I'm an exporter and work with a mate in Lilydale (Eastern suburbs of Melbourne of course) and have been there a heap of times for decent periods of time too, so pretty familiar with things...I'm an exporter by trade too...shipping stuff over there (and back here now and then as well of course) and aside from my Torana I've brought over a heap of Valiants here (I was really into Mopars originally here) and another couple Torrie hatchbacks besides my red one (which I have had over here since around early 2000 or so)
As for my car and what I've done to it....well, I've done just about everything I could think of so far..
It started out as a 253/4 speed car which I did a cam swap, extractors and a few other little things and drove it around that way for years..the engine was getting abit tired, and after building an blown LS1,6 speed '69 Camaro (that was for my mate there) I got the LS1 bug...(and my daily driver for a few years was a 2000 Camaro SS convertable) so I pulled the 253 out of the Torana and just went at it.
I paint stripped the engine bay to bare metal (it was mint) to start with and just primered it and rolled the car into the garage. I looked around a little to find a good low mile LS1/T56 donor, and after finding one I went ahead and built mounts, modified the trans tunnel for room, etc.
I have done every thing on the car from start to finish so far, aside from welding up the air cleaner box (I designed it and made a cardboard mock up) but I only have a mig welder and wanted it done with tig, so had it done locally. I built the wiring loom for the car using a Camaro donor and just used the service manual and went wire by wire and picked out what I needed or didn't.
Aside from the LS1 and T56 six speed...I've got a drop tank, which I bought on one trip there (had it made by a guy near Mt Evelyn) fuel system is all Aeromotive...A1000 pump, twin filters, fuel pump controller, and regulator. I made up all the braided and hard lines for it as well. The engine itself is stock inside, aside from the Edelbrock intake I went with..also I moved/hid the coil packs as you can see as well.
Exhaust is some stainless extractors I built...into an X pipe feeding into Spintech side outlet mufflers. (no worries here with exhaust exit in front of the rear wheels!)
Speaking of wheels, they are custom made ones I had done by a local wheel company. They are a forged aluminum center and are light and strong. 18" x 10" in the back and 18" x 8" in the front.
Diff....I got a 9" housing one trip I was there and bought all new bits for it here.. new 31 spline axles, new Strange nodular center, new Tru-Trac limited slip, 3.55 gears, billet pinion support, the lot..
For brakes...the rear I just used an off the shelf kit with 330mm rotors. The front is abit unusual, but worked out good in the end. I used some billet hubs from there with 5 on 4.75" stud pattern (HQ/Chev) and after alot of research I found a rotor with the perfect offset to suit the caliper choice and my wheel...which is a 360 x 36mm rotor from a 2009 Mercedes AMG. Cool thing is they are factory drilled and really quite cheap even right from the Benz dealer! Calipers are 4 spot Brembo's. I would have liked to use the matching 8 piston AMG Brembo calipers, but the price was sorta outa hand for me (at the moment at least) so this combo worked out well. Just made a caliper bracket out of 5/8" thick plate steel.
Hmmmmm...what else... Oh...car has air conditioning too. I used a street rod style a/c-heater unit mounted up under the dash and spent a fair amount of time building and hiding all the lines in the engine bay aside from a couple short runs from the compressor to the inner skirt area. Power windows and remote door locks was a pretty easy step as well. Also on the interior..I was able to use the factory console as well after some minor trimming.
For cooling, I went with a dual pass Afco radiator and twin Spal fans (with a Spal fan controller) it works excellent. On a very hot day with the air con on..I let the car sit and idle in the driveway for an hour and it didn't flinch.
I wanted to keep all the factory SS gauges in my car too...so I used a tach adaptor from Dakota Digital to run the tacho from the output from the LS1 computer (and it runs the fuel pump controller too) and for the speedo, I use a electronic to mechanical adaptor...pretty much a little box with a motor in it that takes the signal from the computer and converts it to a standard type mechanical speedo cable output. Nice bit of gear.
Sure there is a heap more, that's a start at least...and hope I didn't ramble on too much, ha ha....I have hundreds and hundreds of pics I took during the build and of course be happy to share if anyone is curious about any of it !
I've been around the block in it, but have a few more little things to finish off then will start putting some miles on it to see how it all works out. Once I see everything is good, I have some engine upgrades in mind to take advantage of the intake too...some worked heads and a cam swap should put me in the 500 - 550 hp range I figure.
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