Simo Says: What would my teenage self do?

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The recent passing of our Dirty Stuff columnist, Noel Tuckey, was a sad loss for the street machining community, particularly the many of us who’d enjoyed reading Noel’s mechanical musings over the past 40-plus years.

First published in the June 2026 issue of Street Machine

I’d been a fanboy of Noel’s column – penned under that unforgettable pseudonym, William Porker – since I was a young bloke, and found comfort in knowing I wasn’t the only one sometimes navigating the most ridiculous of mechanical challenges.

So, it’s an absolute honour to fill the blank magazine page left by Noel’s passing with the first of my monthly Simo Says columns. If they prove half as popular as Dirty Stuff, I’ll be stoked. I’ll certainly be drawing inspiration from Noel’s work, along with some other old-school SM columns like Beefs by Darryl Savage and the late, great Chic Henry’s Shootin’ The Breeze. Hopefully, my lifelong car obsession, along with 20 years as an SM contributor and even being a one-time SMOTY nominee, serves as proof enough of my pedigree and skin in the game.

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Thinking about Noel’s four decades of Dirty Stuff abruptly reminded me that I’ll soon be turning 53, which boggles my maturity-stunted mind. I started tinkering with my own cars as a young teen, and eventually did the hard yards and invested thousands of hours and dollars into ‘proper’ projects. In recent times, however, whenever I’ve been faced with a mechanical hurdle or a pending challenge, I’ve found myself thinking back to those earlier, simpler years and wondering: What would 19-year-old Simon do?

Of course, my broke, grunge-era teenage self was a far dumber and more naïve – albeit more sexually energised – version of how I plod along today. But I think my mates and I achieved so much enjoyment with cars back then purely because we didn’t know any better, so we couldn’t overthink it.

It was nothing for us to slam together an engine in my parents’ garage, using a sheet of cardboard on the concrete as an engine stand and a dodgy torque wrench that would also click your elbow joint when the tension was correct. ‘Dialling the cam’ meant phoning our mate Cameron, while an oily sharpening stone was deemed the perfect tool for decking the block. But it worked. So long as said car blazed the tyres, we were happy, and those engines would rack up a heap of kays, not only being wailed on but also pulling double duty as daily drivers.

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Somewhere along the way, that changed. The monetary investment and stakes both got higher as the racing and show side of things ramped up, and it became the norm to build everything ‘too properly’. We might have got smarter, but things became more serious, and we lost a lot of that fun and innocent enjoyment we had as youngsters.

Fortunately, between family and financial commitments, varying doses of CBF, and the yearning for a simpler life, I’ve come full circle with how I approach tinkering with cars, and it’s already been paying off, both for my brain and my wallet.

My ‘what would 19-year-old Simo do?’ mantra kicked in recently when slotting together a 318 Chrysler V8 to replace the knackered Perkins diesel six-banger in my dad’s Dodge D5N truck. An uber-expensive diesel overhaul was out of the question, so we ridge-cut, ball-honed and sharpening-stoned our way to a simple, old-school V8 home rebuild, even lapping the valves with paste and a suction stick. The project was a great excuse to spend quality time with the old man, too, and the Dodge now runs a treat, sounds great and didn’t cost the earth.

I thoroughly enjoyed that build and intend to apply my new mantra to the mechanicals, body and paint of my latest project: an old 1960s custom Falcon that my better half, Kylie, and I are about to resurrect. The harsh reality is that there are fewer and fewer people around these days who are old enough to remember the car from its glory days, which, along with our own plans for the future, has made us keen to fast-track it onto the road ASAP while still having it be respectable.