Callum Shand’s 1000hp, Whipple-blown, Coyote-powered EL Falcon XR8

Callum Shand’s EL XR8 build tested his patience over more than a decade, but he emerged with a 1000hp, blown Coyote-powered beast

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Photographers: Jordan Leist

Unlike their Holden adversaries, properly hot 90s Falcons are few and far between. Worry not, however, because Callum Shand’s bright white EL XR8 packs four times the cams and many times the power it left Broadmeadows with in 1997.

First published in Street Machine’s Yearbook 2024

Callum’s long had a soft spot for E-series Falcons. “My second car was an EL XR6,” he says. “When I was 20 and I had a bit more money, I decided I wanted to build a serious car.”

Events like Gazzanats, Motorvation and Powercruise had a profound effect on the young Callum at the time, so he decided to build something that would batter eardrums and torch tyres at will. This XR8 tickled his fancy, as it was fairly presentable and packing the correct number of cylinders, so he snagged it for a few grand. When it lunched the trans some months later, Callum delivered the car to a big-name workshop with one simple goal in mind: to peel tyres with a ball-busting blown Coyote. Sadly, that’s where the fun ended and a 14-year-long nightmare began.

“They said, ‘No worries, we can build that,’ and it was going to cost me 40 grand and be done in five months,” Callum says. Three years and a house deposit’s worth of coin later, he had to drag the XR8 out of there on a flat tray and take most of his parts home in boxes. “They’d built it so poorly that we couldn’t get it to run; it was full of gremlins. I had a bigger house by then, so I decided to start again and build it myself.”

Even with Callum managing the project, the serious setbacks kept on coming – so much so that there’s barely any of the original Coyote left apart from the timing set, lifters and crank. “I’m on my fifth block,” Callum laughs. One of those cracked between a cylinder sleeve and the coolant jacket, the second one was recalled by Ford, and another was broken by an engine builder hammering a sleeve in. Even the heads didn’t escape the touch of chaos, with brand-new cams seizing in one while in the care of the original shop. Callum must have the patience of a saint!

Eventually, his luck turned around when he met Dan from Bluestreak Performance. Dan’s got a penchant for quad-cam Ford donks, and he set about sorting out Callum’s engine once and for all. The resulting bottom end is based around a first-gen block with Darton sleeves, a standard forged crank, Manley rods and Diamond slugs. Slippery stuff is contained inside an off-the-shelf Canton sump, and a billet MMR pump moves it to where it’s needed. The cylinders are topped with heads that have been lovingly ported and fitted with oversized Manley valves and springs by MPR Racing Engines in the States. L&M Engines, also from the US, provided a set of custom-ground cams that operate with the variable timing locked out.

Taking pride of place in the engine bay is the elephantine four-litre Whipple twin-screw blower, which is about the only part the original shop got right! “They said a three-litre would do the job, and I asked if there was anything bigger. He said there was the four-litre, and I said, ‘Well, yeah, let’s not f*ck around!’” laughs Callum.

A crank support stops the fat 10-rib belt from breaking the nose off the crank, and the Roush inlet manifold was modified to take a much larger intercooler core than standard by Paul from Horsepower Engineering Australia. The combo eventually spat out 1010hp at the tyres on the WA Racing Developments dyno on a measly 22psi of boost, though there’s room for more if Callum decides there’s still too much traction for his liking.

The rest of the driveline is not exactly your standard E-series fare either. The Coyote’s prodigious output is sent through a Shotgun Performance torque converter and into a Hughes Extreme Duty 4L80E equipped with a transbrake and fully manualised operation. Final Drive Engineering built a healthy nine-inch with a Strange centre, 3.9:1 gears and 35-spline axles, and then fitted it with bracketry to hang it from the factory arms and Watt’s link.

While the driveline was coming together, Callum decided to give the tired factory duco a new lease on life. “The paint was another kerfuffle,” he sighs. “The first job was a shitshow; he gave me the runaround, and I finally got it back a few weeks after it was supposed to be done. I picked it up at night, so I couldn’t really see it, but when I got it into the garage it was just runs everywhere – they were enormous, like 5mm high. A mate and I had to fix it with razor blades, wet-and-dry and a buff.” A few years later, Callum had the team at Pro Spray repaint the car correctly, and he couldn’t be happier with the results.

With the horrors of the build behind him, Callum has decided to ditch the XR8’s original ‘event car’ persona and focus on drag and roll racing, so there are some changes already happening. “The suspension’s not ready for racing, so I’ve got some Strange coil-overs and 275/50R15s to go on the rear,” he says. “It should run nines with a bit of work, and then we can make some changes and head for 30-35psi of boost.”

Sounds like plan to us!

THE FINAL STRAW

As if the painful build process wasn’t enough, Callum’s first foray into racing the XR8 didn’t go to plan either.

“I was sitting in the staging lanes behind a Skyline when the drive-by-wire throttlebody malfunctioned and sent the engine to full noise all on its own!” he says. “It overpowered the brakes and went straight into the back of the Skyline before I could shut it off. Luckily, it was a drift car with no rear bar, and he was a really nice guy – he was more worried about my car.

“It was a slow crash, so the damage wasn’t too bad, but I threw in the towel, put the car in storage and moved to Melbourne for a year just to get away from it! When I came back and had calmed down a bit, I installed a cable throttlebody and haven’t looked back.”

CALLUM SHAND
1997 FORD EL FALCON XR8

Paint:Dynamic White
ENGINE
Brand:5.0L Ford Coyote V8
Induction:Modified Roush manifold, Ford Racing throttlebody
ECU:Haltech Elite 2500
Supercharger:4.0L Whipple
Heads:MPR ported
Camshaft:L&M custom
Conrods:Manley I-beam
Pistons:Diamond
Crank:Factory
Oil pump:MMR
Fuel system:MagnaFuel pumps, Bosch 2200cc injectors
Cooling:Stock radiator and fans
Exhaust:Custom extractors, twin 3.5in exhaust
Ignition:MSD coils
TRANSMISSION
Gearbox:Hughes 4L80E
Converter:Shotgun Performance
Diff:Strange 9in
SUSPENSION & BRAKES
Front:Pedders coil-overs
Rear:Pedders coil-overs
Brakes:AP Racing (f), stock (r)
Master cylinder:Stock
WHEELS & TYRES
Rims:Simmons FR1 19in (f & r)
Rubber:Pirelli Dragon Sport 245/35R19 (f), Sailun Atrezzo ZSR 275/35R19 (r)

THANKS
Dan at Bluestreak Performance for helping me get the engine to where it is now; Mike at WA Racing Developments for many hours spent tuning on the dyno; Adam at Cronic Customs and Matt at Unwanted Automotive for the fab work; my close mates for the countless nights spent getting the car to match my vision for it.

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