Innholdsfortegnelse for No 265 January 2019 i NZ Performance Car

Humans are competitive by nature. It’s hardwired into our DNA, so it makes sense that the lifeblood of most things we hold dear is fuelled by competition, and the car scene is no different. So what happens when guys stop pushing boundaries and trying to better the next guy? Workshop-versus-workshop, club-versus-club, even mate-versus-mate, friendly or otherwise: these rivalries are what drive the scene forward. It all comes down to two main things: money being injected back into local business and, above all else, innovation. Your mate puts in a new close-ratio box, now you can’t keep up, so you go and install one, along with some new cams for more power. You both now have the fastest whatever-it-might-be at the track, so the guys that you two were always battling…

23 NOVEMBER NIGHT SPEED DRAG WARS 2 MEREMERE DRAGWAY Featuring some of New Zealand’s quickest street-legal imports and rotary-powered machines, the Night Speed Drag Wars series is one of the few events in the country in which drivers (with a current license, warrant, and rego) can compete in anything from their high-powered street car to their nana’s old Corolla. This season has been increased from six meetings to eight, three of which will be on Saturday nights to make getting to the event easier with traffic. It’s split into the full range of classes, and you must have a helmet and a minimum of a restricted license to drive. All classes, except King of the Street, must run DOT-approved street-legal drag tyres only — race slicks are strictly prohibited. Priced…

HEART ENGINE: Toyota 2JZ-GTE, 3000cc, straight-six turbo BLOCK: Reground and balanced crank, oversized bearings, Manley H-Beam Tuff rods, custom Proturn pistons, new wrist pins, Ross Racing rings, ARP main studs, new seals throughout HEAD: Clearanced and deburred 2JZ-GE head, 274-degree GSC Power-Division S2 camshafts, Tomei cam gear, Gates Racing timing belt, Brian Crower dual beehive valve springs, Brian Crower titanium retainers, new valve shims, GSC valve-stem seals INTAKE: Custom intake plenum, Nissan throttle body, GT-R-style intercooler, three-inch intercooler piping EXHAUST: Custom Sinco turbo manifold, four-inch downpipe, four-inch stainless system TURBO: HKS T51R rebuilt with ceramic bearings WASTEGATE: TiAL 60mm FUEL: 1650cc injectors, Walbro 460-litre-per-hour fuel pump, Sard fuel-pressure regulator (FPR), 8AN braided lines, custom fuel rail IGNITION: NZEFI coils ECU: Link G4 COOLING: Aftermarket alloy radiator, twin radiator fans, oil…

Every single one of you reading these pages should be well versed in the classic Kiwi car-park meet-up. It’s an automotive concept as old as time, and one that we all no doubt have fond memories of from younger years. Who doesn’t want to show off the object that occupies their mind every waking minute of the day? These meet-ups are solid excuses to dust off the crud from disuse and actually enjoy the cars that we’ve built. Those in the North Island are lucky to see plenty of these organized, no-nonsense type of gatherings, but the team at Christchurch-based car club ChaChaCha felt that their local was lacking, which is why they created an event last year to fill the gap (covered in Issue No. 253). While that event…

As teenagers with petrol running through your veins, often your dreams and your reality sit firmly at opposite ends of the custom car scale. What you’ve seen in magazines, on the internet, or in person at shows is often beyond your skills and/or budget. Try as you might, more often than not, dreams of parking a highly modified machine in the school car park often go unfulfilled. This tends to leave many with a sense of unfinished business, and, if they are lucky enough to still own that car later in life, when the skills and means are there, it is then that the car can be lavished with the type of attention that your teenage self fantasized about. But, if you’re anything like Brian Cox, who let his KE20…

Martini and rallying is a partnership that evokes memories of passion, highs and lows, dust, suffering, and joy. It is an association that spanned decades and will be forever remembered through the most romantic era that rallying has ever seen. With 2018 marking 40 years since Martini met the sport of rallying, Rallylegend this year took the opportunity to celebrate rallying’s most iconic love affair. It kicked off in 1978, when Martini had a brief fling with Porsche in the World Rally Championship (WRC) after having dabbled in Formula 1 — sadly it wasn’t to last. The second foray, at the dawn of the 1980s, saw Martini move its allegiances back to Italy, where Lancia had shifted its focus from the circuit to rallying. Martini didn’t need any persuading to…

For many, it’s the biggest racing series in the Southern Hemisphere; diehard fans would kill for their chosen drivers; and, come race weekend, you better not even come close to disturbing their ritualistic race viewings. But, these days, I find myself following the Supercars series less and less, mainly because my interests in motorsport have been channelled elsewhere as time has gone on. I grew up in a staunch Lion badge–supporting household, which meant that, in my earlier years, V8 Supercars rounds were big events, and Bathurst was the most important time of year — bigger than Christmas and my birthday combined. I vividly remember sitting mesmerized in front of the TV watching my favourites — Skaife, Murph, Lowndes, Perkins, Ingall, and Bright — smashing their way around all the…

Got Instagram? Want print fame on top of all those likes that fly your way each time you post a photo? Want to show us your whip without actually talking to us? Want to see what other readers are up to in their sheds? The answer to all these questions and why these two pages exist lies in the use of the hashtag #nzpc. Search it, use it, and thrash it! We keep a very close eye on it and will be choosing a bunch of hashtagged posts each month to print right here. And that’s not all — the best shot will earn it’s photographer a little prize for their trouble. So remember, next time you’re gram’n’, use #nzpc…

