First published in Street Machine’s Australia’s Toughest Fords #3, 2005

On first inspection, this tough ZG Fairlane doesn’t reveal the full extent of its modifications. From a distance you might think the twin 600 Holleys hanging out of the bonnet are just sitting above a tunnel ram manifold. Enough to give the big beast some poke, but not enough to see off real competition.

Don’t be fooled, though, because under that expansive bonnet lies one of GM’s finest donations to the street machining scene: the 6/71 blower. That’s right – Matthew Long has a blown Clevo riding between the frame rails of the big Fairlane.

Obviously, this super-tough ZG didn’t leave the factory in this condition, or with that power-plant. It was the product of Matt’s labours and swallowed up more than a few dollars over the years that he’s owned it.

In the beginning he went to look at an XA GS Coupe with the intention of turning that into something special, but when he saw the big ZG, which was serving as a daily driver, it struck a chord. Cruising around in a huge behemoth has a lot of appeal when you’ve got a few mates you want to take with you, and there’s something perverse about a huge machine that can also turn the tyres on demand.

So Matt took it home and stripped the Fairlane down so he could have the cancer cut out of the rear quarters. To save dollars, Matt did a lot of the prep work himself but left the hard stuff to the guys at MSA Smash in Yagoona. After cutting out the rusting bits and welding in some fresh metal, the guys coated the whole thing in fresh Walnut Glow, the factory colour.

This left Matt with a problem: the damn thing looked too good. When they got the body back, it was clear that bolting on the original chromework was going to do a grave injustice to the quality of the panels. So the bumpers were sent off for rechroming, strips and badges were polished and new body rubbers were sourced. The project started to get out of hand.

Polishing, chroming or replacing one item would have the next item looking secondhand, so it would need refurbishing or replacing. Like a virus, the disease spread throughout the whole car until everything shone like the crown jewels.

On each corner, the standard wheels were dumped in favour of Centreline Convo Pro rollers – 15x4s up front and 15×8.5s filling out the rear guards. To provide the right stance, two inches were taken out of the ride height and Pedders shocks installed to settle the bumps of Sydney roads.

You already know that Matt is packing 351 cubic inches of blown Ford small-block, but it wasn’t always that way. He started off with a 302 Clevo that he replaced with a built-up 351 topped with a single Holley. At the time it was all that Matt could afford, but the engine did its duty for seven long years before the decision was made to build up a blown engine.

Blown Fords almost all have something in common: they tower way up out of the engine bay almost to the roofline. With the front-mounted distributor, there isn’t much choice. However, Matt saw Bill Laney at Max Wedge Performance and checked out the low-level 6/71 intake that he casts up for the Cleveland. Bill even makes up a dizzy to suit the low position of the 6/71, but Matt elected to go for a right-angle-drive MSD distributor. That super-low intake, combined with a pair of customised engine mounts to lower the engine position, sits the blower totally under the bonnet. It’s not unheard of, but it is uncommon to have such a large blower sitting under a bonnet.

Anyone with a little common sense knows that you can’t just bolt a 6/71 to the top of your stock motor and expect it to live long. You need a whole catalogue of bits to strengthen up the bottom end so you don’t blow the crank out the bottom of the sump or melt the pistons into slag.

To this end, a 4MA crank was fitted into the block that had already been modified with four-bolt mains. Swinging off the crank are six-inch Eagle H-beam rods fitted to some SRP forged flat-top Chevy pistons that have yielded 7.5:1 comp in the 30-thou overbore. It’s a tough short-block, and it’s been topped with GT 4V closed chamber heads fitted with stainless valves, triple valve springs and Yella Terra rocker gear.

Deciding the valve events is a Camtech roller camshaft that works with Comp Cams roller lifters and chrome-moly 3/8-inch pushrods. No expense spared might be a better way to describe the engine, which handles the 12psi of boost created by the 6/71 with ease.

You would expect that a toughened auto would back an engine with such credentials, but Matt has chosen the select his own gears with an XY GT Toploader. It’s an unusual choice for a blown car and an even stranger choice for a big cruiser like this, but it’s one that Matt has never regretted. Up the back is the quintessential disc-brake nine-inch diff, fitted with 4.11 gears and an LSD centre. Serious stuff for a serious car.

Inside, comfort was given priority, so the standard seats and door trims remain, although they’ve all been retrimmed in a grey parchment vinyl. It’s not overboard or filled with a lot of stereo gear, but it keep Matt’s bum off the floor and makes for a cruisey journey.

While the lack of a CD stereo might not gel with some people, Matt gets all the music he needs when he gets out on the open road and squeezes that right pedal. That supplies all the music he needs to hear from the twin three-inch pipes and that sweet-singing blower, and all the build-up heartaches just fade away.

A SMALL WORLD

Believe it or not, Matt and I used to live on the same street in Sydney for a couple of years, so
I got to see this cars progress through the build-up. At the time I was playing with a couple of Valiant Hardtops and Matt was into the Fords, so our cars had nothing in common other than the fact that they were both modified.

We didn’t know each other at all, but I would take notice when the big Fairlane cruised up my end of the street, the same way Matt would notice my Valiants, which had to go past his house to get out of the street. Looking back now, it’s amazing that we didn’t actually introduce ourselves, but that seems to be the way things are in large metropolitan areas.

Imagine my surprise when these photos lobbed across my desk, and imagine Matt’s surprise when I gave him a call to flesh out some details for his story and told him where I used to live. Yep, it’s definitely a small world.
Scott Taylor

MATTHEW LONG
1973 ZG Fairlane