Innehållsförteckning för May 2018 från Street Machine

21 APR, BLACKBUTT, QLD Blackbutt Show ’n’ Shine Swap Meet, Blackbutt showgrounds. Contact Brian on 0428 760 229. 22 APR, WINNELLIE, NT Repco Classic Car Show, Repco car park, Winnellie. Contact Robert on 0417 262 918. 22 APR, CAMERON PARK, NSW Lost In The 50s Brunch With The Cars, 42 Stenhouse Drive. Visit lostinthe50s.com.au. 22 APR, MAFFRA, VIC Maffra Motor Museum Swap Meet, 1A Sale Road. Contact Mike on 0402 084 302. 25 APR, WERRINGTON, NSW Anzac Day Show ’n’ Shine 2018, Colonial Hotel. Contact Michael on 0416 139 742. 27-29 APR, CASTLEMAINE, VIC The Boogaloo Invitational, Wattle Flat Reserve. Visit theboogalooinvitational.com.au. 28 APR, KWINANA BEACH, WA Holden vs Ford, Perth Motorplex.Visit motorplex.com.au. 29 APR, BULLA, VIC 5c’s Car Club Car & Bike Show Fundraiser, Calabria Club. Search for ‘5c’s…

WITH 50 years in the car scene tucked under his belt, Erik Johnson has seen trends come and go and then come back again! Last issue we took you for a spin through Erik’s early years of hot car building; this time ’round we pick up the trail in the 70s and ride on through to enjoy a few examples of his current fleet. 01: IN 1975 Erik forked out $3000 for this 1969 XW GT, an early build running a 351 Windsor and Top Loader combo. “I worked with a guy who had a mate at the local motor registry,” Erik says. “When the HOT prefix series of standard number plates came to Wagga, he put aside HOT350 for my mate and HOT351 for me; there was no such…

AUSTRALIA’S quickest female? Try Australia’s quickest, full stop. Kelly Bettes is just three competitive meetings into her Top Fuel career behind the wheel of the Lamattina Racing dragster, and she’s already peeled off the quickest 1000-foot pass this country has ever seen. At Sydney Dragway in January, she laid down a blistering 3.83@308mph to beat Damien Harris of Rapisarda Autosport in the final and claim her first Top Fuel event win. Not too shabby for a rookie, but Kelly’s rapid ascent in the Top Fuel ranks comes as little surprise to those that have followed her progress. The Victorian-born, Queensland-based dyed-in-the-wool racer started out in Junior Dragsters when she was 10, and has had success in almost everything she’s pedalled. In 2010, she became the first female to win the…

2018 GUIDE MEGUIAR’S MotorEx hits the Melbourne Showgrounds on the weekend of 26-27 May. This will be the first MotorEx run by the new team from Out There Productions, and the first to feature the good folks from SEMA. While the headline attraction remains the elite show cars, this year’s event will feature a massively expanded Real Street display and a bigger focus on active displays such as drifting, dyno and FMX. Throw international superstar Chip Foose, AFL legend Barry Hall, and a bunch of other Aussie celebrities and their cars into the mix, and you’ve got a massive weekend! For more info, check out motorex.com.au. CHIP FOOSE AMERICAN car builder and TV personality Chip Foose will be a special guest at this year’s Meguiar’s MotorEx, thanks to the good…

NOTHING says ‘nanna car’ quite like a stock Toyota Corolla painted plain white – except in the case of Nathan Patterson’s example. His KE30 started off exactly this way, but was turned into a 550rwhp V8-powered tyre-melting monster. And this transformation began just two months out from Summernats 31! Nathan’s plans for the small sedan – named THELMA after its original owner – changed radically in the lead-up to Summernats when the boys from the US-based 1320Video YouTube channel needed a car to skid at the ’Nats. IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN A SLAPPED-TOGETHER SKID CAR, BUT I’M NOT THAT KINDA GUY, AND NEITHER ARE THE PEOPLE WHO WORKED ON IT “Originally the Corolla was going to be a tough street car with the Nissan SR20 turbo four-cylinder out of my…

