First published in the March 2009 issue of Street Machine

The story of Steven Loader’s UCSMOKE started about six years ago. Back then he was playing around with a UC Torana, running a 355-cube injected Holden.

“I was looking for an HR or HK to do as a cruiser,” he says. Instead, he found an HT Prem belonging to an old lady. With its 186 red motor and Powerglide trans it was just the ticket for a cool cruiser.

“It was dark green with a tan interior, stock as a rock,” Steven says. But a mate had 20 litres of black two-pack to fix that. They also slipped in standard style red interior trim and a big cam for the six-banger. And then another mate put a 308 up for sale two weeks later.

“I put that in, got it regoed and cruised around until I sold my Torana as a roller,” he says. At which point the 308 came out, replaced by the Torrie’s donk and T350 trans so he could do skids with the HT instead.

From there, he added a set of Center Line Autodrags and a nine-inch diff, and ditched the red trim in favour of a new grey velour interior.

The 355 Holden was stout, with a COME twin throttle intake and good internals. At the car’s first outing, Springnats, Steve copped a defect (too low, no washers) but won Best V8 Burnout before wiping a lobe off the cam on the trip back to Melbourne. So he sold the Holden engine to a mate and built up a tunnel-rammed 350 Chev instead. That lasted 12 months before it tossed a rod at Easternats.

The block was still good, so they stroked it to 383 and plonked a carby-fed Weiand 6/71 pump on top, while the car got mini-tubs and a narrowed nine-inch up the bum.

Steve debuted the newly blown powerplant at Gazzanats in 2006, where he scored second place. He scored a few top three places before taking the $5000 win at the Elite Pro Street burnouts in Queensland.

Then it came all unstuck.

“At Summernats we totally destroyed the engine,” Steve says, “revving it a bit too hard. I turned it to about 8500rpm and it didn’t like it.”

That’s an understatement! All that was salvageable were the bare heads (the valves were bent) and the blower.

So they started again. Same cubes, but this time with a Blower Shop 8/71 and Enderle Bugcatcher injection consuming straight methanol. With that came a full set of wheel tubs and a ladder-bar rear, along with wider wheels and HQ brakes. He wanted to run a back seat but with the big tubs and modified suspension it looked wrong and was dropped.

Which is the car that went to Summernats 21 and had The Accident. Steve’s altercation with a concrete barrier on the cruise was big news.

At first the guys thought the throttle had iced up — a common problem with engines running methanol — but it turns out otherwise.

Steve blipped the throttle three times and on the third it went wrong.

“It’s got a little adjuster and it’s on a spline on the side of the hat. When I blipped the throttle, that slid across and got jammed up against the hat and held it at about 3500rpm,” Steve says.

A jammed throttle is a colon-draining experience and Steve did the best he could on the packed cruise route.

“When the throttle got stuck I was just looking at the crowd and looking at the barrier and I opted for the barrier. I pretty much just sat in the car with my hands on my head. I was shattered.”

They managed to get the Premier running for the burnouts the next day but the fuel supply shut off halfway through the skid, killing any chance of a win.

After the Nats, one of Steve’s mates gave the car a quick blow-over with fresh black paint for the Vic Supercruz and following that event, Steve decided a new motor was needed.

The guys at High Port Cylinder Heads in Ferntree Gully, Vic, built a 540-cube grunter using a Dart block and Pro 1 cylinder heads. The old 874hp small-block was sold off minus the injection hat, and the new mill was set-up to run just 8psi for a dyno-measured 847hp and 990ft-lb.

Craig Brewer at Pro Pipes & Race Cars helped to get the new motor in place by front-mounting the steering rack, building new pipes for the bigger donk and making engine plates to suit. He also gave the car a six-point ’cage, just in case Steve wanted to visit any more concrete walls.

Why big-block? “I sort of weighed it up. I wanted to build something with a Dart block and when I compared the prices it wasn’t much dearer to go big-block,” Steve reckons.

“But then, once I went big-block it meant new pipes, new front rack and reconfiguring all the steering. Building the actual engine wasn’t that much dearer but modifying everything to get it in was.”

The new motor debuted at Easternats, wearing the same Bugcatcher scoop from the small-block engine, but after Easternats things got really serious. Steve wanted the whole car looking like new for Gazzanats, which was just five months away.

On the mechanical side, the engine received its Big ‘n’ Ugly injector hat, an in-your-face bit of gear that suits the car’s new persona.

Adam at Hi-Gloss Bodyworks went to town with the shell, filling the door locks, smoothing the body and engine bay and flat-sheeting the firewall. Then the body was hit with two-pack Black Mica for a flawless finish — the car’s never looked this good before. SOC Car Audio & Upholstery handled the trim using tan and cream leather to cover the modified RCI race seats and the six-point rollcage. Auto Meter gauges are stacked across the dash like dominoes and a B&M Pro Bandit shifter works the Burko Automatics-prepped Powerglide.

The icing on the cake was the new set of Intro V-Rod billets from Showwheels. Up front they’re 18x7s, while at the back they’re 20x13s wrapped in 15in-wide, 29in-tall Mickey Thompsons. From what used to be just another burnout car, it’s now a total package that can win trophies in the show arena and then pull a serious skid on the burnout pad.

At Gazzanats 2008 the HT took Best Engine Bay, Top Engineered and Top Holden and then at Springnats ’08 Steve won Best Burnout Overall. Not bad for a car that can also run 10-flat at 139mph over the standing quarter. There aren’t many cars in the scene that can tick all the boxes; this latest rendition of UCSMOKE is definitely one of them.

But Summernats was the real prize for Steve. While he appreciated the Chic’s Choice Award and loved being in the Top 60 Hall and having a crack at the Grand Champion, his greatest pleasure was being able to drive it back onto the truck at the end of the weekend.

“I’ve been going to Summernats for five years and every year I’ve done something to the car,” he explains. “Blown engines, broken fuel pump, smashed the car or something. This year was the first time when nothing at all went wrong. That was the biggest reward ever.”

OVERNIGHT EXPRESS

The Summernats barrier incident started one of the most amazing rebuild tales ever.

“I was pretty shaken up,” Steve says. “I was happy to just walk away but the other guys were saying: ‘We’ll get it back out there.’ I was sort of ‘Nah’ because I wasn’t in the mood. But everyone started chipping in and helping and started pulling stuff apart and it just went from there.”

Mates and anonymous helpers sourced a new subframe, driver’s guard and grille from a wreck and had the car up and running for the Sunday burnout finals.

But there was no fairytale ending on the burnout pad. The cam-driven mechanical fuel pump had been dislodged slightly when the car hit the barrier, and halfway through the finals, the pump came out enough to shut the fuel supply off, ending the skid prematurely.

“The number of people that came up to me this year at Summernats and shook my hand and said: ‘You don’t remember me, do you?’ was unbelievable. I didn’t even know half the people in there helping. It was just amazing.”

STEVEN LOADER
1969 HT PREMIER

THANKS
Pro Pipes & Race Cars; High Port Cylinder Heads; Hi Gloss Body Work; SOC Car Audio & Upholstery; Burko Automatics; girlfriend Kylie and all the boys who help at events and work on it all the time. Thanks guys!