Indholdsfortegnelse for September 2020 i Street Machine

EARLIER this year, Jasmine ‘Jazzy’ Green was the winner of the 2020 Laurie Starling Scholarship, recognising the amazing fabrication work that the young Shepparton-based barista had done to her LS-powered ’91 Toyota HiLux mini-truck (that’s her at the top of the page receiving the award from Laurie’s parents and some bearded bloke). Last time we checked in on Jazzy (SM, Feb ’20), the HiLux was painted and ready for the engineer’s seal of approval. “I’ve been consulting with the engineer the whole way through, so it passed with flying colours,” says Jazz. “I had kept the chassis in bare metal just in case, so once it was approved I drove it to work to the show the guys, then took it straight home to pull it down. “I got the…

THERE are certain events in everyone’s childhood that help shape the person they grow up to be. For former AFL player James Gwilt, a ride in a friend’s muscle car as a young tacker sparked a love for power on four wheels that eventually led to the gold behemoth you see before you. “My friend Sam took me for a ride in his 500hp XY GT Falcon when I was 12,” James explains. “Ever since then I’ve been hooked on XW-XY Falcons!” Unfortunately, James’s first fling with a classic Falcon of his own ended prematurely when his XW was hit by someone running a red light. “It destroyed the driver’s side of the car and it was declared a write-off,” he says. Fortunately, it didn’t take long for him to…

THE Snowball Effect. It’s the phenomenon responsible for the majority of rides gracing these pages – including Pep Minutolo’s VC Valiant Regal. “I built the entire car all because I lost my cool when I was taking the engine out,” Adelaide-based Pep says. “I was pissed off when I pulled the hurt motor and I damaged the paint in the engine bay. I shut the bonnet and walked away, but realised the damage when I went to fit the new engine.” Yep, one heated moment sparked the third build for Pep’s tidy VC, a ride that’s been with him for the past 19 years. Having said that, a VC wasn’t his first pick. “I was going to buy my cousin’s HX Monaro with a hot 308,” Pep says. “My brother…

SLAMMED trucks are a favourite of ours in the Street Machine offices, and Michael ‘Freddy’ Kruger’s hot rod-inspired 1961 F100 is one truck packed with a whole bunch of attitude. Freddy had been eyeing off the truck for a number of years, eventually trading it with a fellow member of his Ground Level Mini-Trucks & Customs Club for his 1949 Ford spinner. “I knew if I was to ever own a truck, it would be this one!” says Freddy. “I’ve been around the truck and the Ground Level guys for its whole life. “I got it as a running, driving truck,” he continues. “It was a bit rough, but that’s how the previous owner built and wanted it – he liked the rougher, down-to-earth kind of car. It was never…

WHEN is a humpy ute not a humpy ute? When it gets dropped over a Chev LUV chassis, is powered by a Ford Windsor and grunts through a Ford driveline! The man behind this schizophrenic creation is plumber-turned-storeman, Dave Hemsworth. Dave’s been in the customising business for yonks, fooling around with hot rods before slotting Jaguar and Ford Windsor mills into early-model Falcons. Then he became hooked on humpies, building a black small-block Chevpowered FX (SM, Aug/Sep ’85) and a white FJ utility that had a Hemsworth-crafted tilt front. But these were just a taste of what Dave had in store. The Hemsworth mind started ticking over after a trip to an engineering shop in ’85. Purely by chance, the boys in the shop were working on a Chev LUV…

EVERY so often you meet someone whose journey with cars mirrors your own. So I was fan-girling hard when I learned that Chloe Begley has been a stubborn supporter of her VL Calais for the past 15 years, sticking with her beloved wagon through thick and thin. How did your VL Calais journey begin? Mum owned an HDT VL Turbo; I had the specs memorised off by heart when I was in primary school. From then on, I always loved VL Turbos. When I got my L-plates I bought the wagon for $5000 – it was my very first car and first love. So, she’s genuine? Yep, one of only 50 VL Calais wagons with an RB30ET that were built. If people know their stuff about VLs, they look at what…

Send your favourite funnies to: LOL, Street Machine, Locked Bag 12, Oakleigh, Vic 3166 or email them to: streetmachine@bauer-media.com.au. GAG OF THE MONTH WET BAR A DRUNK man in a pub stumbles up to the bartender and orders another drink. The bartender says: “I can’t serve you anymore; you’re way too drunk.” “I’m perfectly fine!” the drunk bloke slurs. “Tell ya what: I’ll bet you $100 that I can pee from here into that bottle at the other end of the bar and I won’t get a single drop outside the bottle.” The bartender, seeing an easy $100, agrees to the bet. So the drunken man gets up on a chair and pees all over the bar – an entire bladder-load, and not a single drop gets anywhere near the…