WHEN I WAS 19 I HAD AN RX-2 MAZDA WITH A 265 AND A ROLLCAGE. BACK THEN IT WAS ALL ABOUT POWER-TO-WEIGHT AND I COULDN’T AFFORD THE BIG V8 STUFF THE Bergamin brothers are Moparmad and truly live by the motto: ‘If it ain’t Mopar, it’s below par.’ About the only thing they love more than the cars themselves is drag racing said Mopars. Frank Bergamin has this ’70 Dodge Charger and another ’69 Charger in the build, while brother Robert has a ’70 Road Runner and a VF Valiant coupe that’s run a best of 9.74 over the quarter-mile. “We’ve raced most of our lives with Valiants,” Frank says. “The VF has a naturally aspirated small-block. It’s got W9 heads with an R3 race block, but it’s a big…

CONGRATULATIONS to Brisbane’s Aaron Treymane, who has claimed the world record for the quickest and fastest door car running an aspirated small-block Chev. Built totally in Aaron’s Tremaniac Racing workshop, the 1200hp, 400ci small-block recently ran a rip-snorting 6.888@198mph in the team’s Jerry Haas-built 2011 Pontiac. The engine utilises a GM block, and needs a conventional head gasket to ensure studs are in the stock location. The motor is a big-bore, small-stroke deal that is still based on an SBC but has splayed-valve, symmetrical-port billet heads that were custom-made in-house. The intake is a custom billet job with Braswell carbies that are not rated by cfm but by venturi size; they would be around 1300cfm. The 60mm cam is line-bored with internal oil feeding. With the motor being revved to…

“SURPRISINGLY, EVEN ON YEARS-OLD FUEL DILUTED WITH SOME FRESH STUFF, THE SILVER BULLET FIRED ALMOST INSTANTLY WITH NOTHING MORE THAN A ONCE-ONLY PUFF OF SMOKE FROM THE EXHAUST” SO, I’VE been bangin’ around in a Toyota HiLux 4WD for six years. Good rig, but I was over it. I’ve got me a little fast Vee-Dub for a bit of weekend track fun, but driving the lifted, knobby-tyred HiLux anywhere apart from over the Snowies or across the Simpson was giving me the craps, especially as before the ’Lux I’d had a 15-year run of V8 dailies, with a VP Calais and then a VT Senator. And in mid-2016 I’d bought an ’89 VN V8 Calais as a collector/cruise car. But I was soon sneaking to the shops or the pub…

THERE should be no surprise that lighter cars go faster than heavier cars; that’s the reason people have been putting big engines in little cars since the dawn of the automobile. How much of a difference does it make, though? We set out to answer that question, and have a little fun, at Calder Park recently with an AWD Ford Territoryfor an episodeof Carnage. It was an eye-opening experience in more ways than one. The car itself was a basic Barra-powered SX Territory with seven seats and the $4000 AWD option. It had 309,000km on the clock and stank like someone had used it to carry wet dogs for a year. We paid way too much for it at auction, and with its eye-watering stench and puke-green paint, we quickly…

UK XA STREET Machine had my XA wagon in the Readers’ Rockets section a few years ago when I first started restoring it, so here’s an update. I found the car here in the UK. It’s an original UK-supplied XA Fairmont wagon, was Jewel Green with a 302, sold from a dealer in the south. It was left under a tree for a long time and was very rusty, so I had to save it. It’s had loads done so far – sills, lower doors, guards and lower sections, complete plenum repair, and the list goes on. I should have the shell rust repaired by June. It’s not far off now. Going all-original with a strong driveline. Can’t beat our Aussie cars; nothing compares. Will keep you posted. Lewis Rogan,…

