Inhaltsverzeichnis für October 2023 in Street Machine

WE’VE been talking about doing a serious ute on our Carnage YouTube show for some time now, and that’s finally happening with our latest project, a 1997 VS ute we’ve dubbed Grimace! Grimace is a gem we picked up from a Grays auction earlier this year. Although she’s a factory V6 manual, we have no intention of keeping that purity intact. You see, this is going to be Carnage’s wildest and quickest car to date, with the eventual goal of a seven-second timeslip! How’re we doing that? We’ve enlisted the help of Adam Rogash and his team from MPW Performance & Race Fab, who’ll be ensuring we do it all right the first time in order to futureproof the car for the blistering speeds we’re after. They’ll be taking on…

IT’S the summer of 1958 when best mates Bo and Harley (played by a very young Nick Nolte and Don Johnson respectively) kick off a road trip from Georgia to California. With Bo driving and Harley as the mechanic, the pair dream of winning the Grand National drag racing championship in their hotted-up ’57 Chevy Bel Air, decked out in yellow with flames and sporting plenty of sniffer rake. Their secret weapon is a custom ‘super injection’ system developed by Harley that offers a big burst of power similar to that of nitrous, but a flick of a toggle switch and flames from the Chevy’s exhaust are the only evidence for the pair’s spurious claim of 8.7-second quarter-mile times (on cheese-cutters!). The mates swing by a local diner, where they’re…

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JUDITH and Rodney Menso have travelled all over the country for shows in their respective rides (HERLX for Judith, and HQFORU, Street Machine’s legendary giveaway car from the mid-80s, for Rodney), but this was their first trip to Red CentreNATS. With Rodney’s famous Monaro in pieces, it was Judith’s Torana’s turn to shine, and it gave a good account of itself, running third in the Grand Champion chase. How was the trip from Ayr? It was pretty cool, except one of the straps holding our trolley down in the car trailer came loose on a bumpy road and rubbed against the back bumper! Rodney had only finished repainting and perfecting the bumper the day before we left. Ouch! Stuff like that is going to happen when you are travelling so…

FATHER-and-son Radek and Dilan Saitz hail from Darwin and brought a two-car team down to Red CentreNATS this year. Radek was back for another crack at the Grand Champion title in his trick 1JZ-powered XM Falcon ute (above), while Dilan was piloting a 350 Chev-powered Model T Ford (below). The pair both gave the Grand Champion title a good shake, but Dilan came out on top, finishing second overall behind Brent Murray’s Dodge Dart! We had a quick chat to proud dad Radek before they headed home to Darwin. The boy done good, eh? Yep, he beat me in both the motorkhana and the grass driving. Has he done this kind of thing before in the T-bucket? Not in the bucket. He’s raced go-karts and does a lot of simulator…

KYLLIE DIDN’T WORRY ABOUT CRACKING OPEN THE 347 WINDSOR CRATE MOTOR, INSTEAD BOLTING UP A SIDE-MOUNT PAXTON BLOWER THE ELITE Hall at Summernats has been so well-stocked over the past couple of years that we’re still playing catch-up on all the new rides, and Kyllie Garrett’s ’68 Mustang is a fitting example. Unveiled at the ’Nats back in 2022, it’s a gorgeous showcase of current-day styling and functionality, without sacrificing an ounce of what’s made the first-gen fastback so damn cool for almost 60 years. The Ballarat mum’s hometown may host plenty of streeters, but this one was rescued from interstate. Kyllie bought the car sight-unseen in 2015, having put up a wanted ad on Gumtree. “I had a guy from Port Pirie in SA call me and tell me…

