First published in the June 2008 issue of Street Machine

Gary Myers is one of a handful of guys in the car scene who can honestly say they’ve been there and done that. He’s won Street Machine Of The Year (twice), Summernats Grand Champion, many burnout comps and run across the wide-open spaces of Lake Gairdner at a class record-setting 170mph.

Gary also bleeds Ford blue and loves nothing more than destroying a pair of tyres to the tune of a blown small-block Ford at 8000rpm. But at the end of the day he’s just a bloke who loves his cars and bikes like the rest of us, and if you’ve ever had the chance to have a word with him you’ll know that to be true.

The differences between him and rest of us mug wannabes are his skill and determination. When it comes to chucking a skid, there’s no-one better and he’s got the tinware to prove it. As for determination, well the XA Coupe you see here was built from a floorless shell in just 12 months. While the winter months saw the rest of us curled up in front of the TV, Gary was in the shed, cutting, forming, welding and finishing the sheet-metal on what became the Repco XACUTER. Through the late nights he didn’t let the cold weather deter him.

“I had the heater going in the shed,” he says with a laugh. Wife Deby had orders to tell anyone who rang that Gary was unavailable for the next few months.

While finding a pristine shell or starting with a complete car might have been easier, there’s something to be said for bringing a car back from the edge of oblivion. Bought in Shepparton late in 2006, the shell was gutted, with no floorpan all the way to the tail-light panel. Gary also scored a rusty donor car in the deal. From there the shell headed south to Jeff ‘Rodie’ Draper at Rodent Restorations down in Melbourne.

“Rodie’s a good mate of mine and was just starting out in business. I just thought I’d give a young up-and-coming bloke a chance and I knew Rodie was going to put 100 per cent into it,” Gary says.

Jeff sent the shell across the road after he had it on the jig and Melbourne Sandblasting and Spraypainting stripped it bare. With the shell back in the workshop and a deadline of Easter 2007, Jeff got stuck into the job of creating a whole new chassis out of 50x70mm box tubing. Crossbeams were made from the same stuff and attached to tunnel supports that were crafted out of 50x25mm tubing bent into shape by filling them with sand so they didn’t collapse.

Check out the pic on your right and you’ll also see that the crossbeams were modified with four-inch diameter hemispherical cuts to give the exhaust system somewhere to sit.

“I see other people’s chassis and the one thing that doesn’t seem to fit is the exhaust,” Rodie says.

He also created a new floorpan for the car using 2mm sheet, while 1.6mm was used for the trans tunnel and wheel tubs. Super-thick 3mm sections were welded in behind the rear tyres to handle the explosive forces of Gary’s favourite BF Goodrich tyres letting go at high revs.

Another mate of Gary’s, Jarrod Wood, travelled down to Melbourne to start massaging the rear quarters before the wheel tubs were locked in. John Taverna Chassis built the diff housing, which Rodie slotted into place using a VPW-supplied Competition Engineering four-link kit.

Lovells, WA Suspensions and RRS were all called upon to supply bits and pieces to complete the suspension and the rolling chassis was ready to head back north just after Easter 2007.

Gary had planned the timeline for the coupe carefully — as long as the XA met each of its deadlines the car would be ready for its Summernats debut.

Mounted on a rotisserie, Gary and Jarrod got stuck into the shell, cutting out the rusty sections, welding in new steel from Rare Spares, and smoothing the panels in time for the next deadline. Rodie made the trip up from Melbourne to finish welding the seams, modify the boot hinges and weld in the seat mounts before Gary gave everything a coat of primer.

“I appreciated Rodie’s help for coming away from his business for five days,” Gary says. Jarrod Wood was also a huge help: “He did all the final prep and speed-filing on the body.”

Over the next few months the guys continued preparing the shell. The underside was given a coat of black POR15 treatment for a hard-wearing finish, while the diff housing, tailshaft and four-link bars were all coated in House of Kolor Kandy Violet.

In the engine bay the front towers were sliced and fitted with RRS clearance kits for more room around the headers, and Gary also seam-welded the engine bay and filled all the holes. Then Jarrod sprayed the engine bay in Kandy Violet before the car headed to Wagga’s Batkin and Damme Smash Repairs. That was the end of August ’07 and the Repco XACUTER was still solidly on track.

While the shell was in for painting, Gary set about assembling the mechanicals. Happily the Powerglide was all ready to go, thanks to Tradematics and a specially built converter from TCE. As for the donk, the plans were for a naturally aspirated 351 Windsor with enough grunt to win burnout comps. That was the whole aim of the project. When we asked him why there was no blower, he said: “I wanted to prove that you don’t need to be blown to win.”

Kostecki Engine Centre in Perth looked after the machining and balancing on the bottom end. Filling the SVO block is a Crankshaft Rebuilders 351 crank, Manley rods, Arias pistons and a High Energy sump holds the oil, while a pair of CHI 3V heads locks in the compression. Crow came to the party with a camshaft and valvetrain components while Kavanagh Auto Parts supplied the REV stainless valves.

On Danny Selva’s dyno the stout combo went 545hp at the flywheel using a 750 Dominator and avgas — that’s a bit better than 1.5hp per cubic inch. Not bad but there were more changes in store.

