Well here’s a first, I don’t think I’ve ever featured an audio-centric build on this site. Building an intricate competition-spec audio system might not be everyone’s preferred flavour of fabrication, but it takes just as much planning, patience and technical know-how to do it all properly. Am from Blade Ice sent me a link to his Japanese import 1997 Chevy Astro which packs over £50k and 4000kg worth of ear-bleeding audio equipment, I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many speakers, amps, batteries, and wiring in my life. If the sound of your loud exhaust pisses off your neighbours, imagine what you could do with this!
Category: Build Threads
’72 Martini Porsche RSR recreation
Continuing the trend of international readers submitting builds, Arlo from Belgium brought this amazing car to my attention. A very dedicated British enthusiast named Mike flew all the way over to Arizona in the US to purchase a ’72 911 RSR replica. As if that long-distance acquisition wasn’t impressive enough, once it was transported it back to the UK it was promptly torn down and received an intense restoration, with attention paid to the utmost detail. The actual car that this Porsche is based on is the 107 Martini Targa Florio car, and Mike intends to take his recreation over to Sicily once it’s complete to participate in a re-run of the event. This pleases me.
The Widow Maker
Don emailed me his crazy build way back in June last year and I remember looking at the first page and getting an instant view of how ridiculous it was, which is a good thing. Those of you with a keen eye would have seen a teaser of this build in my Speedhunters guest-posts last month, so here it is in its entirity.
The Widow Maker is a first-generation 1991 Eagle Talon, or what’s left of it anyway. With a stroked 2.3 4G63 motor and a whole lot less bodywork, it certainly puts a new spin on open-top driving.
AE86 GT-APEX Trueno
Okay, the Speedhunters posts are done and dusted for another year, hopefully I’ve picked up some new readers with the increased exposure so let’s get back to business and feature some builds. Romas emailed me his Trueno build only a couple of days ago, hailing all the way from Lithuania. The AE86 was already modified when it was shipped over from Japan, but it was quickly torn down and rebuilt to his own standards, which meant fitting a 4AGTE and some S13 suspension bits, including the IRS rear end.
Speedhunters: Best of 2010
Here is my second and final guest-post for Speedhunters in 2011. You can read the actual story by clicking here. As usual, I like to post it on my own blog as well for archiving.
There are some teaser shots of new upcoming builds to be featured in 2011, so make sure you stay tuned for those, regular programming will commence soon. I apologise for the lack of content but the guest-posts take a decent amount of time to put together.
Speedhunters: One year on
I’m pretty sure that the majority of you who read this blog also read Speedhunters. If that’s the case, you no doubt would have seen that I recently contributed to Build Month. This is the second year in a row that I have been asked to guest post, and I am very grateful to be able to do so. I like to re-post my contributions on my own blog, mainly for archiving purposes, so here is the first one for 2011. You can read the post on Speedhunters here.
SR20DE 510
I’m trying to get through some of my oldest submissions that I’ve been holding onto for way too long, and one of them is from Duke, a fellow 510 owner whose build you can check out here). You know I’m never going to hesitate to feature a Datsun build, so when he kindly submitted one of such a high caliber, it was definitely going up on the site.
Quick specs: ’72 Datsun 510 4-door built for race/rally duties, packing a dry-sump equipped 260hp SR20DE with individual throttle bodies. More info after the jump…
RWD Suzuki Swift
This next build comes all the way from Sweden, a first generation Suzuki Swift sitting atop a custom tube frame chassis. The engine has been rotated 90 degrees and now powers the rear wheels. Not only has it been remounted, but it’s also received a little kick in the pants courtesy of a turbocharger and pumps out over 260 dyno-proven kilowatts. Damn these Scandinavians with all their fabricating skills, there must be something in the water. There are so many great builds that come from Scandinavian countries that I’ve decided to create a Scandinavian Post Tag that you can use to find builds stemming from these skillful folk..
Thanks to Audrius from the Lithuanian forum per4m.lt for submitting this one.
Speedhunters.com Build Month
February is Build Month over at Speedhunters.com, so the next few weeks of content is going to be right up the alley of Build Threads readers. Not only are they going to showcase the best build-related material from around the world, but they’re also asking for readers to submit their own builds to feature. So if you’ve got a project hiding away that you want to see on the biggest automotive blog in the world, head to this post and start submitting!
Photo credit: Casey Dhnaram / Speedhunters.com
Red Victor 3 – Vauxhall VX4/90 FD
I haven’t featured many drag cars in comparison to other build styles on this site, but Slinky from Red Victor 1 Racing over in the UK sent me the teams latest build and I knew it deserved a post. This style of drag car is usually the domain of American builders who focus their attention on the quintessential muscle cars from Detroit, so it’s good to see the same treatment being given to a unique car in a totally different part of the world.
The car in question is a 1972 Vauxhall VX4/90 FD being built for the NHRA/FIA Pro Modified class, with a twin turbo methanol slurping 540ci V8 shoehorned between the towers. The team are intending to make this the worlds only street-legal, NHRA legal, Pro Mod car. I guess that all depends on your definition of street legal!