2118 replies to this topic

[SmacT]

So hot, and drove it there. Tops effort mate, well deserved.

[MRLXSS]

Awesome work mate! I was more than happy to help out with the renders of this beast - It was so good having it directly in front of my stand as well!

 

Seeing I was in my stand for the majority of the weekend, everytime I looked out at your car it was flooded with people around it. It was easily the 'busiest' car in the pavilion for most of the weekend which is a real credit to you.

[rexy]

Oh, if only that orange hatch had a blue engine bay & graphics...

 

P.S. That silver "Rod Shop" LC seems to be missing some bonnet protrusions now?

 

 

Now has Ferrari power….

[Shiney005]

Thanks for taking us all on the ride with you Heath.  It is one of the greatest build threads in here.

[Heath]

Thank you guys. Thanks for coming on the ride with me hahahaha.

 

Yeah that Rod Shop LC Torana has a Ferrari V8 backed by a slushbox nowadays. Must be the only one of its kind, and not in a good way. I think that vehicle is a victim of being owned by a company rather than one person who can outline a vision or philosophy for the car. Or maybe someone thinks that "More is More", because that car seens seems to have... "things" (Clickbaity things that would draw people in on a YouTube title or similar) on it for the point of having those things. It's less than the sum of its parts IMO. 

 

“Oh, if only that orange hatch had a blue engine bay & graphics...”

Harfhaha you’re too quick, beat me to it

When you mentioned graphics Heath, I had disturbing flashbacks
to those late ‘80s gaudy street machine mag jobs
I reckon it’s really complimented your other orange bits in the car
and balanced it all up.
Just need to do the wing mirrors and wipers orange now(nyuknyuk)
I wouldn’t have dreamed it would work out so good
Full points for you again

I'm working on that orange hatch getting a blue engine bay... it's taking some arm twisting.

 

I am very concerned about your use of "disturbing" and "late 80's" in the same sentence, however. We should be celebrating this shit!

 

But yeah random exterior parts being painted orange isn't at the top of the list. That's a bit low rent for my taste, lol.

 

Agree completely - very hard to pull off graphics like this without looking tacky, but you've done it superbly. Seriously hot - and amazing how much it now makes the engine bay colour etc all just seem like a perfect fit.

 

Well done mate. Your car is now in my official Top 10 Torana's of all time, haha!

 

Awesome! That's quite the accolade.

But now I actually feel like ripping my 70's style stripes I did off to spite you guys who are talking about graphics being tacky! I want to replace them with some airbrushed 80's graphics in pastel colours, fragmented shapes/glass, graph lines, heartbeat with a big neon glow...  I clearly haven't been anywhere near polarising enough with my graphics package.

 

This is not a piss-take by the way. Late 80's era is PEAK Street Machining in my opinion. 

 

Nice one on the self contained display!!

 

Thanks for the chat mate, that was such excellent timing that I could chat to you and Al and Woody at the same time, what a bonus!

 

I want to point out something for other readers to appreciate... half the cars that are parked around Heaths were brought in via enclosed trailers, all fully detailed ready to show. As would have been the case in the Elite hall at Summernats.

 

To present your car alongside those, to a standard which equals or in some cases surpasses, is a huge feather in Heaths cap. Not to mention most of those cars are built in workshops with large cheque books.

 

Massive skill, massive commitment, exceptional engineering and craftsmanship. Well done mate. Legendary result.

 

Great timing, haha! Also great to meet you and aren't Al and Woody just great fellas too?

 

Cheers dude. Yeah, I think it is a shame that this category of entrant is "Street Elite" but there's clearly no qualification of anything to do with street use in it haha. Nothing I can do about that though, lol.

 

Awesome work mate! I was more than happy to help out with the renders of this beast - It was so good having it directly in front of my stand as well!

 

Seeing I was in my stand for the majority of the weekend, everytime I looked out at your car it was flooded with people around it. It was easily the 'busiest' car in the pavilion for most of the weekend which is a real credit to you.

 

[yel327]

If it counts at all Heath I vote for DL7 (remove/delete stripes). Personal taste though, your car is unique whichever way to do it! Big fan of Ultra Blue though, my favourite HZ colour. My HZ Overlander cab-chassis was Ultra Blue originally.

