Innehållsförteckning för October 2016 från Street Machine

ONE thing we love seeing is street machines, hot rods or race cars from days gone by that are still out there, decades after they were first built, blowing minds and torturing tyres. Another thing we dig is when someone takes it upon themselves to lavish bulk development on an antiquated engine, pushing it far beyond the limits of what most experts think is possible. And if you combine the two, you really have our attention! A case in point is Jeff and Matt Ramsay’s FJ Holden ute. It was originally raced in the 70s by Sydney racer Ray Walker. Dubbed Brumby, the FJ ran in the 13-second zone thanks to an aspirated Holden six. Jeff and Matt love the history of the car, but they also want to go…

VANATIC WHAT a great story on the old show vans (SM, Sep ’16); it inspired me to put pen to paper. It would be good to know what happened to Alley Cat, Misty Blues, Wrest Point, etc. Vanrat was my favourite; my yellow van was my own Vanrat – a genuine HX Sandman, and it is still registered in South Australia. In 1984 I entered the Custom Vans & Trucks Rat Talk Sketch Pad contest, and won second place (see picture). I have kept the letter from Vanrat owner Steve Abbott for all these years; I wonder if he remembers writing it. “Yours in vanning” – how cool was that to an 18-year-old apprentice vanner? Dion Witt, Port Lincoln, SA HIGH ’ROLLA I’M FEELING very humbled! Having my own product…

THE BOYS COPPED A RUDE SHOCK; NOT ONLY WAS THEBODY COVERED IN RIPPLES, BUT THE GAPS WERE ALL OVERTHE PLACE AND THE SWAGE LINES DIDN’T MEET HEN Michael Schena bought a dilapidated Monaro coupe back in 2009, he quickly realised he’d bitten off more than he could chew. But he didn’t let it get the best of him; he just kept on chewing! “My dad just looked at me and looked at the car and asked me if I was serious,” Michael laughs. “‘Yeah, shouldn’t be too bad,’ I answered him. I had no idea! It was already at a panel beater, who told me straight-up that it would need 3000 hours spent on it.” Putting aside the fact that it’s one of the most beautiful shapes ever to escape…

THERE WERE STREET CARS, FOUR-WHEEL DRIVES AND DEDICATED DRAG CARS – EVEN A CHRYSLER 300 LIMO! THANKFULLY the Mopar Gods pulled rank and turned on a beautiful Queensland winter’s day for Mopar Sunday 2016 at Willowbank Raceway. After last year’s double rain-out, there was an understandably tentative build-up to this year’s event for organiser Sam Tatton and his crew, but they had the backing of a very close-knit Chrysler community, who turned out in droves to help make it a cracker of a day. The Mopar Sunday philosophy is simple: All cars must be Mopar-based in body and/or soul. It means you’re always treated to a broad spectrum of the Pentastar product range at the event. This year, vintage, classic and modern Mopars from Aussie and American backgrounds mixed with…

KERRY Digney has been announcing at motorsport events since 1975 or thereabouts. He began plying his trade at Surfers Paradise Raceway as the apprentice of the legendary Milton Adey, and has been doing it ever since. For the past 21 years he has been the senior announcer at Street Machine Summernats (“‘Senior’ means I’m the oldest,” he laughs). He has also provided commentary at Powercruise since its inception. In between those engagements he announces at Willowbank, Warwick, and Roma drag strips and at Lakeside Raceway special events. But no car nut is created in a vacuum, and here Kerry reveals the formative automotive experiences that helped shape him and his path through life. AT HIGH SCHOOL CARS STARTED TO BECOME AN OBSESSION. A COUPLE OF US WERE ALREADY HANGING AROUND…

