Innholdsfortegnelse for No 189 February 2021 i NZV8

As a young teenager full of idiotic pro-street ideas, no real conception of costs, time frames, or what talent — or lack thereof — lay within my own two hands, I’d read magazine articles where guys were taking five, eight, or even ten years to complete a project. I recall thinking: ‘man those dudes really need to pick up their act, what the hell are they doing?’ Truth be told, I knew nothing of what a real car build took. All I’d ever done was rattle-can BMXs and a 50cc scooter in a horrible satin blue. Fast forward two decades, and I now appreciate all too well how a decent-sized project can take that long. I ran into someone I’d rate as one of the best in the biz last…

Every issue we seem to be talking about another new Mustang special model, and this issue is no different — but the Mustang certainly is. If you follow drifting, then you’ll know the names Vaughn Gittin Jr and Fanga Dan Woolhouse, both of whom pilot RTR Spec 5 Mustangs. These machines were once reserved only for competition but, to celebrate RTR’s 10th birthday, 10 special roadgoing versions have been released — although they have been barely tamed down enough to be street legal. Given the limited number of production units, it might surprise you that two of these are headed our way, although both are pre-sold. These wild streeters see power levels from the Coyote sitting at 559kW and 906Nm of torque, the wild body styling is the same aggressive…

BIG BEAMER Fiddling around in a pitch-black engine bay, or constantly squinting to see that semi-hidden bolt under the car, is for suckers. Light it up with the Narva Colt 1000, a high-powered, six-LED handheld spotlight. It’s a heavy-duty, rechargeable unit that packs 2500 lumens and provides a crisp spot-beam range of up to 244 metres. Fully sealed and waterproof, the removable battery can hum for a solid 2.5 hours runtime and takes only 1.5 hours to charge, making it ideal not only for working on the car but for hunting, fishing, camping, security, and emergency purposes. Available from leading automotive stores throughout New Zealand. Contact your local Narva stockist for pricing. Visit narva.co.nz for further information. STEER RIGHT Manufactured in the USA since 1914, Borgseon steering universals are some…

Already the owner of one of the country’s most popular supercharged sedans — the Drunk Goat Racing ’66 Pontiac GTO — Michael Franklin is about to reach cult status as news filters through of his new ride. Purchased off Graeme Cowin and the team that brought you the Aeroflow Outlaw Nitro Funny Cars last summer, the new addition to the stable is no less than a full-blown 1957 Chev nitro funny car. Currently being prepped for Michael by Morice McMillin and the crew at their Sydney HQ, the ex– ‘Red Devil’ funny car will campaign the same running gear and combo as have propelled the nitro beasts below the 5.5-second range in Australia. Plans for Michael and the team once the border reopens both ways are to travel to Sydney…

It’s the biggest event on the calendar, the one that diehard fans plan a year in advance in the hope of scoring a house to stay at, and having their car ready, but all that went out the door when world events came knocking and the government put restrictions in place just before the March running. The team behind Repco Beach Hop had to make the call to either postpone the event or cancel it altogether. Noddy and the crew rolled the dice and announced a new date in November, not knowing whether or not the event would be able to happen. Well — it paid off, and from our extremely unofficial ‘eyechrometer’ the event was the biggest Beach Hop we’ve seen. If anything, the lockdown period seemed to have…

Sitting in the shed at Glen Eggleton’s father’s is the next victim Glen would love to get his hands on now that the Chevelle is all but buttoned up. The base is a ’37 Chev coupe and would be built in a mix of new and old. The old being the timeless combination of solid black paint and the contemporary an orange, red, and blue-tipped flame job licking off the nose cone. The body itself would remain unchopped and, as GM intended, include all chrome. But a set of inner rear tubs would need to be added, and here’s why. Underneath would be where the new came in — a custom chassis with IFS front and a narrowed nine-inch set-up with air ride to allow the Chev to tap terra…