 

I'm not a fan of that later 70's GMH colour schemes and stripes. I reckon HX and HZ Sandman, HX-HZ GTS and LX SS are the worst exteriors of all pre 80's GMH vehicles. They did fix the final L31 SS's though (A9X)!

[Shiney005]

I used to froth on cars like these.

 

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[LXCHEV]

Heath - in my eyes too - I think the late 80's, early 90's was the absolute peak of street machining, generally speaking across the board. Especially for street/muscle cars in Australia. Time moves on, tastes change and builds evolve - I get all that. But I just can't relate to all these high-end builds these days - there's far less street machining now and it's more about workshop bragging rights and cheque-book builds. Yawn!!

[Shiney005]

Think John Travena, Howard Astil, Bam Bam, Ron Beauchamp, Alan Cooper, (who could forget Blobak) and the guy who did the light blue LH with the Rover V8. 

And the HG(?) panel van with the VK front. Was it "Motorvator"?

Edited by Shiney005, 16 May 2023 - 01:47 PM.

[Heath]

Mark Sanders was the builder of the light blue (and red, and white, at different times) LH with the Rover V8. That car is off the charts for me.

 

Yeah Brett, it's an arms race and it does seem to have lost the plot. "Show cars" have really never done a whole lot for me and my car of course isn't intended to be one, but if you want to make things nice and share your work, which I like to do, these rooms full of non-functioning vehicles that don't even have wipers is where you end getting inserted.

But of course high level Street Machining is not dead. Aaron Gregory for example operates in the modern era at a higher level than anyone probably did in the 80's and manages to find the balance between elite building and functional use. His stuff is aligned with my view of Street Machining perfectly. The nicely presented cars at Drag Challenge are good examples of this too. There's not much of a style & creativity factor in those cars, but super tidy & super functional things need to be applauded. I can only hope that Optima's events inspire some people to start building actual Pro Touring cars in Australia and then we can have the Street Machining revolution that would tickle my pickle.

 

I'm not a fan of that later 70's GMH colour schemes and stripes. I reckon HX and HZ Sandman, HX-HZ GTS and LX SS are the worst exteriors of all pre 80's GMH vehicles. They did fix the final L31 SS's though (A9X)!

Yeah, okay. I am the complete opposite and would never buy a HQ Sandman for example because they have no colour in the graphics. 

 

I used to froth on cars like these.

 

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Same, other than the "used to" bit. And it isn't just the cars; it's the everything. The graphic design of the magazine, the haircuts, the music, the fashion. frOck yeah. 

 

My car is essentially trying to be some kind of amalgamation of these vehicles for anyone who's interested, haha.

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[LXCHEV]

Ahhhhh COPBAIT - one of the best Torana's to ever grace planet Earth! Damn I love that car. Funny you share that photo - I've started compiling a list of my personal "Top 10 Torana's" - which I'll share in due course.... and COPBAIT was firmly on that list. Huge inspiration to me as a young bloke.

[yel327]

A collegue of mine had a Summernats Trophy winner, It was very low key though, just a WB Kingswood ute with Caprice front etc with a blue 308 and other contrasting coloured gear. All detailed and done beautifully but still not exactly my taste. He still owned it until maybe 6 years or so ago, along with the Saffron Metallic L34 he bought as a demo off the GMH dealer in Warrnambool VIC in the later 70's. Just googled it and found it:

 

SUMMERNATS 1989 TROPHY-WINNING HOLDEN WB UTE (whichcar.com.au)

 

My personal favorite was Ron Barclay's HQ ute in 1990 SMOTY.

[neglectedtorana]

Well done Heath,

 

Your build all done with your own hands is fantastic, thanks for putting so much effort into the car and letting us see it as you did it.

Love your car and the graphics, I think they suit your colour scheme perfectly.

Also your interior, my first Torana I had in the early 90s was an orange hatch with the same inserts in the seats, its timeless cool.

 

Keep up the good work and pimp it as you wish, 

 

When is the next Optima event?

Although my car does not have the handling I would enjoy that type of event, I recently had a few laps around Pheasants Wood circuit and although I will drag again in the future the circuit beats drag racing for enjoyment by a mile in my experience.

 

Cheers, Tom

[gtrboyy]

Thunder hatch was iconic back in the 90's...still remember it rolling down Nortbourne Ave.