MY BROTHER AND I WERE WORKING ON IT EVERY DAY AFTER WORK FOR FOUR YEARS IN OUR BACKYARD SHED THE EH is the quintessential classic Holden that everyone seems to have a soft spot for, but Shane Keene’s fondness for the model is profound. As a whippersnapper, he was carted off to school each day in his old man’s EH ute, and that sewed the seed that eventually grew into something of an obsession. Shane’s first car was an EH – a Premier sedan with a hot 179 that he still owns to this day. This ute followed six months later, when Shane was still only 17 years of age, and it was used very much as its maker intended – put through its paces every day on the Keene…

BUILDING a Summernats cruiser was a pretty popular pastime in the early years of the event, but it seems to have fallen out of favour in recent times. The whole idea is to create a high-impact, low-buck cruiser that will turn heads and ensure you and all your mates have a great time at the ’Nats – and that’s exactly what Dave and Robert Stephenson decided to do after visiting Summernats 30 as spectators. WELD THE DOORS UP, CHOP OFF THE ROOF, SLAP SOME PAINT ON AND GO CRUISING – IT MIGHT SOUND STRAIGHTFORWARD, BUT IT’S NEVER THAT EASY “We used to go every year,” Dave says, “but we hadn’t been in a while because of young kids and families. We’d never actually been for a drive in a car…

NOW that Adelaide’s had a consistently running drag strip for six years, the flow-on effect has been a surge of single-figure street-and-strip monsters. Turbo-powered small-cube rides are now commonplace in a land where naturally aspirated, big-inch cars once dominated. So it seemed a good time for Street Machine to venture along to a Fast Friday quarter-mile street meet-style event at Adelaide International Raceway for a gander at the current scene. Fast Friday events are open to everything from bog-stocker streeters to comp cars that need some test time. The mix makes for a great visual and acoustic feast, and at $75 for pre-entry, it’s cheap racing – if you don’t break anything! Although an unusually humid day with the threat of rain kept both entrant and spectator numbers down, those…

BEST ON THE DAY WAS EDDY TASSONE IN HIS VZ GTO. HIS 334.93KM/H RUN WAS ALMOST 10KM/H FASTER THAN LAST YEAR’S WINNER THE long weekend in March saw a horsepower invasion take over the city of Albany, the normally peaceful community on the Southern Ocean about five hours south of Perth. Yep, the Motul Racewars crew had rolled into town, but you won’t hear any complaints from the locals. In fact, Albany promotes the event as one of its Amazing Albany tourist attractions. It’s pretty obvious by attending the Sunday-morning Cars & Coffee event down at the marina that there’s a solid car scene in this city of just over 30,000 people. Rolling up to the event on Saturday, it appeared that around 10,000 of those people were at Albany…

JOHN MCCULLOCH’S SURVIVOR FJ CUSTOM SEDAN STOOD OUT TO RAZZ UP THE ESTABLISHMENT METRES from the beach, surrounded by Norfolk Island pines and perpetually kissed by a gentle sea breeze, Glenelg’s Wigley Reserve is a prime place to be on a summer’s day. Add about 300 Monaros, Kingswoods, Commodores and a lone Camira, and you’re in Holden heaven! Holden was cranking out family sedans and muscle machines by the hundreds just north of here until October last year. How had the demise of locally built Lions changed things for Holden fans? Would the 8th All Holden Day be a car show, or a wake? Street Machine went along to find out. The FB/EK Holden Car Club of SA runs the All Holden Day, originally establishing it as an event for…

DAD BOUGHT THE EH FOR MY 12TH BIRTHDAY, AND THEN NINO FROM SHOWROOM FINISH PUT HIS HAND UP TO HELP US OUT AND TOOK ME ON WHILE most other teenagers spend their weekends glued to their smartphones, 17-year-old Darcy Chircop occupies himself by restoring his EH with the help of his dad Manny and the guys from Showroom Finish Smash Repairs in Hoppers Crossing. It’s his first car, and he’s investing a great deal of effort in making it something really special. Fair to say that cars are in your blood, Darcy? Yep, my grandfather owned an EH, and Dad’s one of the founders of the Cruzin Knights Car Club. My EH started out as a shell; the only panels that came with it were the boot and bonnet. My…

