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

Next time you’re out with some street-machining mates, try this. It involves a few typical problems that any street machiner will know, but when you put them all together they become a major drama.

For starters, you’ve got a black car and you’re sick of having to wash the bugger every other day. On top of that, none of you have a flash enough car to cruise down to Summernats in, especially your AU ute with its poxy-looking front end. Problem number three is that Summernats is less than a week away, with Christmas and New Year in between.

Your challenge is to get to Nats without buying a new car. Impossible? Maybe. We’ll make it easier. Your mate is a panelbeater with a painting booth and a tin of Moly Orange. For $500 we’ll sell you an XR8 front end, complete with lights.

So what do you do? If your mates are fair dinkum, you can bet your arse you’re all going to disappear into that panel shop and work your rings off. Jim Dawson and his mates did, and somehow they got the job done – and done right.

“It was good fun – something to do,” laughs Jim. “We did it in five days. We worked 16 hours on Christmas day, and right up to New Year’s Eve, but we had a few drinks that evening.”

‘We’ includes Pat O’Shea, who owns a super-tough XR ute and P&C Custom Paint & Panel. The S Man works with Pat, doing the spraying, and then there was Thommo and Brett as well.

Pat had to convince Jim the Moly Orange would work, and mixed a gold pearl to add to the clear coat in order to brighten it up.

“We completely stripped everything – every guard, took the tray off it, ripped the interior out of it, stripped it all down to a bare shell,” says Jim. And that was before lunch on day one. “We took it all the way back to the undercoat.”

The only bodywork required on the very straight ute was welding up holes left after Jim ditched all the badges and tonneau clips. Smoothing the body like that is a subtle touch that makes the Ford look far classier. Making up a hard cover for the tray was perhaps the most difficult job. It’s made from 10mm craftwood that required very delicate cutting and lots of sanding to get it to correctly and smoothly follow the ute’s gentle curves. Fully sealed by paint, it’ll last years, but it’s heavy enough to have stuffed the hatchback gas struts that were first fitted.

The XR8 front end went on easily. The ute was a V8 from the factory, so no hassles there, and Jim hasn’t played with the powerplant except to add a mandrel-bent 2.5-inch exhaust system. It’s already got enough grunt to do damage; two dead nine-inch diffs and an engine mount that pulled itself out of the block attest to that.

The block snapped after Jim fitted a tough clutch from Mike’s Clutches. “It’s not the brass button one,” says Jim, explaining that this version has an extra plate in there. “It has more give in it; it keeps the original pedal feel so you haven’t got that jerky brass-button feel.”

The current diff is from an early Fairlane with a strong centre, shortened to fit and adapted to carry the AU’s brakes and ABS. All the discs are DBA drilled and slotted rotors.

“The suspension’s been done,” adds Jim. The aggressive stance is three inches lower than stock. “I got Formula by Fulcrum suspension throughout, with the adjustable struts for the front. It’s brilliant now.”

Fortunately, all that work on the running gear didn’t have to be tackled during that hectic week before Summernats. On the last day, after endless frantic work and broken sleep, someone bumped a freshly painted guard to the ground. It would’ve been a disaster, but a bloke from the Dent Doctor answered the emergency call and came straight out to knock the dents out on the spot.

“I had no skin left on my hands from sanding,” Jim says. “We were buffing the car about two hours before we were leaving. We didn’t get any sleep, we were just flat out. We were knackered by the time we got to Summernats.”

But they made it, with almost no stone chips despite the fresh, soft paint. The stunning colour and cool stance were a hit; people loved it.

Mission accomplished. But then, a few months later, Ford released an almost identical orange as a standard colour on the new BA. Bugger!

“I was dumbfounded,” Jim says. “I was like, are they for real? You don’t do these things to blend in, you do them to stand out.”

So it’s back into Pat’s shop for the orange Ford. Yep, time for a green instead. And a complete BA front end. Plus an aluminium tray cover. Maybe more. Only this time the guys will take a little longer.

Jim Dawson
AU Series II ute