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Summernats madness
MAR. 2017 ISSUE 142
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$9.99 Vicious CUDA
Retro '37 FORD COUPE
THE LOW-DOWN ON NZ’S QUICKEST HOT ROD TWIN-TURBO CHOPPER CROMWELL CAR SHOW AND MORE
1974 HOLDEN HQ KINGSWOOD ENGINE: GM ZZ572 big block Chev crate engine, Chevrolet Performance tall-deck castiron block, 4340 forged steel crankshaft, 4340 forged steel H-beam rods, forged aluminium pistons, 9.6:1 compression, hydraulic roller camshaft, aluminium rectangular-port heads, 118cc combustion chambers, 2.25-inch stainless-steel intake valves, 1.88-inch stainlesssteel exhaust valves, aluminium roller rockers, 1.7:1 rocker-arm ratio, GM tall-deck intake manifold, 850cfm Holley carburettor, GM mechanical fuel pump, Aeroflow fuel-pressure regulator, custom 100-litre fuel cell, GM high energy ignition (HEI), Pacemaker headers, custom three-inch exhaust, Flowmaster mufflers, Aussie Desert Cooler radiator, twin thermo fans, Aeroflow overflow tank DRIVELINE: GM 4L80E four-speed auto, TCI transmission controller, Winters nine-inch diff, 31-spline Winters axles, Truetrac diff head SUSPENSION: King Springs coil springs, KYB front shocks, Monroe rear air shocks, relocated rear trailing arm mounts, Blacks Racks steering rack BRAKES: Wilwood master cylinder, aftermarket brake booster, Wilwood six-piston front calipers, Wilwood front discs, Wilwood four-piston rear calipers, Wilwood rear discs WHEELS/TYRES: 18x8- and 18x10-inch Boyd Coddington Junkyard Dog wheels, 225/40R18 and 275/35R18 Michelin Pilot Sport 3 tyres EXTERIOR: Custom bonnet, Blacks Racks aluminium bonnet hinges, Monaro guard flutes, mini-tubbed rear, Spies Hecker Super Deep Black paint
BLACK MAGIC
You do have a back issue to refresh your memory, right? Warren’s Monaro is definitely the most out there street car we’ve featured, made a whole lot better by the fact that he actually does race it. The 555ci big block unfortunately lunched itself after receiving a bit too much boost, although Warren has talked to Big Al, who is sending another long block his way. He has also decided that he no longer wants to race the Monaro, keeping it as more of a street/show car, which means that he’s planning on building something else for the strip. As far as that goes, you’re just going to have to wait and see.
CHASSIS: Custom cross-member INTERIOR: Custom leather upholstery, reclinable front bucket seats, Billet Specialties steering wheel, B&M Street Bandit shifter, Holden Monaro LS dash fascia PERFORMANCE: 620hp
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Another no-brainer was the decision to hand the project reins over to Roger and Tania Binnema, whose team at Balclutha Automotive were responsible for the majority of the Monaro build. Once the Kingswood was in the shop, no time was wasted in giving it the works. The front subframe had a Blacks Racks steering rack installed, since the unit in the Monaro did everything Warren wanted it to, but otherwise retains the factory suspension set-up, albeit with a lower ride height thanks to King Springs coils and shorter KYB shocks. Wilwood six-piston brakes with matching discs were chosen for the front end, with Wilwood four-piston at the rear. And with a Wilwood master cylinder and smaller brake booster — necessary to clear Warren’s mountainous engine of choice — the sedan is not deficient in stopping power.
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At the rear, the stripped shell had the bum cut out of it and a pair of mini-tubs grafted in to clear the set of 18x10-inch Billet Specialties rear rollers. As well as tucking big wheels, the sedan had to sit right, which meant more cutting and welding. You can’t half-arse a build like this, and wonky suspension geometry was never on the cards. The Holden HQ sedan came with a factory-triangulated four-link set-up, so there was no point in reinventing the wheel, but the team did relocate the body-mounting points for the trailing arms, correcting the rear suspension geometry for the lowered ride height. In addition, the diff tunnel was cut out and moved up to provide an additional five inches of vertical clearance for the Winters nine-inch diff. That nine-inch is filled with Winters 31-spline axles and a Truetrac limited-slip head. If you’re
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Event Report
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here isn’t much that can be said about Street Machine Summernats that hasn’t been said before. Most comments contain a flagrant use of superlatives, insane hyperbole, and much raving about “the best automotive event in the world”. Since it’s all been said before, our introduction probably validates all of those points — Summernats is in a league of its own, and if you’re into the kind of stuff it’s about, you will not find a better automotive event. Period. Local street machiner Chic Henry helped to build the dedicated burnout pad at Exhibition Park in Canberra (EPIC) in 1987, hosting the first ever Summernats in January of 1988 — but surely even he couldn’t have predicted what the event would become. At this year’s event, which marked its 30th anniversary, the official figures reported 2534 vehicle entrants and 119,184 people through the gates.
