Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2020 i Street Machine

STOP the press! Our mates at Summernats have teamed up with Sydney Dragway to stage the first major post-coronavirus car event, and it’s got us more than a little excited. Burnout Masters will see some of the toughest skid cars on the planet converge on Sydney Dragway on 18-19 July to compete for prize money and golden tickets into the Burnout Masters final at Street Machine Summernats 34. With safety measures around COVID-19 still an important consideration, the event will be an entrant-only affair, but the action will be livestreamed so that you can watch it from your lounge room as it happens. How cool is that! Entries are now open, with big-hitters like Jake Myers, Phil Kerjean and Mick Brasher (the latter debuting his brand-new blown 13B combo) already…

LETTER OF THE MONTH STREET CRED HI FOLKS, I read in the latest edition of Street Machine that Telfo is moving on from being editor of the magazine. Just wanted to say thanks for all your efforts, Telfo, and all the best for your new direction. Also welcome to the new guy, Andrew Broadley. There are lots of things I appreciate about the mag: the layout, articles, excellent photography, paper quality – and the incredible cars and their creators. Yes, the mag is a bit thinner right now (wish I could be), but it’s still the best value out there, so keep it coming onto the shelves! Also very much appreciate SM’s developmental and organising skills in providing the Drag Challenge events – awesome stuff! Thanks guys and girls. In…

THE 6/71 IS AWESOME. IT’S SO TORQUEY THAT IT TORCHES THE TYRES; IT’LL FRY THE RUBBER AT 100KM/H. YOU HAVE TO BE CAREFUL IN THE distance, I can hear that unmistakable whine: a Roots-blown V8. Seconds later, a luminescent green, tough-as-nails AP6 Valiant powers around the corner, the sun glinting off the twin-carbied blower towering through the bonnet. The tough and tidy AP6 easily pulls up and a smiling Lucas Hurley disembarks from the luxurious cream cockpit. Straight away, Lucas enthuses about his chosen powerhouse. “The 6/71 is awesome,” he says. “It’s so torquey; it just torches the tyres. It’ll fry the rubber at 100km/h or whatever speed you’re doing; you have to be careful.” When it comes to tough Mopars, the AP6 is rarely a model that comes to…

WHEN WE STRIPPED THE CAR BACK FOR PAINT I FOUND SOME RUST AND A FEW OTHER ISSUES. THAT’S WHEN I LOST MY MIND AND DECIDED TO GO ALL OUT BIG, loud, fast, tough – there are plenty of words that come to mind when you first lay eyes on Morris Markovic’s XE Falcon, but ‘understated’ is certainly not one of them. Eighties Falcons have been in Morris’s family for as long as he can remember, so it comes as no surprise that an XE was his car of choice for this project. “My dad is a Ford man through and through,” he says. “When he came over here in the 70s his first car was a Falcon, and we all grew up in an XD Falcon. My brother owns one…

IT MIGHT appear that we’re giving Steven Alldrick and the Deluxe Rod Shop a lot of ink lately, but that’s simply because they keep turning out killer hot rods and street machines. Most recently we featured Steven’s XR ute in SM, Apr ’20, and it was a huge hit. In a way, this ’32 roadster is a hot rod version of that car: understated, with a tendency towards factory styling features, but highly detailed top to bottom. I know many of you won’t believe it – and it sure as shit doesn’t look like it – but both cars were built with very tight budgets. Of course, it helps when you have your own hot rod shop and spend a lot of time attending swap meets to source the cool…

WE ALL love seeing a tough car slammed to the ground, but they can be a royal pain to live with. Getting in and out of driveways, over speed humps or down our rough highways without taking the sump, exhaust or undercarriage out is a real challenge, and this is where airbag suspension provides an awesome solution. Aaron Gregory from Memphis Hell (that’s his ’51 Chev, top right) has been installing air suspension in all manner of vehicles for over 10 years, and he’s seen the industry change dramatically in its packaging and brain-power. “While Slam Specialties brought out airbags with internal bump stops and springs comparable to coil-overs, the single biggest improvement has been the technology controlling the air systems,” says Aaron. “Companies like Air Lift and the recently…

