2118 replies to this topic

[sibhs]

Geez Heath, your talents are endless. There's always something amazing happening on this 'finished' build thread.

 

Marty

[LXCHEV]

Love the latest updates Heath, fantastic mate!

Well done on the Street Machine gig, look forward to seeing that.

And also - love the total lack of body roll in your video. I’ve seen a tonne of cars at motorkhana days and not many behave like that.

[neglectedtorana]

As always your work is incredible Heath, well done on all the achievements.

I see a familiar colour scheme on a Repco catalogue, part of the trade shoot?

 

Great you have so many driving events, I think Sydney area is lacking this type of fun.

 

Cheers, Tom

 

 Repco Heath.jpeg   191.64K   13 downloads

[Heath]

^ Haha, that is a separate thing again from a while back (the lack of brake ducts is a time stamp). I didn't know that was online but that's cool to see. Even got my yellow Manta Mirage in the background lol 
 

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

Yeah, I must say it does feel pretty good now!

 

There's always something amazing happening on this 'finished' build thread.

Ahhh... unfortunately there will be at least a bit more to come on this "finished" build thread.

 

Love the latest updates Heath, fantastic mate!

Well done on the Street Machine gig, look forward to seeing that.

And also - love the total lack of body roll in your video. I’ve seen a tonne of cars at motorkhana days and not many behave like that.

Cheers Brett! Me too obviously.

 

I think some of the reason for the lack of bodyroll is that I actually am not using much grip on that motorkhana! But yes, a lot of Toranas are set up with very, very soft body control. I've never liked that feeling in a car, personally. I want to be low to the ground and I want it to drive pretty flat. Otherwise when you come in and out of corners or slides, everything seems to get so unsettled!

[Bruiser]

Haha your car is getting it’s own modelling career
You could retire early like those people with YouTube sensation pets
Good to see the ongoing improvements and developments,
and it’s easy to see you’ve put a ton of time getting things ship shape.
I would say keep up the good work, but I don’t think you need telling

[SHEEL]

Awesome updates!! Can't wait to see the feature in SM... I reckon you should be a candidate for SMOTY!! 

[rodomo]

Haha your car is getting it’s own modelling career
 

Still can't drag a chick though

[SmacT]

Awesome stuff as usual - curious why you didn't go the 260km/h speedo? This weapon should get north of the 200km/h jobbie on your track jaunts? Maybe it's best not to know. Ha ha.

[Heath]

lol, whether I want to know or not, it tells me exactly how fast I went. I think the recall on the first dash when I took it out showed a peak of 238km/hr? I was shitting bricks looking for braking markers rather than looking at the needle on the dash when those speeds were clocked.

I have the 200km/hr scale speedo because it looks the best by a mile, and is easiest to read on the street (by many miles!) due to the needle being half way through the sweep at highway speeds.

I had a 320km/hr TRD speedo on the Chaser when I bought it, and it was terrible to use. I went back to standard and sold it to someone who wanted it for street cred.

 

With the Torana, I can flick it across to digital speed display if I want to see North of 200km/hr live, but I've not needed to. On the track you're better off ignoring the gauges... paying attention to the warning lights, and using the mobile phone to do data logging with GPS and Wi-Fi OBDII from the Haltech.

 

Thanks fellas.

[yel327]

Heath, I have nowhere near the experience nor had the car under me you have, but I can attest that when I had my LX hatchback around Amaroo Park I didn't look at the speedo once! You spend the whole of each lap figuring out lines and braking and just listen to where to shift. And not hitting the wall at what I think was called stop corner, or the Armco coming off the last corner onto the main straight. As a novice the speedo might as well not have even been there! And that was only a sub 200hp 6cyl back then with standard A9X brakes, front crossmember and suspension other than the shocks, and on street rubber. In all honesty my biggest issue was lack of grip due to the tyres.

[FLY_LX]

i wonder what SM will call your car or did they ask you?

i actully just thought of one "Blue Steel"

because i was thinking of the movie cause your car is so hot right now- like they say in the movie. just the sad way my brain works

im waiting for the hot wheels version, ha ha

 

great work, its the small details that make it 

[LXCHEV]

Ahhhh memories from waaaaay back.....