There’s a very thin, dangerous line when it comes to dancing with the devil that is lap times — not in the sense that there’s a risk to your physical well-being out there on hallowed tarmac, but for the unmeasurable chances of finding yourself miles too deep into a car that you never quite intended to build. Chasing those crucial milliseconds becomes an addiction like you’ve never known; soon, you’re stripping every non-essential fibre from the engine bay, swapping out factory panels for fibreglass and carbon goodness, the factory suspension components are all but a distant memory, and the cabin is so empty that you’ve forgotten what it was once like to be able to hear your own thoughts. Before you know it, what was once a simple road-goer, destined…

Among beer’s many evils, it’s arguable that its contribution to society encompasses more than a couple of positives: refreshment, at its absolute core; second, as a social lubricant, gathering mates together to share a drink, and have a bit of a yarn; and, no doubt, it’s the catalyst for a handful of misadventures. It’s obvious, then, to draw some arallels with car culture. Whether participants are drawn together by passion for a common badge or a rabid pursuit of perfecting their driving skill, these four wheels and an engine offer a rich social fabric: expression, relaxation, even a dab of healthy competition. And let’s not forget those yarns and occasional misadventures — perhaps with that order reversed. HEART ENGINE: Toyota 4Y-C, 2400cc, four-cylinder BLOCK: Rebuilt factory HEADS: Factory INTAKE: New…

NAME: SMUGZ AGE: 41 LOCATION: MANAWATU NZ Performance Car: Hey, Smugz. You’ve been around for long time; tell us how you first got into cars. Smugz: Wassup, team. Funny you ask, I used to be a street skater and was part of a graffiti crew in Auckland (DMN) in the early to mid ’90s, and times were changing — hitching and catching the bus just wasn’t cutting the mustard, so I bought a 1983 Honda Accord hatchback, which we used to rip around Auckland in and get up to mischief. And how did you wind up in the rotary scene? Laughs] OK, well, to tell you the truth, back then, I used to hate them. When we would roam the streets of Auckland city on Friday and Saturday nights, we…

JEREMY HEWSON REWORK The fastest pump-gas (98 octane) rotary in the world of Jeremy Hewson has undergone some serious changes during the off season to come out swinging at round one of the Meremere Dragway Competition Series, taking out Super Sedan and putting the Starlet right back at world-record pace, equalling his best ET of 8.7s and setting a new 60-foot PB of 1.23s. Changes to the Starlet include a newrelease BorgWarner S372 SX-E, replacing the old S369 SX-E which ran out of puff at 9000rpm. “The new turbo made 690hp [514kW] still on 98 pump gas and makes power all the way to 10,000rpm,” explained Jeremy. The rear end has been replaced, which Jeremy tells us was at first due to purchasing the wrong-size slicks, but that proved to…

It was the perfect statement on just how far Ian Baker’s World Time Attack Challenge (WTAC) has pushed the sport of Time Attack since the event’s inception in 2010. When the clocks stopped on Barton Mawer’s 2018 winning run, jaws dropped at just how close to the outright lap record of Sydney Motorsport Park he’d pushed in the PR Technology ‘RP968’ Porsche. Not only had he broken the magical 1min 20s mark for the first time in a tin top, but Barton’s 1min 19.14s lap was run in between some of the worst weather the event had seen, and it was only seven-tenths of a second off the long-standing lap record set by an A1 Grand Prix car. We’ll let you soak that in for a second … While some…

NAME: BRENDAN PARKER AGE: 31 LOCATION: AUCKLAND OCCUPATION: MANAGING DIRECTOR OF PTEN DEVELOPMENTS LTD ENGINE: SR20VET (X-Trail GT), 1998cc, four-cylinder turbo DRIVELINE: P12 six-speed, USDM Sentra B15 helical LSD, 350Z Brembo calipers INTERIOR: Defi water-temp, oil-temp, and oil-pressure gauges; Gizzmo boost controller EXTERIOR: Factory aero WHEELS/TYRES: 17-inch Impul, 215/50ZR17 Vitora Sportlife SUSPENSION: Nismo shocks, Nismo springs POWER: 239kW FUEL TYPE: 98 octane TUNER: Impul NZ Performance Car: Hey, Brendan, tell us how this P12 came to be. Brendan: Hi, guys. I’ve always had a sweet spot for Primeras. I bought this one for parts, as it had a blown gearbox. When it arrived on the truck, I realized how tidy it was and thought it was too good to wreck, so I put in a spare gearbox that I had…

ONE STRANGE MINI With a name like Strange Workshop, you’d expect some oddball creations to be rolling out of their workshop doors during the nine-to-five. But, as it turns out, the strangest cars are built after hours, with concepts created after a few cheeky brews — at least that’s how workshop owner Jon’s personal 20B-powered Mini came to be. The shell of a 2006 Mini Cooper was an import destined to end up as patch panels until Jon got sick of looking at it outside a neighbouring business, made an offer, and wasted no time putting the grinder to panel steel. It is now a Mini by skin only, as a considerable amount of work has gone into grafting a complete FD RX-7 rear subframe in, while the front end…