EVEN before it was released, Ford engineers knew that the Barra was going to be A Very Good Thing. That’s why they codenamed it Project Gull, as, according to engineer Gordon Barfield, they “knew it would crap on everything”. Part of the huge appeal of Ford’s Aussie inline six is the ease with which you can make up to 650hp without resorting to a full engine build. Yep, the Barra is a rudely capable engine, but there is some key info to know before you get started on your first bolt-on Barra. “Oil pump gears, valve springs and head studs are pretty much the go-to modifications,” says Zane Heath from Melbourne’s Maxx Performance. “But I actually tell people to start with the fuel system, which seems backwards, but Barras are…

THE first SM project build I was hands-on with was a WB Holden ute dubbed Wild Child. The build had actually begun in the early 1990s, but by the time I’d joined Street Machine in ’95, this poor old WB was covered in dust at a Sydney TAFE college, where students had done some bodywork on it. As many of us know, taking on an unfinished project is almost always laced with dramas, and yep, there were plenty of those. The car had a transplanted VN Commodore 5.0-litre V8 and four-speed auto, which sounds simple and old-school now, but back in those early days of electronically fuel-injected engine transplants, there wasn’t much information on the internet about how to do it – mainly because there was hardly an internet back…

BLOWN COOL JASON FLYNN HG HOLDEN KINGSWOOD “THIS is my HG wagon project, which I bought in 2014 for just $3000, only two months before my wedding. It had no interior or glass and shabby paintwork, and was running a 186 and M20 four-speed. I hid it from my future wife at a mate’s trim shop, where it had the seats, rooflining, glass and trim fitted. It was also lowered and fitted with widened wheels with Monaro hubcaps. I drove it home the day after our wedding to surprise my-now-wife. After our honeymoon, I decided it was time for a V8 swap, so we chucked a Holden 5.0-litre from a VN in it, which was great for a few years until it threw a leg out of bed. That triggered…

GAG OF THE MONTH EXTRACTING INFORMATION A MUMMY was found in Egypt, and in order to determine its age and other historical details, three of the best forensic teams in the world were sent in. The CIA team went first. They studied the mummy for a year, before declaring that this person lived around 1000 BC, plus or minus 200 years. The Mossad team went next. They studied the mummy for a month and concluded that it was a pharaoh who ruled around 1000 BC, give or take 100 years. It was the KGB team’s turn. They held the mummy for a week and announced that it was Pharaoh Ramenhotep II, who was born in 1106 BC, became king after murdering his uncle, and ruled for five years. In the…

THE inaugural Dubbo MotorFest cemented itself as a must-see show from the get-go, with over 1000 cars and bikes from the regional NSW city and beyond turning out for a day in the sun. Organisers Matt Rendell, Nick Pahlow and Max Robertson started planning MotorFest in mid-2022 alongside an all-volunteer crew. “It blew our minds,” Matt says of the turnout. “I think we broke a few state records; we definitely broke the Dubbo record!” Matt says the idea for a larger show stemmed from the success of the Dubbo Motorcyclist And Drivers (aka MAD) Club’s cars-and-coffee meets. “We have around 150 cars at our MAD Club’s annual event, and each month with our Dubbo Classic Cars & Coffee we have 150 to 200 cars and bikes and around 1700 people,…

Write to: Your Stuff, Street Machine, Unit 9/3-5 Gilda Court, Mulgrave, Vic 3170, or email streetmachine@wheelsmedia.com.au. Make sure you include your address (not necessarily for publication). Keep it short and sweet! WORTHY CAUSE G’DAY guys and gals of Street Machine, just wanted to drop a quick email to say well done again on providing us with great cars and the stories behind them. It’s awesome that Aussie car culture is large and vibrant enough to support events like Summernats, where every man and his dog turns up to celebrate everything automotive, as well as something like Chopped, where you need to get a tetanus shot from just looking at the cars! But events like the recent Cruise for a Cause in Canberra in support of Ryan Tanaskovic’s cancer battle (pictured,…

