Inhaltsverzeichnis für August 2024 in Street Machine

HARLEY-Davidson is perhaps the most hallowed name in motorcycling, but since the demise of its Street 500 model in 2021, the brand hasn’t offered a LAMS-compliant bike with beginners in mind. Happily, that changed late last year with the introduction of the X350 and X500 models. I was recently offered a ride of the larger of the two bikes, the X500, and was keen to find out what sort of Harley $11,495 buys you in 2024. First up, it’s a good-lookin’ rooster, though the smaller (and cheaper), flat track-inspired X350 is arguably more handsome again. Despite being heavily derived from the Benelli Leoncino 500, the X500’s styling has been refined from the tank through to the seat and rear guard to give off a vibe somewhat reminiscent of Harley’s XL1200…

> LETTER OF THE MONTH TO A TEE HI TEAM! I’m just writing to say I absolutely loved the cover of the July issue. The cartoon-style tribute to the great Rob Beauchamp was an all-timer, one I hope you guys put on a poster or some kind of merchandise in the future. Keep up the great work! Jeff Aikmann, email HEY Jeff! Thanks for the kind words. And you’re in luck! In collaboration with the Beauchamp family, we’ve developed a limited run of T-shirts (pictured right) featuring that cover image by Pat Skinner of Ten Tenths Creative, depicting Rob’s legendary Calais and Torana builds. The shirts are only available via pre-order, which closes at midnight on Wednesday 31 July, so scan the QR code to secure yours! All profits will…

DRAMA and drag racing have long gone hand in hand, both on- and off-track. But heading into the 56th Winternationals at Willowbank Raceway, the main cause of concern was the track surface itself. Willowbank had been closed since last August as part of an $11 million upgrade. This included ripping up most of the old bitumen track surface, as well as redoing the staging lanes and start-up area, adding spectacular new lighting, conducting major drainage works, and more. The scope of the project was huge, with 2500 tonnes of concrete laid down from the 660-foot mark to 50 metres beyond the finish line, but the end result is Australia’s third all-concrete quarter-mile, joining Sydney Dragway and South Australia’s Dragway at the Bend. The plan was to have the strip ready…

BUILDING a car to be unveiled at a marquee show like Meguiar’s MotorEx takes years of patience, determination, sacrifice and dedication. For Jordan Lord, however, the motivation for completing his HQ Premier project wasn’t car-show glory but simply a burning desire to make the sedan better than what you’d normally find out the front of your local on a Saturday arvo. “I never wanted a show car; I just wanted a tough streeter I could put the boys in and cruise down to the pub, and then run a flat-nine on the quarter-mile,” the Sale, Victoria resident explains. “The Premier is a street car, but I wanted it to be built with all the best parts and done as well as it could be done, which is how we ended…

THE little 2.4-litre Honda K24 is quickly becoming the LS of four-pot engine swaps. Cheap, easy to source and capable of making Barra-like power out of the box, they’re getting stabbed into cars all over the globe. John Healey decided to jump on that train with his stunning 1971 Datsun 1600 wagon, which he’s owned for 11 years. The L-series mill it had was giving him some grief, so he binned it in favour of the Honda. “Bang for buck, you just can’t beat them,” says John of the K24. “They make great power, are reliable, and so cheap and easy to get compared to, say, an SR20.” THE K24 MAKES GREAT POWER, AND THEY’RE RELIABLE AND SO CHEAP AND EASY TO GET COMPARED TO, SAY, AN SR20 While it…

SOME of the coolest photos we’ve seen this year came from Scott Briant’s shed, as he rechristened his iconic, Holden 355-powered Corolla wagon (SM, Sep ’09) after a 15-year separation. Shane ‘Paj’ McDonald captured Scott and the ’Rolla getting reacquainted via a huge burnout, while Scott’s kids and mates looked on. Starting with a $300 shitbox, Scott built the Corolla into a competition machine dubbed KE355 back in 2006, before steering, skidding and generally sending it to a list of trophies as long as both your arms. “I had it at every Easternats, most Gazzanats, Performance Car Mania, and I was in the Team Extreme at Springnats for a couple of years, where we were paid to do demos – I did a lot of powerskids and drifting in it,”…

FIT FOR A KING RYAN MOODY HG KINGSWOOD “THIS is my 1970s poor man’s Monaro – an HG Kingswood. I’ve owned this car going on six years now, and I used to daily drive it in its original patina. It was once a rusty ex-Melbourne taxi, but as I’m in the automotive refinishing trade, I was able to put all my knowledge and skill into doing a full bare-metal restoration. It was originally a 186-powered car with a three-on-the-tree manual, but I’ve now replaced those with a 5.7L Gen III LS1 and a floor-shift Turbo 350. It has also been mini-tubbed and runs a built Truetrac nine-inch diff out back. It has been a long journey so far, involving lots of blood, sweat and an empty wallet, and I’ve still…

