Innehållsförteckning för June 2020 från Street Machine

JUNE 2020: ALL THE NEWS THAT MATTERS WHILE there isn’t much actual racing going on in Australia at the moment, there’s still plenty of stuff happening behind the scenes at some tracks. Here’s a sample. SYDNEY DRAGWAY THE Sydney track is getting a serious birthday, starting with a brand-new strip. “The racing surface will be concrete the whole way,” says SD’s Rusty Gregory. “There will be a new bitumen braking area too. We’re also taking the opportunity to update a few things, such as the drainage.” And what about the suggestion that Sydney Dragway will be the new home of speedway, with Valvoline Raceway set to be demolished by the NSW Government? “There is no news yet,” says Rusty. “We’re not even sure if the speedway would share land with…

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! WORD OF WARNING HEY guys, hope you’re well. Just thought I’d let you know what happened to me in September last year, and its correlation to Scotty’s Carnage skids. I did a test skid in a driveway on private property in a country town, with permission of the owner, testing a car we’d been working on for Summernats. Long story short: the police arrived, the car was impounded and I lost my licence for 11 months. I was charged with deliberate loss of traction, creating unnecessary noise and smoke, dangerous driving and reckless driving. I’m going to court in June…

LEE Payne is a wood butcher by trade, and this second-gen Camaro is the result of his first ever crack at building a car. It’s a certified Summernats Top 60 stunner and tough as the proverbial, and considering he threw it together in the shed at home with limited tools and experience, he’s suitably rapt. “I’ve read Street Machine since day dot, and I’d always wanted to build a car with the view of getting it in the mag,” he explains. Well, we’re glad to be of service. Lee bought the car near where he lives on the NSW Central Coast as a painted roller, complete with a smattering of go-fast bits, most of an interior and a not-yet-fitted vinyl roof. His first move was to throw it on the…

YOU had me at the grille. When the photos for this feature landed on my computer screen, I saw that custom grille and instantly knew the car: Howard Nessen’s XB hardtop. The grille alone symbolises how to create an iconic street machine that will be recognised for decades to come. How young was I when I first saw it? I had nary a sprout of pubic hair as I BMX’d home with the new Feb/Mar ’84 issue of Street Machine. Among a brace of ’55 and ’56 Chevs highlighted that issue, I spied a feature on a tidy Red Pepper XB hardtop with the headline ‘Key to the Car’, complete with that trademark grille. “This is actually the fourth time the XB has been featured in Street Machine,” the now…

IN JANUARY 1989, a young Holden mechanic by the name of Todd D’elboux drove a Holden Gemini from Tamworth to Canberra for his second tilt at the Street Machine Summernats. After rubbing shoulders with such legendary cars as Rob Beauchamp’s Calais, Howard Astill’s Rock Solid and Ivan Hans’s Mr Hyde, Todd drove home with trophies for Top Sedan and Top Custom Paint in the Gemini’s boot. “It was a bit of a shock when they called my name out at the trophy presentation,” Todd recalls. “The real surprise was the cheques for $300 and $500 as well. I almost fell over!” Fours and rotors are pretty well accepted in Canberra these days – and have even won the Grand Champion sword a time or three – but it was a…

SYDNEY’S SCF Race Cars has built a reputation as one of the best race fabrication shops in Australia. The number of killer cars they have built or had a hand in setting up would rival the biggest and most famous race shops in the USA. For owners Craig and Shellie Burns and their boys Cory and Joel, racing is a family affair. “A while back we decided to get the boys into Junior Dragsters, and we all just loved it,” Craig says. “It’s an awesome class with a lot of great people having fun. It restored my faith in the sport by putting the fun back in it. There were times when we were due to race at Sydney but it was pissing down, so we all just hauled down…

01 UP FRONT WANT some killer CNC bling for your LS? Tremaniac Racing now offers a whole bunch of goodies for LS mills, including this CNC billet aluminium timing cover. With a ballnose finish, the covers can be ordered to suit standard or raised cam heights, are compatible with small-block Chevy accessories, and, critically, still have timing marks to stop guessing games. You can find these and a whole lot more at tremaniacracingengines.com.au. 02 BREATHING SPACE IF YOU need some extra breathers for your mill but have no place to put them, Summit Racing’s valve cover baffle kits will sort you out. There’s two options to choose from: a double O-ring internal seal for push-in breathers, or if you’re wanting to run an EVAC-style system with a catch can or…

JUNE 2020: ALL THE NEWS THAT MATTERS CANADIAN hot rodder Chris Webb has made something of a career out of taking the ubiquitous small-block Chev and disguising it as something it’s not. He is most famous for his Webb Motorworks line of flathead conversions, which allow punters to dress up the humble SBC as either a sidevalve V8, V12 or V16. The idea is to get the classic looks of a flathead engine with the horsepower and reliability of the more-modern Chev. Chris’s latest project has taken that thinking to the next level. This time, the SBC is the disguise, concealing an electric motor. “My daughter came to me with an idea that she wanted an electric hot rod,” says Chris. “I began to do some research and realised how…