 

 Street Machine LXCHEV.jpg   120.62K   14 downloads

[Rockoz]

Heath, I have nowhere near the experience nor had the car under me you have, but I can attest that when I had my LX hatchback around Amaroo Park I didn't look at the speedo once! You spend the whole of each lap figuring out lines and braking and just listen to where to shift. And not hitting the wall at what I think was called stop corner, or the Armco coming off the last corner onto the main straight. As a novice the speedo might as well not have even been there! And that was only a sub 200hp 6cyl back then with standard A9X brakes, front crossmember and suspension other than the shocks, and on street rubber. In all honesty my biggest issue was lack of grip due to the tyres.

 

I can attest to this having spent a day at Amaroo in the early 80s.

I was in a borrowed car on the day.

I tried to keep it under valve bounce revs by ear only.

Half an eye on the warning lights on the dash.

All the rest of the senses were on the track and the limits of where I wanted to stay.

 

Cheers

 

Rob

[FLY_LX]

CHICK CHICK.... PUMP ACTION  sweet

[christolx]

The car is looking awesome Heath! 

 

I've been putting off fitting my rear spoiler for many months now too... 

[Heath]

Heath, I have nowhere near the experience nor had the car under me you have, but I can attest that when I had my LX hatchback around Amaroo Park I didn't look at the speedo once! You spend the whole of each lap figuring out lines and braking and just listen to where to shift. And not hitting the wall at what I think was called stop corner, or the Armco coming off the last corner onto the main straight. As a novice the speedo might as well not have even been there! And that was only a sub 200hp 6cyl back then with standard A9X brakes, front crossmember and suspension other than the shocks, and on street rubber. In all honesty my biggest issue was lack of grip due to the tyres.

Any car that doesn't have any actual problems still has grip as the limitation. That's the best "issue" to have!

 

But yeah, that's right. You normally don't even look at a tacho on the track when you've got so much going on, hence the shift light on mine. Just focus on what you're doing, listen, look, learn... bloody great fun.

If you only had 40hp it would be a bit different.

 

i wonder what SM will call your car or did they ask you?

i actully just thought of one "Blue Steel"

because i was thinking of the movie cause your car is so hot right now- like they say in the movie. just the sad way my brain works

im waiting for the hot wheels version, ha ha

LOL! Pisser. We haven't gone through that yet.

 

I can attest to this having spent a day at Amaroo in the early 80s.

I was in a borrowed car on the day.

I tried to keep it under valve bounce revs by ear only.

Half an eye on the warning lights on the dash.

All the rest of the senses were on the track and the limits of where I wanted to stay.

100%

 

You should spend another day on a racetrack. And another... and another.

 

Brett, LOVE that photo of LXCHEV on the skidpan mate. That is sublime. I want to photoshop up a fake Street Machine cover with my car on it at some point.

 

Well, the car has been copping some media attention of late but what was missing was this THREAD getting any airtime, haha! 

 

This problem has now been answered here on the fantastic www.Build-Threads.com website.

[yel327]

I always thought that one day I'd buy an old UC Sunbird and make a decent track car out of it, like a nice high revving SBC (283/302 etc), alloy heads, Muncie, 12 bolt or 9" and good brakes and go have some fun. But life moves on and I don't get the time to play with my street cars or projects. Today I'm happy with a narrow tyred cruiser with auto, air and steer. The widest tyres on my yellow GTS I'm working on at the moment are 15x7 with 215/65/15 tyres.

[Heath]

Sounds like a dream, apart from the not happening bit. :( I want to build a short stroke SBC for my Manta! They're so awesome.

Well, another day of hooning happened a week ago. This car is absurdly fun to drive in settings like this.
https://www.instagra...zRlODBiNWFlZA==

I've got another fortnight or so to enjoy it before I will rip it apart to deal with the huge oiling issues it has. I had planned to go pretty deep with with the job (fix oil leak, new sump, external pick-up, external drain-backs, new windage tray, etc.) but the calendar is filling out with events again so I may have to skip some of these steps. I signed up for the WTAC Show & Shine in Sydney, and amongst other commitments it may end up being a bit of a rushed job.

