TOP-JUDGED CAR: OVERKILL

HOW MANY CARS CAN YOU THINK OF THAT ARE CHOPPED, BLOWN, TUBBED, AND PACK A 1000HP BIG BLOCK BACKED BY A MANUAL BOX …? YEAH, DIDN’T THINK SO!

The exact number is probably somewhere around zero, zip, nada, or none … and there’s a damn good reason for that. You see, to pull off such a concoction of mechanical mayhem takes a special breed, a person not afraid to risk everything in the quest to create something truly unique. In the case of this 1964 Ford Galaxie, that person is Justin Walker. Just like almost every other feature-car owner, Justin never intended to go quite this far with the project. As we all know, though, once you start pulling the thread, things just keep on unravelling, especially when that thread is attached to a freshly imported car. To begin with, the theory behind buying the Galaxie was that Justin’s tubbed ’64 Falcon Sprint was just a two-seater, and, as he had a young son, it wasn’t really the most practical thing for family cruising. So, when Justin laid eyes on a Galaxie with three inches chopped out of its pillars, it was love at first sight and the ‘Buy Now’ button was pushed. Of course, the Galaxie wasn’t quite as described, and the plan to simply throw some new wheels on it and get on the road was never going to happen. No, it’d be a full 10-year build before the car would legally turn a tyre on New Zealand soil. “I drove it home, and it would have been the worst thing I’d ever driven!” Justin now laughs — although we’re sure he wouldn’t have been laughing at the time. “After more looking and digging, it was evident that the workmanship was rubbish and it was full of fibreglass and poo. What welding had been done looked like the person had his eyes closed — for example, I hit the engine mount with a hammer and it fell off,” Justin adds.

It took Justin a year of walking past the car in disgust before he could finally bring himself to get his head around the build to come. He’d specifically bought a car that was done, to avoid both the cost and the hassle involved with a project, and he knew that to do it right would never be easy. In fact, the easiest way to do it was going to be seriously hard for the first few minutes: bringing out the grinder and cutting away the rear section of floor and the attached part of Americanized chassis. With those bits in the scrap pile, there was no turning back, no matter what lay ahead. Although the Galaxie had already been mini-tubbed, Justin still had the wheels from his now-sold Sprint kicking around, and, measuring in at 20x16 inches, they’re not exactly what you’d call small. To ensure enough space for the wheels and monster 29x18-20 Mickey Thompson rubber, he stitched a set of Chris Alston chassis rails into place. While an F150 steering box had been mounted to the Galaxie’s chassis in America, the workmanship was far from acceptable. This dodgy job was the motivation Justin needed to bin it in favour of a power rack-and-pinion set-up plumbed up to a boot-mounted Toyota electric powersteering pump. As the build continued, the small brakes sitting behind those big wheels kept bugging Justin every time he walked into the shed. There was only one solution, and that was to go big — real big, in the form of 14-inch front discs and 12-inch rears. To clamp these dinner-plate-sized discs, Justin selected Wilwood six-piston calipers for the front and matching four-piston items for the rear. At one stage, there were also plans for a pair of turbos to go under the hood. However, with an 8-71 Teflon-tipped supercharger already sitting in the cupboard and the build cost rapidly spiralling, sticking with what was on hand was the obvious choice.

Before Justin got into the big goal of cracking 1000hp, the chassis and engineering side needed to be completed. Of course, the list of things to do wasn’t a small one. It extended to removing the locks; sorting out rust repairs on the rear quarters; and — due to the lack of space under the rear — creating sideexit exhausts, which Justin frenched into the sills. The blackest black Justin could get his hands on was the colour of choice. For the daunting task of ensuring that the body wouldn’t look like porridge when the Axalta 6000 was sprayed, good mates and fellow car builders Lloyd, Nitz, and Clint, were roped in. For all the pain involved in sorting the bodywork, little did Justin know what sort of nightmare he’d be in for when it came time to sort the glass. Despite various locals saying that they could cut, or custom make, a windscreen, Justin was left with piles of shattered glass — and hopes — on more than one occasion. Finally, he found a company in Australia that could offer what it said it could — even if it meant that he had to create a mould and send it across the Tasman. However, despite the apparent success, the finished windscreen still required a bit of bending — a task performed with a diesel workshop heater over a saw stool — not an experience Justin would recommend for the faint-hearted! Fortunately, the rear screen is a stock item just tilted forward and didn’t provide anywhere near the hassle of the front one. Sadly, though, the difficulties of the build continued, exactly as Justin had feared — the

next problem being another American special. With dreams of 1000hp, a 580-cube monster big block based on an Eliminator Premier block had been ordered from the land of stars and stripes. The motor was filled with all the good bits to make that happen, including a steel crank, H-beam rods, and the essential forged pistons. Justin’s instructions to the engine builder had been specific, in that it must be able to run on local pump gas. Unfortunately, it appears that this particular instruction was ignored. The excitement of the initial fire-up faded on the discovery that the compression ratio was far too high, shooting down the goal of getting the car on the road in time for Repco Beach Hop 17. It’s lucky that Justin took the precaution of pulling the engine out, too, because when his engine builder, Steve Hildred, removed one of the AFR heads, he was met with pitted bores due to water sitting in them when the engine had been shipped. After many phone calls to America, and a complete lack of cooperation from the engine supplier, Justin was left with no option but to foot the bill for the rebuild. Although understandably pissed off at the time — having spent every night between the engine going in and Repco Beach Hop 18 working on the car — Justin is now well aware that the goal of being ready a year earlier would never have been achieved anyway. During that final year, the finishing touches were added to the interior — which he wanted to stand out from the crowd and be functional at the same time. For this, the steel dash was extended by 100mm to accept a hoard of Auto Meter gauges, and, while the front seats are stock Galaxie, a customized rear seat was required to work in around the raised floor and tubs. Kevin Water was then called in to manage the fabric side of things, which included that bright red leather, and Porsche carpet. When the car finally debuted at Repco Beach Hop 18, freshly certified, warranted, and registered, it blew minds and dropped jaws from day one — so much so that even among the thousands of cars that flooded the Whangamata area, the Galaxie was clearly the talk of the event. The hard yards paid off for Justin and his supporters when the car was crowned Top Overall Vehicle — a monumental achievement to top off a monumental build. Now with that goal achieved, Justin’s setting about the next one, which involves adding plenty of street miles to the car’s already long list of impressive features.