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THERE are two forces that drive the Street Machine juggernaut ever-onwards, helping us overcome adversity, exhaustion and the duties imposed by civilised society. The first force is an immutable one: deadline, so named because if you miss it, you’re dead. The second force is more of a carrot than a stick: FOMO – Fear of Missing Out. FOMO scratches away at the brain of every journalist and photographer who knows there’s a tasty event happening soon that they could conceivably attend. And so it was FOMO that drove me and publisher Telfo to attempt to cover both Cooly Rocks On and the 56th Winternationals on the same weekend in June. Common sense would dictate that a massive nostalgia festival and a history-making celebration of drag racing – with almost 200,000…

MY GOAL WAS TO HAVE THE FIRST CUSTOM, PURPOSE-BUILT DRIFT ROD IN AUSTRALIA WITH the price of Japanese hero cars going through the roof over the past few years, Aussies have turned to domestic rear-wheel-drive machines to take sideways racing. That means V8s are not an uncommon sight at drift events these days, but what most certainly isn’t a common sight is a car like Levi Clarke’s 1932 Ford pick-up, the Drift Rod. “I have always wanted to build a hot rod with my dad, so we bought this shell privately in Helensvale,” said Levi. “It sat on the property for a few years until COVID hit and I decided it was time to start the project. My goal was to have the first custom, purpose-built drift rod in Australia.”…

THE Street Machine VIP Park-Up at April’s Optima Ultimate Street Car Challenge attracted all kinds of rad cars, from retro muscle to stance-y Japanese stuff, and Bailey Anstis delivered more than a touch of mini-trucking cool with his 1995 TF Rodeo. It was the ute’s first show, with Bailey slapping the custom plates on just five days beforehand, and he followed up with a trip to Real Street at this year’s MotorEx. How’d the Rodeo come into your life? I bought it about 11 months ago. It had been repainted and lowered on blocks, but nothing really special had been done. It had been damaged on the front and side, so I had to fix all of that up during the process. A lot of people have wrecked them, and…

01 MAD DASH HALTECH’S hotly anticipated uC-10 digital dash is now available to pre-order! After changing the game with its iC-7 dash a few years ago, Haltech has gone bigger and better yet simpler with the new the uC-10. For starters, the 10-inch display does away with the iC-7’s buttons and shift lights for a crisper look, and with 1280x480 resolution, the 600-lumens display boasts a minimum 70-degree viewing angle so you can read vitals easily. Like the iC-7, it links to all Haltech products with a CAN plug and can read some OBD-II systems as well. It can also be set up as a standalone display, and it’s even compatible with other brands of aftermarket ECU. To find out more and jump on the pre-order, scan the QR code…

Email your favourite funnies to gday@streetmachine.com.au. > GAG OF THE MONTH DISPENSING JUSTICE A LADY went into a pharmacy, strode right up to the pharmacist, looked him straight the eye, and said, “I would like to buy some cyanide.” Taken aback, the pharmacist asked, “Why on earth do you need cyanide?” “I need it to poison my husband,” the lady replied. The pharmacist was aghast. “Madam, I’m not giving you cyanide to kill your husband. I’d be helping you commit murder! I’d lose my licence, and they’d throw us both in jail!” The lady calmly reached into her purse, pulled out a photo, and showed it to the pharmacist. It was a photo of her husband in bed with the pharmacist’s wife. The pharmacist looked at the picture and said,…

BREAKDOWN VEHICLES: 1971 Dodge Charger, 1967 Jensen Interceptor Mk1, 1973 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray, 1973 Datsun 240Z, 1970 Lincoln Continental, 1955 Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud, 1974 Plymouth Satellite, 1970 Mercedes-Benz 280S, 1936 Ford V8 De Luxe STARS: Joe Don Baker, Tyne Daly, Morgan Woodward, Richard Jaeckel, Robert Loggia, Lana Wood DIRECTOR: Earl Bellamy ACTION: From Jensen Interceptors to Datto 240Zs, a wide range of 60s and 70s road icons are jumped, drifted, blown up and beaten, all to the tune of a funky 70s soundtrack PLOT: A hard-strutting private investigator is tasked with capturing a high-end car thief who’s wreaking havoc across Phoenix AVAILABLE: YouTube, DVD THERE’S something about the loose nature of a 1970s-era flick that warms my heart, and the opening scenes of Speedtrap quickly drew a smile of satisfaction…