LOOKING at John Moy’s stunning FC ute, it’s bloody hard to imagine that it was nothing more than a neglected, rusty pile of metal when he first got his hands on it. “It was a very rusty car; it had no floors, the sills were severely rusted, and even the subframes were gone,” says John. “Even the sand blaster bloke said to me, ‘You won’t get much car back when we’re finished.’” But John, a semi-retired builder, was set on an FC as his next major project and could see well beyond the rust to the potential the ute had to fulfil his vision. “I love the shape of the FCs, especially the bonnet,” he says. “I wanted a car that looked like an unassuming FC on the outside, but…

PAUL Tinning brought his November ’22 cover hero (and SMOTY ’23 contender) XP coupe for a second crack at Grand Champ. Though he missed out on the big trophy, the twin-turbo Viper-powered hottie still earned a Top 10 Elite finish and the Top Undercarriage/Engineered gong. Have you changed anything on the Falcon since we last chatted, Paul? Nah, not really. I’ve just put a new shifter on it, a taller one that’s a lot better for getting gears. What’s it like on the quarter? It’s a bit of a handful, as you can imagine! It wants to turn the tyres in every single gear. I should’ve put some radials on it; it’s still got the tyres from when I started the build six or seven years ago. Not making excuses…

THERE are few things in this world more iconically Australian than a Holden Kingswood. TV’s Ted Bullpitt would have you believe that the humble Kinger is the finest car ever to grace Australia’s highways and byways, but as he’s something of a purist, we’re not sure Ted would approve of Jay Jorgensen’s example. We certainly do, however, and if you don’t mind, we’d like to tell you a little bit about it. When Jay came to own the HK, it was an original six-cylinder car wearing its factory Ermine White paint, but it was a bit of a mess. It had been disassembled for a resto, so it was the automotive equivalent of a 1000-piece Lego set without any instructions. “It was all in pieces, with rust in the usual…

IF YOU fancied yourself a sporty Torana in the mid-70s but didn’t quite have enough moolah for the top-tier V8 SL/R, the cheaper G-Pak was the solution. For your money you got bucket seats, SL/R-style instruments, three bright colours to choose from, and, best of all, the signature G-Pak striping. Les Gulan had grown up a Holden man playing around with early Commodores, but he decided that for his next project he wanted some older 70s chrome-bumper goodness. “I’d always wanted to do a steel-bumpered Holden, and this one popped up cheap enough,” he says of the LH you see here. At that time, it was a multicoloured rolling shell in a pretty sorry state, so there was very little evidence of the car’s factory G-Pak status. “We ran the…

1 NEW & IMPROVED PROFLOW’S crown jewel in its Barra parts range is this new Series II intake plenum. “Our first one was very popular, so we used a lot of lessons we learned with that one to help improve our latest version,” says Jake Cugnetto from VPW Australia. New features for the Series II includes straight runners for better AFRs, as well as a redesign of the plenum chamber for smoother airflow. The bore has been reduced from 90mm to 80mm for greater air velocity, and a peek inside will reveal integrated bellmouths for each runner. Included with the kit is a billet fuel rail, which’ll take full-length, 14mm O-ring injectors. There’s a provision for the Ford MAP sensor, and adapters to suit either FG or BA throttlebodies, as…

JUST about every cool kid’s street car in the 1990s was an HDT or HSV lookalike ex-chaser Commodore. You’ve gotta remember, Ford had dropped its V8 option in 1982, so there was a 1980s-sized hole in the ranks of cool Fords in Aussie pub car parks. Thankfully, the Falcon V8 made a return in 1991, and by 1996 or so, the first of these reintroduced V8 Falcs were affordable second-hand cars. Since street machiners could finally play with Ford V8s again, we decided to do our best to rekindle the flickering flames of Falcon passion by building a 1990s Ford hardtop with a high-performance bent-eight under its snout, which would come to be known as the Sony Scorcher. Our car-art consultant Jeff Haggarty got the ball rolling with some brilliant…