WHO OTHER THAN SEPAROVICH WOULD PUT A PSI BLOWER ON A 305CI CHEVY SMALL-BLOCK – AND HAVE IT MAKE AN AWE-INSPIRING 1300HP? GEORGE Separovich of Blown Motorsports in Western Australia is a racer, car builder, jack of all trades, and just happens to build the absolute baddest blown and injected V8 engines in the country. Seriously, asking this guy to build you a donk would be like asking McLaren to build you a road car. George first hit the limelight with a legendary burnout at Motorvation in 2004 with his stunning blown and injected, small-block Chevpowered HK Monaro. It was in a class of its own back then, and George has had a bunch of tough cars since, while also building engines for many of the modern burnout champions. Just…

01 CRANK IT UP HOLDEN’S ‘plastic-power’ V8 mills aren’t the beefiest things out of the box, but with some trick kit they can still move. Bumping up the cubes can help with that, and SCAT’s 4340 standardweight crankshafts are a great starting point. The cranks are forged before being ground, micro-polished, heat-treated and ion-nitrided – all fancy ways of saying they’re made from the good stuff. They can be had in 355ci or 388ci capacity (when used with a 4.030in bore), and are available through Rocket Industries on (02) 8825 1900 or rocketindustries.com.au. 02 SWEET ’TOOTH WE’VE all heard of Bluetooth tailshafts before (SEMA, anyone?), but what about actually being able to control your car’s driveline from your smartphone? Well, the wizards at TCI have now developed the Wireless EZ-TCU…

THE pro touring scene has seen a decent growth spurt in Australia in recent years, so it seems fitting that the USA’s premier pro touring event is making its way back to our shores next year, hitting Calder Park Raceway over the weekend of 20-21 February. The Optima Search for the Ultimate Street Car (OSUSC) is revered around the world as one of the hardest and most well-rounded events for pro tourers, pitting competitors against each other in a variety of tests including drag racing, autokhana, speed stop and circuit time trials. Last year saw the first OSUSC event in Australia take place at Calder Park, the day after the conclusion of our own gruelling street car marathon, Street Machine Drag Challenge. But while events like Drag Challenge and Hot…

SOMETIMES all it takes is a great sponsor livery to forever cement a race car in people’s brains. Take Russell Ingall’s old ‘Silver Bullet’ VT Commodore V8 Supercar, for instance. Much like Craig Lowndes’s ‘Green-Eyed Monster’ AU Falcon, Ingall’s Silver Bullet from the 2000 Supercars championship didn’t actually enjoy that much success, but the Castrol-sponsored VT is still remembered to this day. The car has recently undergone a full resto at its original home at Perkins Engineering, and is now for sale for an eye-watering $500,000. We shared the news on our Facebook page; here’s what you had to say. Andrew Swane – One owner, only driven on weekends. Stephen Faunce – Never been driven hard, old lady owner. Benjamin Parnell – One female owner, non-smoker. Ben Thatcher – Well…

IMAGINE setting out to build a car for Street Machine Drag Challenge and ending up with something good enough to be in the final three cars in the hunt for the Grand Champion sword at Summernats, almost by accident. You’ve got to hand it to Sydneysider Domenic Luci, because that’s what he’s managed to achieve with his flawless VK Commodore. Dom is perhaps better known for his antics in his HZ Holden skid car, LITMUP. Powered by a staunch 416ci LS-based combo, Dom’s all-motor Kingswood has mixed it with the blown brigade for years, with a best of third place in the Summernats Burnout Championship and an eighthplace finish in the Masters. It has also proved capable of a 9.7@138mph pass at Sydney Dragway. However, Dom was keen to build…