JEFF BRENNAN 1963 EJ HOLDEN “I PURCHASED my EJ in 2009 from Bannockburn, Victoria. It had a red motor in it when I got it, but now runs a stock-bottom-end LS1 out of a WH Statesman. A Proflow manifold with two four-barrel throttlebodies sits nicely on top. It also has a custom set of headers to clear the tight engine bay and a twin three-inch exhaust by Andrew Darby at Moolap Mufflers. We put a Comp cam into it to give it a little more lump and got it tuned by Tony Di Biagio at TDR Engines here in Geelong. Wiring was done by my good mate Paul Marjanovic. Power gets to the rear wheels via a T400 with a Stage 2 shift kit and 3800rpm high-stall converter built by…

SACRÉ bleu and strewth, mate! French border officials have threatened to destroy a classic Australian car they say is a potential drug carrier. The car’s owner, UK-based Aussie Travis McKimmie, says the hoopla over his barn-find HG ute would be almost funny, if it weren’t so serious. “Ridiculous is the only way I can put it,” Travis told SM. “If you were going to transport drugs in Europe, would you really use something that stands out as much as a rare Holden? It makes no sense.” At the centre of the controversy is a pale yellow 1970 Holden Kingswood ute, which was originally built in New Zealand and shipped to the Netherlands by a private owner 12 years ago, where it sat in storage until recently. Travis got his hands…

“ONCE a-gain par-a-llel…” You can’t tell me you’ve never said this to your mates at the traffic lights. In the car scene especially, the ability to recite a film’s one-liners is a sure-fire sign of its staying power, often trumping any flaws it may have. There are no rose-coloured glasses when it comes to Better Off Dead though; yep, the legend of Lane Meyer is still well and truly hilarious after 33 years. The depressive, bumbling Meyer was John Cusack’s breakout role as a 19-year-old, and a part he played to perfection. When Lane gets unceremoniously dumped by his fickle girlfriend Beth (Wyss) for the rich Greendale High School jerk Stalin (Dozier), he struggles to manage his anger, frustration and depression, all compounded by his unconventional home life – an…

WE posted a web yarn about a punter trying to sell a CV6 Monaro with a Toyota 2JZ swapped into it. As you might expect, our Facebook followers slammed their keyboards into high gear to respond. Martin Pascoe – Following for the onslaught of hate. Should be hilarious. Daniel Connelley – When you wanna be a Supra fanboy but bogan is life. David John – At least it’s a much better engine than the standard one. Shannon Barrett – At least it’s not a Barra. Glenn Burney – A better option than the rotary Holden used. Daniel McCarron – What a waste of a good engine. Paul Trandos – JZ the world. Josh Ryan – I’m totally OK with this. Dave Alexander – This is best sort of cross-breeding. Joseph…

I DESIGNED THE SIDE STRIPE MYSELF. EVERYONE DOES THE SAME THING; I DECIDED TO MIX IT UP AND FOLLOW THE LOWER BODYLINE WITH its six-point rollcage, Kirkey seat and 275-wide Mickey Ts, Jarrod Wood’s XT might look like a full-on strip car, but as the saying goes, you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. “It’s actually a tough streeter,” Jarrod says. “We built it to have fun in; something that anybody can jump in and drive.” In 2017, Jarrod and a few mates decided to join the fun of Street Machine Drag Challenge. “We were there for the beer and biscuits,” he says. “It was more about having fun. Other than setting the timing in Adelaide and changing the tyres, we never put a spanner on it. We were…