PREVIOUSLY INVITE-ONLY, THIS YEAR THE MUD RUN FLUNG OPEN THE DOORS TO THE WORLD – AND IT LOOKED LIKE THE WORLD TURNED UP TIMES have changed. Last year I rocked up to the Mud Run at Gresford Showground in my 1951 Ford shoebox; I felt like a bad-arse hero from a Western riding into town. This year I snuck in steering a Toyota Corolla hybrid, and I only made it past the two henchmen from the Death Dodgers Car Club on the front gate because I was on their ‘already paid’ list. Otherwise my protests that the ’51 was currently mid-roof chop would have fallen on deaf ears. And that was another big change – even though the Mud Run’s overlords had sworn to keep their event free and invite-only,…

ELVIO Gonzalez has a history with fast Capris. His old white beast LVO351 went through a succession of small-block Ford engines before stepping up to some big-block Ford muscle and high eight-second quarters. However, that kind of performance doesn’t come easy or cheap, so when Elvio was looking to step up even further he figured boost was the way to go. “Originally I was going to do a twin-turbo Holden V8, because I was building a lot of Holden engines at the time,” he says. “But then I started doing LS engines and I was blown away by the power they were making. I love the LS engine; you can’t go past them.” Elvio started off with a stock-ish six-litre in his Capri with an eBay turbo bolted in the…

BRETT MATTHEWS 1968 XT FALCON “MY FORD XT Falcon, COMPXT, was a drag car in a previous life. I did a 12-month rebuild to turn it into a tough streeter, which was completed in mid-2014. It was bought as a well-presented Track Red roller with a few extra bits and pieces that helped get the ball rolling quickly. After an overhaul, the reflective strips, black-outs and other minor changes give it a new look and feel. The original motor was scrapped as it was only good for about 500hp. After a lengthy conversation with Zoran at Competition Engines, it was decided to build a new SHP Dart 427ci Cleveland. The motor is made up of a race-spec roller camshaft, CHI 3V 225cc heads, Pacemaker headers and an 1100 Dominator carb.…

A DEDICATED FILM BUFF, ROD COVERDALE OWNS REPLICAS OF SOME OF THE MOST ICONIC MOVIE CARS OF ALL TIME DELOREANS WERE PRETTY GUTLESS FROM THE FACTORY, SO I TURBOCHARGED THE ENGINE MYSELF TO ADD A BIT MORE GRUNT WHEN it came to designing his house in Howard Springs, Northern Territory, the shed – or rather, sheds – were at the forefront of Rod Coverdale’s mind. Every man needs a good shed, and Rod has three of them – four if you include the big metal job down the back of the property that holds his project Lamborghini Countach. That’s all a bit of a mess at the moment though, so let’s focus instead on Rod’s collection of awesome movie cars and Corvettes. The jewel in his collection is surely…

LOOK out Australia, the top burnout warriors from The Land of the Long White Cloud are heading across the Tasman to take on our burnout best. They’ve already put together a five-car team called Kiwi Carnage to take on Tread Cemetery at Lardner Park in mid-November, and then they’ll be joined by a sixth car before heading north to Summernats 30. At Summernats Liz Gracie and her ’69 Camaro (EV1L69), along with Ricky Ireland (ENVEED), Ian Smith (SAMBO), Braden Smith’s blown VF Commodore, Shane Donaldson (LOLIFE) and Robert Macraee’s blown HQ ute will be competing in the Last Chance Wildcard show to see who, if any, will have a crack at this year’s Burnout Masters. The Kiwis are sporting some serious-looking hardware, so it’ll be interesting to see how they…