680RWHP OF TURBO LS SOUNDS MUCH NICER THAN AN ASTHMATIC 202 AND TRIMATIC SLUSHBOX! IT’S a quandary for anyone considering pulling apart a pristine and original LH Torana in the 21st century: do you leave it as-is in tribute to Australia’s golden era of chrome-bumper motoring, or build it into something mental to blow your socks off? The choice Mick Jahnecke ended up making with his LH is something he contemplates to this day. “It was a two-owner car when I got it, and I probably shouldn’t have pulled it apart,” he laughs. While some may be upset that the LH is no longer sporting its original driveline, we think that 680rwhp of turbo LS sounds much nicer than an asthmatic 202 and Trimatic slushbox! Mick got the car roughly…

TRADING household items for chromebumpered Aussie metal sounds like the kind of dealings that would’ve gone on in the 90s, but that’s exactly how young gun Tim Polsen got his hands on his HQ Premier. “Dad got it for me as a Christmas present in 2011, trading a chainsaw for the whole car,” he says. While it sounds like a ripper deal, as with any Lion of this age, it wasn’t all gravy and rainbows. “It was painted with what looked like three layers of house paint, and it had rust in three of the doors, the rear quarters and the firewall, so it needed some work,” says Tim with considerable understatement. The initial stage of Tim’s journey with his first car saw him turn it into a sweet P-plate…

ANDREW DALE EH HOLDEN PANEL VAN “WE BOUGHT the pano nearly five years ago. Since then it’s had 15 trips on the back of an ambulance to the hospital. My wife said we should call it Cider, because it’s always on the cider the road! Funniest thing she’s ever said, and it stuck. It puts out 300rwhp via a 350ci small-block Chev, TH350 trans and a Truetrac diff centre. It’s done 6500km since March, when the engine was rebuilt by Johnno from D&H Automotive in Mitchell. I love the car, but it’s the people you meet and the memories you get to keep that are priceless. Sunday cruisy lunches are the best time of the week, hands down.” Photos: Ben Hosking TINO SALVIA 1955 CHEVROLET “TRI-FIVE Chevys are the epitome…

WIN! WIN a Street Machine gift pack, containing a variety of our awesome clobber! Please include shirt size and mailing address; contents may vary. WINNER! SM GIFTPACK…

LONG before he hit the big time in Hollywood with flicks like Dead Poets Society and The Truman Show, Australian director Peter Weir’s first feature film was this low-budget, pitch-black comedy/horror, and it’s a beaut. The Waldo brothers, Arthur (Camilleri) and George (Scully), are driving their EK Holden through rural Australia, hoping to find work. As night is falling, they spot a sign advising of employment in a town called Paris, so they follow the directions down a winding dirt road. But a sudden blast of bright light blinds driver George and the EK careens down a slope, killing him. After waking up in Paris’s hospital, the shell-shocked Arthur is taken under the wing of the town’s mayor (Meillon), who lets him stay with him and his wife Beth (Jaffer)…

I WANTED TO CREATE ONE-OFF CARS THAT WERE DEFINITELY NOT LIKE SOMETHING THAT EVERYONE ELSE WAS DRIVING THE Australian custom mindset of the late 1950s and 60s carried over into the styling of the panel vans and street machines built in the 1970s and early 80s. Hot-car people of those eras weren’t afraid to let their imaginations run wild, chopping and changing cars that were often less than a decade old and still plentiful as daily drivers. There was no concept of ‘wrecking a classic’ back then. Stephen Wilson was front and centre for all of this action and has numerous builds to his credit, but his wild custom Monaro panel van dubbed Hunchback is the stuff of legend. What sparked your interest in cars? I used to go to…

