TURBO HEMI VG VALIANT AND VORTECH BLOWN V8 VH CHARGER

A couple of cool force-fed Mopars from father and son

Share


JAKE and Jaydin Rebrovic are a Chrysler-loving father and son duo from Perth. Dad Jake has the Vortech-blown, 360ci VH Charger, while son Jaydin struts his stuff in the turbo Hemi-six powered VG Valiant. Let’s check them out:

Jake’s VG has an all-business, purposeful look – both the outside and engine bay. The 17in steel rims hide a set of Mitsubishi EVO X Brembo brakes on all four corners. Yep, Jaydin likes to go around corners as well, taking the car down to Collie Motorplex and Barbagallo Raceway every now and then, although it didn’t end well on one occasion when he tipped the car on its side before it teetered over onto the roof. Not to be deterred, Jaydin and his dad Jake pushed it all back into shape, put a new screen in and the car was back on the road in little more than a week! Talk about a can-do attitude.

There’s a lot more going on with this engine than meets the eye. Yeah, it’s a 265 Hemi with a Garrett GTX4088R turbo, front-mount intercooler and a 1000cfm Edelbrock throttlebody on the outside, but there’s a fair bit of trickery on the inside that you can’t see. Jaydin has shaved 4kg off the crank, 6.2in Scat rods from a 350 Chev and 5.7 litre Hemi pistons which are 27-thou over. All this stuff is pretty straight forward for Jaydin as he works at Harris Engines, a long standing machine in Perth with an awesome reputation. Jaydin also machine the Aussiespeed intake to accept the injector bungs which have been welded from the inside and the whole lot runs off a Wolf V4 ECU.

All of the TIG welding is Jaydin’s own work, and if you look closely you can see where the rocker cover has been extended to make it taller. This was necessary to cover the rocker gear as the head has been fitted with longer valves which allows you to use beehive valve springs.

There’s a pretty big hydraulic cam from Camtech and the end result is 486hp at the wheels running around 17psi boost. The rest of the driveline consists of an A500, which is basically an overdrive version of a 904 Torqueflite, and a Borg Warner diff that runs 28-spline billet axles and a TORQ Locker centre with 3.45 gears. While the car hasn’t been run down the quarter-mile with the current set up, it has already gone 10.96@124mph when it ran a Vortech blower. The turbo might go even quicker!

Jake has owned his VH XL Charger for over 20 years and has developed it into a seriously quick machine. It ran a 265 and 3-speed when he first got it, but it’s now powered by a Vortech-blown 360 which makes the most out of a fairly stock bottom end. The addition of the twin-headlight Chrysler by Chrysler front-end adds a touch of class, but once Jake puts the hammer down, any ideas of luxury go out the window. Jake’s been tapped on the shoulder a couple of times at the Perth Motorplex for going a little bit too fast, as in 10.80s fast! It’s time for a roll cage, but Jake’s not too keen on that idea as the car is regularly driven on the street.

The 360 block runs the stock crank and rods with a set of hypereutectic pistons. There’s a hydraulic ‘Purple’ cam out of the Mopar Performance catalogue and a set of Edelbrock aluminium heads. The Vortech T-trim blower sends the charge through a front-mount intercooler which is then fed into a Holley Projection throttlebody that has had the top-mounted injectors removed. Fuel is delivered via port injection through the Mopar M1 single-plane intake. Being a very early adopter of EFI, Jake is still running a Wolf 3D v4 ECU and it’s obviously working out for him as the car makes 503hp at the rear wheels. It still cruises nicely on the highway thanks to the A518 overdrive auto and 3.45 gears, sitting at just under 2000rpm at 110km/h.

Comments