Satan’s Lady Bug

Residing amongst the sea of first-gen Camaro’s on the Pro Touring forum lies this very special bug, one that I’ve had my eye on for a few years. After owning an assortment of muscle cars, the owner realises his childhood dream of owning a V8-powered VW Beetle by buying one already complete. Once he takes a closer look, though, he decides the circa-1980s construction methods weren’t up to his standards, so begins the tear-down and rebuild in a more modern Pro-Touring style.

Thanks to Martijn for reminding me about it. Click here for more Beetle builds.

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Holden HR Ute – Pro Street build

This next build was found via Instagram of all places. I noticed a new follower pop up in my feed, clicked on his profile and I was greeted with images of this Pro Street ute build. After a few comments back-and-forth I located the build thread online and now I want to share it with you. The car in question is a 1966 HR Holden – an Australian car manufactured under our local GM banner – being transformed to a full chassis drag car in the owners garage. By the way, there is no official Build Threads Instagram account, but feel free to tag your projects with #buildthreads to share and connect with other readers.

Click here for more ute builds.

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Datnats 2013

Just a few photos from the 2013 Nissan Datsun Nationals held at Phillip Island this past weekend. Sadly I couldn’t make the show and shine on Sunday, so I made my way down to the track-day on Saturday and snapped a few photos. Click on the images for a slightly larger version. Please link back to the site if you feel like sharing these elsewhere.

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Turbine powered Spitfire

This build is only in it’s early stages, but it is of such an extreme nature that I just had to feature it straight away. I think it’s one of those projects that will get a lot of exposure very quickly, and then I’d be all butt hurt about the fact I didn’t feature it sooner (as has happened in the past), so here it is. It’s quite simple really, the car is a Triumph Spitfire, and the engine is from a helicopter. Yep, nothing to it…

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Street-legal sculpture – ’63 Econoline

For this build you’ll need to take a step outside of the scene we’re all entrenched in, and see things from a different perspective. Shawn Hibmacronan isn’t your typical hardparking scene-kid, out to get a magazine cover and a tyre sponsorship, far from it. Shawn is an artist, and I’m talking about an actual artist here, not just a guy who doodles in his spare time, but someone who lives his life creating mechanically-influenced sculptures. His latest project, however, finds him crossing over into our world; an aired-out ’63 Ford Econoline with a VW TDI engine swap. Shawn’s philosophy for the car is a bit different from what we’re used to, and that’s what I love about it. It’s refreshing to hear someone from a different subculture talking about a process we’ve become so accustomed to. Another interesting element of this build is that Shawn has started a Kickstarter campaign to help funding, now why didn’t I think of that?!

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Project 510: FMIC + more (pt 4)

Let’s wrap this up, shall we? This fourth (and final!) segment will be all of the satisfying stuff. Now that all of the fabrication and test-fitting had been completed, I could move on to the fun stuff; making everything pretty and bolting it all back onto the car.

Part 1  -  Part 2  -  Part 3

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Project 510: FMIC + more (pt 3)

Part 3, here we go. To quickly re-cap, Part 1 was all about relocating the alternator with custom mounts, and Part 2 saw the intercooler and radiator bolted into place, and the intercooler piping tacked together. Now we’re getting down to the finer details.

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Project 510: FMIC + more (pt 2)

When we left off from the last update, I had successfully relocated the alternator and had the crank pulley machined down to one single groove, with a smaller belt fitted to suit. I was now ready to get back to the original task at hand; fitting the intercooler, radiator, and modifying the intake manifold.

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Project 510: FMIC + more (pt 1)

Well, where do I start? This is going to be easily the biggest update I’ve ever posted about the car, as I’ve just completed 8 months of on/off work under the bonnet in my spare time. During those 8 months I also sadly lost two of my beloved grandparents, went a holiday to Europe, and have attended 4 weddings, so things may have taken a little bit longer than usual.

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Suzuki GT750

A man on a mission, that’s how I’d describe Rassie, the guy behind this latest build. After owning no less than 4 of these bikes over the years, he decides to give it another crack and build his idea of the ultimate GT750. To achieve this he rectifies the handling issues of this older model by bolting on a set of Hayabusa front forks/brakes and a modified Katana swingarm. All of these improvements to the underpinnings are paired with a delectable oldschool exterior. I love the idea of buying a model of car or bike you used to own and then creating the ultimate version that you always wanted, I often have ideas like this about all of my previous cars.

Thanks to Jake for the link. Click here for more bike builds.

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