MY MOST enduring memory from Street Machine Summernats 21 was poring over Clint Ogilvie’s new-again LC Torana, resplendent in the Top 60 Elite Hall. There it sat, flanked by awe-inspiring, mirrors-on-the-ground show cars, stinking of molten rubber with a pair of freshly slain tyres lying beside it. “Yeah, we made the Top 60 that year,” recalls Clint. “I think we came third in the Burnout Masters, and then we drove it into the hall on the rims.” That a car built for the express purpose of sending tyres to bastard hell could go shoulder-to-shoulder with the best show specials in Australia is something that really stuck with me, and as history would eventually show, FRONT/BACK was first among a raft of show-quality skid pigs that followed. The car ran on…

AS WE discussed in Newsfront last issue, bastard COVID-19 is having a mixed impact on the car scene. The suspension of car shows and race meetings has had a big effect on activity, and some street machiners are using the enforced home time as a chance to get stuck into their projects – much like the Swedes do during their long, cold winters. Of course, with the ranks of the Aussie unemployed set to reach 1.4 million by mid-year, many of you reading this may have larger concerns. Just hanging on to project cars – and having somewhere to store them – will be an issue for many. If you’re in that situation, we feel for you. All we can hope for is that the upswing at the end of…

LOW-slung, dark-hued, all-steel big-body, white interior, beefy rims. Shaun Dunstan’s HJ GTS Monaro offers all of this, but also packs hefty horsepower to equal the show-pony looks. Built in WA, the genuine GTS had done a few shows before Shaun took ownership in early 2019. “I was browsing the internet for 1960s to ’85 Holdens and came across this for sale,” he says of the blown LS1-powered four-door HJ. “I was keen on that shape but I didn’t want an HQ. “Having had a lot of work already done meant it was a great starting point for a build,” he continues. “So I bought the HJ sight-unseen, having been told that the car was in perfect condition.” Money was paid and plans were made as the GTS was shipped across…

ANY spray painter will tell you that painting cars is all about the prep work; the job is only ever as good as the foundations it’s laid on. So what’s involved in the process? The following is some very basic insight into what it takes to get it done – Painting 101, if you will. These techniques will vary from painter to painter, but the fundamentals and end results will be the same. For this job, I’ll be using a solid-colour, direct-gloss (DG) 2K paint. Unlike its predecessors, acrylic and enamel, 2K (also known as two-pack) can be used to paint a vehicle without the need to go back in with a buff to get a decent shine. It is also non-porous like acrylic, leaving your vehicle safely sealed from…

EVERYONE has their own idea of the perfect holiday, whether it’s sunbaking on the beach, gawking at historical monuments or wasting away your life savings in Vegas. But what about five days of drag racing? For Gino Aiello, Drag Challenge 2019 sounded like the ideal getaway. “It was the perfect opportunity to have some time away with the boys without having to worry about anything else,” Gino says. “We had a ripper of a time.” While his approach to the event may have been fairly relaxed, Gino’s choice of weapon was anything but: a beastly 1970 Chevy Chevelle SS sporting over 900hp of supercharged LSX goodness. We featured Gino’s Chevelle in great detail in Street Machine LSX Tuner #8, but here’s the basic rundown: an LSX 454 crate engine livened…

CRAIG MESTON 1986 VK COMMODORE “MY VK is a purpose-built burnout car running an LS1 383 stroker, built and tuned by JC Racing in Sydney, and makes 480rwhp on E85. It’s backed up by a two-speed ’Glide and nine-inch. It also has a six-point chrome-moly rollcage and a tubbed, ladder-bar rear end with coil-overs. Wheels are Showwheels KWC013s – 20x12s on the rear and 20x8.5s up front. Earlier this year I was a Summernats 33 Last Chance Wildcard Shootout entrant and made it through to Masters qualifying.” Photos: Bright Design COREY WALLACE 1971 HQ HOLDEN “MY HQ is currently running a fresh talldeck big-block Chev by BluePrint Engines that made 755hp on the engine dyno. It has 10:1 compression, a Holley 1050cfm carby on pump fuel 98, Super Victor manifold,…

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.…

HAVE you ever taken a chance on a flick that looked like it’d be a low-budget, straight-tovideo stinker but actually turned out to be pretty good? Well, In The Red is not that movie. The poster promises some kind of Aussie Fast & Furious (impossible anyway, given the latter came out two years later); unfortunately, the film itself is resolutely subpar. Pretty-boy Dymo (Bradford) is apparently some sort of Sydney crime lord (“Ram raids, car theft, drug deals – if it’s illegal, he is into it,” according to the cops). He appears to divide his time between hooning around in his hotted-up Nissan 200SX and chilling in his palatial crime-boss pad with his sassy girlfriend, Carli (Cratchley). But when someone tries to kill him and shoots up his beloved ride,…