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What’s the attraction? Since you could count on one hand the things Summernats is missing, it’s got quite a lot going for it: an almost constant cruise route around EPIC, enough trade and merchandise stalls to send the average person broke, a show hall with cars that defy belief, dyno-cell that’s home to a mega-power shootout, bourbon and cola slushies, live concerts, the Miss Summernats competition, a raft of driving events, and the legendary Summernats Burnout Championships and National Burnout Masters competitions. Of course, that’s only the short version. To try to fully convey in words what goes down at Summernats is going to be pretty damn hard, but let’s give it a crack anyway. So, without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, we present the Street Machine Summernats 30 highlights reel.
Right: Tough cars abound at Summernats, but sometimes the toughest ones are also the most understated — relatively speaking, of course. The ‘DOGNUT’ Falcon XW has no blower and injector hat sticking out of the bonnet, but the pair of air cleaners poking through the cowl-induction scoop speak of aspirated power. Then there’s the roll cage, beadlock rear wheels, and all-important parachute — yeah, this thing is hard. If your car can transbrake-launch on Tuff Street, nearly pulling the fronts off the ground, while barely exceeding walking pace, it’s tough. No question about it.
Tuff Street
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Summernats is far greater than the sum of its parts, but Tuff Street is its most important one. Without Tuff Street, it wouldn’t be Summernats. What you’ve got to understand about its attraction is the relatively strict legislation around modified vehicles in Australia. While regulations vary from state to state, it’s a fairly safe bet that, if you’re building the tubbed and blown machine of your dreams, you’re going to have your work cut out to get it on the road. That doesn’t mean it’s impossible, but it does mean there are many examples of automotive excess built solely for events such as Summernats. What Tuff Street does is provide the owners of these vehicles with the opportunity to drive their creations, on what is somehow the slowest moving and coolest street in the world. Why would you want to drive a 1000hp blown monster down the motorway, when you could let low-rev blower surge haul you along a procession of similarly wild machines, as hordes of methanol-hungry spectators exuberantly take it all in? If you’re on the other side of the steering wheel, Tuff Street presents a constantly changing canvas, exhibiting the coolest, toughest, and most extreme vehicles — ones you’d probably only seen in magazines or on the internet — in all of their raw, unmuffled glory. Cars like the ‘REALDEAL’ Torana built by Castlemaine Rod Shop become more than just insane photos when they’re snarling and whining past at little more than walking pace.
Below: Jason and Paulbags Drew drove up from Geelong in their limo, purchased as a dirt-cheap pub cruiser for the boys. Paul and Jase helped out by storing the Kiwi Carnage cars in their shed, helping to arrange the rebuild of Arnie’s engine after it fried itself at Tread Cemetery last year, and sorting out transport for the cars to Summernats on a transporter driven by the one and only Andrew Lynch. Bloody legends, those boys.
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uckets are controversial; some love them, some hate them, and others just plain don’t get them. Dunedin’s Kerry Stewart couldn’t really care less what people think of his 1923 Chrysler bucket, as he built it solely with one purpose in mind, and that was to go from a standstill to a point a quarter of a mile away in as little time as possible. Of course, to add a level of difficulty to that seemingly simple task, the catch was that the car must be 100-per-cent street legal — not 99-per-cent, not 99.5-per-cent, but bangon, no bullshit, testing-station-WOF legal. While you certainly wouldn’t put Kerry in a box labelled ‘bucket owners only’, he has had a couple over the years, among other tough cars. The most notable of those previously owned buckets being this one — well, sort of.
Having owned and raced the car back in 2006, Kerry tore up tyres at drag meets around the country with a big block Chrysler engine up front. Sadly, the fun didn’t last as long as he’d hoped, with the engine expiring in a grand way before the car had shown its full potential. Disillusioned and sidetracked with other cars, Kerry made the decision to sell the car rather than deal with the cost and time involved in fixing it. Luckily for Kerry, the man who pushed the Buy Now button was Matt Hayter of Hayter Precision Metalworks in Taupo. As you can imagine, with a business name like that, Matt’s a not half-bad fabricator, and he soon set about adding his own touches to the project.
