the banana, he was strapped into the electric chair. The switch was flown, sparks flew, and smoke filled the air – but nothing happened. The man was perfectly fine. At the…

THERE’S something very fresh, bright and endearing about early-1980s Australiana, and 1983’s BMX Bandits has it in spades. This feel-good flick is the stuff of local legend and became surprisingly popular overseas as well – not to mention the fact that it’s the second-ever film role for a then-16-year-old redhead named Nicole Kidman, who learned to ride a BMX specifically for this part. Checkout chick Judy (Kidman) is befriended by two local BMX louts, PJ (D’Angelo) and Goose (Lugton), who are strapped for cash for bike repairs after a spill at their local shopping centre. They decide that selling seafood to the local market is a means to some quick dollars, but stumble upon a box full of walkie-talkies suspiciously moored in Sydney Harbour. These high-tech radios have all the…

RUNNING HOT JUST got back from the Running On Empty Festival in Cobar, which appeared to be a huge hit with ROE fans, with around 2000 people driving in from all over the country. There were many replicas of the cars that West Australian hot rodder Dave Duncan originally cast or designed for the film, and one or two originals with what appeared to be Dave’s original artwork as well. What Dave said in your article a few years back (SM Hot Rod #16) about the producers of the film was true: “It was terrible, embarrassing. The whole production staff didn’t have a clue – they wanted to know why we weren’t using Mini Minors. We had a bit of fun, we just went hot rodding. I was there for…

SHAUN Horton’s wild HQ Monaro just goes to show that a good thing can always be made better. You very likely recognise the Quey’s distinctive, low-slung silhouette from its initial incarnation, CHOPPT, built by Jody Vincitorio. Back then the car ran a 468ci big-block with Crower stack injection, HOK Emerald Green paint and a crazy bare-metal and croc-skin cabin that showcased Jody’s flawless metalwork skills. Under Jody’s stewardship the car featured on the cover of our February 2012 issue and made the Summernats Elite Top 10 twice. It was an exercise in unbridled creativity and never masqueraded as a street car, meaning that it didn’t have to please any engineers or comply with any bastard Australian Design Rules. All it needed to do was be tough as hell and look…

FIFTY years ago, the first HK Holden rolled off the production line. Spawning icons like the Kingswood and the mighty Monaro coupe, the HK (along with the HT and HG iterations that followed) helped truly cement Holden’s place in Australian motoring fans’ hearts. To celebrate the HK’s 50th birthday, the inaugural HK-HT-HG Holden Nationals took place in Adelaide over the weekend of 19-21 October, thanks to the tireless efforts of the Nationals committee and the HK-HT-HG Owners Car Club of SA, spearheaded by president Paul Kannane. And what a celebration it was, with punters making the trip from as far away as WA, Queensland and even NZ. Proceedings kicked off on Friday night in Gepps Cross, 10 minutes from the CBD, then headed north on Saturday for the Collingrove Hillclimb;…

AL JAMES is no stranger to driving very cool and very fast Plymouths. He campaigned the legendary ‘Ramcharger’, a genuine lightweight ’63 Belvedere super stocker that his father had also raced back in the early-70s. So you could say Al was hooked on Mopars from a very early age. “When I was six years old my dad had a brand-new Vitamin C E38 six-pack R/T Charger big tank,” Al says. “I think Mum forced the sale of the R/T after she was rushed to hospital in it at 140mph while trying not to give birth to my younger sister!” The Charger was sold to Ian Diffen and it went on to become a wild mid-engined Sports Sedan. It’s fair to say the James family have a fair bit of West…

IT’S THE phone call some of us have received, and all of us dread: “Mate, why don’t you take it straight to the tip!” That’s what Peter Hondow told Rick Postrak after a media-blast revealed a holy history of rust in Rick’s LJ Torana. During our photoshoot, Rick and Pete showed us a scrapbook of ‘before’ pics, and the extent of the rust – and the prior bodges to ‘fix’ it – was astonishing. Real spaghetti-strainer, teabag and Swiss cheese stuff. It’s probably more astonishing that the lads got this Torana back on the road again, let alone as this trophy-worthy toughie! “There were a lot of times when I thought about pulling out of the build,” says Rick, who bought the car nearly eight years ago. “The bad condition…

WE’VE been having a serious spring clean at home recently, and I came across these two photos (opposite page), which have quite a back-story. As a teen in the mid-80s, I used to pore over car magazines. Street Machine’s Plankkman and Wayne & Vicky were great regular features, but my favourite was Kelly’s Kolumn (yes, both with a K) in the now long-defunct Street & Custom magazine; I’d read it religiously and repeatedly. Paul Kelly was already a legend of the Aussie custom scene 30 years ago and a stalwart for period builds of the 50s, 60s and 70s – styles that were quickly losing favour as we edged towards the stock-bodied boredom of the 90s through to now. Paul’s column and stories introduced me to Aussie custom pioneers such…

DALE REITH HZ HOLDEN “I FOUND my HZ by the side of the road back in 2010; I paid $2200 for it. I only got into the build in 2015 and the car was up and running for Australia Day 2017. It was originally only going to be a cruiser, but things got a bit out of hand. The car was built in the shed by my best mate Justin and me. I decided on the top-mount blower and to stick with the standard-stroke Holden 308. VN heads were used with just a basic clean-up and the bottom end got four-bolt mains thanks to Chris’ Porting Service. She runs on E85, with 650 DPs on top to get it into the engine, and with around 12psi of boost. A Preston…