VISITING Aussie street machiners are often jealous of how good the Kiwis have it when it comes to New Zealand’s liberal registration rules and how gently they are policed. Blown, tubbed and even bonnetless streeters are left to cruise in peace, provided the driver is well behaved. Justin Walker’s ’65 Falcon Sprint is a perfect example of what can be done in the Shaky Isles. Justin took a strip-only, eight-second bruiser and – after a stack of work – got it legally registered to prowl the streets, complete with a ladder-bar rear, fat rubber and a crank-mounted ProCharger. JUSTIN TOOK A STRIP-ONLY, EIGHT-SECOND BRUISER AND – AFTER A STACK OF WORK – GOT IT LEGALLY REGISTERED TO PROWL THE STREETS Justin already had some runs on the board in…

OVER the past 40 years, George Poulson has become pretty handy at making chrome-bumper Mopars look good and go fast. “I had a low-13-second 340 VG four-door in the early 80s, an 11.4-second Regal in the early 90s, and a 10-second Charger in the mid-90s,” he says. He’s remained in step with the times since then, as illustrated by his previous effort, a bad-arse 6.1 SRT-swapped VJ hardtop (SM, Aug ’16), and he’s now debuted another Gen III transplant, distilling his formula into a sweet 1970 Dodge Dart Swinger. “Most of my mates have US Mopars, and I was excluded from events where only those cars were invited to attend, so I decided to change that,” George explains. “It had to be lighter than my hardtop and be a muscle…

WHILE many 20-somethings these days are driving around in compact SUVs (barf), 22-year-old Riley Matekovic said nuts to that and built himself this 500rwhp, LS-swapped VH Commodore. Riley found the VH as a tidy, basic SL in Port Macquarie around five years ago. “I got it for a steal at $6000 and dailied it for around three months,” he says. “But I got sick of getting left behind on cruises, so we pulled it apart at a mate’s house and started the build.” The first thing to go was the 202 six, to be replaced by a spicy aspo LS. “My mate Brodie Ward with the PUMPEN VL [SM, Mar ’24] had a similar LS combo in his that went hard, so I took inspiration from that with my new…

THE AP5 WAS A SPECIAL-ORDER PRIEST’S CAR – HENCE THE RARE BLACK PAINT WITH RED TRIM COMBO, AND WHY IT’S IN PRETTY GOOD CONDITION WHEN she was in her late teens, Anneke Schelfhorst nabbed herself a VF Valiant, instigating a deep love for old-school chrome-bumper rides. At 21, she swapped the VF for a 351-powered ZD Fairlane to travel Australia, but now she’s hopped back in the Mopar camp with a fresh pair of Vals – a 1964 AP5 and a 1978 CL. Your ZD Fairlane expedition sounds massive. It was! Back in 1997, my boyfriend and I drove around most of Australia for five months in my ZD. We even worked for a month at an NT roadhouse to save up for fuel. The car really didn’t like the…

IT MIGHT surprise you to learn that Street Machine Drag Challenge is often attended by drag racing novices. With a background in rallying, Tasmanian Brad Gunn was one of those quarter-mile greenhorns, but he found himself drawn to the prospect of competing in the torturous drag-and-drive marathon that is DC. “I loved the idea of the challenge of making it through the five days on the road – so much so that I started following drag-and-drives religiously,” Brad says. “We entered the 2020 Drag Challenge before it was cancelled due to COVID, and finally managed to make it in 2023.” Brad’s weapon of choice was a 1967 Mustang, which he and his wife have owned and been building since 2015. “I wanted something V8 – a cruiser I could eventually…

LEE PHILLIPS 1954 VOLKSWAGEN BEETLE “I’VE been a VW fan for a few decades now, and I was also a VW and Audi mechanic for a similar amount of time. I took a break from dealership life and did restoration and mechanical for a specialist in air-cooled VWs, which is where I came across this ’54 oval-window Beetle. It was an ex-race car project that was in really bad shape and was stripped of the good parts, so I decided to undertake a full rebuild of the mechanicals and body. My friend Sabrina did the bodywork, while I threw a bunch of crazy ideas into the mix, from the four-spot Wilwood front brakes (Porsche 944 on the rear) to the twin-charged motor. The engine now receives boost from both a…

GEAR SHIFTS SMALL details like the billet RCD gear drive on the front of the engine had knock-on effects for other engine hardware. “The timing pointer isn’t the normal one, because fitting the billet gear drive meant the water pump wouldn’t fit like it normally does, and we couldn’t run an electric pump because of the electrical load on the system,” Troy says. BUILDING reliable, four-digit forced-induction engines for street, skid and event cars is a skill that takes years to master, and Troy Worsley of Warspeed Industries has it down pat. However, he was recently presented with a new challenge: put together a 427ci LS-based donk for an off-road racing Trophy Truck. While many of his most well-known street combos use iron blocks, Troy opted for an alloy Concept…