ANNE Brown’s 1972 HQ One Tonner is very much a product of the COVID pandemic, a project she undertook in lieu of a holiday to Europe and the United States. It was finished just in time to debut at the 2022 WA Hot Rod & Street Machine Spectacular, where it was the only One Tonner in the building! How did this project come about? We finished restoring and modifying my husband Anton’s HQ well-body ute at the end of 2019, and given how successful his car turned out (Readers’ Rockets, SM, Jun ’21), I decided I wanted to have a classic of my own to cruise in. It definitely came about sooner than I expected. After Anton’s ute was finished, we were going to go travelling to the US, but…

01 FAST TURNAROUND IF YOU’RE undertaking a full-blown, nut-and-bolt resto, odds are you’ll be needing a rotisserie. That’s why the wizards at Hare & Forbes Machineryhouse are poised to release this new Metalmaster rotisserie. It’s a real game-changer, allowing a vehicle shell to be rotated a full 360 degrees, so you can perform all the bodywork and paint on your project with ease. The unit is designed to fit through most domestic garage doors, and the best bit is that the rotisserie collapses once you’re done with it, so you can store it away until your next project. They’ll be available through all Hare & Forbes outlets very soon for just $2500. To find out more, scan the QR code or head to machineryhouse.com.au. 02 FULLY CHARGED IF YOUR big-horsepower…

MANY petrolheads’ interest in cars, and their particular brand allegiance, gets passed down to them via their parents. This was certainly the case for 42-year-old Rhett Nankervis, who grew up immersed in the Volkswagen life under his father Ian’s influence, which has blossomed into nearly three decades of Rhett’s own VW journey. “It’s pretty all-encompassing,” he says. “At its peak, we had 96 VWs in the backyard!” We’ve managed to whittle Rhett’s extensive VW history down to just some of his favourites, which we’ll share over this and next issue. 1: IN 1992, Rhett was an impressionable 11-year-old living in Howlong, NSW when his dad Ian bought a custom Beetle. It had a huge impact on Rhett and catalysed his obsession with cars. “Dad has always owned modified cars –…

IF YOU ever need a reminder of just how vast our country is, consider that Alice Springs is a full 1500 kays from any capital city. Bringing a top-notch street machine, rat rod or racer through the arid centre of Australia is no small feat, so to have north of 800 entrants taking on the ninth instalment of Red CentreNATS is kind of a big deal – not to mention nigh on 15,000 punters streaming through the gates! This year’s Grand Champion chase was a doozy, with 14 cars in contention, ranging from a blown two-door VE to a T-bucket and even an Isuzu Bellett! To win, entrants must score well not just in the show judging, but also in the People’s Choice vote and the drag racing, motorkhana and…

WE FIRST met Lee and Anna Povey at Red CentreNATS 7, and since then, their VL Calais has just got better and better as an all ’round, show-and-go streeter. It has a 7.54sec PB to its name and recently took out the roll racing competition at Springmount Raceway’s Northern Nats. At RCN 9, Lee won the 8-8.99 class in the Heavy Hitter drags, and placed in the Top 10 in the Street-class judging, along with winning Top Engineered and Top Engine Bay in the same class. Congrats on the win, mate! She’s hauling now; do you think you’ll ever get her down to a six? I don’t think so; we might get down to a 7.40. We’re reaching the limit of a few things, such as the front end set-up.…

MITCHELL Rando’s first automotive love was an HZ Holden ute, and he’s had a few of them over the years, including one he’s building for Drag Challenge with a turbo LS. His dad turned him onto EHs, too, and Mitchell eventually ended up with a pretty tidy V8-powered one. It’s been off the road for almost 10 years now getting a complete rebuild, and Mitchell got sick of not having something cool to cruise around in, so he did what any proper street machiner would and bought another project. “I bought the Camaro off a mate, Dave Preedy, who has had some pretty cool cars over the years, including a really nice orange Camaro,” Mitchell begins. “Then he brought in this Camaro with all-new panels and all the components brand…