[yel327]

I'd love to see you let one of the V8 Supercar drivers loose in it and see what they can do. Even John Bowe who is used to a Torana. Would be a nice article for one of the magazines.

[Uncle Chop Chop]

If it's going to take while to fix the 308, I have a 202 you can borrow!

[claysummers]

Don’t be silly. Got to be a short stroke. Always on time in a 179.


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[gtrboyy]

Be sure to post up all ol' cool tricks holden tragics did back in the day to keep them alive but stop pushing gaskets & seals lol

 

Love the exyernal oil pickup setups one day want to do it also ol' roll pin in pushrods etc

[Heath]

The only person other than me who's driven the car is Chris from Shockworks. Not sure if I'm comfortable with someone else flogging the frOck out of it on a racetrack yet... maybe when I've had it a bit longer and fixed the oiling problems haha. I guess I'd like someone who's qualified to tell me what they think of the car dynamically.

 

Putting a 6cyl in this car would actually be awesome. I used to hate anything but V8's in flared cars, but I don't feel that strongly about that any more; if I could get a mid-300's hp Holden six (J-Zed head, throttles, etc.) I think it would be a great combo, lol. Maybe not a stock red 202 with a single barrel strommy, though! Haha.

 

Also some more media recently. Did a video with some red-headed brothers that's probably being edited as we speak. Absolute legends to spend a day with.

 

I was finding that my vinyl-dyed original sunvisors were a little ordinary in that the pivots were a bit worn and they wouldn't really stay straight up against the headlining, and I'd heard good things about the reproduction ones. 

 

Anyway, I sourced some more pivots (they don't reproduce these):

Drilled holes in each round bar to cut some weight out of them:

Painted:

Fitted with new repro parts:

 

The reproduction ones are a bit longer (they actually foul on my mirror which may be from a full-sized Holden rather than a Torana, so I'll need to get a shorter one). But the material feels a lot nicer in the hand than 45 year old vinyl dyed stuff. Simple job, happy I've done it.

 

And the bigger news is that I'm starting on the sump now. I was advised to make it occupy basically all of the available space because I'll simply need the volume. I made a huge a cardboard shape to consume all the real estate that was spare, then un-bolted the starter motor and worked out how much of a corridor was needed to get that in and out in-case I have problems with it again (I don't want to have to remove the motor for this!), and it does encroach on the sump volume a lot. 

 

One little modification I did was to make "low-profile" fasteners for the heat shield on my starter, but drilling out the washers and welding the bolts to the washers, haha. Every bit counts!

 

Made a bit of a pattern for the base (which is huuuge and flat)

Did some bead rolling on a friend's machine:

A fold at each end (not actually parrallel which each-other)

Lots of trimming, rolling, plus I had to make some sections to join the bottom of the "wall" together to make a complete border.

A few more sections that'll go into the shell. I can't finish & weld these sections in until later, as the assembly sequence will be quite specific due to difficult access.

 

This sump will prevent the motor from coming out the top, ever. It will need the subframe to be dropped to get it out. But it's pretty much like that anyway with the winged sump.

[SHEEL]

cool!!

[Heath]

Enjoying using this car a bit more before I pull it apart soon to re-work the oiling stuff.

 
And another bloody rear right float hub seal... I've already had 3 leak (the original plus changing it twice).

I found some little blemishes on the surface and thought the shoulder was a bit sharp generally, so I masked it up and filed it to a softer edge:

This time I decided the surface finish on the section of the spindle that the seal runs on was too coarse. And a friend interestingly commented that while both sides will have the same machining grooves (same feed direction when turned on CNC lathe), one will be leading into the hub, and the other will be leading away from the hub, because the left and right wheels rotate in opposite directions. So that would be an explanation for why I've only had the leaking on one side of the car.

Sanded that smooth and re-fitted. Haven't tested yet.

 
And amazing news... Street Machine's September issue will cover the full car feature!