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 What do you get when you combine four petrol-heads, a couple of thousand dollars and knowing these guys, way too many amber fluid cans?

 Travis (see Knob of the Week Award - no offence dude!) and three of his mates decided to split into two teams, set a budget of one thousand dollars per team which includes purchasing a suitable car and head out to Willowbank Raceway and see who’s contraption is the quickest down the quarter mile.

 On the winning side of the fence we have a Mitsubishi Starion Turbo bought for a total of $650 and on the other side they have a Ford Telstar TX5 that set them back a measly $500.

 The Starion was bought without the engine running and a few necessary bits lying in the boot. On the positive side it came with the mother of all front mount intercoolers with all the nescessary pipework already in place and a spare turbo off a Nissan VG30. The front right hand guard even has flames painted on it, although the TX5 is red and as everyone knows red is the fastest colour!

 The Starion was trailered over to us early this week and as a possible sign of things to come the flame-painted guard was dented getting it off the trailer. Oh well, a sticker or two will fix that. After a quick inspection it was agreed that the car is indeed a s**tbox but not beyond help.

 Last night I made some brackets and bolted up the front mount and connected the piping, making one section out of a stretchy c.v. boot to allow for engine movement. Worked like a charm. The throttle plate was siezed shut in the throttle body so off came the throttle body and after about a litre of wd-40 and a few turns with the biggest shifter I could find the throttle plate was back to working condition again.

 We charged up the battery and after checking the oil level it was decided to change the oil for personal safety reasons. The engine had obviously been cranked over many times with the throttle plate siezed and fuel would have been pumping into the cylinders with little air making it’s way in and the oil had more fuel than lubricating fluid in it.

 Oil change done and we turned the key and away she went, purring like a kitten. A quick drive to make sure everything worked the way it should and now it’s time for extracting what power we can with the limited funds left. I’m thinking a cheapy boost controller to get the intake pressure up, ignition timing advanced as far as we can without any  detonation and a cold air intake made out of whatever is the right diameter and shoved through where the right hand headlight should be. Dollars permitting we may have a play with the exhaust as well.

 So that’s our grand plan so far and fingers crossed we will have the goods on the day. By the way it is doubtful that the Starion will see the road again and after it’s done a few quarter passes it’s future will be uncertain. There may be a Starion hitting the drift circuits around Brisbane in the near future, who knows!

  The “Knob of the Week” award goes to a good friend of ours, Travis, who this week managed to destroy his second gearbox in his N14 Pulsar. And what a fine job he did too!

  Not that he would have needed much help, the car runs a GTiR engine with a dyno proven 187kw at the front wheels. Add to the mix a brass button clutch, super sticky Bridgestone Potenza tyres and a need? to dump the clutch at 4000rpm and suddenly the gearbox becomes stressed to the point of no return! Unfortunately for Travis the only gearboxes readily available for these cars are the standard duty box that slots in beside the non-turbo SR20 engines. Not an ideal combination to say the least! There is talk of a toughened, straight-cut gear equipped box being available for slightly less than a good house deposit, but hey after all we are talking about a Pulsar here, not a GTR or something as worthy of having crazy amounts of dollars thrown at it.

 So in went another second-hand SR20 box and out went Travis and his Pulsar from our garage. The last thing I said to him was “Take it easy on this one and it should last a little while”. He had his buddy Brad drop him off to pick up the car (Brad drives an identical car!) and they both got to the red light at the end of the street at the same time. I’m sure I heard the poor gearbox screaming blue murder as the Bridgestones went up in a cloud of smoke once the light had turned green! As the car went out of ear-shot he had pulled second gear and the tyres were still scrambling to grab onto the bitumen and the turbo was making an oh-so-sweet sound. I think we should have placed an order for two gearboxes, sounds like we will need another before too long. The good thing - he’ll be paying for our holiday to North Qld the way he’s going! After that effort, step up son and accept your “Knob of the Week” award!

Take care and be safe on the roads.