Painted in the ’80s, built and driven in the ’90s, and thrown into hibernation for the past 20 years, Tim Barwell’s Fairlane is making a comeback. The car runs an RHS chassis and A-arm front end originally built by Graham Berry to incorporate a mini-tubbed rear end, nine-inch, and coilovers. The 429 Tim purchased 30 years ago has had only one minor freshen-up since, but never missed a beat. The C6 transmission, on the other hand, has been swapped out for a four-speed Toploader, which the car was always destined to have. The irony is that it’s been so long that Tim can’t quite remember how he ever ended up with an auto box in the car. The only other update is a power rack-and-pinion set-up to replace the manual…

Ash Ronald’s ’55 Ford F1, dubbed ‘TRUKME’, is his dream build, one that’s been 10 years in the making. The original chassis now has Jag XJ Series 2 front and rear subframes grafted in and is running Air Ride with air struts to ensure the running boards will lie hard on the ground. The truck has also been converted to right-hand drive to suit the Jag front. The build features an interesting power plant — a straight-six Barra turbo, which will remain in near stock trim, backed by three pedals and a manual box. Wheels are widened steels, and there will be removable spats so the look can be changed from time to time. It’s not getting fancy paint and has been unbadged and dechromed with the stain brown pictured…

No one could have guessed when Tim Barwell went into business building diffs under the Krysler Shop name, that he’d evolve into building complete vehicles … no one except Tim that is. The 1952 Ford F1 currently under construction has to be the coolest car to be built there yet, and now the body is back on the chassis to see what it really looks like. The chassis is a work of art, based on original C-section rails up front running down into a custom rear section. Both the old and new ends have been boxed and the front fitted with a Jaguar IFS set-up. With Slam Specialties airbags being fitted all round, a custom four-link has been added to the rear along with a Watt’s link. As you’d expect…

The official Repco Supercars Championship calendar for 2021 has been announced and, with the uncertainty still surrounding travel restrictions and crowd numbers, things are not as you’d expect. The calendar is being called a draft, and there are back-up dates locked in to cover their butts should the worst happen, with multiple Sandown dates booked, none of which feature on the 12-round calendar, and only to be used should new restrictions force a cancellation. There will be two trips to Bathurst in 2021, first a 500km season opener in March and then the traditional 1000km battle later in the season. There are also two night rounds in both Sydney and Perth. Don’t fear, we Kiwis are also on the calendar — although the event would be travel-restriction dependent; the ITM…

One of the biggest events in motorsport will see a huge reduction in its attendance to ensure social distancing is adhered to come the February running of the Daytona 500. Typically, some 100,000–150,000 fans attend each of the four days, but this time those numbers could be halved. All attendees will be screened before entering, and masks are mandatory as is a two-metre social distance. In fact, this is actually a best-case scenario, since the series was forced to race in front of empty grandstands for most of 2020.…

In 2019, Rotorua’s Glen Eggleton cruised the main street of Whangamata at Repco Beach Hop 19 in his recently “finished for Beach Hop” ’68 Camaro. On the Saturday afternoon, Whanga’s busiest day, he spied a ’71 Chevelle parked up and sporting a ‘for sale’ sign. He quickly parked and gave the US coupe a bit of a onceover. Impressed with what he saw, he contacted the owner, had a bit of a chat, money was exchanged right then and there, and the car was picked up Saturday night. Now Glen had two tough American cars at his disposal at the biggest car event in the country! The Chevelle looked and sounded tough with the compulsory 6-71 blower poking through a hole in the hood — life was good. Over the…

EMAIL YOUR INFO TO EDITOR@V8.CO.NZ There’s a very high chance that many of you reading this will remember the iconic photo taken by Mike Ashton of the Pak’nSave–sponsored Mk2 Cortina with the front end in the air and the back bumper scraping along the Meremere tarmac. Well, the man in the driver’s seat in that 20-year-old photo, John van Bommel, is now making a long-awaited return to the strip. Being a Ford fan from way back, the only way John was going to do it was when he could commit to doing it in a Ford and doing it right. Having stayed away from even spectating locally for most of his extended absence, a few trips to spectate abroad kept the fire alight and his eye on the game. The…