TENSION between street machiners and government departments is nothing new, with creativity and passion often running up against bureaucratic indifference – and sometimes outright hostility. The modified car community in almost every state has had to fight for their right to exist over the years, and right now it is Western Australia’s turn. There are a number of issues in play, but the main point of contention is that the Department of Transport has seemingly unfettered power to reject a car’s rego without any right to appeal – regardless of whether the car complies with the national guidelines or not. This is creating paralysing uncertainty for your average street machiner, and is also wreaking untold damage on the performance industry itself. To counter this problem, a small group of West…

DISARMED YOU would think with everything going on in the world right now, VicRoads would have more to worry about than potentially “offensive” rego plates. But sadly for Portland resident Peter Hansen, Victoria’s licensing and rego authority has elected to cancel and demand the immediate return of the ‘WEPN’ number plates that have been on Pete’s Torana for 10 years. Naturally, we were left scratching our heads at the news, so we decided to share the story with you. Here’s what you had to say on our Facebook page. Michael McDonald – The stupidity of this country never ceases to amaze me. Clive Stevens-Clark – Tell the do-gooders to piss off! Michael Shaw – Possibly apocryphal, but allegedly the number plate ENIS was rejected when it was found out the…

DON’T worry, you aren’t having a stroke – yes, this is a VW Beetle, and yes, it’s in Street Machine. But unlike your grandfather’s old clapped-out dak-dak, Reece Reynolds’s V-dub is a sweet little street cruiser with some party tricks up its sleeve. “The build started out as a typical ‘I’m going to leave it standard’ kind of story,” says Reece. “After lowering it and putting some aftermarket wheels on, I got the ‘bug’ and it began to snowball from there.” Reece’s love for old-school, air-cooled German machines started with a joyride. “My brother Beau took me for a drive in his 1970s Super Beetle back in 2013,” the 23-year-old says. “I immediately fell in love with the early air-cooled cars and knew I’d eventually own one.” Reece’s car was…

FJ HOLDEN NATHAN SONNEVELD “MY FJ is being built into an old-school cruiser, and so far I’ve done all the work myself. I’m going for full Queensland rego, so I’ve been working closely with Dr Tim who has been giving me plenty of advice. I can only go up to a 4.0L engine due to the rules here in Queensland, so I was initially thinking about a Toyota V8 to power it, but it’s too new-school technology for me, so it will run a 202 red motor with twin carbs. Other plans include a full custom chassis, two-door conversion with 150mm-lengthened front doors, welded and widened rear guards, a roof chop, rear tubs and a shortened Commodore diff. The rear suspension is a parallel four-link with a Panhard bar and…

TOUGH street cars are what Drag Challenge is all about, and Aaron James’s beautifully presented VG Valiant Regal is a proper streeter. “My work schedule means I get a week off, so I’ll get out and cruise it every chance I get,” Aaron says. “If the sun’s out, it gets driven, especially for the pub runs!” Aaron and his father Alan built the car, getting a hold of it a bit over 10 years ago. Mopars have always been in the blood for the James family, according to Aaron: “Dad said when I was younger that if I wanted to get into this car thing, it’d better be a Mopar or I’m on my own!” Unfortunately, the circumstances in which Aaron acquired the VG were not the greatest, having been…

01 RINGS OF FURY SIDE-exit exhausts are all the rage at the track these days, with turbo guys in particular running dump pipes down through their front guards or bumpers in race trim to maximise performance. Those parts of the car then need reinforcing to handle a hot exhaust, so the crew at Muscle Garage now offer a cheap and easy solution. Their turbo dump pipe trim rings are available in pairs, diameters ranging from 2.5 inches to 5.5 inches, and are made from laser-cut, mirror-finish stainless. The kit even includes all the alloy pop rivets needed for a super-easy installation. They’re available now at musclegarage.com.au. 02 FILE IN STYLE FILING down metal can be a real stress on the ol’ forearms, but sometimes an angle grinder just isn’t suited…