08-11 SEP, WILLOWBANK, QLD Powercruise #62, Queensland Raceway. Visit www.powercruise.com. 10 SEP, ADELAIDE, SA Auto Transformers Charity Fundraiser, 1259 Main North Road, Para Hills. Contact (08) 8349 7035. 10 SEP, SANDY HOLLOW, NSW Sandy Hollow Motorfest, Tourist Hotel. Contact Mike 0438 934 619. 10-11 SEP, MORGAN, SA Dubs By The River, Morgan Riverfront. Contact Terry 0413 867 380. 10-11 SEP, PORT MACQUARIE, NSW Port Motor Mania, Westport Park. Contact Mick 0416 809 533. 11 SEP, TERREY HILLS, NSW Northern Beaches Muscle Cars, Miramare Gardens. Visit www.northernbeachesmusclecars.com.au. 11 SEP, BEAUDESERT, QLD Beaudesert 2016 Spring Swapmeet, Beaudesert Showgrounds. Visit www.springswapmeet.com.au. 16-18 SEP, BENALLA, VIC Performance Car Mania, Winton Raceway. Visit www.wintonraceway.com.au. 16-18 SEP, SANDOWN, VIC Retro Revolution, Sandown Racecourse. Visit www.melbourneoldschoolcruisers.com.au. 17 SEP, EASTERN CREEK, NSW Street Machine Supernats, Sydney Dragway. Visit…

WITH Summernats’ 30th anniversary fast approaching, there are only a handful of folks who can lay claim to having attended every year, and even fewer who have taken the same car for the majority of that time. Geoff ‘Stickman’ Waters is one such stalwart; most of his adult life has included the annual pilgrimage to our nation’s capital. 01: GEOFF kicked off his tough-car career with this Chamois-painted HJ ute, which he bought near-new as an 18-year-old. The 202-powered Belmont was soon on the receiving end of a number of mods, including GTS guards, a Premier nosecone and wagon rear bar, while a 350 Chev and Saginaw four-speed were slotted in for good measure. An Offenhauser tunnel ram and bug catcher were eventually added along with a Top Loader and…

JOHN’S QUICKEST TIME SO FAR IS 8.16@172MPH; THAT ALONE WOULD BE AMAZING ENOUGH, BUT THISMUSTANG IS ONLY PACKING SIX CYLINDERS! EVOLUTION isn’t something that happens overnight – just ask Charles Darwin. Or maybe you can ask John Colaidis. He’s got one of the quickest street cars in the country, but it took a while to get there because John didn’t want the car to just be quick; he wanted something that was truly streetable, and that’s not as easy as it sounds. “I could slap a big turbo on this thing and go sevens tomorrow” John says, “but it would ruin how streetable this car is. It’s unbelievable, it’s not lazy or laggy, you just put your foot down and it goes straight away.” And it sure does go. John’s…

THE LQ9 IS THE PICK OF THE PRODUCTION-CAR LS MOTORS FOR HANDLING BOOST. “YOU CAN’T BEAT THE BANG-FOR-BUCK YOU GET WITH LS ENGINES,” MICK SAYS ONE of the attractions of early Commodores is that you can still find absolute gems hiding in sheds that cost bugger-all to buy. Michael Lobie nabbed his VH as a neat six-pot cruiser. “It was a VH Vacationer that was a really neat old country car” Mick says. “In fact it was full grandpa spec, with a stock 202 and even a working stock radio! The guy I bought it off was the second or third owner; it was blue and still had all the Vacationer stripes and everything.” Mick is the first to admit the VH was never supposed to be the 760rwhp, 9.5-second,…

WHAT’S a bloke to do when he’s already got one ’64 Buick Special in the shed with a 565ci big-block Chev, a healthy dose of nitrous, massive tubs and low nine-second timeslips? He builds a more streetable version of the same car, of course! That seems to make a lot of sense, and Ron Grabbe has done a superb job of fulfilling that dream – except for one small detail. Ron’s street car has about 600hp more than his race car, and his race car is pushing out around 1000hp! Yep, you read that right, get out the abacus and work it out yourself; this sedate-looking Buick A-body is pumping out over 1600hp at the crank. You’d figure with that kind of grunt there’d be something sticking out of the…