 

My cousin liked it so much he painted he his car same Ascot Green & started building showcar vh charger at 15.

 

Rat Attack hq monaro was one of my faves also Ron Barclay ute with so detail for d.i.y low budget showcar.

 

Saw that fluoro red/yellow fluoro xu1 in our hotel car park...actually looked better in person.Was also Allan Grice bodykit Rx7 massive flares/wing all graphic'd up paintwork almost as loud as the engine.

 

Convertible ute was Greg 'Beach'Ball iirc.

Edited by gtrboyy, 16 May 2023 - 06:52 PM.

[yel327]

I should give you an old HK Monaro body to make a mixup of these. No Rainbow stripes though! Although at one stage the HK had some down low.

 

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My car is essentially trying to be some kind of amalgamation of these vehicles for anyone who's interested, haha.

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[Heath]

Haha Ron Barclay is a legend. He seems to kinda like what I've done with my car! He came up and introduced himself when I was bumping in to Summernats and then spent half the day hanging around my car talking to me and looking all over my hatch. He was at MotorEX too and pretty much did the same thing! I love his HQ (which he still owns although it's in pieces) and he's building an awesome Camaro now as well.

 

He was involved in Bernie's metallic green XR Falcon that has the coolest motor out of anything at these shows... a Gurney-Eagle headed Windsor.

https://www.whichcar...-windsor-engine

 

THe HK/HT/HG stuff is obviously a huge deal but I didn't grow up loving it or anything. I wouldn't say it's my flavour particularly, noting that Norm Beechey's car is an exception because of the purposeful look with the brake ducts, the flares, the fitment with huge bags, cross-ram manifold, etc. But generally for 60's stuff I gravitate towards American sports cars instead.

[yel327]

I think Ron would appreciate the massive effort involved in your car and the attention to detail. I think everyone does! I liked it more without the rear spoiler and stripes but those are just visuals, the car is super impressive in all facets.

 

Those HK-HT cars are the heritage of GMH/Holden in GroupC. The HK GTS327 was designed for GroupC from the get-go, it was never meant for Series Production. That is one reason why it had a lower spec 327 engine. Most of the other competitive stuff in that class was imported cars apart from the Geohegan XY Falcon. Both of Beechey's Monaros ran 500-600hp Tra-co race engines and had big brake ducts and tyres, just the HT had flares for a wider track and wider rims. The HT was the legend car though as it was the first Australian made (and designed) car to win the ATCC. The cars were running similar spec engines to those being run in the US Nascar and Transam cars in the late 60's like Roger Penske's '68 Camaro. Its a shame there isn't more surviving video footage of the racing.

[yel327]

I forgot to mention Heath, that Beechey HT was very much GMH's first in-house version of what you have essentially done losing vehicle weight, that was used in anger anyway. Their first factory race cars were the EH's but they cancelled that program and those raced by privateers were production examples. The Beechey HK was a standard GTS327 turned into a GroupC race car, and the 3 x HDRT HK's built for Bathurst 1968 (Series Production) were GMH's biggest involvement in factory racing for a lot of years (they built all 3 cars in house). However, the Beechey HT was very cleverly made into as light a car as it could be in-house by GMH, like delete cigar lighter and delete forced air. Every delete option they could apply was used. Other items like the rear-view mirror and glovebox lid were Belmont with no extra weight in pretty stuff on them. There is also a possibility that some of the body itself was lighter weight steel but unconfirmed. I've even heard that every bolt used in the car was slightly shorter so that no threads were wasted through the nut other than required for desired specification.

[SmacT]

I think there's a place for both shop-built mega showcars and owner-built streeters that actually run and can be driven, there just needs to be a judging criteria that separates them completely, yet allows them to compete for the one overall trophy.

We did this in Motorcycle of the Year comps we ran when I edited motorcycle mags by judging across five criteria that evened the score - value for money, for example. If a car was $600,000 to build, it could still be judged next to a 100k car, by judging it on where those dollars got the car. Innovation, too - if the more expensive car didn't move the street machine needle, then it scores less than the less expensive machine, that did. 

 

The Forged beast unveiled at Motorex isn't my cup of tea, and doesn't look like it even runs (sure t does, it just doesn't look like it does) - but there are some things on it that may push people harder in their builds, which is a good thing. I'd pick your car Heath over it, any day, because you drove it there, did most of it yourself and it still leads innovation in various directions.

