MY BROTHER AND I
WERE WORKING ON IT
EVERY DAY AFTER WORK
FOR FOUR YEARS IN OUR
BACKYARD SHEDT
HE EH is the quintessential classic
Holden that everyone seems to
have a soft spot for, but Shane
Keene’s fondness for the model is
profound. As a whippersnapper, he
was carted off to school each day in
his old man’s EH ute, and that sewed the
seed that eventually grew into something
of an obsession.
Shane’s first car was an EH – a Premier
sedan with a hot 179 that he still owns to
this day. This ute followed six months later,
when Shane was still only 17 years of age,
and it was used very much as its maker
intended – put through its paces every day
on the Keene family piggery.
“It was basically a registered bush bomb
and a work ute; we used it to cart tucker
for the pigs,” says Shane. “I used it up until
about 10 years ago, when I pulled it off the
road and stuck it in the back shed.”
Shane eventually shifted it to another
shed in readiness for a rebuild, and
disaster struck soon thereafter. A bushfire
ripped through his property, destroying his
home and much of his shedding, but his
ever-expanding stash of EHs – including
the ute – survived.
After Shane was done rebuilding his life,he got started rebuilding the ute. It was
a full-on process, with much of the car
re-engineered, from its hand-built chassis
up, and Shane is proud as punch that the
vast majority of the work was completed
at home. It wasn’t his first rodeo; he’d also
built a stunner of an EH panel van, but he
was keen to raise the bar with the ute.
“The van only had relocated leaf springs
in the rear, so I went with a four-link rear
and a Rod-Tech front end for the ute, and
it handles heaps better,” he explains. “I
made the whole chassis myself. I bought
the front end from Rod-Tech and the four-
link kit from McDonald Bros, and the diff is
narrowed five inches either side to fit the
bigger wheels.
“I did all the fab stuff myself, and my
brother and I did the panel beating together.
We were working on it every day after work
for four years in our backyard shed.”
The chassis and suspension upgrades
brought vastly improved levels of torsional
stiffness, further bolstered by fully
adjustable coil-over suspension at all four
corners, rack ’n’ pinion steering, tubular
arms and meaty Wilwood disc brakes all
’round – big upgrades over the archaic
horse-and-cart rear suspension, king-pin front end and drum brakes that were
standard issue on the 60s workhorse.
The searing red duco was applied off-
site by Shane’s good friend Trev Monti,
who’s the go-to painter for all Shane’s
projects. Gavin Hill from Bendigo Trim did
the interior, with Shane opting for the plush
red motif after clapping eyes on Reece
Pagel’s HT Kingswood (SM, June ’17)
at Summernats.
“It’s hard picking colours, but the idea for
the interior came from Reece’s Kingswood,
and I saw the paint colour on a Honda
motorcycle,” Shane says. “That’s where all
the red came from.”
Speaking of all things red, in 1963 the
EH saw the introduction of Holden’s “red”
inline six-cylinder engines in both 149-
and 179-cubic-inch capacity. At the time
they were cutting edge, and represented
a major leap forward in performance over
the outgoing grey motor. A well-warmed
179 is a thing of great beauty even today,
but Shane needed a powerplant that
was better aligned with the ute’s wildly
enhanced driving dynamics.
To that end, Advanced Engine Dynamics
screwed together a Dart-blocked 400ci
small-block Chev, topped with a WeiandUte Beauty!