ANTHONY Burns has taken a slightly different tack with his Monza Red, XE-fronted XD Falcon S-Pack, removing some of the previously fitted grandpa-spec pieces like the sun visor, venetians and whitewall tyres and replacing them with some good ol’ bogan-spec 80s styling cues: chrome 12-slotters, white-letter tyres and the mandatory Oakley sticker on the back window. As it stands, the wagon has run a slippery 11.5 at around 120mph. “Looking at the few cars that I’ve seen that have entered Drag Challenge this year, there are a lot of sleepers, so I wanted to try a bit of a different angle,” Anthony says. “Being a wagon it’s a bit sleepy anyway, and having 12-slotters on it – by the way, it’s all done ironically, it’s not my style of car…

ONE of the true street cars of Sydney is the LH Torana of Daryl Elliott. It’s competed in two Drag Challenge events and has run a best of 10.2 on pump gas on 235 tyres. Looking for a few extra ponies for this year’s event, Daryl wanted a head, cam and piston upgrade from Westend Performance for his 427, but that has quickly got out of hand. The little Torry will be packing over 800hp for Drag Challenge 2016 thanks to a whole new combo that boasts the best of the best: Little M block; 427ci; custom Diamond pistons; AFR 15-degree Racer Pro heads massaged by Nathan Higgins; Dominator carb; Callies rotating assembly; T&D rockers; 904 lifter; and a bunch of other goodies including a Racepak datalogger and MSD grid.…

MY FIVE-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER LOLA CAME HOME AND ASKED IF WE COULD TAKE HER AND HER FRIEND OUT IN THE CHEVY. I CAN IMAGINE WHAT THE PARENTS WOULD’VE THOUGHT ABOUT THAT! SANDRA HORNE NARRE WARREN SOUTH, VICTORIA VIBRANT and bubbly Sandra Horne is undoubtedly a resolute gearhead. While she’s got a few cars to her name, her love of ’57 Chevs is long-standing. It began as a kid thanks to her brother’s Matchbox collection; later, the cult classic Running On Empty cemented the deal. Now she finally holds the keys to her own ’57 – this sweet red long-roof. Nice wagon Sandra! Thanks, it’s a ’57 with factory RHD, 350, TH400 and stock diff. So many people have offered to buy it – it’s blown me away. Everyone loves it because…

MATCHING PAIR A WOMAN has identical twins and gives them up for adoption. One of them goes to a family in Egypt and is named Amal. The other goes to a family in Spain. They name him Juan. Years later, Juan sends a picture of himself to his birth mother. Upon receiving the picture, she tells her husband that she wishes she also had a picture of Amal. Her husband replies: “They’re identical twins! If you’ve seen Juan, you’ve seen Amal.” Luke DaSayme, email UH-OH AN ELDERLY lady called her equally geriatric husband during his drive home. “Herman, I just heard on the news that there’s a car going the wrong way on the freeway!” she said. “Please be careful!” Herman replied: “It’s not just one car. There’s hundreds of…

AS WE go to print, there’s less than three weeks until Hot Rod Drag Week 2016, and Victorian Harry Haig is planning to pull another rabbit out of his hat with the Drag Week Chevelle. You may remember the guys pulling the 1969 Chevelle out of the paddock behind The Car Shop in Independence, Kansas to use on the event last year. Well the team is set to go bigger and better this year, with a twin-turbo big-block engine combo that will test the limits of insanity. Built by Terry Seng of Paramount Performance and Robby Abbott of Abbott Engine Reconditioning in Queensland, the 560-cube stroker fired a few shots on the dyno before being packaged up and sent to the USA. It’s a Dart Big M block with an…

“People definitely stop me at the gas station, butI love that people enjoy it. It’s what it’s there for” WES Messick quickly progressed from pulling around Radio Flyer wagons as a young tyke to street racing at the age of 15, and has spent the decades since building and racing motorbikes and cars. But none are more well-known out on the salt lakes of Bonneville than his gigantic version of everyone’s favourite red wagon. We caught him and his furry mate, Demon, watching the racing at this year’s Speed Week from way up high in the driver’s seat. You definitely don’t see something like this every day. What’s it called? Well I used to call it the Radical Flyer, but I got a letter from the Radio Flyer company one…

