Innehållsförteckning för November 2024 från Street Machine

NOVEMBER 2024: ALL THE NEWS THAT MATTERS IN HUGE news for Australian motorsport, Toyota Australia announced last month that it would be entering the Repco Supercars Championship from 2026, running four GR Supras under Walkinshaw Andretti United against the current Mustang and Camaro. The Supras will be built to Gen 3 regulations, with Walkinshaw working closely with Toyota in Melbourne to develop the car. Despite Supercars regulations theoretically allowing the use of the 3.0-litre, turbocharged B58 BMW inline six that the road-going production Supra comes with, the Gen 3 Supercars racers will use Toyota’s 5.0-litre, quad-cam 2UR-GSE V8. On the road, that engine can be found in Lexus products like the LC 500, but it is also used in Toyota’s motorsport efforts in vehicles like the HiLux Dakar racing truck.…

EMAIL your missives to gday@streetmachine.com.au. Keep it short and sweet! LETTER OF THE MONTH GRAPHIC CONTENT HI, I’VE just purchased a very cool 1969 VF Valiant convertible (pictured) that I believe may have been in one or several shows in the 80s or 90s. I’m hoping to bring it back to life as it was then, and the history I’ve learned about it has been very interesting. It was owned by Andy ‘Spike’ Henderson in the 90s, and the plates were JUSTASEC, as you’d always hear him saying, “Just a sec!” It was featured in a 1994 issue of Perth Street Car magazine. The front half of the car was a factory slant-six vinyl-top, and the back half was a factory V8; they were cut-and-shut, built and panel-beaten by Spike.…

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MANY of us wish we could’ve kept our first car and built it into the dream machine we envisioned as naïve teenagers. We usually end up either crashing or selling them, but Matthew Orsida is an exception. He’s kept the same 1971 Datsun 1200 ute since he was 16, and over time has transformed it into the car you see now. “It had an A15 engine with twin SU carbs when I bought it,” says Matt. “I rebuilt that engine in school for an automotive project, and me and a mate did all the bodywork and had it painted.” By the time he got his ticket for the road, Matt realised the wheezy A15 wasn’t going to cut it. “I went on the hunt for a 13B rotary engine and…

IT SHOULD GO 8.00 WITH THIS ENGINE. THE GOAL IS TO GET INTO THE SEVENS ASPIRATED; THAT’S ALWAYS BEEN THE DREAM ALON Vella’s dark green PRO369 Mk1 Capri is one of the most successful Drag Challenge cars of all time. He’s won the Radial Aspirated class more times than we can count on both hands, as well as a suite of Top 10 Overall finishes where he’s bested several of the boosted brigade. So, when you’ve got such a successful package, how do you go one better? This shiny new Mk1 Capri is Al’s answer to that question. A fresh build, it’s already shown smashing pace. “It’s gone 8.20 seconds so far, and it should go 8.00 with this engine,” Al says. “The goal is to get into the sevens…

WITH two Street Machine features (Jan-Feb ’87 and Jun ’93), Top 10 placings at Summernats 6 and 8 and a Top 20 spot at ’Nats 7 to its name, the pedigree of Steve Hodges’ 1971 HG Holden ute is beyond dispute. Powered by a stout 327ci small-block under Steve’s ownership, the HG was built for drag racing, but the lifelong truck mechanic eventually sold it on after becoming frustrated at the lack of dedicated drag venues in Sydney at the time. Somewhat ironically, the ute then spent 15 years tearing up drag strips in Perth. Happily, Steve had the opportunity in 2020 to buy the HG back, and he’s since been making up for lost time by getting it out and about around Sydney. Now powered by a 427, the…

NOWRA’S Mark Andriske had a problem: his blown LS-powered HK wagon ran mid-nines, but he wanted more. As fate would have it, after receiving a generous purchase offer from a fan of the HK, Mark was able to clear the decks and put his plan into action, which is how he ended up with this sweet VH wagon he calls ‘Code Brown’. “The HK was such a good, tough streeter that I didn’t want to pull it apart to put a ’cage in,” Mark explains. “I got a great offer on it, so I sold it off and then found this car for sale in Geelong.” The early-Commodore community is full of supportive, like-minded folk, so Mark reached out to Drag Challenge veteran and all-round legend Todd Foley for some…

THE Toyota Supra and the JZ engine go together in tuner folklore like a beer at the footy, so why the hell does Ross Harris have an LS in his? That story began the way all should: a few mates in a shed, beers in hand, scheming new ways to go quicker. “The 7M that the car came with was really tired, and one night my mates were daring me to LS-swap it,” Ross says. “So, I found a crashed V8 VY wagon on Marketplace and jumped on it.” As you can imagine, an LS into a Supra is not exactly a common swap, so Ross needed to get a few things sorted to install the GM donk. “I found some billet mounts online, and we had to change to…

