History
Oh man I wish still had this car! I bought it back in 1988 and owned through until 2000. For the first 4 years of my owning it the car was my daily drive but once I got married and into our own house with a good shed, it got parked away and used for special occasions. It used to be great to charge up the battery, go and put $20.00 of fuel in it and go for a blast somewhere late at night.
In about 1994, whilst it still looked very good to the average punter I could see a few signs of aging, so I pulled it back to a driving shell, had the front scutter panel and rear screen lower deck panel replaced (some small spots of rust and back then the replacement new genuine panels were available - and cheap), car repainted in two pack but still original colour, I dismantled heater / AC housing and replaced heater core, new wiper mechanisms, had the dash board redone (to original spec) as there were some small cracks, new front screen etc... A few weekends reassembling it once I got it back from panel shop and it looked good. The pictures I have attached are about 2 years before I did all the work and it still looked good before. I used to do a lot of night driving hence the additional lights. For a while I had a manual gearbox in it and that was a great car to drive over Bells Line of Road late on a winters night. My wife still laughs and tells our kids about before we were married. I left her parents house at about 5.00pm with the car a manual and turned up the next day with it as an auto. And no shabby corners cut. It all looked factory. I bought all the bits needed to and turned it into a manual, drove it as a manual for about a year (with all the auto bits boxed and tagged) and then swapped it back to auto. I sold the car from memory in 2000 and have never seen it again. It was a full option VB SL/E with lots of goodies I put in it. My kids (now adults) still jab me about selling it.
Modifications
Improved performance 5.0 litre V8 engine. Too much to list every bit of detail, but bored, decked, flat top pistons, L34 (or equivalent) valves but I used stainless valves with hardened seats in preparation for PULP, adjustable roller rockers, Speedpro push rods, valve springs and retainers, Crane high intensity lifters, dual row timing chain, high volume oil pump, high volume sump with windage tray, crank scraper and baffling, port matched cylinder heads to intake manifold. Once the engine was built and run in the standard starter motor wouldn't crank it over. I ended up getting and auto electrician to build me a high torque starter. VL turbo brakes, 1 inch brake master cylinder, Lovells springs with gas dampers front and rear, Nolahane bushes all round with stitch welded rear suspension upper control arm pick up points and sway bar anchor points on body, hand assembled / re calibrated (tight) Limited Slip Diff, Genie exhaust extractors with what was then termed as the "Brock" 2 1/2 inch mandrel bent exhaust, electronic ignition, a very worked out Rochester 4 barrel carburettor. I used to fit alarms for a second job so the car had remote alarm with remote central locking and window closure on locking (nothing special in this day but back in 1989 pretty cool). I set up a second key operated start circuit isolator so you needed a second key to turn on the ignition circuit before you even used the standard key. It had the 2.6:1 gearing big 10 bolt Salisbury diff so it was so strong on acceleration at freeway speeds (and higher of course) And I kept all the original luxury features of the car functional. I actually made an idle up function to accommodate for the AC (and they were the BIG AC Delco Compressor in that era) load on the engine with a sizable cam in it. Oh, and it had baby seats on occasions when the wife needed the car. She showed some young punters a set of tail lights on more than one occasion! The car had the glove box lid signed by Peter Brock with Brocky at the car in Warners Bay (Newcastle). I kept he glove box and fitted a standard one when I sold the car.