BREAKDOWN VEHICLES: 1975 Lincoln Continental Mk IV, 1970 Dodge Challenger, 1971 Plymouth Cuda, 1961 Chevrolet Impala, 1962 Chevrolet Impala, 1972 Chevrolet C30 STARS: Ken Carter, Robert Fortier, Evel Knievel, Gordon Pinsent, Kenny Powers, Jim Deist, Dar Robinson, Sammy Miller DIRECTOR: Robert Fortier ACTION: Amazing old-school footage of stunt car preparation and bone-crunching sideshow car jumps. The final daredevil attempt is comically sad PLOT: This documentary chronicles the five-year quest of Canadian stuntman Ken Carter to jump a rocket-powered Lincoln Continental from Canada to the USA EDITOR Telfo sent me a YouTube link to the documentary film The Devil At Your Heels, suggesting it could be a great Fanging Flick. He wasn’t wrong. I can’t remember the last time a film so enthralled me or stirred such a mix of emotions;…

TOLLED YA! MELBOURNE’S Herald Sun newspaper recently reported that Ford ute drivers are getting charged more on Melbourne toll roads than Holden ute drivers. A trip on the EastLink or CityLink toll roads, for example, would see Falcon ute drivers charged around $3 more than their Lion-hearted counterparts. It’s because CityLink classifies the Falcon ute, with its cab-chassis configuration, as a light commercial vehicle, as opposed to the Commodore ute, which is considered a normal car. Even though the two have similar fuel consumption, emissions, weight specs and are basically the same concept, the rules seem to side with the Red team. Craig Burnell-Jones – Anyone with half a brain knows Fords are 10 times more reliable than Holdens. Mark Reynolds – “Anyone with half a brain” seems to Ford’s…

DAD BOUGHT THIS PARTICULAR CL BACK IN 1995 AS A STANDARD FACTORY 770 V8, AND PASSED IT DOWN TO ME IN 2008 JIMMY Cemal had the highest possible standards to meet with his CL Charger build – his own. “To be honest I’m a little OCD when it comes to my car, so trying to get everything perfect was a challenge,” the Sydneysider admits. Well Jimmy, you’re in good company there, and it’s safe to say your tenacity has paid off tenfold. I mean, for starters, how’s that booty? Mega rubber and the Charger’s stumpy rear styling have been perfectly blended, making Kim K, J-Lo and Nicki Minaj look like mere amateurs. However, tubs and tyres need to be backed up with ample horsepower, which is pretty much the cause-and-effect…

IT’S BASICALLY A SIX-SECOND CAR WITH A SEVEN-SECOND ENGINE, BECAUSE I WANTED IT TO BE SAFE AND RELIABLE IN THE 20-odd years that this Torana has been in David Hellyer’s keeping, it has gradually evolved from a modest 253-powered SL/R 5000 replica into a Summernats Top 20 stunner. It also happens to be one of the quickest naturally aspirated sedans in the country, having run a stonking 7.57@178mph on its very first outing. “When I first bought the car I stripped it down, built a 308 for it and put a drop tank and V5 Simmons rims on it,” David says. “I used to get hassled by the cops and defected a lot, so eventually I decided to pull it off the road and turn it into a drag car.”…

I STARTED DRIFTING WITH A NATURALLY ASPIRATED EB FALCON. IT WASN’T ENOUGH, SO I TURBOED IT. THEN IT MADE 280KW AND BROKE 11 GEARBOXES AUSSIES love smoking rubber; burnouts have been a true-blue rite of passage almost since the dawn of time. But some burnout fans with a little too much tyre smoke in their eyes may have missed that the drifting scene has also taken off in our own backyard in recent years. Competition prize pools have skyrocketed and events have even attracted V8 Supercar drivers like Shane Van Gisbergen to have a crack at sliding around a race track. Aussie drifters have pulled influences from the original Japanese masters, combined it with some Yankee ingenuity, and stuffed it all into homegrown cars in order to hit the track…

