DOING IT TUF
WHEN THE GOING GOT TOUGH, CRAIG DIXON’S TUFHQ GOT TOUGHER
TO HEAR Craig Dixon tell it, it’s all the fault of Allan ‘Bundy’ El-bayeh and Danny Makdessi.
“I went down to [Danny’s business] Custom Bodyworks one night to help Bundy put FAT LC together for Motorex, and I decided then and there that this is the quality I wanted for my own car,” he recalls. Craig’s Monaro, TUFHQ, was at the time essentially a drag car and Powercruiser that had run a best of 11.0@126mph thanks to a tough 383 Chev that he and his father had screwed together. “I couldn’t really just get in and drive it,” he explains. “I wanted to be able to enjoy it with the family, be more of a cruiser.”
So shortly after that fateful night, Craig set about stripping TUFHQ 1.0 down to bare metal. Unfortunately, blasting revealed a nightmare.
“I’d bought the Monaro 12 years ago; the body looked pretty decent,” he recounts. “I sold off the original 5.0L, TH700 and 10-bolt and added the 383 and new driveline. So I was really surprised when the blasting revealed bog up to 30 and 40mm thick! You couldn’t pick it, but it was a mess.”
Undeterred, Craig soldiered on. Starting at the front, a flat firewall was added, the wiper motor and brakes were relocated inside the cabin, and the heater box was shaved, before the firewall and the rest of the engine bay was smoothed off. Out the back, there are mini-tubs and a 40mm wheelarch stretch to swallow the 22x11in rollers.
Tying it to the pavement are Mcdonald Brothers tubular front control arms with three-way adjustable Competition Engineering shocks, along with tubular rear trailing arms. The Panhard bar and Strange coil-overs are a carry-overs from TUFHQ’S first incarnation. “Dad and I installed the Panhard bar and a monster sway-bar
[now removed] as it used to wheelstand pretty hard,” Craig says. “It was wild. It’d leave like a pro stocker, lift the wheels 500mm but then run out of horsepower, as it only had 530 at the flywheel.”
Rather than dialling back the grunt for the cruiser version of TUFHQ, Craig went in the complete opposite direction, scoring a very stout 414-cube small-block from a mate. Its parts list reads like a go-fast honour roll: Arias pistons, Scat crank, Manley rods, Holley carb, MSD ignition, Chevrolet Performance intake and Edelbrock heads.
“It had very little use,” Craig says, “but Dad and I tore it down for new rings and bearings just to be sure.”
While the engine was apart, Warspeed Industries took to the Victor Jr alloy heads and Bowtie inlet manifold with the die grinder to unleash a host of extra neddies – a barnstorming 630 dyno-proven horses at the flywheel, to be exact. It’s not every day you hear that adding 100hp to an already-stout combo helped make a track weapon more street-friendly. But hey, that’s just how Craig rolls.
Exhaust-wise, Di Filippo extractors dump the spent gases into a dual three-inch system.
Backing the new ‘street mill’ is one of Al’s Race Glides’ brutally strong, 1000hp fully manualised reverse-pattern TH400S, and a 35-spline Strange nine-inch by Smithfield Diff & Gearbox. At either end of the braced housing there are 315mm Wilwood rotors and four-piston Wilwood calipers.
It’s the same brand up front, except the rotors are 360mm and the calipers are six-pots.
To keep the underside tidy and serviceable, Oxytech powdercoated numerous bits and pieces, including all the suspension.
Thanks to the extra-lumpy lumps on the roller cam, there’s bugger-all vacuum to run the brakes. To haul TUFHQ to a stop, it now runs twin remote boosters and an electric vacuum pump – all activated via an under-dash Wilwood pedal box.
With driveline sorted and fab work completed, TUFHQ headed to Custom Bodyworks, with John Raso welding up the inner guards to make them one-piece, before spending many hours fettling the famous HQ lines into shape. Danny then laid on the custom mix of House Of Kolor Organic Green (with green Metajuls) over a Planet Green base. Those Gts-inspired stripes are also Organic Green, however they’re over a lighter green base, giving them a subtle, understated presence.
“I love the colour, especially against all the chrome,” Craig says. “Being an old-school car, it had to have plenty of chrome. I’m not a big fan of the black-out treatment.”
When designing and creating the interior, Inside Rides aimed for practicality and functionality. It features one-off everything – even the Recaro front buckets were stripped down to their frames and re-shaped with high-density foam. The dash, door trims, hood lining and full-length centre console were all fabricated from scratch. An eye-catching theme running through the engine bay, interior and boot are the polished, hand-cut alloy inserts accentuated with countersunk Allen-head bolts. The bolstering in the seats was sculpted around the inlays – which are tethered securely into place via small holes drilled through the bolts.
No self-respecting family cruiser would be without a kickarse audio system – but good luck finding it, as it’s completely hidden. “At first, I didn’t want one,” Craig states, “but Matt, along
with Sean from Frankies Car Audio, talked me into it. I’m glad they did – I love it.” The system operates wirelessly through a Bluetooth-connected iphone, which adjusts volume, scrolls through tracks and can tune into streaming audio platforms like Pandora and Spotify. It all pumps through four discreet speakers and a subwoofer.
While the overall build went surprisingly smoothly, that didn’t mean it wasn’t a total pressure cooker in the lead-up to the car’s debut at Motorex 2016. With the underside painted, Craig and his dad had the engine and driveline back in within the week – with Troy from Warspeed chipping in to complete the fuel system. Mark Sant from Ontrak Auto Electrical rewired the whole car in just five days, while Inside Rides and Frankies pulled out all the stops to get the Monaro in and out in under two weeks. From there, things really ramped up on the final run to Motorex, including a weekend at Custom Bodyworks where Danny, John, Craig and his brother-in-law Nathan worked until three o’clock in the morning getting it all done.
“The amount of extra stuff those guys did was ridiculous.” Craig says. “We’re good mates now; it’s not often you say that about people you do business with. Without help like this from everybody – especially Dad, who is now like one of the boys – the car would never have got to where it is.”
In the end, it was all worthwhile, with TUFHQ picking up several awards at Motorex Melbourne. “The original plan was to build a Top 60 car and have it in the hall at Summernats,” Craig says. “However I’m overwhelmed at how well it’s turned out.”
Craig’s wife Brooke and two-year-old daughter Macie also love TUFHQ 2.0. Craig cannot thank Brooke enough for never complaining about all the hours he lavished on the build, despite her being pregnant with their second child.
“With another one on the way, Matt is going to trim us up a couple of baby seats to match the rest of the interior,” Craig says.
You’ve gotta love a man with a plan. No doubt this quality build will provide the entire Dixon household with plenty of quality family time for many years to come.