TROPICAL MELTDOWN
THIS TOWNSVILLE XB WENT FROM SAD GT REPLICA TO FALCON 500 TUFFY, PACKING A PRESSURE-FED COYOTE!
What better way to re-power an XB Falcon than with a Coyote and a pair of spooly boys?
WHILE bleaters on the internet complain about how bored they are when someone builds a car to their own tastes, anyone who has a project car that uses a left-of-centre drivetrain knows how much brain, wallet and gumption is involved. Townsville’s Daniel Dibella took the less-trodden path with his XB Falcon sedan build, though he never actually intended to end up with the killer 900rwhp streeter he now enjoys.
“I had a nice XE Falcon street car with a small-block Ford in it, and I sold that,” explains Daniel. “The XB had been a race car out of Brisbane, and it was tired. It had been run with a blown small-block Ford, then a nitrous SBF. I bought it sight-unseen off the internet as a roller.”
Once it got to Townsville, Daniel unfortunately discovered it wasn’t quite what he’d expected. “It was a Red Pepper GT mock-up with red interior, and I hated it,” he says. “It looked good on the outside, but being a race car, everything was tired. I bought the Falcon because I couldn’t afford a ’69 Camaro – and then I spent [the equivalent of] four ’69 Camaros on the Falcon!”
The ladder bar, Afco Menscer coil-overs and nine-inch diff are the only parts left over from the purchase. Everything else has been switched out or modified.
“The car was blasted and built on a rotisserie,” says Daniel. “It needed new sills, new quarters, new boot floor, completely new B-pillars, new plenum, bottoms of doors and guards, boot and bonnet replaced… I just wanted it semi-straight, so it’s only been blocked twice, but I wanted a job that I could use as a street car.”
While we’re used to seeing GT replicas, Daniel went for a subtler look, harking back to the car’s heritage as a factory V8, nine-inch, sunroof-equipped Falcon 500.
“I love silver muscle cars, so I didn’t want anything crazy,” says Daniel, who shaved the gutters, badges and fuel cap, and put a stock Falcon 500 bonnet back on. “I wanted a smooth, clean car that didn’t attract attention.”
I BOUGHT THE FALCON BECAUSE I COULDN’T AFFORD A ’69 CAMARO…
Another area this X-chassis differs from others is the twinturbo Coyote powerplant, which, Daniel admits, was actually a conversion his mate led him to.
“My mate Paul Morel at Xtreme Motorsport suggested doing something different with the XB and said he wanted to build a Mod motor, but I didn’t even know what that was,” laughs Daniel. “I started the Coyote swap about six-and-a-half years ago with a supercharged Miami that had gone into the back of a tow truck and snapped the blower off. But the block and heads were cracked, so all I got from that was the crank, although they’re still good for 2000hp as a factory part!”
Built by Xtreme Motorsport, the snail-fed quad-cam makes 900hp on a conservative 17psi at just 5000rpm, drinking E85 corn juice. A replacement five-oh block from the USA was fitted with Oliver Speedway rods and JE FSR slugs, while the Cnc-ported heads were fitted using ARP hardware and are otherwise stock for now. This is because there is a pair of Gen2 Garrett GTX35 party-starters hooked up to their exhaust ports on custom manifolds, plumbed through Turbosmart 50mm wastegates and a Plazmaman intercooler.
Controlling the ’Yote is a Haltech Elite 2500 ECU, which fires stock ignition coils and ID1000 injectors, which get their corn sauce from a Waterman cable-drive fuel pump out of a bootmounted cell.
“It was all very new when I was doing it; there wasn’t much info around,” sighs Daniel. “Everyone wants to do a conversion, but nobody wants to deal with you when you have problems! I wouldn’t advise anyone to do something different, because it was just so much pain. The amount of plumbing you do with twin turbos is an extra level of headache. Everything was tight and hard, but we tried to go the extra mile to make it all neat.”
Xtreme cut the stock strut towers and fitted the notch kit so the big DOHC donk fits, sitting on custom engine mounts. The XB now uses RRS coil-overs and a factory manual steering box,
AND THEN I SPENT THE EQUIVALENT OF FOUR ’69 CAMAROS ON THE FALCON!
BUILT BY XTREME MOTORSPORT, THE SNAIL-FED QUAD-CAM MAKES 900HP ON A CONSERVATIVE 17PSI AT JUST 5000RPM
though Daniel plans to fit an Astra electric power steering pump to make it nicer to steer.
“I did a test pass on the 10psi run-in tune and it went 10.1@133mph with lazy shifting, but it is now on 17psi and making 900hp,” Daniel says. “The combo is capable of over 1000hp, and once I fit the MMR timing chain kit and better valve springs, I’ll turn it up. I want to drive it to the track, run an eight, and drive it home.”
While there were plenty of hoops to jump through in the longterm project, at the end of the day Daniel is stoked with the result and really enjoys sharing the finished product with those who matter the most to him. “I put the kids in it and we do at least 100km every weekend I’m home,” he says. “It was a lot of heartache, but my family loving it is enough of a reward.”