Craig

  I’d like to share with you the other love of my life. Of course my beautiful wife and three fantastic children are first on the list, but the list also includes this ‘84 VK Commodore. I am planning on spending some serious dollars on this car one day, so I’m writing this post for two reasons. First to score points with the Minister for War and Finance (hope the flattery works!) and second to share with you something that has been a picture in my head for so many years and is now slowly (read very slowly!) taking shape. I know it’s only a Commondore and they are dime-a-dozen over here but I have wanted one of these since I first saw Peter Brock punting the VK Group A race car around Bathurst in ‘84. Yeah I was only eleven but even then I knew I wanted one. I thought of buying a genuine road going VK Group A but I couldn’t be sure that I wouldn’t want to modify it to suit my tastes and you just don’t do that to a genuine Group A! So instead I started off with the base model Executive and went from there.

  I started off spending $100 on the white dunger you see in the above pic. It had reasonably straight body for it’s age (sounds like the wife!), was fitted with power steering and air conditioning and had a fuel injected six in it. The first to go was the engine, I advertised it and got $1100 for the motor and box! So now the car owed me -$1000! Didn’t stay that way for long though. I spent the $1000 plus a bit more on buying a 308 short motor that had just been rebuilt with a 355 cubic inch stroker crank, 60 thou oversize Flat top Hypatec pistons, a camshaft with lobes that Samantha Fox would be proud of!, ACL race series bearings and a True Roller timing chain kit. I had a set of Black 308 heads that have recieved new valves, double valve springs and mild porting, perfect for the job. I fitted the standard inlet manifold and standard fuel and oil pumps in a rush to get the engine fired up and have since taken the heads and manifold off again, deciding on fitting a Edelbrock Performer manifold and taking the ports out a little further. Carby was a 600cfm Holley which will be replaced with a 750cfm once I get back into it. I added a Gilmer belt drive, more for the noise they make than anything else! On the exhaust side it runs Genie Tri-Y extractors into a 2&3/4 inch single system with one Turbo muffler. I had flanges fitted to the extractors for days at the drag strip if it ever gets there! A Holley blue fuel pump and 1/2 inch fuel lines will be added when finances allow.

  I decided on running a Tri-Matic Auto transmission. My reason for this is that I have the magical figure of 300 rear wheel horsepower in my mind and I believe the Tri-Matic takes a lot less horsepower to drive than the Turbo 350/400/700 transmissions. The slushbox has been fitted with a full-manual, reverse shift pattern kit and runs a 3200rpm stall convertor to suit the camshaft. Out back is a LSD 10 bolt disc brake diff with all trailing arm and swaybar bushes replaced with Nolathane bushes.

  The bodywork and paint was by far the biggest hurdle I had to overcome. The only experience I’ve had is doing ‘jam’ jobs to pretty cars up, I’ve never tried to straighten out and paint a car to this standard. It was a very steep learning curve and to be honest I’m very happy with the results. The engine bay was done first. I removed the battery tray and welded up a lot of holes, including where the A/C goes through the firewall as I think A/C makes the engine bay look untidy. The power steering stays though, ever tried doing fish-tails up the road without it! Just kidding I’m just lazy and enjoy P/Steering. The colour I chose is Formula Blue which is a colour of the genuine Group A’s. I used two-pack paint for the first time and the shine you get straight off the gun is great. No more painfull buffing! The rest of the body is standard except for the badges being removed and hours upon hours spent hammering, filling and sanding. The door jambs and inside the boot area are done in body colour and the battery now resides in the boot. I have a set of Calais wheels on it at the moment but I don’t think they will be staying. My first choice would be a set of genuine Aero wheels but they are a bit out of my price range right now. With super low King Springs and Pedders struts/shocks it should look the goods and go around corners fairly well. I have a Group 3 rear wing fitted to the boot and plan on fitting a Group A front bar extension when I can get hold of one. I am yet to start on the interior and don’t really know what I want there, maybe just a re-trimmed Calais interior will do the job.

  So there you have it, if I was to have a mistress that is what she’d look like! You could probably compare the two as they both cost loads of money and probably cause as many fights as each other! Once I get it all together it will be off to the dyno to see what else I’ll have to do to reach that magical 300 rw/hp figure. Fingers crossed we won’t be too far off the mark.

Take care and be safe on the roads.

Craig.