Up at Sydney’s Injection Perfection, Mark Heysmand was cooking up a custom EFI methanol set-up. Working with a Microtech LT10S ECU and ICE ignition system, the quad-throttlebody injection system would deliver all the horsepower needed while still looking the goods while on show. Being EFI it should also prevent the over-fuelling and fires that seem to be common with methanol-fuelled burnout cars these days.

Back at the paintshop, the coupe rolled out of the booth with a fresh coat of Kandy Violet over Orion Silver. Dan Seddon from Signs Plus Graphics added a thin line of Lime Time and also threw in some subtle marblising, with the name XACUTER shadowed in over the rear quarters.

As soon as the XA was out of the booth, Gary was bolting GTX70 Billet Specialties rims on to see how it looked — nobody had any complaints.

With just four months to go, time was getting tight. Sure, most of the major stuff was done but Gary also had the GazzaNationals taking up a lot of his attention and that fiddly stuff is time consuming.

An interior was sourced early on from WA’s Mark Miocevich but of course it needed some tweaking, due to the height of the trans tunnel. Gary also needed the hoodlining, floor and boot trimmed so he called on Claude Carofano from Claude’s Trim Shop to do the deed.

For the fiddly stuff Gary’s sponsorship deals with Repco and Rare Spares came in very handy when it was time to fit the engine and trans as well as the windows, dash and wiring. Next the XA headed north to Stuart Vale at Racers Choice for a set of custom headers, twin three-inch pipes and a pair of Flowmaster 44 mufflers. From there the coupe was delivered to Injection Perfection for the new intake and some tuning after Gary installed the Microtech with some help from the guys. Then it was time for Mark to spend a few hours working his magic on the little black box. The result was a very healthy 420 horses at the wheels and if you want to put that into perspective, that’s more horsepower than his blown black Mustang used to make back around the Summernats 12 era.

Back home again, time was running short and the final tweaks needed to be made before the big event. Jarrod readjusted the door gaps with the new rubbers installed and Greg Maskel from Shepparton’s Revhead Restorations came up to buff the paint to a lustrous shine.

Then it was time for the Summernats debut and the big reveal in the Elite Hall. If you were claustrophobic but really wanted to cop the first look at the Repco XACUTER, then you were going to have a hard time of it. When the covers came off, the crowd was packed tight as sardines around the car and there was barely room to even breathe.

“Yeah, there was a pretty good response,” Gary says. “We had a few people say it looked better in real life than it did in the mag.”

While other reveals were going on around them, Gary and Deby were flat out with the punters, handing out a huge stack of posters.

“Seemed like we were there for more than an hour signing and giving away posters,” Gary says.

After the Elite Hall, where Gary won the Master Craftsman award and a place in the Top 20, the battle was on for the Grand Champion award.

He got a taste of the grunt on Saturday night during the Grand Champion grass events, but his first real drive on tarmac came during the go-to-whoa on Sunday morning. On his first run Gary managed to beat the top qualifying time of all the entrants who’d had their shots on Friday. He then reeled off two even quicker times and eventually placed second overall after the Top 10 shootout.

Despite that second placing in the go-to-whoa there weren’t quite enough points to knock Rob Godfrey from the top position but Gary sure gave it a good crack. Then, with less than 5km on the odometer, Gary headed for the burnout track to see if the last 12 months had been a waste of time.

No practice sessions or secret testing — the car would either work or it wouldn’t. Imagine if the car had died at the start of its first burnout. Fame is a fickle creature and the crowd can quickly turn against you but despite some issues with security on the way to the track, Gary had no worries with the XA. On the burnout pad the car ran hard and strong all the way through and managed third place in the biggest burnout comp in the land with its very first outing.

According to Gary, the XA never missed a beat from start to finish and when it was all over he drove it off the pad without a hiccup, and without the car boiling its heads off.

Since then Gary has run the car at Murray Bridge Speedway and at the Calder GazzaNationals, destroying a truckful of brand-new BF Goodrich 235s in the process.

He’s also taken it for a blat at the WSID Nostalgia Drags, running a best of 11.5@121mph. Pretty stout for a 3660lb car with 100 litres of fuel on board! We’d say mission accomplished but we suspect Gary’s got more rubber to shred. Check it out when it hits a burnout pad near you.

GARY & DEBY MYERS
XA HARDTOP

THANKS
Wife Deby and our sons Ivan, Joel and Jake. Also Jarrod Wood, Brent and Shanny from Adelaide, Greg Maskel and Dan Musso.

AND THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS
Repco, Rare Spares, Rodent Restorations, Cylinder Head Innovations, ICE Ignition, Batkin & Damme Smash Repairs, BF Goodrich, Crow Cams, WA Suspensions, VPW, High Energy Sumps, Yella Terra, Tradematics, Kostecki Engine Centre, Kavanagh Auto Parts, Microtech, Selva Racing Power, Injection Perfection, Precision Parts, Hoppers Stoppers, Ingrams Automotive, RRS, Switched On Auto Electrics, Racer’s Choice, House of Kolor, John Taverna Chassis, Signs Plus Graphics, Motospecs (Flowmaster).