LION PRIDE

> WE SEE PLENTY OF BLOWN LS AND SBC ENGINES AT DRAG CHALLENGE, BUT JAMES GARDNER’S PUMPFED HQ ROCKS PURE HOLDEN POWER

RUNNING a Roots-blown large car like an HQ sedan at Drag Challenge is a tough gig when the temps start soaring. Given that Drag Challenge Weekend 2020 was hotter than an Australia Day chilli eating competition in Alice Springs, it meant blokes like Toowoomba’s James Gardner and his awesome blown, plasticpowered HQ were up against it.

James’s history with the HQ began in 2019, when the then 25-year-old snagged it from Warwick, Queensland at a bargain price of just $5000. He promptly gave the six-cylinder sedan a birthday in the form of a respray in factory white and a budget Eaton M90 supercharger set-up.

“I think it went 9.10 seconds over the eighthmile at the 2019 Six-banger Nats,” says James. “That was the first time I ever raced the HQ. The bottom end was just a stock 202 blue motor with a cam and nine-port head. I think the blower set-up cost $250 for a bit of fun.”

The car remained relatively unchanged until Christmas of the same year, when James kicked off a bare-metal, no-holds-barred rebuild, with 10-second slips and all-aussie power the goal.

Out came the venerable 202 that had powered the car for decades, in favour of a stroker Holden V8, with boost still on the menu. A cast-iron 308 block was gifted a Scat stroker crank, bringing capacity out to 355 cubes. I-beam rods hook up to hypereutectic pistons, topped by early Holden 308 heads – “nothing too flash”, according to James. As a long-time fan of the classic Holden bent-eight, a small-block Chev or an LS were out of the question for him. “Everybody’s surprised to see an old iron lion in there!” he laughs.

THE UNTESTED COMBO AND INCREDIBLY HOT WEATHER HELD HIM BACK SOMEWHAT, BUT JAMES MANAGED A BEST TIME OF 11.29@120MPH

The donk breathes through a Blower Shop 6/71 supercharger, with a Joe Blo EFI kit providing E85 juice. Managed by a Haltech ECU, the injection gear is tucked out of sight for old-school points.

The rest of the driveline consists of a manualised Turbo 400 and sheet-metal nineinch diff. A Gazzard Brothers set-up occupies the rear, helping to keep the drag radials planted.

James, owner-operator of J-tune Automotive in Toowoomba, admitted the car’s testing in the lead-up to Drag Challenge Weekend 2020 was limited. “We did about 20km of road-testing before this,” he says. “One week out we put an Aussie Desert Cooler radiator in it, because we found out she gets hot on the highway!”

To keep the car happy and healthy throughout the weekend, Jamie detuned the car to a stillformidable 425rwhp. While this hurt potential ETS, it meant that over three days and more than 1000km of driving, James and the HQ finished the weekend, coming 13th in the Haltech Radial Blown class.

While they were gunning for a 10-second timeslip, the untested combo and incredibly hot weather held them back somewhat. James managed a best time of 11.29@120mph down the Willowbank quarter-mile on Day One, backed up with an 11.46@117mph in Sunday’s ferocious heat.

We look forward to seeing them at another Drag Challenge event soon to watch the 355ci Holden really rip!

SUPER SEDAN: The HQ SS was built off the basemodel Belmont and only intended to be a limited edition. After the first 1500 sold out, GM-H had to race through another 1300 examples, powered by a 185hp, 253ci V8 backed by an M20 four-cog, and coated in one of three colours: Infra Red, Ultra Violet or Lettuce Alone green. The SS’S popularity led Holden to build fourdoor Monaros soon after

Despite only having a handful of kilometres worth of testing, James and his crew drove the HQ to the event and home again. Towing a trailer, they racked up 11 hours of quality road tripping adventures on the route between tracks, with the HQ consuming $1200 worth of pump fuel along the way