JEREMY Bond skidded the wheels off his Holden Statesman, FAT WH, for a number of years, but recently took it off skid duties for a ground-up rebuild. The plan is to go bigger and badder than before with a blown and injected small-block Chev motor. But while FAT WH is off the pad, obviously Jeremy wasn’t going to give up burnouts, so he built WAITNC, a VZ ute with the Statesman’s old running gear.

It runs a stocky LS1 motor, albeit with a couple of freshen-ups over the past two years, topped with a 6/71 blower and Big & Ugly injection hat. The donk is backed by a tough TH400 ’box that runs into the factory IRS rear end. It’s an angry bit of gear and has no trouble turning a set of tyres to dust in just a matter of minutes.

The VZ ute debuted at Brashernats Sydney earlier this year, where it broke the belt for the mechanical fuel pump. Unfortunately Burnout Allstars later in the year saw another mechanical failure.

Jeremy hoped it would be third time lucky for WAITNC when he competed at Sydney Dragway’s Burnout Outlaws event last weekend. Everything seemed to be going to plan as Jeremy tipped it in and it started pumping big smoke. The motor sounded on song too, and Jeremy was giving it a good steer.

But after about a minute of abuse on the pad, that LS1 gave up the ghost and punched the rods out with a spectacular fireball. “I think it may have been an oiling issue,” said Jeremy afterwards. “The tune was mint, but it started losing oil pressure towards the end.”

With less than two weeks before Jeremy is due to make the trip up to his next skid comp at Red CentreNATS in Alice Springs, he’s going to drop another stock LS motor into the car and hope it hangs together!