NATHAN CLARKE

THERE are few people who got more bang for their bucks from this year’s Drag Challenge than Nathan Clarke. Starting with a time-warp pop-spec HG Holden Belmont, he did an LS1 transplant and turbocharger conversion in less than three months with his mate Dominic Pelle in Dom’s shed. Top work! But the real head-shake here is the fact the engine was a junker with water in the sump when Nathan dragged it from a backyard!

After spraying some WD40 into the sparkplug holes, he began working the crank pulley with a breaker bar. “I thought: ‘What the hell am I doing?’” Nathan laughs. But for $300 he had nothing to lose after he blew his first LS1 transplant engine due to a dodgy wastegate spring.

The turbo conversion is something the lads whipped up at home – a Chinese Gt45-copy turbo fed from turnedaround VE manifolds with some backyard-built plumbing pressuring to 10psi. The management is a tuned Holden LS1 and the engine has had stiffer valve springs fitted.

The TH350 ’box is the first Nathan has ever built and it takes the twist from a 2800rpm Dominator converter bought second-hand for a box of beer. The rear end is a nine-inch hung on reset leaf springs and a set of $200 shockies.

Nathan drove the car from Sydney, ran a string of 10s – the last a 10.1@137mph from some octane booster in the tank and a lift in boost from 10 to 15psi – and drove home again, laughing the whole way.