CRUSTY DEMON
AS LOOKS CAN BE DECEIVING, WITH HIS PATINA-CLAD JESSE BOOTHROYD PROVES – IT RUNS EIGHTS! SURVIVOR HZ KINGSWOOD
“Paint and panel isn’t my thing,” Jesse Boothroyd says of his patina-clad eight-second HZ. No kidding!
RAT ROD, patina, barn-find. Few words in the car lovers’ vernacular have been abused and cheapened more than these three. So it’s a relief – no, a Christmas miracle – to come across a fresh and legitimate application for at least one of these terms: patina.
“Nice panel and paint won’t make it go quicker,” says Geelong’s Jesse Boothroyd, owner and builder of this deceptively crusty-looking eight-second HZ Kingswood. “People are always asking when I’m going to respray it, but it looks bad-arse as-is, and I think the money is better spent on making it faster.”
You can’t argue with that logic, and let’s face it, Jesse’s HZ has its own identity now – adding fresh paint to its nicely ruffled exterior would ironically take the ‘shine’ off its presence both on the street and the strip.
The Kinger came into Jesse’s life as a grandpa-spec survivor running a 202, three-on-the-tree manual and a blown banjo diff – the latter thanks to Jesse when the car was owned by his friend Josh. “There’s nothing wrong with doing a skid in your mate’s car!” he laughs. “I thought I’d see if it could do a burnout. I got it spinning in first, flat-changed the column-shift into second and bang – it was all over.”
Josh sold it to another of their mates, Lee, who palmed it off to their friend Jake, until finally becoming Jesse’s a few years ago. “It did the rounds but nobody really wanted it,” he says. “It was cool and all, but wasn’t a mint car, nor was it an HQ, and for me it was an impulse buy. I was building a VS Commodore at the time with a turbo LS, but that project was dragging on so I thought: ‘Stuff it. Let’s chuck all the running gear into the HZ and get it on the road.’ No tubs, no rebuild, just a quick turbo swap into a dirty old Kingswood. “Of course, that plan went mostly out the window!” he laughs. The 403-cube LS donk was expertly built by Tim Holmyard at TJH Performance in Geelong. It’s cranked out 850hp at the treads and has pushed the heavyweight HZ to an 8.94@153mph best on 17lb of boost.
Tim chose an LQ9 6.0-litre cast-iron truck block, filling it with a Callies Compstar stroker crank and rod assembly topped with CP Bullet pistons. A Tjh-spec custom hydraulic-roller camshaft rounds out the short assembly, while Higgins Cnc-ported L98 heads were chosen to house stainless valves with titanium retainers, Comp trunnion rockers and PAC valve springs.
A custom Proflow intake manifold was modified by Mark Drew and mounts Bosch 1650cc injectors and Holley fuel rails to correctly disperse the E85, while a 92mm Aeroflow billet aluminium throttlebody controls the air intake following a detour via a hefty front-mounted intercooler. The brains of the operation is a Haltech 2500 Elite ECU that works in conjunction with a Haltech/racepak digital dash and sensors for just about everything.
A whopping single Garrett GTX4508R turbo and 60mm Precision wastegate make the LQ9 get up and boogie, nestled into the HZ’S bay with Hpc-coated 1.75-inch steampipe exhaust manifolds, with a five-inch dump pipe channelling into a twin three-inch exhaust system.
Cooling is provided by an ebay-spec alloy radiator and twin thermo fans from a Ford Mondeo (the latter surprised me; I was sure Mondeos had nothing positive to offer), while a brace of chassis-mounted LS3 coil-packs light the fire.
An FTI Level 5, full-roller, Reid-cased transbraked Powerglide transmission might be a mouthful, but that’s what happens with a 2000hp rating. It’s fronted by a TCE 3200 converter