As Street Machining evolves, it will always grow more disparate, but I do reckon it can be tied together without going to a scenario where cars that don't even run properly and aren't driven are trumping cars that do. Otherwise they are just car-themed sculptures.  

[gtrboyy]

Funnily enough the Hk Monaro was my first love...always wanted a silver mink 327 gts with red interior yet I've never owned own & probably never will tbh.

 

Settled on a miniture version an Lc Gtr...a car that I've known since 12 yrs old then managed to buy as a roller a few years later...way too much sentimental value in that particular although owned shit ton of cool holdens.

 

 

When first saw colour on body remembered that super cool blue A9X 4 door from old forums.

[myss427]

I think there's a place for both shop-built mega showcars and owner-built streeters that actually run and can be driven, there just needs to be a judging criteria that separates them completely, yet allows them to compete for the one overall trophy.

We did this in Motorcycle of the Year comps we ran when I edited motorcycle mags by judging across five criteria that evened the score - value for money, for example. If a car was $600,000 to build, it could still be judged next to a 100k car, by judging it on where those dollars got the car. Innovation, too - if the more expensive car didn't move the street machine needle, then it scores less than the less expensive machine, that did. 

 

The Forged beast unveiled at Motorex isn't my cup of tea, and doesn't look like it even runs (sure t does, it just doesn't look like it does) - but there are some things on it that may push people harder in their builds, which is a good thing. I'd pick your car Heath over it, any day, because you drove it there, did most of it yourself and it still leads innovation in various directions.

As Street Machining evolves, it will always grow more disparate, but I do reckon it can be tied together without going to a scenario where cars that don't even run properly and aren't driven are trumping cars that do. Otherwise they are just car-themed sculptures.  

 

I agree with the different category idea, I remember to well showing my car at Toranafest  2018?, when I debuted my resprayed orange hatch, my car was put in the same category as the yellow LJ full chassis drag race car, my car was registered, engineered and legal with a big block chev, was so pissed as all the things I had to have to be road legal then put in a class against a striped race car. Yes it was beautiful, but like heath I built and painted the car myself with little outside help then to compete against a professionally prepped car. 

[Uncle Chop Chop]

Which is the first problem, where is the line drawn?

[Heath]

Well, all interesting comments. Quite an eloquent dude you are, Sam! Haha.

 

Anyway, MotorEx is now a long way in the past and the car is continuing along its journey. Over 7,500km on the clock now and lots is going on. The car hilariously was invited to be at the premiere for the new "Fast X" movie (the franchise that never ends) but they had a problem with site access, so they just gave me and some mates free tickets instead. That would have a corker to have the car in all the influencer's photos, but anyway, it wasn't to be and we enjoyed the free piss and had a good laugh at the movie

 

Snagged a very nice spot at "Maling Rd Autoclassico" which is one of my absolute favourite shows and the car was received incredibly well there. I didn't get any photos (it was really crowded so I didn't even think to get my phone out... my car was in a bit of a swarm every time I saw it), and I got interviewed on Bumper2Bumper, plus took home the top Australian Icon trophy, and had a journo from a trade magazine contact me wanting to do a write-up on the bodywork/paint & panel of the car.

 

Did a little shoot for that trade magazine which was nice:

 

And the following day I entered the Avalon Group 5 Bitumen Motorkhana, which was obviously my first time doing skidpan activities with it. This was heaps of fun and I'll try and edit together a proper video with a few of my runs (they weren't all super well composed of course)

 

A super nice reel my mate put together: https://www.instagra.../p/CtJhw3RL79a/

Quick un-edited video I threw on YouTube taken by a fellow competitor: https://youtu.be/pv6VlqtKp68

[Heath]

Back to work...
 
I finally pulled the trigger on getting some hub-centric spacers made for the front end. They were machined up by a CNC shop (who didn't follow my instructions for lightening holes adequately... I'll have to manually swiss cheese them properly later) and they were a bit hesitant to put the relief in to fit onto my Wilwood hubs that I'd added a spigot onto:

So I did the proper relief myself on my manual machine:


That'll do!
 
SpeedHut also brought out a new series of dashes at the start of the year, and these have a couple of little upgrades. Since I'm buying stock of them to build dashes for people nowadays, I treated myself to an upgrade of my own dash to the new model with my custom orange SS Torana style fonts, etc.
 
