Rebuilding this magnifico HG ute demanded a mountain of folding stuff
It’s low, this HG ute. Real low. And with grunt generated by a full-house, fuel-injected 327, this street-sweeping mongrel is as tough as goat’s knees. A no-holds-barred barnstormer that began when Chris Hollingworth parked his Holden ute underneath his brother’s house for a while. Chris had bought the ute – which began life with a 186 and a three-speed – as a stormer with a 327, four-speed Muncie and GTS front guards.
First published in the Oct/Nov 1998 issue of Street Machine
“I could have done a bit better,” reckons Chris Hollingworth of his HG ute. Yeah, right
His brother must have been bored stupid one day, because he ripped into the ute and stripped it. So when Chris sold his 350 LJ Torana (which ran twin Predators on a tunnel ram, a nine-inch diff and all the gear), he went around to repossess the ute. Which he discovered wasn’t about to rev up and go anywhere. Now, with nine grand in the bank and no wheels, 22-year-old Chris had to get into a monumental rebuild…
Ace Brisbane engine builder Mick Atholwood started on the 327 V8. Mendham’s bored it to 331 cubes and machined the steel crank. Mick dropped in a set of 11.5:1 TRW pop-top pistons on stock rods, bolted by Moroso and running on Vandervell bearings. The cam chosen was a Sig Erson, a 999X solid lifter stick with 320 degrees of duration and 595 thou lift. Valve lifters came via Sealed Power, as did the special 150-thou-longer pushrods. Rockers are the famous Yella Terra roller items
The heads are sorta special. These mothers are 292 Turbo heads, machined by Mick Atholwood to take 2.02in inlets and 1.94in exhaust valves, closed by Crane springs. And there’s a Crane stud girdle to keep things together. Top heads need a top intake system, so on went that wild Crower injection manifold, fed by a Crower injection pump with fuel initially pushed along by a Holley Blue electric pump. And while all this engine-rebuilding work was going on, plenty of stuff was happening with the rest of the HG.
MacDowell Engineering was busy building a roll cage. Why? Chris still remembers the day he wrote off his second Torana… The lads also narrowed the nine-inch Ford rear axle, made up rear wheel tubs and a half rear chassis and fitted the ladder bars underneath lowered rear springs. Chris brought in a set of 4.57:1 Zoom gears from California for the Ford rear axle, the diff centre driving a pair of 28-spline rear axles. A heap of work went into the rear end.