THIS may not be the kind of fire-breathing monster with four-digit power figures you’re used to seeing in Mill of the Month, but with stocks of a long-standing street-machining staple (the GM Gen III and Gen IV small-block commonly referred to as ‘LS’) rapidly drying up, it’s important that we look at the newer Gen V ‘LT’ series. This particular Gen V mill, a 6.2-litre L87, now powers the Tuff Mounts HQ Holden wagon, and you can read all about the installation process in this month’s tech yarn from page 90. While it has little more than a cam kit, lightly fettled heads, an inlet manifold and an aftermarket ECU in terms of performance-focused mods, it should still spit out around 650hp at the crank. Importantly, it also features a…

NOVEMBER 2024: ALL THE NEWS THAT MATTERS WHAT do hen’s teeth, rocking horse manure and manual, rear-drive V8s have in common? All are exceedingly rare. The new Ford S650 Mustang, the seventh-generation of the iconic Blue Oval muscle car, is now the only car available in Australia with the holy trinity of three pedals, skid-wheel drive and a proper exhaust note. The bad news is the entry price has increased significantly compared to the previous generation. You’ll now need $64,990 plus on-road costs to get behind the wheel of an S650 Mustang, and that will only buy you four cylinders and an automatic gearbox, the manual four-pot having been discontinued globally. That’s a fair chunk more than the $55,590 (+ORCs) that was required for the previousgen and 2.3-litre High Performance…

AT A dozen paces, Steve Moon’s LJ looks like a neat little Torana with a great stance and all the XU-1 trimmings. It’s not until you take a closer look that you begin to appreciate the scope of the fabrication work involved and the exquisite standard to which it’s been finished. Of course, the 1000-plus-horsepower, Harrop-blown LS is something of a highlight, too. “Growing up in the western suburbs of Sydney, tough cars were everywhere,” says Steve. “I was lucky enough to live over the back fence from a well-known engine builder, Greg ‘Lawsy’ Law, so as a kid I would hang over the fence just watching him build cars. Then, as I got older, it turned into arvos and weekends in the shed with him pulling apart cars and…

THE Father’s Day weekend has become the most jam-packed weekend in the Aussie hot-car scene, with huge events like Red CentreNATS, World Time Attack Challenge and Dubbo Motorfest filling the 2024 calendar. And for Victorians, the jumbo Acland Street Father’s Day Car & Bike Show is a must-do. Hosted by Elvis Barbieri and the ever-busy Showcars Melbourne team, the event sprawls across St Kilda’s palm-dotted foreshore and popular shopping precinct. Our cold little state was slammed with some of the roughest weather on record in the days leading up to the show, but Elvis was as ready as he could be. “We couldn’t keep up with the weather apps, it was moving that quickly on Saturday night,” he laughed. “We knew there wasn’t any rain coming, so our main concern…

DARREN Pelacchi has always been a Chevrolet guy, and he loves his Corvettes in particular. “I’ve got a C4 ’Vette and was president of the Corvette Club,” he says. That’s all well and good, Darren, but given we can all see the immaculate cab-over-engine Ford truck on these pages, it appears you’ve been swayed to the Blue Oval dark side. Care to explain? “Fourteen years ago, I saw a YouTube video with a COE [cab-over-engine] rig just like this,” Darren begins. “That was it – I just had to have one. Everyone thought I was crazy!” To scratch his newfound itch, and keen not to betray his allegiance to The General, Darren initially purchased a Chevy COE. In his heart, though, he knew it wasn’t 100 per cent what he…

THROWING a rambunctious classic car around corners is a world of fun, as James Feros well knows. His HK Kingswood looks like a neat survivor, but it packs a Harrop-blown Holden 304, lots of cornering mods, big brakes, and bulk smarts. You may think such a project would come from meticulous planning, but James didn’t intend to go quite so far when he started out. I WENT INTO FULL BUILD MODE AND 3D-MODELLED, DESIGNED, AND FABRICATED MOST OF THE PARTS YOU SEE ON THE CAR “I bought the HK in Tassie about 15 years ago,” he says. “I’d had a little browse on Gumtree, and the next minute my girlfriend Rochelle and I were on our way to Tassie to view this car. It presented as it did in the…

NICK SKARAJEW MAZDA REPU “HERE’S my 1974 Mazda REPU (Rotary Engine Pick-Up), which I imported here from Florida in 2022. I’d purchased it back in 2020 to do Rocky Mountain Race Week in the US, but that unfortunately didn’t go ahead due to COVID travel restrictions. The previous owner was running it with a 408ci SBC, with nitrous, a TH350 and a 9in. It was quite a successful grudge racer, with a PB of 10.8@126mph, but it was well overdue for a birthday. I got to work overhauling it with the goal of running it in Tuff Mounts 235 Blown at Drag Challenge. I started with abody-off restoration, blasting away the rattle-can matte-black paint and then coating it in epoxy. After that was a solid year of rust repairs and…

WANT your pride and joy featured in the mag? Just send some photos of your car (minimum file size 2MB each) and a few details of what went into the build to readerscars@streetmachine.com.au. BEN MORTENSEN 1966 FORD GALAXIE “WHILE working on a property in the Lockyer Valley, Queensland, I noticed a big old Ford sitting in the long grass. I asked the owner about it, and he told me it was a 1966 Ford Galaxie, an Australian-delivered American Ford – a big brother of sorts to the Aussie Fairlane. I bought the car for $800 with no idea what I was going to do with it; I just knew it had to come home with me. It had rust in the floorpans and other areas, but otherwise, its bones were…

