Cam Waters’s pro touring XB Falcon hardtop

When Supercars racer Cam Waters teamed with pro touring maestros Rides By Kam to build an XB Falcon hardtop, the result was always going to be spectacular

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Photographers: Chris Thorogood

When this stunning XB coupe was unveiled at this year’s Meguiar’s MotorEx, it was Rob Zahabi pulling back the covers, the man behind Gold Coast workshop Rides By Kam, which had brought the car to life. But the massive Tickford Racing transporter sitting immediately behind it gave a pretty good clue as to who had commissioned the build in the first place: Supercars driver Cam Waters. And don’t go thinking that Cam was just signing the cheques – he was heavily involved with the fabrication at various points in the build.

First published in the June 2024 issue of Street Machine

Unfortunately, Cam was racing NASCAR trucks in the US the weekend of MotorEx and couldn’t be there to appreciate all the attention the car received from punters and judges alike. By weekend’s end, it had picked up medals for Design & Execution, Engineering, Paint, and Bodywork, as well as a Superstars invitation for next year. The only downside of that success is that Cam might have to keep the XB clean for a good while, as he’s more than a little keen to strap into it and rip some skids!

Cam bought the car in 2018 from long-time friend and personal sponsor Colin McQuinn. “He had two coupe shells he had bought, and he wanted to sell one of them,” Cam explains. “I went to his shed to see him and saw the coupe in the corner. He was close to having it sold, but when I saw it, I bought it on the spot. I’d always had a desire to build or buy an old car down the track, and I couldn’t pass it up.”

The XB had been fitted with a big-block, and it would have been easy to make bulk horsepower from it, but as a Supercars driver, Cam is more accustomed to high-winding small-block Fords. For a solution, he turned to Jon Grove, who at the time was head of Tickford Racing’s engine shop. “Cam dearly wanted to run the same engine that took him to victory in the 2017 Sandown 500,” Jon says. “It was his first win and my first win with the team after coming back from NASCAR, and it was also cool for me because it was the first time we had run the new engine package I’d developed for the team.”

Unfortunately, the block wasn’t serviceable anymore, so the decision was made to go for a new Dart SHP Windsor block with an 8.2-inch deck height, the same as a 302 Windsor, in part for ease of packaging in the Falcon’s engine bay.

The first order of business was to send the car off to Rob Zahabi and the Rides By Kam team. “I found RBK online from the red XC coupe that Rob had built a few years back for Brock Mahoney [SM, Sep ’14],” Cam says. “Rob helped guide me early on with what I should do. I got the car as far as I could at the time, then gave it to him. Rob and his boys do amazing work, and they really nailed this build. I can’t thank them enough for the level they took my car to.”

The RBK team worked their magic to install McDonald Brothers front and rear ends, including Ridetech airbags and Fox shocks on all four corners. That might sound straightforward, but it required a bit of extra head-scratching due to the specialised sump on the engine. “There was a lot of to and fro between me, Cam and Jon to get everything right and dialled in, because we hadn’t used that sort of sump set-up before where the engine mounts off the sump,” Rob explains. “It’s a bloody good design; it’s a Tickford Racing sump that they machine out of billet aluminium on their CNC machines. The engine mounts are built into it, so they’re strong-as.”

With the suspension in the car, Cam took it back home to continue working on it with his dad. “They started stripping the old primer and bog to get it back to bare steel and were going to look at starting the bodywork themselves, but he found a lot of steel work that needed attending to,” Rob says. “Cam did do the new trans tunnel and tubs, and made up the exhaust system, headers and fuel tank before sending it back to our shop, where we fixed all the steel and did the bodywork and paint.”

Some might look at the engine bay and think it could have been more highly detailed or perhaps have more painted and polished parts considering the elite finish on the rest of the car, but Cam had his reasons. “That was one of Cam’s specs for the build,” Rob says. “He wanted it to still have a race car look; he wanted to be able to see the Wiggins clamps and not hide stuff.

