First published in the February 2002 issue of Street Machine

There are lots of ways to go fast, and Bernie Makhraz has tried just about all of them. For many years Bernie was an aspirated V8 boy, but after an eye-popping blast in a twin-turboed 454 he became a one-eyed turbo devotee.

“Once you’ve been exposed the explosive potential and addictive rush of a turbocharged car when the boost comes on hard, you’ll never go back,” he says.

For Bernie it was more than just going fast. He’d salivated over all the tough streeters at Eastern Creek’s off-street drags and had aspirations of building his own 10-second weapon, but rather than take the usual V8-in-a-lightweight route to drag strip Nirvana, Bernie decided to use turbo technology. His instrument of speed was the unlikely combination of a turbocharged Sigma pushing a mountain of boost and his 10-second plans were on track, until a massive off-road excursion totalled not only the slingshot Sigma, but smashed Bernie’s legs.

After many months of painful rehab, Bernie was in the market for new set of wheels. As luck would have it, one of his customers was looking to get out of his turbo VL Calais for a bargain price, perhaps small compensation for his injuries.

“It was a bit of a heap and had an ugly blue velour interior, but my intention was to leave it bog stock and drive it around for a year or two before worrying about any mods,” he says. Not even two weeks after transferring the rego, the unsuspecting VL found itself stripped down to its undies at cousin Sayad’s panel shop in preparation for a full respray.

With the car off the road, it was also a good opportunity to rip out the interior and ship everything off to Dave at Class Motor Trimming. Instructions to Dave were simple: “I’ll hunt you down and strangle you if you give it back to me in the same yuck blue.”

Rising to the challenge, Class Motor Trimming swathed every surface, including the console and dash, in contrasting black and silver cowhide. Luckily for Dave, the luscious combination looks sweet!

Car modifying has this snowball effect, get one area looking schmick, and another becomes an eyesore. So with new trim and paint, a trip to the tyre shop was deemed necessary. Bernie couldn’t resist the temptation, out came the credit card, and on went a set of 18-inch DTM rollers.

Cosmetics and style were one thing, but Bernie had the need for speed, so it was time to make the car go. Boost and more boost was the cry and up it went, necessitating an intercooler to keep the temperature of the incoming air under control. Oyo from Plazman Intercoolers knocked together a monster. Problem was it worked too well, robbing the air-conditioning condenser of cool air. After all, the VL was a streeter and you need air when carting the wife and two rugrats off to the beach on a hot day. Off came the monster cooler, and on went a more conservative one. Helping along the horsepower quest is a Microtech aftermarket computer replacing the factory JECS unit.

As fate would have it, along came a complete Walkinshaw body kit, which Bernie thought would definitely turn some heads. Once fitted, his predictions were spot on. But now the car looked fast, but couldn’t really cut the mustard.

At drag strips around the country, Nissan-powered VL missiles have earned themselves a solid reputation, so getting the 3.0-litre to make some serious grunt wasn’t an issue. Step one called for a turbo upgrade to a higher-flowing TO4 (first a small one then a larger), ported and polished head, new free-flowing exhaust manifold and a set of tough Wiseco forged pistons.

This new set-up ran hard, so hard the auto spat the dummy. Tony Dominello came to the rescue with one of his super duty C4 conversions which has proved very reliable even though Bernie really gives the VL a hard time.

Power junkies are all the same, they never have enough. Time for another turbo swap. After talking with the guys at Precision Turbos at Wetherill Park, Bernie got motivated and swapped the ‘old-school’ TO4 for one of their gun ball bearing units. The new monster is capable of flowing up to 700hp, which should satisfy Bernie’s speed needs for a while.

Bigger turbo equals more boost, which equals more heat so the limits of the small intercooler soon became apparent. They really needed to go back to the big unit originally fitted, but Bernie was reluctant to go this route knowing it interfered with the air-conditioning. Oyo from Plasman had a plan. He designed a water-to-air intercooler set-up with the heat exchanger sitting on top of the engine (see more below). The system works a treat, with air inlet temperatures staying at around 20 degrees. Two pumps located down behind the bumper bar circulate water through the system. The first pump remains on all the time, while the other kicks in with the boost.

Speaking of boost, good friends from Turbo Smart, Nick and Daniel, kicked in one of their fully-adjustable dual-stage electronic boost controllers and the blow-off valve you can see poking through the bonnet. Rounding out the turbo package is a 75mm XF throttle body, six high-flowing 600cc Bosch injectors and a high-pressure Bosch fuel pump that’s mounted on an aluminium plate in the boot next to the swirl pot and truck-sized filter.

One of the biggest disasters that can happen with a boosted engine is fuel starvation. Lack of fuel leans out the mixture, which can have horrible consequences such as holed pistons. To ensure this never happens, the 3.0-litre is fitted with Mal Passi rising-rate fuel pressure regulator. At idle the regulator sets fuel pressure at around 40psi then ramps it up to a maximum of 80psi when the boost fully kicks in. For visual appeal, Rob – from Competition Coatings powder-coated various engine bay parts bright red including the turbocharger itself.

Engine development hasn’t all been smooth sailing with a few teething problems including block replacement when a small hole was discovered in the original. However, things look promising thus far with a genuine 348hp at the treads on just 15 pounds of boost. Once sorted, these numbers should grow dramatically once boost hits 30psi.

To help traction on the street, Bernie has designed a dual-stage boost switcher that presets the boost according to road speed. This cockpit-adjustable piece of electronic trickery allows him to get off the line at low boost before automatically switching to max boost at a preset speed. Clever, eh?

While Bernie would like to continue with development, he’s decided to end things here.

“I can still use it as a family car,” he says. “The wife loves it up to 70km/h, but anything over that and it’s a smack in the back of the head.”

Sounds like true love to us, mate!

Cool boosting

When air is compressed by a turbocharger (or supercharger) it gets heated, which is bad for power production. To reduce the temperature of the compressed incoming air-charge, it’s passed through an intercooler. Intercoolers for turbo installations are nothing new, with front-mount air-to-air types being the most common – your car’s radiator is a simple air-to-air intercooler.

Another type of intercooler is the water-to-air set-up. Here the incoming air-charge is passed through a heat exchanger (radiator) that is housed inside another chamber which has cool water flowing through it to pull heat out of the compressed air charge. The water pumped through the system is then cooled by a conventional front-mounted radiator. Air-to-air intercooling is more efficient, but requires more space. Therefore a water-to-air set up could be just the ticket if space is tight or you have a weird configuration.

Bernie Makhaz
1987 VL Turbo Calais