THERE WERE 69 ENTRANTS IN ALL SORTS OF CRAZY-FAST MACHINES, RANGING FROM 60S MUSCLE TO VF CLUBBIES FOLLOWING the success of the inaugural No Excuses event back in December 2018, organiser Paul Sera and the Radial Life team knew they were onto a good thing and returned with No Excuses #2 in late February. Thankfully, the gloomy Victorian weather decided to give it a rest for a day and provided blue skies, sunshine and comfortable temperatures. The Ballarat Drag Racing Club blocked off one of the Ballarat Airport runways and the racing was on! No Excuses is a radial tyre-only event with four classes (235, 275, 325 and AWD) and extra prizes awarded for various performances like the obligatory Best Burnout. As the title implies, No Excuses doesn’t involve winning…

ALAN FLEMING’S ‘MOTORVATOR’ HG PANEL VAN WAS AN UNBRIDLED BLAST OF CREATIVITY WE MAY NEVER SEE THE LIKE OF AGAIN THE glory days of the Australian van craze were over by the time Alan Fleming’s ‘Motorvator’ dropped like an alien spacecraft into the Aussie show scene at the start of the 1990s. Pro streeters now ruled the roost, and Alan’s HG van-meets-VK Calais creation had precisely zero in common with those drag-inspired weapons. When the HG appeared on the April/May 1990 cover of SM with the cover line ‘Loony Bin’, the VK front end and tail-lights weren’t the craziest parts of the build. After all, Aussies had been updating their rides with later-model looks for at least a couple of decades by that point. No, what was really wild was…

AMANDA Archer has recently developed a penchant for chromebumper rides thanks to an unexpected love affair with a 1964 XM Falcon coupe. Her striking orange Ford seems to be a trophy magnet wherever it goes, and showing it has become quite an involved hobby for Amanda. Why an XM, Amanda? I never had a passion for old cars, only new. Then my husband David bought an XP coupe, which is a ’66 model and he’s a ’66 model himself. So, I thought that it’d be cool to get a ’64, which is my year. We came across this in Cooly [Coolangatta] a couple of years ago and asked the owners to let us know if it was ever for sale, and six weeks later, they did. My passion just grew…

SOMETIMES, it takes time away from the people and things you love to realise their importance. I’m sure many of you can relate to that feeling during this period of self-isolation, and it got me thinking about the fact that most of the significant relationships and experiences in my own life have had one common denominator: modified cars. I remember how it all started. I was the second-youngest child in a family of five boys and one girl in Brighton, South Australia. My older brothers were into cars, so a big part of my childhood was spent messing around with them in the back shed. My eldest brother modified an FJ to quite a good standard, and the secondeldest was a mechanic, so he always had me handing him tools…

GAG OF THE MONTH CHILD’S PLAY THE BOSS of a company needed to call one of his employees about an urgent problem with the company computer system. He dialled the employee’s home phone number and was greeted by a child’s voice whispering: “Hello?” “Hello, is your daddy home?” the boss asked. “Yes,” whispered the small voice. “May I talk with him?” the man asked. The small voice whispered: “No.” Surprised by the response, the boss asked: “Well, is your mummy there?” “Yes,” came the answer. “May I talk with her?” Again, the small voice whispered: “No.” “Is there anyone else there I could talk to?” the boss asked the child. “Yes,” the child whispered. “A policeman.” Wondering what a cop would be doing at his employee’s home, the boss asked:…

IN DISCUSSIONS of ground-pounding FoMoCo engines, one name always comes up: Jon Kaase. The Georgia, USA-based engine builder has taken more Engine Masters wins than most of us have had hot dinners, and he was the number-one choice for Hunter Valley resident Chris Lewis when he went shopping for a new donk. “My car is a ’74-model XB Fairmont GS coupe, which was originally white with a 302ci,” says Chris. “I didn’t have the original motor, so I started wondering what I could fit in there. I didn’t want solid lifters or a really revvy race-style motor, or anything that was going to need a lot of maintenance. I’ve followed Jon Kaase for a while and I had the cash there for one of his engines, so I decided to…