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During the build, Ken dug into the car’s history, tracing its ownership back to the Rea family — a family name well known in hot rodding circles, with Gary Rea having pedalled the car way back in the 1950s. The car then moved on to Rod Guilford, who attended the first New Zealand Street Rod Nationals with it in 1973. Drag racer Paul Bloemsaat’s name appears next on the ownership papers, followed by Charles Lewis, who purchased the car in 1990. It was in Charles’ barn that the car sat for 20 years in an uncompleted state before Ken purchased it. The car’s rich history, as well as Ken’s own requirements for it, meant that the build stretched out over four years, as every effort was made to ensure that no corners were cut along the way. Ensuring that the chassis was up to the task was the first part of the build, a job that saw the
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stock chassis boxed and complex custom cross members fabricated between the rails. As the car was purchased with a 327-cube small block Chev in it, it made sense to retain it, albeit rebuilt. During the chassis build, the Holden HT front end was modified to eliminate bump steer, and a set of Rods by Reid drop spindles was added. Out the back, a custom triangulated four-link was constructed and mated to QA1 adjustable coilovers in an effort to get the ride height sorted. Having been hot rodded for so many years, it’s no surprise that the car had been roof chopped at some stage in its past. What is surprising, though, is that the chop is just three-quarters of an inch. While, in an ideal world, this would mean Ken didn’t need to do anything apart from simple body touchups before paint, that couldn’t have been further from the truth. As the roof was prepared for paint,
KEN BROWN
CAR CLUB: Oceanside Street Rods AGE: 72 OCCUPATION: Retired PREVIOUSLY OWNED CARS: ’48 Ford sedan, ’35 Ford Tudor, ’37 Ford Tudor, ’38 Ford Tudor, ’34 Ford pickup, ’85 Ford Mustang, ’66 Ford Mustang hardtop, ’87 Ford Mustang, ’66 Ford Mustang Deluxe convertible DREAM CAR: This one WHY THE COUPE? I wanted a retro coupe with modern reliability BUILD TIME: Four-and-a-half years LENGTH OF OWNERSHIP: Six years KEN THANKS: Greg Dietch, for the interior trim; Dave Green, for the diff; Chuck Mann, for the transmission; Phil Game and crew at PG Hydraulics; Kerry Brocas at Franklin Auto Refinishers, for the paint; Mike Phillips, for the roof chop, Terry Furness, Bretto
it was discovered that the previous panel work had been done by masters of body filler — the filler having been sculpted to give the roof profile some semblance of the correct shape. However, Ken’s quick to point out that the metalwork itself wasn’t badly done; it was just the heat warping during the chop that turned things pear-shaped. To remedy this, Brett Stinson at Kaipaki Kustom Kars was called on to re-chop the chop and create a finish that needed very little filler. To ensure that the factory profile was achieved, templates were taken off Ken’s sedan. The process took just shy of 40 hours to achieve, but the end result is nothing short of amazing. Colour choice was easy. Having previously seen and fallen in love with a ’36 Ford from abroad that wore red and black, Ken decided on the same scheme, albeit in reverse, with Victory Red coating the bottom and a satin black up top.
The interior, which at first glance is just as retro, features many not-so-obvious modern amenities, such as electronically adjustable seats and layers of Dynamat heat and sound insulation. The smoked look of the dash is the handiwork of Warren Houston, and a throwback to the days when Ken first started hot rodding — when the look was achieved using real fire. Thankfully, that’s not required these days. The car finally hit the road in 2014, not long before a bucket-list road trip around the South Island — although, leading up to the trip, the rebuilt 327’s rocker gear let go, destroying the bottom end in the process. This saw a crate 350 fitted to a Chuck Mann–built Powerglide and dropped in the hole. Ken estimates the new combo to have around 310hp, which, in a small car like the coupe, is plenty. It’s still surprisingly sedate around town, as we discovered during our photo shoot.
GOTTA DRIVE ’EM
As confirmation of Ken’s passion for making sure his cars are driven, he lent his Tudor to Phil Game and family to take down from Auckland to the Omarama Pre 49 event, towing a race-car trailer full of luggage and clocking up several thousand kilometres in the process. That’s not a bad way to say thanks to Phil for the help he gave Ken during the build.
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NICK SCAMMELL AGE: 45
OCCUPATION: Semi-retired PREVIOUSLY OWNED CARS: This is my first car … DREAM CAR: Any Aston Martin WHY THE COBRA? It was a dream at high school BUILD TIME: 20 years LENGTH OF OWNERSHIP: As above NICK THANKS: Mum and Grandad; Burt Norman — a great mate, thanks; my wife, for making me finish it!
actually being able to hold a conversation with each other, as well as the underfloor heating that keeps them both nice and toasty in the winter months. For what it is, the interior is actually surprisingly comfortable, despite the relative lack of creature comforts. Marty McFadyen took care of the leather upholstery — “as he does for a lot of hot rodders down here [in Gisborne] — a true gentleman,” Nick adds — and the rest of the cosy cabin is taken up by the vitals: a bunch of gauges, big Auto Meter rev counter, and a custom shift lever attached to the close-ratio four-speed Toploader gearbox. The manual ’box keeps driver engagement high, although the well-sorted chassis lends itself to that sort of thing. A narrowed Jaguar rear end working
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in conjunction with double A-arm front suspension and a full suite of coilover shocks means the Cobra “handles like a roller skate”, as Nick puts it. The custom Arrow Wheels three-piece rollers, measuring in at 17x10 and 17x11 inches, endow the pocket rocket with more than enough grip, as well as looking absolutely bang-on. “I had to remortgage the house to get the wheels,” Nick laughs, “but the knock-off conversion was the look we were going for.” They’re probably the most expensive things Nick has bought for the car, which is a real testament to the fact that you don’t need a bottomless pit of a bank account to build the car of your dreams. Sometimes, all it takes is a bit of skill and a lot of patience.