Obviously, the trumpets had to be seen, and that’s why we had to build that big-arse box underneath the bonnet. It’s designed to hug the trumpets within 10mm all the way around, so when the bonnet is shut, it’s just breathing through the nostrils in the hood.”

The interior is also pretty low-key, completely swathed in black Alcantara and highlighted with bronze stitching to tie into the wheel colour. The front and rear seats are FG XR8 Falcon ute items, with the rears losing their headrests. There’s a full-length console housing a Ringbrothers shifter, Haltech CAN keypad and Pioneer touchscreen. A couple of 6×9 speakers in the back and some six-inch speakers in the doors means Cam can listen to some sweet tunes when he’s cruising, although it would be tough to beat the sound coming out of the pipes.

One of the final decisions was picking a paint colour, and Cam had a few options in mind, all quite different. “The purple was on the cards, but there was a white in the mix, as well as an orange,” Rob says. “Cam got some renders done, and when I saw the purple, I wanted to make sure it was a bit darker – more of a black/purple – and that’s when Cam found that colour on the internet.” The chosen hue is Porsche Amethyst Metallic, which looks practically black in the shade but really pops when the sun hits it.

The XB’s underside is neat and tidy, too. The smooth floor is painted a satin version of the body colour, while the exhaust and various suspension parts are finished in bronze Cerakote. As beautifully finished as it is, the car was still built to be a driver, so at least it should be easy to clean the rubber off those smooth surfaces.

Given his rather busy professional schedule, you might think that Cam would have had enough of tinkering with old rides for a while after building such a high-end example. Not so: “During COVID, I was in Sydney for four weeks, racing back-to-back weekends. During race weekends, I was browsing Marketplace and saw an XP sedan for sale,” he says. “It was a roller and needed a bit of work, so I went and looked at it. I got there, had a look around and bought it. I wanted to buy something that I could work on myself and keep a little more standard than the coupe. The project has escalated a little from my original plan now!”

Cam stripped it himself, before getting it blasted and in primer. He then mini-tubbed it and put a triangulated four-link and nine-inch underneath, along with a Rod Shop front end and new tunnel. “It’ll be powered by a Ford Coyote with a six-speed Tremec Magnum manual,” he says.

Sounds like there could be another Cam Waters Falcon in a future issue of Street Machine!

CAM WATERS
1974 FORD XB FALCON COUPE

Paint:PPG Porsche Amethyst Metallic
DONK
Brand:369ci Dart Windsor
Intake:FPR/Tickford Supercars ITB manifold, custom throttle blades, EV14 injectors
ECU:Haltech Nexus R5
Heads:D3, 2.125/1.60 titanium valves, PAC springs
Pistons:JE custom
Crank:Bryant custom
Conrods:Carrillo custom
Camshaft:Comp Cams custom solid-roller, over 0.700in lift
Oil pump:Dailey Engineering five-stage
Sump:FPR/Tickford billet
Preferred fuel:Petrol
Exhaust:Custom stainless-steel four-into-ones
Ignition:Haltech individual coil packs
SHIFT
’Box:Tremec T56 six-speed
Clutch:Triple-plate billet
Diff:9in
BENEATH
Front:Custom IFS, Fox shocks, Ridetech ShockWave airbags
Rear:Triangulated four-link, Fox shocks, Ridetech ShockWave airbags
Steering:Power rack-and-pinion
Brakes:Wilwood 15in discs and six-piston calipers (f), Wilwood 14in discs and four-piston calipers (r)
ROLLING STOCK
Rims:Billet Specialties Prism; 19×8 (f), 20×10 (r)
Rubber:Michelin Pilot Sport; 235/30R19 (f), 305/35R20 (r)

THANKS
Brooke, my parents and my family; Dad and Richard for putting in a lot of hours early in the build with me; Rob and his boys at Rides By Kam; Jon Grove for the killer engine; Haltech for everything electrical – if I needed help or had questions they were always there; the PPG crew for nailing the paint colour and everything else they helped with; GJ Drivelines; Michelin; 3M; PWR.

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