A BEAST BENEATH —

BLOWN HEMI VALIANT

Isn’t it interesting that, as car fanatics, we can all remember the moment that a certain car or vehicle made a big enough impact that it formed a burning desire to own one? For Steve Phillips, the love of Mopars started because of not just one but two such moments. The first in 1976 when he bought an American Hot Rod magazine that had a line-up of Dodge and Plymouth muscle cars, and the second when he was watching a late-night movie called Vanishing Point. He instantly loved that white Dodge Challenger and can clearly remember thinking, I’ve gotta have some of that. Fast forward 40-plus years and Steve still has that Hot Rod magazine and, more important, now owns a 1970 Valiant hardtop coupe, as well as a cool 1970 Dodge Challenger.

The Valiant build began in 1982 when Steve was only 21, when he bought a 392 Hemi engine while working overseas. A year later, on his return to New Zealand, he started hunting for something cool to put it into, with a ’70 Valiant coupe being top of the shortlist. Only a couple of weeks later, he was told of a car for sale minus motor. The body of the car was in great shape with zero rust and complete except for the engine and trans. The roll of $20 notes couldn’t come out of Steve’s pocket quickly enough, and he bought it immediately. Initially, though, he had nowhere to keep it, but luckily a workmate offered his spare garage to store it in for a few months until a workshop became available at another mate’s house.

The ’69–’70 Valiant coupes are basically an Australian-assembled Dodge Dart with a restyled

front end, and Steve had taken a liking to one in particular: a limited-edition ’68 Hemi Dart factory drag car, which would become the inspiration for building his own machine.

Once the car was in a decent space, the build started immediately and progressed well, with many late nights and many beer-glass stains on the boot lid — right up until the 1984 Southland floods struck Invercargill. As with most flooding, it all happened quickly, and, as the car was up on axle stands with no suspension, there was no chance of moving it to higher ground. The coupe ended up almost completely submerged, with the water level within eight inches of the roof.

A massive clean up revealed that it didn’t look like too much harm had been done, and the car was moved again — this time to a rental garage. This time, another disaster was averted when the garage was broken into and tools were stolen, but the car, like a cat with nine lives, was left untouched. There was then a gap in the build as Steve took some time out to marry his best friend, Suzanne; buy a house; and build a good workshop, whereupon the project was back on. By this stage, the car had affectionately been named ‘the wheelie bin’ by Suzanne, sitting, as it had, seemingly full of junk for a few years.

The build of this Mopar was never going to be rushed as Steve is a self-confessed perfectionist, and the car had to be built to go, stop, and handle, as well as look like it could ‘Clark Kent’ into prostreet Superman with a minute’s notice. Steve was aided by son Calvin, who, right from the time he was old enough to walk, was in the garage with tools in his hands. The father-and-son team spent most weekends working on the car. Performance parts were scarce at the time and money was short, so Steve, being a fitter/turner, made or modified a lot of parts. He started by stiffening the whole car up with 75x50mm

rectangular-hollow-section (RHS) frame connectors fully welded through the floorpan, and rolling and fitting new aluminium wheel tubs to provide more room to squeeze in the Centerline alloys and Mickey Thompson Sportsman rubber. Next, he narrowed a nine-inch diff and machined up floating hubs, and fitted the diff with turned down and re-splined heavy-duty truck axles. Extra leaves were fitted to the springs in the rear, with the spring front eyes repositioned to give some antisquat. A custom-fabricated 24-gallon aluminium fuel tank in the boot space completed the rear end of the car.

At the front end, Steve moved the firewall back two inches and fabricated a new trans tunnel, then moved the front shock tops outwards to provide a little more space for that beast of a Hemi engine. Deciding that the engine needed freshening up, he completely rebuilt it from top to bottom with many hand-built parts, including machining his own four-bolt main caps, making adjustable pushrods and casting his own aluminium timing cover. He even made a pattern for casting the valve-cover

breathers with his initials ‘SJP’ embedded. A custom sump pan was made with a one-inch pickup and end plate for the high-volume oil pump, and he fitted a 6-71 blower from a Detroit diesel, matching it to the Hemi using a Cragar blower manifold that came with the engine. Next, Steve made a blower drive and 8mm pitch pulleys, at the same time, fitting a cable-drive tach from an old truck that is cleverly driven off the back of the blower running at a 1:1 ratio. Internally, the engine runs a stock forged-steel crank, shot-peened 440 rods, Ross forged pistons, and a custom nine-litre Teflon-coated sump, and windage tray to take care of oil collection. More fabrication and machining skills were employed to create custom front and rear engine plates with four rubber mounts to hold the engine secure, and a set of handmade headers and genuine M/T valve covers were added to top off the engine bay. A great improvement was the steering rack from an early Commodore, considering the bigger and heavier engine, and the steering wheel came from an R/T Charger that Steve had previously owned — it was in mint condition, so he swapped it for a less perfect one before selling that car, intuitively knowing that he would have a use for it one day. Steve had originally intended the Valiant to be a dedicated drag car, so, at the beginning of the build some parts were sold off or swapped, including the complete interior. But, as the Charger came together, Steve realized he wasn’t going to get much use out of a dedicated race car and decided he wanted to put it back on the street. This created

HE FITTED A 6-71 BLOWER FROM A DETROIT DIESEL, MATCHING IT TO THE HEMI USING A CRAGAR BLOWER MANIFOLD

a lot more work and made him cringe at the thought of all the parts he’d sold off.

After sourcing Autosport front seats and a VH Valiant rear seat, he replaced the factory dash with a fabricated aluminium panel to house the Autometer and Smiths gauges, and has only recently replaced the Autosport seats with latemodel VW black leather items. A Hurst ratchet shifter takes care of selecting gears and uses a handmade Hemi-stamped aluminium shifter knob. Lastly, a race-style switchgear / warning-light panel between the seats puts everything important in one easy to find place.

The Valiant VG body is a facelifted version of the Valiant VF, with a restyled front grille and rectangular headlights. Steve didn’t want to mess with that gorgeous body shape, so, apart from a wired-edge hole in the bonnet for the supercharger, the rest of the bodywork was left stock and sprayed over with Hemi Orange in 2K and matching Hemi 392 stripes to set it off. Keeping the car streetable has turned out to be a good decision, as Steve has been able to really enjoy driving the car instead of racing — he doesn’t want to hurt his engine with it being only 0.020 of an inch over, and, of course, he’s sentimentally attached after owning it for so long. These engines have become valuable — to put it in perspective, the block, crank, and heads are now 61 years old, with basic old-school engineering and no sign of any computers or sensors. Over the years, the Valiant has picked up awards and trophies at shows and local street sprints, the most prized of which being Best Mopar at Muscle Car Madness, Rangiora in 2011. More events are on the cards for 2020, so watch out for this immaculate, well-built, bright orange Mopar on the road.