OFF AND RACING
IARRIVED in Brisbane in late ’71 or early ’72. Things were about to change dramatically. Little did I know there was a red XU-1, two great mates, and a couple of Christmas trees about to come into my life, and by the end of 1975 I would be announcing with Milton Adey at Surfers Paradise Raceway.
By this time I was driving an HR ute: triple SUS, 12-port P&R performance head, Mallory twin-point distributor, 40/80 Mcgee cam, equal-length Seton headers, all on a steel-cranked 186, running through a standard Holden three-speed to a 3.9 diff, and rolling on Bridgestone wet-weather racing rubber. Bandag used to retread them with a street pattern, so they were sort of legal. At 6200rpm it was doing 100mph in top gear. Best it ever ran was a 15.8 with the clutch departing on the second-to-top shift.
Anyway, the motor, diff gears and 13x10s out of the HR ended up in this red XU-1. It immediately started running mid-14sec passes and winning races – that’s how the race car called ‘Xu-berance’ came into being.
Pretty soon we were looking to go faster. There was this little Datsun called ‘Time Is Tight’ running against us; the owner Gavin Adams had some sponsorship from Lalor Motors (Nissan dealership) and was giving us a real run for our money.
Power wasn’t our problem, traction was. In Stock Eliminator in those days you couldn’t tub the rear; rolling the lips was about as far as you could go. My solution came by way of a pair of M&H speedway slicks on 14x8 HK steel rims.
Wow – what a difference! Low 14s immediately – and a maintenance program that would have broken lesser people, but my mates Pete Warrendorp and Archie Mcilroy were stayers. George Wegener showed us how to keep harmonic balancers on the engine most of the time.
I would tow a trailer full of Opel four-speeds, humpy centres with 3.9 gears, and spare axles to every meeting (couldn’t change any of the original running gear for stronger stuff). Flywheels were a challenge as well; at a time when everyone was lightening up, we went with heavy – like 35lb heavy. That engine would just stay up there and you changed gears behind it. If we got four passes without the flywheel coming loose we were ecstatic. Two Christmas trees later, the Torana was returned to the street, and by then the Warrendorp/mcilroy/digney Morris Minor gasser, Gas Treatment, was nearing completion.
As always, things didn’t always go to plan, and there were frustrating teething problems with the gasser. And what do you know – the Winters were just three weeks away and we didn’t have a competitive race car. Then the penny dropped: Let’s put the Torana back together for one more go; after all, low 14s was still competitive in D/S (no one in the country was quicker at the time). The three-week stint to put it back together was tough, but for the first time ever the car was ready on the Wednesday night before – something we had never achieved before. The car was sign-written, tuned and ready to go.
Now the car belonged to Archie, and he wanted to take it home to show his friends, so the muffler went on (a five-minute job), the SUS were leaned up a little and Archie was off.
That was the last time I ever saw the car in one piece. On the Thursday night some thieving scum skull-dragged the car out of Archie’s yard, and Xu-berance was gone.
We did get some of the car back; we dragged the body out of the Petrie Dam. Archie sold it to a speedway guy.
As for the Morrie, it eventually went 13.00@103mph with a stock XU-1 202, triple Strommies, three-speed and 4.11s. But money was tight and I had just got married, so the development of the Morris waned. I became a scrutineer and apprentice announcer at Surfers just so I could stay involved.