HAULIN’ ARSE

FREAKY FAST FORD HAULER

Picture this — you’re driving down the motorway taking the family to the drags, when you overtake a ute towing a trailer with a few slicks in it. You assume that the driver must be taking the slicks to the track for a race car that’s already there and think nothing more of it. Once seated in the stands, hot chips in hand, you see that same ute pull into the staging lanes with the slicks now fitted. It proceeds to launch with the front wheels in the air and runs through the traps with an eight-second time showing on the boards at more than 150mph. The look of disbelief and shock on your face would be photo worthy in itself. This is the reaction of the uninitiated to Dave Moyle’s 1989 XF Falcon, while those who are in the know smile every time they see the nitrous-ingesting road-legal rocket ship pull up to the staging lights. Both Dave and the ute have been around the drag strip for a long time, and, over the years, both have earned huge respect. As the owner / operator / oneman band of Pro Street Automotive, Dave’s become somewhat of a horsepower guru over the years, and his power-adder of choice is nitrous oxide. While the bones of what he works on are quick street cars, including a handful now on the NZ’s Quickest Streeters list, Dave’s also an essential part of the crew on the fastest nitrous-assisted car the country has ever seen — Barry Plumpton’s Chev Monte Carlo top doorslammer. While Dave’s love affair with nitrous goes back to the 1980s, his story with the ute spans back to around 2002. At the time, he was running a business called ‘XR8 Automotive’, and needed to tow the company’s showpiece out to Kumeu, so he borrowed the ute off a mate to do so. As Dave continued to use it rather than give it back, eventually cash changed hands, and he held onto it — for his wife Donna to use, of course.

IT’S A STREET CAR FIRST AND FOREMOST, NOT A RACE CAR WITH NUMBER PLATES

Fast forward a few weeks, and the factory 302 was being pulled out to make way for a 460ci big block. A rebuild and a few mods later, the ute was running 12-second quarters, but then boredom set in. Thanks to Dave’s good mate Alec Cantlay providing invaluable help at the drag strip, the next few years saw a procession of motors in and out of the ute — all big blocks, all with ever-increasing capacity, and all making more power than the last — until, one day, Dave slowed it down for a bit … for a while, at least. Having owned an SVO block and heads since 1989, Dave started piecing together the toughest combination yet, changing almost everything apart from the block itself along the way. That combination started in the 10s and has continued to evolve into the brutal eight-second package it’s now running. Dave admits that it hasn’t all been plain sailing, though, with a few hiccups along the way. With only the machining having been outsourced to Paul Brooker at Taylor Automotive, Dave’s engine now displaces 563ci thanks to a Bryant crank, Eagle rods, and JE pistons offering somewhere above 13:1 compression, and it’s as reliable and bulletproof as it’s ever been — given how many street miles Dave likes to put on it, that’s a good thing. Yep, although there’s no denying its drag strip prowess and set-up, it is, first and foremost, a street car, not a race car with number plates. The streetability allows the whole family to enjoy the car — and, since the family, including the three kids, are the crew on race day, that seems only fair.

While the ute was built on a relatively tight budget, Dave is now putting to use some of the good gear that he’s amassed over the years, such as the CNCported Trick Flow heads and matching self-ported A460-R manifold. Dave’s also worked his magic on the carb; while, in theory, it’s a 1250cfm item that rolled out of the Quick Fuel factory, there’s now plenty of custom touches inside. The same goes for the heads, which now feature 2.4-inch and 1.8-inch stainless valves along with TSD shaft rockers and Trend pushrods among myriad other custom touches. With a MagnaFuel ProTuner 625 fuel pump providing the 98-octane pump gas — or Avgas on race day — the engine’s clearly making a shit tonne of power. However, as surprising as it may be, it’s never been on a dyno — Dave prefers to do the tuning himself with the aid of an RPM Pro Data Logger. Come race day, the Wilson plate nitrous system is fired into life, using a Barry Grant 220 HR pump to provide the added fuel required and add a few hundred ponies to the combo. Finding a transmission to back the power plant wasn’t an easy task, especially given that the ute had to remain streetable, but that’s where some clever thinking has created a great result. That thinking included sourcing a short-shaft ATI Superglide transmission — usually found behind the engine of a dragster — and matching it with a Gear Vendors overdrive purchased through Key West Fabrication. This gives not only the strength required but also perfect cruising ratios, even with a 5000rpm stall converter on-board. The rest of the driveline is equally well thought out, with Tony Rattrie at Steelie Gears filling a Strange nine-inch diff with 35-spline Mark Williams axles and adding a Daytona pinion support. Understandably, the driveshaft, built by Drive Inn, is also seriously tough, with 3.5-inch thick-wall tubing being joined to billet yokes at both ends. It may seem ironic, then, given the hard work and high-end parts, that the suspension is remarkably