SINCE 2010, the Yokohama World Time Attack Challenge has brought fans of several niche Japanese motorsports together, to the point that these days the Sydney-based event draws entries from Europe, North America and Japan. But there is a lot more to this two-day party than just who can get the quickest lap time. For example, at the 2023 event, held over the first weekend of September at Sydney Motorsport Park, a bunch of the world’s best drift and demo cars also come to party, and there were speed comparisons, roll racing, burnouts, a stunt plane and a tank! This year, five international Time Attack teams crossed the oceans to challenge Australia’s best. The Emtron Pro class is where the big dogs play at WTAC, and both they and the hard-chargers…

NO, YOUR eyes aren’t deceiving you and you haven’t been drinking degreaser (we hope). You’re looking at a Volvo in the pages of Street Machine! Fret not, Sash Avramoski’s 242 GT is no trainspotter’s resto with matching-numbers sparkplugs and factory diff oil; the street-and-strip wheel-and-tyre package hints at what’s really going on here. Sash’s list of previous cars is as long as your arm, with highlights including the XY GS that was his first car, a low-10-second manual VL Turbo, an animalistic F6, a van with a 151dB competition sound system, and a handful of Skyline GT-Rs. In between the home-grown and JDM cars, however, is a fascination with Volvos that stems from a couple that Sash’s parents owned. “I’ve had a 760 and a 740 turbo, but I’ve always…

AS A KID in the 1980s, I loved magazine project cars – awesome rides like the supercharged XF Falcon and Project Berlina in MOTOR; Street Machine’s iconic HQFORU; and Project Oval, a rotary-powered VW Beetle in Fast Fours & Rotaries. I was hooked on the processes, people and tech involved in making a car quicker, better and cooler. So imagine my joy to end up landing a job at Street Machine, which saw me being involved in the build of not just one but two SM project cars!…

RICCARDO Pontonio has long been campaigning his LSFKNX VK Commodore (SM, Mar ’20) at Drag Challenge. That car entered the Seven-Second Club at DC 2022-’23 earlier this year, and has a PB to date of 7.56@181mph. Running a car at the pointy end of the DC field is a stressful exercise, so for his next build, Ric wanted to take a more relaxed approach. “I just wanted a nice, simple cruiser for the next one, so we can spend more time having fun and hitting the beers than fixing the bloody thing!” he says. That brings us to this 1984 Mercedes-Benz 230 TE wagon, which is in the final stages of construction before its deadline of Drag Challenge 2023, 10-14 October. Ric purchased it as a stocker with the original…

SHANE BUTLER XD FALCON “MY 1979 XD Falcon wagon left the factory as a 3.3L (200ci) crossflow with a column-shift three-speed auto and ‘dickie seat’. I’ve put in a naturally aspirated Barra and four-speed BTR transmission (converted to floor shift), and replaced the dickie seat with a centre console. All works have been carried out by The Car Garage. Plenty of other less glamorous things have been added to get the car engineered (brakes, seatbelts, etc), and it’s been resprayed in the original Ghost Gum Beige paint. There’s intentionally no turbo; I just wanted a mega-reliable cruiser – the ‘go fast’ money will be spent on another project. If you know anyone who places absolutely no value on their time and wants to know more about the swap, there’s a…

VIEWERS of our Carnage show on the Street Machine YouTube channel will probably recognise this Toyota V8, as it’s the mill destined for a home in our Toyota Lexcen wagon that we’ve been building to take on Drag Challenge 2023. The whole project is the brainchild of Carnage frontman Scotty Taylor. He wanted to stick a non-GM V8 in a rebadged Holden to create “a V8 Commodore that isn’t a V8 Commodore”, as he gleefully puts it. We scored the 4.0-litre 1UZ from a running early-90s Toyota Soarer. “It’s an early engine, which means it has the beefier rods rather than the later ones that don’t,” says Scotty. “Because of that, we’ve kept the stock rods and pistons, which will be fine for our 550rwhp goal.” While the standard bottom-end…