BREAKDOWN VEHICLES: 1972 Honda Z360, 1972 Ford Transit van, 1980 Toyota LiteAce, 1977 HZ Holden, 1984 VK Commodore, 1984 Ford XF Falcon, 1973 HQ Holden Kingswood, 1973 Ford XB Falcon, 1971 VH Valiant Charger XL STARS: Colin Friels, Lindy Davies, John Hargreaves, Chris Haywood, Charles ‘Bud’ Tingwell, Beverley Phillips DIRECTOR: Nadia Tass ACTION: A Honda Z360 splits into two independently powered halves to evade a pursuing police car; a Ford Transit van is jerry-rigged with gadgets to help carry out a bank heist PLOT: A socially awkward mechanical genius forms an unlikely alliance with his two new housemates in an elaborate bank robbery plan AVAILABLE: DVD, internet download, streaming PAINFULLY shy Malcolm Hughes (Friels) makes up for a lack of social graces with a keen aptitude for mechanics, inventing crafty…

EVER watch those Seppo car shows on television and wonder how they manage to cobble a car together in record time to any sort of respectable standard? Just ask Luke Mitchell of Advanced Motorsports; the struggle is real. This positively gorgeous LJ Torana was built from the ground up in just four months for Aussie TV show Rides Down Under: Workshop Wars, and there’s no questioning the standard to which it is finished – it landed in the Elite Top 10 and won a swag of tinware at Street Machine Summernats 33, which is a hell of an effort given the timeframe of the build. “We were approached to do the show by the producer Rob, who was just a normal car guy,” says Luke. “We decided to go ahead…

IT TAKES guts to chop into an expensive late-model car, though it’s perhaps slightly less intimidating than taking a grinder to a traditional old-school rig. But when it comes to the ‘early-girl versus plasticfantastic’ debate, Victorian Mark Attard has a foot in both camps. He was brought up on old-school street machines, and he’s now putting those traditional skills and style into his millennial-era HSV VE Maloo. “I’ve had a few cars. When I was about 16, I went for spin in an XA Falcon GT. It was a low- 11s car, and I was hooked!” Mark explains. “I had a little LJ Torana; that was the one that got me started into cars, but it was nothing too crazy. My first real tough streeter was an HJ Premier. I…

IT’S fair to say 2020 has been a struggle for everyone involved in drag racing, including the Street Machine team. Thanks to COVID-19, we had to cancel Drag Challenge Weekend, and we’re waiting to see how things turn out before we press ‘go’ on the main event in November. One possible scenario is to run the event spectatorfree – and if things get much worse in Victoria, it may have to be held in NSW or Queensland. Not being able to plan our events is tough, but not being able to race is even worse! The Carnage workshop has a record number of cars up and running at once, but nowhere to race them – though there may be a correlation between these two facts! The only racing of any…

FOUNDED in 1983, Eagle Auto Parts has long been a giant in the Australian aftermarket scene. The team has lent their expertise to countless Street Machine feature cars over the years, including Holden’s Project Monaro and our own ’63 Dodge Phoenix. The Eagle guys are most famous for their crate engines and go-fast gear. Stepping into their Dandenong headquarters will reinforce this impression; the showroom is studded with crate motors, superchargers, engine-assembly tools, specialised workshop gear and transmission displays. But the real eye-opener is in the warehouse. Neatly stacked in seemingly endless rows of racking is a treasure trove of parts to suit almost any American car and truck you can think of, dating back to the early 1940s. New suspension and brake parts form a big slice of the…

RETROTECH: The art of dropping a late-model motor into an old-school chassis. It’s a great way to improve the starting, running, driveability and maintenance of any classic streeter. Better still, it often comes with the added bonus of more power! Although a little unloved, Ford Australia’s 5.4- litre quad-cam Boss V8 has a tonne of hidden potential. Unfortunately, the difficulty of slotting one into a classic FoMoCo hasn’t helped its popularity. But Sydney-based Ford suspension specialist RRS has come to the rescue. Using its unique strut front suspension system, RRS has developed and completed a number of Boss swaps, and offered to run us through all the ins and outs. THE ENGINE A HYBRID version of the American ‘Modular’ V8, the 32-valve, 5.4-litre Boss motor is uniquely Australian. It’s incredibly…

SEND photos of your car and a few details of what went into the build to Readers’ Rockets, Street Machine, Locked Bag 12, Oakleigh, Vic 3166 or email readerscars@bauer-media.com.au. Please note: Send us copies of prints as we are unable to return your photos. KEN CROCKETT 1956 FJ HOLDEN “IT’S TAKEN 13 years to build my dream FJ Holden. Right from the beginning, the plan was to put an LS1 and a six-speed from a Commodore into it and have it fully engineered so I could drive it as much as I possibly can. It has all the comforts: the best leather I could buy, air con, and I even had custom electronic gauges with ‘FJ Holden’ printed on them made in the US by Speedhut. Originally the paint was…