THE streets of Albury-Wodonga burst into life over the weekend of 13-15 March, with a Mopar invasion that reset the record books. Held at Gateway Lakes, Wodonga, the 28th running of Chryslers On The Murray offered three days of street cruising, track events and a massive show ’n’ shine that drew 931 entrants from all over the country. Indeed, it was the largest-ever gathering of Chryslers in the Southern Hemisphere. This year’s event also played host to the largest assembly of AMC/Rambler vehicles in Australia, with over 70 rolling up! The Albury-Wodonga Chrysler Club may be one of the smallest Chrysler clubs in the country, but it puts on the biggest Chrysler/Mopar event in Australia. The first annual Mopars On The Murray, as it was originally known, was held in…

IT MIGHT be hard to believe now, but when Kai ‘Creswick Sausage’ McPhee initially took possession of his VC Commodore, he only had the intention of making it a humble club-plated cruiser. That’s a far cry from the 1300rwhp, seven-second street beast it is now. “I bought it for $1000 and it’s somehow just snowballed from there,” Kai says. “I by no means intended for it to turn into what it is today.” Long-gone is the humble 253 thongslapper the car originally came with, with the SL/E initially undergoing a home-brewed LS1 swap before the eventual upgrade to the current 5.3-litre iron-block LS. “We got ourselves a DIY swap kit from the Castlemaine Rod Shop and did the LS1 swap ourselves at home with a mild cam and the basics,”…

I WENT INTO A FORD DEALER TO BUY A T-SHIRT AND THEY HAD A GT FOR SALE. I WENT HOME WITH A GT AND NEVER EVEN GOT THE T-SHIRT! IT’S easy to forget a time when Ford and GM-H were throwing everything but the kitchen sink at engines to make them pump out just over 200kW. For Blue Oval fans back in 1997, the EL Falcon GT was as good as it got, with the trusty five-litre Windsor tickled up by Tickford to reach the mark, while the leaning lion fans could sit back and smirk as their stroker 5.7-litre Holden punched out 215kW. These days my wife’s Kluger is rated at 220kW – I believe that’s what they call progress. Dale Parker’s EL GT has also been a beneficiary…

WHILE HE CALLS IT A ‘CRUISER’, TIM’S WAGON IS NOT SHORT ON HERBS THANKS TO A TOUGH 435RWHP SMALLBLOCK CHEV UNDER THE BONNET SOME clever buggers have the foresight to hang on to their first car, but many of us aren’t so lucky, and are therefore prone to pangs of nostalgia – if not straight-up regret – every time we walk past a similar model. For Tim Martenstyn, those feelings were too much to ignore, so he built a replica of his first ride, but with with a far spicier recipe. “When I was 17, my very first car was a white HG wagon with a red interior,” says Tim. “I paid $30 for it back then. I’ve got an HK Monaro and a Torana, all sorts of stuff, but…

WE CHATTED with chirpy Sue Wales at this year’s Chryslers On The Murray in Wodonga, where she debuted ‘Johnny’, her tidy 1970 VG Valiant ute. Her love for the stout 383-cube, Simmons-shod ute was quickly evident, and she was full of praise for her hubby Tim for his seven years of hard yakka building it. What’s the story behind the VG? Tim bought a Kawasaki Green VG rolling shell to tidy up as a work ute, but I quickly claimed it and asked him to do it up for me. He’s done restorations for everyone else, so it was my turn. But I was part of the ute build too, including choosing the colour and motor and getting my hands dirty here and there – it has all allowed me…

Send your favourite funnies to: LOL, Street Machine, Locked Bag 12, Oakleigh, Vic 3166 or email them to: streetmachine@bauer-media.com.au. GREY ARMY AT 7:45 this morning, I was in a long line of elderly people waiting to get into the supermarket, which was due to open at 8 for seniors only – and boy, was it getting tense. While I was waiting, a young man walked up and tried to cut in at the front of the line, but an old lady beat him back with her cane. Undeterred, he tried to cut in again, but an old man punched him in the guts, kicked him to the ground and rolled him away. As he approached the line for the third time, the young man cried: “If you don’t let me…

IT’S not very often that an Oldsmobile donk has featured in Mill Of The Month, but rest assured this 535ci monster from Dandy Engines has well and truly earned its stripes. Based on the five-inch bore-space Oldsmobile engine, this mill is one of a few serious bangers that found their way over here from the States and eventually into the hands of Frank Marchese from Dandy. “The engines were originally brought in by a good mate of mine, John Straatsma, and we did some development on them in the mid-2000s,” Frank says. Fast-forward a few more years and Frank had taken control of the mills, and when Julian Carafa approached him wanting a new donk for his Wild Bunch machine, Frank knew just what to build him. “The engine hadn’t…