We were stoked when Melbourne’s Calder Park Raceway finally reopened to drag racing, having been shut for a few years due to the spicy cough and track upgrades.

To celebrate the return of Melbourne’s only drag strip, Scotty decided to drive his late dad’s VE Valiant ute there for Calder’s Friday night drags, with the hope of getting a 12-second PB out of the small block-powered machine.

In a recent episode, Scotty had the converter upgraded by TCE for a higher stall, as well as fitting a bunch of new ignition gear from our friends at Proflow.

With those little changes, we hoped it’d be enough to squeeze the angry little 318-powered Mopar into the 12s, but unfortunately this night just wasn’t on Scotty’s side.

The Valiant was having issues getting out of the hole, with the car almost dying after every launch and struggling for a clean pass. After three attempts, Scotty reckoned it was due to heat soak with the carby.

He went back to the pits and let the thing cool right down, and even pushed the big Val all the way to the startline for its next run, opting out of doing a burnout to keep temps down. Unfortunately, that then resulted in a big bag of wheelspin off the line, and the carby was also having a few hiccups down the track.

Things didn’t really improve from there, and with a big drive home to factor into his night, Scotty elected to call it quits on this attempt.

The plan from here is to try a plastic spacer under the carby to keep temperatures under wraps. You’ll see if that was the fix in a future episode of Carnage, when Scotty heads back to the strip (at Heathcote this time) for another crack at a 12 in Dad’s Ute. Stay tuned!