IN THE early 1960s, British Ford and sports car designer/manufacturer Lotus put their corporate heads together to create the Lotus Cortina. Special-build bodies were shipped from Ford’s Dagenham, UK factory to Lotus, where a Ford-based but Lotus-headed twin-cam four-cylinder engine, close-ratio four-speed gearbox and coil-sprung rear suspension were installed. The finishing touch was a green slash down the sides and across the butt of the otherwise antique white paint, plus a trio of Lotus badges. As with Aussie muscle cars these days, the value of surviving Lotus Cortinas has shot through the stratosphere. INSTEAD OF A FAST FOUR, THIS CONVINCING LOTUS CORTINA TRIBUTE HAS A SUPERCHARGED FORD V8 IN IT. RIGHTIO! This is not one of those. This car, owned by Simon Peryer, is a convincing tribute, but instead of…

WHILE hipster Millennials are snacking on smashed avo bruschetta and bitching about the property market, 23-year-old Nick Andreula is sticking his hard-earned cash into a top-level automotive investment – this staunch, low-10-second HG Premier. “I grew up around Fords,” Nick says. “I had an XW as my first old-school car because Uncle Donato and Uncle Phil both had one; Dad isn’t really into cars.” But as teenage Nick began to hone his taste, his heart became firmly set on the clean lines of Holden’s HG Premier. “I like the class and elegance of the early H-series Holdens, which is why I changed teams and bought one.” The then-18-year-old apprentice hunted for a year before locating a tidy example in Victoria. “I got as many pics as I could from the…

FOR me and my mates, Geelong All Ford Day 2018 started off just like the previous ones: looking for a pre-dawn injection of caffeine before completing the trek to Ford Australia’s spiritual home. Boots had been packed with carefully chosen car-care products, folding chairs, sunblock and jumpers. Jumpers in February? Well yeah; last year the event was almost washed away and people had icicles hanging from their eyebrows. Conversely, the year before that everyone got cooked extra-crispy by the sun reflecting off all the chrome in 38-degree heat. Yeah, thanks Geelong. The cruise down to AFD is almost as important as the show itself. People travel in groups, ranging from a single car with two occupants, to whole car clubs decorating the bitumen with 20 or so lovingly prepared examples…

AFTER I HIT A ROCK AND HOLED THE SUMP I REPLACED THE 308 WITH A 355 STROKER. IT’S A GREAT ENGINE UP ON Queensland’s Capricorn Coast, even the farm utes are V8s. Local hairdresser Bec Mossman loves her cars and certainly treasures the motivational forces a V8 under the bonnet delivers. Her pride and joy – and daily driver – is this immaculate Ultra Blue 1977 HZ One Tonner. How long have you had the Tonner? Going on three years. What have you done to it? It was in pretty good nick when I got it – very neat and straight. After I hit a rock and holed the sump I replaced the 308 with a 355 stroker. Lionel Durre from Engine Improvements in Yeppoon has built some massive engines…

GAG OF THE MONTH PASSING THE BATON A NEW father is sitting down with his own father for a drink. His dad tells him: “Now that you’re a father yourself, it’s time I give you something.” The new father replies: “Dad, you’re not talking about –” His father interrupts: “Yes. It’s time.” With this, he hands his son a copy of 1000 Dad Jokes, 6th Edition. The new father is overcome with emotion. With a tear in his eye, he says: “Dad, I’m honoured.” His father replies: “Hi Honoured, I’m Dad.” Dadge Oaks, email SPECIAL DELIVERY THE new CEO of a company comes into work determined to improve productivity and turn things around. Trying to prove himself to his new employees, he looks around the office and sees a guy…

WE ASKED Damian to talk us through the unique engine plate/ front-drive system they developed in-house for this donk. “We wanted to integrate the engine mounting plates, a dry-sump pump, a snout support, a fuel pump and ignition system all in one product,” he said. “Obviously, you’ve got the water to contend with as well. We sat down and drew up a rough picture of what we wanted and tried to integrate everything into one package so it’s really easy to service. “An engine like this is going to be reasonably high-maintenance, so the system is designed to be easy to take on and off. It’s something we can do for any car; it’s not just a one-off deal. We’ve had a couple of people interested in doing different systems…