Mopar aficionados can get pretty triggered about certain engine conversions. You can chuck a Chev in a Ford, throw a Toyota 2J in a Torana, or manoeuvre a Mopar NASCAR mill into a Commodore, and that’s cool by everyone, but stick anything but a Mopar powerplant in a Pentastar product and mud’s going to fly.

First published in the February 2026 issue of Street Machine

But Warick Meldrum’s not going to be deterred by a little mud – he loves rocking the Mopar boat with his bad-arse, eight-second, turbo Barra-powered VF Valiant Regal! “I don’t get those Valiant guys,” Warick laughs. “It’s just an engine – get over it! Oh, the shame of a Barra-powered Valiant. I love it!”

Warick’s got plenty of form when it comes to upsetting purists. First, he built a Barra-powered VP Commodore to take on Street Machine Drag Challenge 2017. For the following year’s DC, he pulled the Barra out of the VP and crammed it into a 1967 Camaro (SM, Apr ’19) – and boy, didn’t that break the internet!

A licensed mechanic and auto electrician, Warick enjoys doing his own bodywork, and currently has seven cars he is building for himself. Fortunately, he has a couple of massive sheds on acerage, one of which has a spray booth just for his own projects, as hiring one was always a hassle. When he is not going hammer and tongs on a new project, he works for Cummins – yep, the diesel guys.

This self-sufficient approach to his projects saves him bulk dollars – he reckons his Barra Valiant build only owes him about $35K.

“After the Barra-in-the-Camaro thing, I was looking for another car to engineer with a Barra engine,” he says. “At that time, I was working in Victoria, so it had to be pre-1973.”

Warick eventually came across this VF Regal; it had a nice body, the interior was done, and it was cheap. He decided he wanted to take the Val to Drag Challenge 2019, which left him a scant three months to install a turbo Barra and a rollcage, and whip everything into shape.

Starting with a naturally aspirated wrecker engine, Warick added a set of Spool Drag Pro I-beam conrods and Carrillo pistons. That was topped by an aspo head with factory valves and Crow valve springs with 130lb of seat pressure.

The rest of the motor was equally inexpensive and simple. The inlet manifold was sourced on Marketplace and fitted with Bosch 2200cc injectors and a Turbosmart fuel pressure regulator, which is fed by three Bosch 044-style pumps internally mounted on a triple-pump hanger. The hot side features a 6boost manifold supporting a Pulsar 83/85 turbo with a four-inch dump pipe.

A massive, front-mounted, 5.5-inch Jonny Tig bar-and-plate intercooler keeps intake temps at under 50 degrees at the top of a quarter-mile pass, and a Haltech Elite Pro Plug-In Barra ECU runs the whole show.

“It’s an awesome ECU, as it has loads of inputs and outputs to control factory options in a Falcon,” says Warick of the Haltech unit. “It’s more powerful than the Elite 2500 and has all kinds of cool extras like the built-in igniter and wideband control. I love it.”

Matt Galvin had to undertake plenty of fab work to complete the conversion, including modifying the torsion bar crossmember to allow the TH400 trans to sit up in the trans tunnel. The K-member got swapped out for an Elko item that was supplied with a manual Commodore rack, but the engineer wouldn’t allow the K-member to be cut or notched for oil pump clearance, so the motor had to be installed a little out of whack, although this was later rectified once the car was engineered.

The other complication was the sump, which interfered with the steering rack. This was rectified by cutting a hole on the sump, welding a tube through it and feeding the rack through the centre of the oil pan.

Other conversion items included Tuff Mounts engine mounts and a Chinese knock-off Holden radiator with Falcon thermo fans.

The rear end consists of a fabricated nine-inch with a full-spool Strange nodular-iron centre with 3.23:1 gears. Homemade traction bars have been added to the stock 1969 leaf springs, while up front, the factory front torsion bars were joined by el-cheapo three-way adjustable shocks.

“It was a case of beg, borrow or steal to build the car as cheaply as I could, and it all worked,” Warick said.

With the Val newly Ford-motivated, Warick fronted up to DC 2019 hoping to run a nine-second pass. He did just that on the first day of racing, posting a 9.81@143mph timeslip, and further improved on that with a 9.35@145mph pass on Day Five.

“I ran the car for about three years like that, until I had massive transmission failure in 2023 and decided to repaint and refresh the car to its current form,” Warick says. With his sights set on Drag Challenge 2023, which was set for October that year, Warick faced another tight timeframe in which to overhaul the car.

He began by completely stripping the Val and painting it silver. Tom Keogh from TK Performance Transmissions came to the party with a new TH400. But unbeknownst to Warick, the driveshaft vibration that had taken out the previous gearbox had caused the converter to drive the crank forward in the block, so when he got it all back together a few weeks before DC ’23, it had little-to-no oil pressure.

“I yanked the motor a week before DC and rang Goleby’s Parts for another NA motor,” he says. “I had it built by the Friday night, and on Saturday morning I drove it to Sydney Dragway, made an 8.8sec hit, and strapped it on the trailer to Adelaide for the start of Drag Challenge.” There, he finished second in the Speed Pro Six-Cylinder class, running a best of 8.74@154mph.

The Val is pretty light, tipping the scales at 3000lb in race trim, and it’s since run a 1.26sec 60-foot and a best quarter-mile pass of 8.62@157mph. “I’ve made the car light, which is kind of like making more power,” Warick grins. “I shouted the Val to a bit of a birthday recently, with some better parts, although it didn’t show it in the timeslips at the recent Drag Challenge 2025. I’m a little deflated that I spent a bit of money on that freshen-up and the car has gone slower – bloody cars!” he laughs. “But the Val has been really reliable, which has made it fun. I’ve finished every drag-and-drive event I’ve done and it has never let me down.

“I’m looking for a seven out of the car now, which will probably mean some head porting and maybe more turbo. I’ve worked out how to get the car to hook up, so that’s half the battle.”

While a Ford-powered Val isn’t likely to be featured in a Mopar calendar any time soon, even the purists must concede that Warick’s Barra VF is one tough, budget-built drag-and-drive rig.