SURV I VAL GUIDE
EVERY year we wonder: how will Summernats be able
to top that? And every year, Andy Lopez and his crew
somehow manage to do it. Surely they couldn’t beat last
year’s effort of bringing Farmtruck and AZN – our favourite
duo of crazy street racers from Street Outlaws – down to
Canberra to shake hands, sign autographs and kiss babies.
Well, they’ve done it by inviting them back but kicking it up
a notch by having them along as entrants.
Shoo-ins for the Longest Distance Travelled award,
Farmtruck and AZN are bringing along a Chevy C10 pickup,
but not the one we’re used to seeing them race – that’d
be too easy. Instead, they’ve shipped across another C10,
a stock-as-a-rock ratty-looking thing that could be best
described as a pile of junk.
But don’t worry, Steven McMahon from the Canberra
Institute of Technology has got a bunch of apprentice
mechanics and a few teachers ready to rip into it. They’ll
have a whole four weeks to tear it apart and fit it with adriveline more suited to killing tyres. Overseeing the project
will be Phil Kerjean, who brings a wealth of competitive
burnout experience to the mix.
It will be a pretty basic combo, with a 6.0-litre L77 sitting
on Tuff Mounts, tweaked with a VCM16 cam package
from VCM Performance, a Haltech ECU and dash, and a
Magnuson Heartbeat blower. There’s a 3500rpm converter
from Slingshot, and keeping it cool will be an Aussie Desert
Cooler radiator and thermo fans, electric water pump and
trans cooler from Davies Craig, with oddles of Speedflow
plumbing to boot. It’s no nitrous-fed big-block, but it should
have no problems turning the tyres and chucking a few laps
around EPIC. Making sure our two friends from the 405 stay
safe will be full race harnesses from Racequip.
There aren’t any plans to tidy up the bodywork, partially
because that’s part of the look Farmtruck and AZN favour,
but it will also save the CIT boys a bunch of time. So, when
you see it, it might look like poop, but it should go like stink!2 0 1 8 2018