RELEASED to capitalise on the burgeoning popularity of the early-2000s international drift racing scene, The Fast & The Furious: Tokyo Drift is the third F&F film and a bit of a black sheep in the franchise. Wayward US high school student Sean Boswell (Lucas Black) is drawn to trouble behind the wheel, and when a chest-puffing race with local jock Clay (Zachery Ty Bryan) gets way out of hand, Sean finds himself on his third strike and facing prison time. After Sean’s all-class mum (Lynda Boyd) ‘negotiates’ an option B with the charging police officer, Sean is sent to Tokyo to live with his estranged father (Brain Goodman) in the hope that some discipline and fresh surroundings will straighten him out. However, after not even 24 hours in Japan, Sean…

BIG murals, wild custom work and OTT paint are hallmarks of the Aussie panel vanning scene, and Jaime and Allison Cramp’s XW Falcon van features none of them. Instead, it earns its place among the van pantheon with subtle style and some of the smartest engineering ever stuffed into a sin-bin. Jaime’s dad bought the van back in the early 90s, soon trading the factory six-pot driveline for a mild 302 Cleveland, Top Loader and nine-inch. “Dad gave it a bit of a resto in the 90s, but as a panel beater, he made a great cabinet maker, and some sins started showing through,” Jaime laughs. Jaime bought the van from Dad and drove it daily for a few years, taking it off the road in 2000 when the tinworm…

NOBODY really understands how we find our hobbies, although some people believe it is environmental. If you grow up in a family that owns horses, the thinking goes, your interests are probably going to end up running along similarly equine lines. If that’s true, it’s no wonder that 20-year-old Mark Caruana has turned out this elite-level, 700hp HK Kingswood streeter as his first build. Mark’s dad, Sam, owns an 850hp blown HJ Premier that scored a Summernats Top 10 plate and was the cover star of our March 2011 issue, and it’s clear that the apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree. “My dad’s mates had HK-T-Gs, and I was originally looking for an HG, but this car popped up at All Holden Day in 2019,” Mark says of the…

ROSS Fortuna’s EH Premier is a truly special car in the here and now, but its long and storied history only increases its appeal. You see, this Prem has been a tough pro street car for over three decades. When it first hit the scene in the late 1980s, the EH was a ’caged, three-quarter-chassis-equipped beast known as TUBBED, owned and built by John Lang of Street & Strip Engineering. It was then sold to Greg Read, who gave it a birthday, renamed it WHYME, and had it featured on the cover of Performance Street Car, April-May 1991. It resurfaced in Geelong a few years ago, this time under the custodianship of Gav Dowling, who put his own spin on it again. Our man Ross stumbled upon it at the…

IT’S now been over a decade since General Motors released its fifth-generation small-block V8, coded LT. Launched in 2013 with the C7 Corvette, the LT ushered in a new era of pushrod performance thanks to the addition of direct injection. It also represented the company’s first wholesale redesign of its small-block architecture since the 2005 Gen IV, which itself was heavily based on 1997’s Gen III platform that introduced the now-legendary LS series to the world. Although the Gen V LT may appear outwardly similar to those Gen III/IV LS mills, only the 4.40in bore spacing, deck height, 90-degree V, cam location and pushrods are shared. To suit direct injection and new packaging methods in modern cars, the block and mounting bosses were redesigned, and this is an important consideration…

AN ELEVEN-week thrash brought Natalie McClelland’s open-top cruiser dreams to life in the form of this V8-powered 1923 T-bucket dubbed ‘Grasshopper’. Born into a hot-rodding family, 28-year-old Natalie has always been surrounded by modified early rides, which has fostered a rodding passion of her own. Recently, she was welcomed into the Drag-Ens Hot Rod Club as its first female member. DAD AND I DECIDED IN JUNE 2023 TO GET THE BUCKET BUILT FOR THE VALLA ROD RUN, SO WE HAD 11 WEEKS TO GET IT DONE How did your T-bucket build come together so quickly? My dad, Andrew McClelland (SM, Jul ’17), and I made the decision in June last year to get my 1923 bucket built for the upcoming Valla Rod Run, as we realised it would be the…

Email your favourite funnies to gday@streetmachine.com.au. GAG OF THE MONTH TROUBLE BREWING A BLOKE stumbles into a pub, looking flustered and anxious. He rushes up to the bartender and says, “Quick, give me a beer before the trouble starts!” The bartender’s a bit puzzled, but she’s used to all sorts in this pub, so she shrugs and pours him a cold one. The man downs it in record time, then immediately says, “Another one, quick! I need a beer before the trouble starts!” The bartender is now wondering what this bloke is on about, but she dutifully serves him another beer. The man drinks it just as fast. “One more, please, before the trouble starts!” he demands. The bartender, now genuinely intrigued, continues to serve the man, but after he’s…