The weather forecast for the week of the Value Motors / BurgerFuel Port Road Drags was rain and more rain! High hopes were held and prayers to the weather gods undertaken, as, for 53 years of the longest-running street drags in Australasia, it has never rained enough on Port Road Drags day for the event to be cancelled. Waking up at the crack of dawn, getting ready for a proper hat-and-sunblock day, rushing out the door filled with excitement, only to be smacked in the face by gale-force winds and more rain — was this to be the year the event would be rained off? The good news was literally on the horizon with the clouds opening up and the sun starting to shine at 9am. A late start but…

ONLY A HANDFUL OF PEOPLE ARE DEDICATED ENOUGH TO SMALL BLOCKS TO GO TO THESE LENGTHS If you’ve been to any large-scale drag event around New Zealand over the last 30 odd years, there’s a damn good chance that you would have heard the name ‘Roger Binnema’. If you don’t know the name, then you’ll almost certainly recognise the roof-chopped Honda Accord sedan that he’s been piloting for a good chunk of that time. The car is as intriguing as it is impressive, and, given the fact it runs mid low sevens at close to 200mph, that’s saying something. While for most people, campaigning a car like the Accord would be enough, we all know that drag racers can be a little different, and Roger’s no exception. His love for…

There was an interesting mentality that arrived with the Napa Auto Parts Central Muscle Cars (CMC) at Manfeild for its opening round of the new season. It was this strange feeling that motorsport had been stripped away from us all due to the bizarre times of 2020. It felt like a relief that cars could once again roar around a racetrack, and there seemed to be a desperation to be included in this phantom return. The funny thing about it was that, even though the final round of the previous season was cancelled due to Covid lockdowns, it was only a few months ago, and that amount of time away from the tracks for regular season runs is pretty normal. Still, it was a crazy year that messed with everyone,…

For such a relatively small country, we have a huge passion for anything automotive. Kiwis have a massive appetite for their cars and a very active car scene, no matter what type of automobiles spin their wheels. The show scene is proof of this, with dozens of events held throughout the country every weekend — events that punch well above their weight when it comes to quantity and quality. Granted, things have been a bit quiet over the past few months due to Covid-19, but what that has done to the car scene is afforded people more time to ready their cars for this summer. One of the fastest growing regions in the country, Selwyn District in the South Island, is expanding in both numbers of people and classic car…

Back in 2017, after listing and selling their ’55 in less time than it takes to eat a three-course meal, Chris and Cathy McRae went hot rod hunting, finding what Chris thought to be the car of his dreams — a very traditional ’40s-style Model A — in the North Island. “Upon arrival, the car was in excellent shape and looked reasonably well built,” explains Chris — but that would prove not to be the case once the cert process began. Long story short, it was built left hook here in New Zealand and would need to be converted in order to ever become legal. Hayden Ophius at Ophy’s Custom Engineering has spearheaded the rework after being recommended by a mate and, as Chris puts it, “His vision worked perfectly…

Hi Thea, now that’s a really tidy-looking Mustang. What year is it? It’s a 1966. I love the older stuff with chrome. Have you guys had it long? Not really — brought it in from America two years ago. Found it online and had someone stateside check it out for us. Oh nice; so which part of America? We got it out of California, where it had spent most of its life. It was in LA three years prior to us buying it. Before that, it belonged to Full Scale Hot Rods & Customs in Ventura, where it had a full rebuild 12 years before we took ownership. The paint looks great for 12 years! Yeah, it is. When we looked at it online, it appeared very red, but after…

Following the iconic brand’s closure, questions did surface amongst the sharks about the contents of Holden’s heritage collection of more than 80 production and concept vehicles — vehicles such as the first-ever production Holden, the sandman concept, the Hurricane, the Coupe 60, and the stunning Efijy concept. The managing director for GM Australia and New Zealand, Marc Ebolo, has announced that the collection will be put on display in museums throughout Australia and we’ll even get two cars here. Don’t get too excited, though, the truly iconic stuff is staying put in Australia — although Steve Fabish proprietor of the Hillsborough Holden Museum in New Plymouth has secured a C5 Corvette and a Vauxhall VX220. A group of Holden retirees has been working through the 1000s of items in the…

