At
the age of 16 I bought my first car.
Strangely enough it was a Mazda RX3
coupe. The fact that no one knew the
potential of Mazda Rotaries and that
many of my mates thought they were 4
cylinder shopping trolleys really attracted
me to them. I
remember having plenty of school yard
arguments with the die hard Ford and
Holden fans. After seeing the potential
of these Mazda’s many of my mates
ended up buying one themselves.
It
took me 1 year to rebuild that car and
it was featured in Fast 4’s and
Rotaries magazine. The car was shortly
sold after that with other priorities
taking place.
Some
years later I was toying with the idea
of buying a muscle car. This time it
had to be a Ford. So after consulting
with my brother in law Nick Sutic the
hunt for a Ford Falcon GT started. Shortly
after that I recall Nick coming over
to my house and saying “hey I
found the perfect XW GT for you”.
So
off like a speeding bullet Nick, Sash
and I rushed over to view the Falcon.
After checking the car and validating
that all the numbers match including
the engine block, some cash traded hands
and the GT was taken home.
With the help of Nick and Sash we began
to strip the car. Just before we stated
work Sash said take it for one last
spin. I remember dropping the clutch
at 5000RPM and the original
cooks
river tyres struggled to break traction.
Sash started spinning the spanners and
within 1 hour the engine was removed
from the vehicle. Every nut and bolt
was also removed from the engine bay
My
brother in law Nick Sutic who is well
known in the Auto Restoration trade
and is a gun painter was not totally
happy with the paint so we decided to
flow coat the whole car in the original
Track Red paint using 2 pak PPG. The
engine bay and boot were also resprayed.
The result is totally awesome.
Once
the paint was done and with the help
of Sash from AN Racing the next phase
was to rebuild the original 351 4V Cleveland
engine. The 351 donk was fully re-built
by Sash. The block was privy to a deck,
bore and hone. The CP forged pistons,
Eagle steel rods, Crank and spinning
parts were balanced and blueprinted.
The 4V heads were sent to Phantom cylinder
heads for some porting and polishing.
A TFC manifold was port matched to
the heads and a
Barry Grant 850 mighty demon carburettor
and MSD electronic ignition was installed.
The
original interior was in excellent condition
so no work needed to be done except
fitting a new dash pad.
A
whole heap of parts for this car came
from Rare Spares. Dean has been fantastic
in this area. He managed to source plenty
of NOS parts. I was extremely lucky
that he had plenty of parts stashed
away which came handy.
The final piece of the puzzle was to
install a new brake booster, rotors
and callipers. The rear end saw a new
9 inch diff with ford 3.7 gears. 31
spline billet axles were also installed
for piece of mind. A new radiator, battery
and Michellin tyres with red walls completes
the rebuild.
