“LIKE A LOT OF PEOPLE WHO DO LONG-TERM BUILDS, I DID GET FED-UP”
and my partner Kerri talked me out of it. I got to a point where I thought I’d put enough money into it and would never be able to finish it. She talked me into hanging on to it and it’s lucky she did. At that point it was in the undercoat stage, so ready for doing the interior and putting colour on it.
The original engine had a blown head gasket and cracked cylinder head, so we got rid of that. I ran into someone I knew at the Ballarat swap meet and the bloke sitting next to him said he had a genuine GTR he said he’d smashed and had kept all the running gear from.
I managed to get the factory door trims from him, the 161S engine and all the bolt-ons for that, the original steering wheel and a couple of other bits and pieces for about $400. That was a few years ago and there’s no way you’d get that deal now. I got two doors from him as well. So we tossed all that in the back of the hatchback Torana we had and brought it all home.
I had the engine rebuilt back to factory specs – it’s still got the original camshaft in it. So we put the Aussie M20 gearbox in it – one I rebuilt – just to have something a bit stronger.
The engine itself was still on the standard bore, but the cam retaining plate had broken and the camshaft had come forward and hit the timing case. The previous owner had pulled it out at that stage to repair it and never got any further with it.
That motor I left up to my engine builder