In stark contrast to popular opinion, Dave Vazey states there’s no dramas in getting scratch-built cars road legal, if you know what you’re doing. The ’41 Willys coupe that he’s just completed is a clear signal he well and truly knows what he’s doing. As if building a car like this from a blank slate is not enough of a challenge, this car was initially being constructed solely for strip use. However, during the build Dave, who is a talented engineer by trade, decided that the way the build was shaping up, it’d be a shame to only be able to use it a quarter of mile at a time. Working in his favour on this wild change of direction was the fact that he’s owned and built 30 or…

Clint Bower always wanted a wheel-standing stick-shift drag car, and while life, kids, houses, and other cars may have seen that happen later than anticipated, this season has seen him finally hit the track in his wild, owner-built 1948 Austin A40 Devon. The dream hasn’t gone completely smoothly, though, with the two meetings the car has attended so far resulting in two broken diffs and a broken axle. Understandably, a rear-end upgrade is now on the go so that Clint can complete a meet without breaking anything and then learn how to drive it properly before searching for some consistency. While the car is new to the track, it’s certainly not new to the Bower family. Clint took ownership of the pint-sized rocket back in 1986. Even back then, the…

John Dillon, Rod Benjes, and the rest of the DB Racecars / ‘Childs Play’ team held high hopes for the season. They weren’t to eventuate, though, as the first test and tune of the season ended in disaster for the team’s Chev Beretta. At the time of writing the team are still working through all the info they have, and pulling the car apart to find the root cause of the tyre shake that saw the car hook hard to the side off the start line. The first impact with Meremere’s concrete wall jarred Rod’s leg, pushing the throttle and sending the car across the track into the other wall. The result was a chassis damaged beyond repair and — thanks to the quality of the build and the professionalism…

The term ‘shop truck’ is something many of you will be familiar with. It harks back to the time long before utes became the most popular vehicles in New Zealand, and when they typically only had one bench seat and a load on the back that would make even the toughest ute of today break a sweat. Care for its paint and panel work always paid second fiddle to its need to pull its weight for the team, and the slap and tickle it was given on a Friday arvo with a bucket and some sketchy rag by the work experience kid was about as far from car care as you could get. This is why these trucks are often a little worn around the edges, the paint’s never perfect,…

Balancing your rotating assembly is critical, not only to ensuring you have a reliable engine that doesn’t shake to pieces, but also to unlocking hidden horsepower and rpm. Balancing the piston and rod assemblies is work that can be carried out in the home workshop with minimal tools, if you have the patience. You’ll need scales that read down to one-tenth of a gram. We purchased a set of cheap digital scales — seriously, these things only cost $12 and the accuracy was fine. Most aftermarket pistons will arrive with a weight tolerance within a gram of one another. You get what you pay for in this area. Our Wiseco race pistons came in at 337g each, ranging from 337.1 to 337.8. Each time you weigh, make sure you repeat…

Some 15 years ago, Ramo Simpson had a date with a judge who threatened to take his one-tonner, which at the time was a work ute. Not having a bar of that, Ramo decided it was better to take it off the road and out of sight for a little while, which is when it underwent its first rebuild. Since that time, it’s been through constant evolution in the quest for bigger and better burnouts, and of course reliability. The latest combo is a blown 400 Chev up front, built by Glen at Engine Specialties. Based around a Dart Little M block, the package is all spec’d by Glen and includes a set of AFR heads with Jessel rockers carried over from the previous NA 400 build. Sitting on top…

By now, many of you will be well aware of Craig Taylor’s “LSMSTR’ Clubsport R8 and the fact that he’s going all out to turn it into a VZ like no other … Well, here’s the latest update. The independent rear end has now been removed and a custom four-link fitted along with nine-inch diff; and the tubs are soon to come. Craig states, “The fabricator helping is well known in the car/burnout scene and puts out top-notch jobs and absolutely loves doing what he does”. At this stage, Craig’s not sure if he’s going to leave the diff in its raw finish with a clear coat or throw some candy at it while it’s out. Either way, having a nine-inch and four-link in a Clubsport certainly makes it different…