DURING the 2003 Canberra bushfires, some 500 homes were destroyed and around 70 per cent of the ACT’s pastures and forests were severely damaged. Over 490 people were injured, and several lost their lives. This 1954 Vauxhall Velox was another casualty. The unfinished father-and-son project was destroyed when the lethal firestorm swept through the nation’s capital. Although the car was salvageable, the pair were too distraught to tackle the rebuild and opted to sell it. Nigel Ashton spotted it for sale on eBay, and noticed that it had already been given a two-door conversion, six-inch door stretch and three-inch roof chop. “The more I looked at it, the more I thought it could be turned into a mini-lead sled,” he says. So young Nigel asked his father Bill to bid…

THESE days we’ve seen LS engines in just about everything, but there’s always someone willing to show us something new; just feast your eyes on Con Pakos’s Mitsubishi L300 van. The van itself has been around for a while; it made plenty of laps down Eastern Creek Raceway back in the late 90s and came about when the old two-litre donk had cried ‘enough!’ “As a joke my wife said: ‘Why don’t you put a V8 in it?’” Con says. “That got me thinking, so I asked my mate Elvio Gonzalez what he thought and he said: ‘It’ll be cheaper to put a V8 in it than rebuild the two-litre.’” They bought a VH Commodore to strip out the five-litre engine and trans, then got Peter Cleary to fit it…

01 VALIANT EFFORT THE Castlemaine Rod Shop has come up with a cool new independent front suspension (IFS) for Chrysler Valiants, from VE through to CM. Get rid of the old torsion bar suspension and bring your Mopar into the 21st century. Included in the kit is the full front suspension assembly, complete with your choice of two brake options. For more information visit www.rodshop.com.au. 02 GET SHIRTY GARAGE 79 makes this cool range of T-shirts for the car enthusiast. They have an ever-growing line of automotive art applied to the best organic cotton T-shirts. Whether you’re an old-school Kombi fan, Monaro lover or Ford fanatic, they’ve got a shirt-and-car combo to suit your tastes. For more information visit www.garage79.com. 03 PIPING HOT LIVERPOOL Exhausts, manufacturer of Hurricane Headers, has…

IT’S CALLED MRS BROWN; MY OTHER BEIGE VH VACATIONER IS CALLED RICHIE BENAUD! BENNY LEAT 1982 VH COMMODORE VACATIONER GEELONG, VIC HE MIGHT work in the R&D department at the Ford Motor Company in Geelong, but Benny Leat bleeds red. He’s a big early Commodore fan, and this stealthy Vacationer is just one of three VH Commos he’s got on the go at the moment. You might remember his stunning red sedan (SM, Jun ’16), but Benny reckons this shopping-trolley wagon is even quicker! Your Vacationer looks like a grocery-getter, but we suspect it’s hiding something; what’s the combo? Well I was looking for a Holden 308 to put in it for two or three months, as it came with just a standard 202. My mate had this 355 stroker…

358CI ROUSH YATES D3 FORD DEAN PERKINS, PUKEKOHE, NZ NASCAR engines may look decidedly low-tech on the outside, but the specs speak for themselves. This Roush Yates D3 donk punches out 850hp at 9000rpm and 550lb-ft at around 7400rpm, with just 358 cubes, a flat-tappet cam and a single four-barrel 830cfm carby. No blowers, no turbos, no nitrous! This particular engine is from the XD Falcon driven by New Zealander Dean Perkins in their Central Muscle Cars class, and it’s been quite successful. “About three years ago my wife and I decided to go to North Carolina and head up to Roush Yates, north of Charlotte. We’d heard all about them and we purchased what they call a D3 flat-tappet NASCAR engine. At the time they were just about to…