SpeedHut refuse to print gauge faces without their logo, which I don't want, so once again I was out there with some satin black vinyl wrap cut into TINY sections that I was applying with tweezers to cover this up:

Much better:

 
New lasercut backing plate, satin black 3D Printed adaptors and a sacrificed garden variety Torana cluster that I stripped and cut down to an open housing.

Assembled with new lenses with holes added for the pushrods:

Spent some time wiring it up super neatly to a 12-way DT connector with four way splices, expandable PET braid and Raychem SCL glue lined heat shrink:



On the older model, the wiring was easy to use but a lot more messy... this is my old cluster, which is still bloody amazing, but just with one generation less development.

 
I also installed my lovely MOMO Veloce steering wheel for Optima last year, but the Autotecnica boss kit I had lying around fell apart in the hot weather at the track... the accordion shroud thing just came off in my lap, so I went back to the GTS wheel for a while there while I had other priorities.

 
I went and bought a new SAAS one from Autobarn, and noticed that the spline was broached incorrectly... it had barely any tooth depth on half of the splined hole, so I didn't think that was very safe and I returned that to the store for a full refund after seeing that all of the SAAS Torana boss kits I found had the same manufacturing defect. I also didn't love the look of the SAAS one, and they were a lot heavier than the collapsible style old Autotecnica one I already had... it's just that the accordion thing fell off. So I decided to re-style what I had into a boss kit of my own design.
I got a giant chunk of bar stock, and a giant drill bit:

Turned it around and put some shape into it, so that it smoothly transitioned from the column diameter down to the pad of the steering wheel centre:

 
I wanted a colour-matched horn button of course, so I drew that up to be made into a dome sticker:

Then I went to see what horn button that would fit best, and noticed that genuine MOMO ones actually come in two types. Neither have stickers (which is a pain in the arse) but one of them is flush-mounted which IMO looks a lot better than the proud one:

Yes, this is where it's at IMO:

 
So I disected the flush-mounted one and investigated how it was made. It turns out it's got a stamped bit of aluminium sheet metal with embossing, and that has been painted and cleared. Yep, that's definitely a pain in the arse to replace.

But if there's a will there's a way. So I started machining a paper-thin bit of aluminium barstock until it was as close a replica as I could make to the silver MOMO button. I made the contactor fit into the back:



Sanded and filed the locating detent in, and that's the exploded assembly which is ready to take a domed sticker:

 
Vuola:

 
Then decided to go fully smooth with it, so bogged it up and just hand sanded it in the lathe, then painted it satin black (I make that sound easy, but painting things in the evenings in the middle of Melbourne winter is not a success-on-first-go type affair):


 
Oh, and added more drillium:


 
This photo shows the profile of the steering wheel boss that I made and how I tried to keep the design flow nicely into the rest of the column but also share the same shapes as the shift light tube housing... I wanted them to have the same design language.


 
And all of this was in a hell of a rush before the big one... Street Machine magazine. Another MEGA childhood dream for me. Chris Thorogood was going to shoot the car and didn't want the maroon H plates on it, which was a good call, so I had to think up something else to put on each end. I started off by cutting out some aluminium panels as fake plates:


Primed, painted blue, then dodgily masked up with some washers and tape to do a black outline:

Had a scaled down stripe made up, and an SSunbird logo. 

Then at the 11th hour (the morning of the shoot, when I had absolutely no chance of accessing a vinyl cutting machine and didn't even have a computer with me, I decided I wanted something bigger and bolder than the SSunbird logo, and I also decided I wanted to pay homage to my favourite era, and take the piss out of something a bit harder, so Mark Sgaravizzi's 88NATS XD Falcon was in my crosshairs. I got my friend to print out the numberplate text onto paper and bring it to my factory while I was working my arse off detailing the car, and then I hand cut it out of some vinyl wrap and applied it to the front plate:



 


 
Huge and frantic build up to a huge day. Once again, I was very nervous about it, but it was an amazing experience.
 
I really feel accomplished after this. I really feel I earned this one. It's in really good hands at Street Machine and I cannot wait to see what the writer I elected puts together for the story. It's going to be sooo much better than little spotlights here and there at events. 

[4dabush]

Great story and awesome videos…geeze you have that car dialed…