David Flew To Australia 3 Years Ago To Fix An Impossibly Broken Ute. Here’s What Shape It’s In 3 Years Later

Autopians! I haven’t written much this year. I’ve been flat out like a frog on a highway with work and life and all that. 

Last time I wrote about this paddock-to-plated old beast of burden, I had sorted out the bonnet-lifting dramas and made some further livability improvements ahead of two roadtrips to the south of my home state of New South Wales.

I haven’t done any real long-distance trips in our rolling effort to the battle against entropy since the April roadtrip back to ‘Condo, but old ‘Cactus still gains miles every week as my main ride when I’m not working. 

This old ute is still earning keep, carrying away garden waste, timber and even working as a weed sprayer to clear out the bindis from my yard when the agile Mighty Boy isn’t available.

For those of you who don’t know the backstory, here’s the story of Project Cactus:

I did a quick trip in July down to Cowra to swap (with some cash) my A518 transmission that was going to be in the ‘79 CM Regal SE for a GearVendors overdrive setup for my A727 which will be an easier install without having to cut the gearbox/torsion-bar crossmember and have gear-splitting as an added feature. 

The bloke I swapped with is putting the A518 into a late-50s Chrysler Wayfarer, where he has the opposite problem: the ‘AP2‘ Wayfarer is body-on-frame, on an X-chassis no less. The GearVendors unit measured to hit the X, whereas the A518’s bulk is no concern when the floor is non-structural.

I’d love to do another interstate trip, but it’s not on the cards this year with the busiest period for my job coming up in about a month when the bulk of the grain harvest is finishing up.

Showtime

A little over a month later it was time for the Dubbo Motorfest, also up to the third running of the event. Raising funds for local charities, this show has been growing each year and saw 8,000 people through the gates and raised nearly $50,000 Aussie dollars for local community groups.

My company encourages us to take a day of Volunteer Leave to help out in our community. I use mine each year to help set up the show on the Friday and then run the traffic control for the main gate for the show on the following day. 

After two years of perfect pre-spring weather, this show was cold, wet and windy. A bit of a challenge with my shift on the gate starting at 5:30am, we persevered and still had a great day overall.

I didn’t get a lot of photos this year, but I did get this of my mate Glen’s mad old truck, running a twin-charged Detroit Diesel!

At this year’s show, local tuner Mr HDT brought his chassis dyno down and invited some local rides and a few elite show cars to spin the rollers and have the crowd pay to guess the horsepower. 

Our cheeky cargo-carrier was invited to take part and help raise some funds for good causes. After lunch our timeslot came up, and I drove from the display area to the dyno.

Ahead of this showing, I bought a cheap tachometer so I could see how high our mighty inline-six could rev and installed it with appropriate dodginess:

Gotta keep it agricultural!

With Cactus eating every speedometer I’ve installed within mere miles, the tacho is a good addition as an auxiliary speed-measuring device.

Brake Horsepower

Close to the ramps, I let the Mr HDT crew park up onto the dyno and make their preparations. Standing in the dyno area, I saw a good number of my Valiant mates and other well-wishers had come out to see how our rot-rod would go on the dyno.

Knowing the 245 ‘Hemi’ inline-six under the bonnet was originally rated by Chrysler at 160 gross horsepower at the flywheel and our ex-paddock basher mill being completely stock except for a Holley 350cfm carburettor, dodgy exhaust headers and a DIY HEI spark system, I put my guess in for 100 brumbies at the wheels.

The crowd had a wide spread of guesses, ranging from around 70 all the way to an outlandish 250. I guess they thought it had some kind of secret-sauce technology hiding somewhere in the CAT-yellow engine bay!

Evidently the dyno crew weren’t anticipating anything outlandish, they didn’t even bother with straps!

Each vehicle had three runs, and Cactus made plenty of noise spinning up:

Not bad, not far from what I anticipated. They only ran the ute up to around 4,000rpm as it was getting super rich by then and wasn’t making any extra horsepower past 3,500rpm where the Air/Fuel ratio was around 11:1. 

I don’t typically rev much over 3,500rpm on the street as the 245 has a very stout bottom-end shove, peak torque coming on by 1,800rpm (at least 190ft/lb or 257Nm) so you get a good launch and up to highway speeds quite smartly in spite of the slow 1-2 shift via the column lever.

I was asked to hop in and drive off the dyno once the rollers were locked. When I hopped in the cab, I noticed the handbrake was left on!

When I had reversed up to the dyno, being on uneven grass I had instinctively pulled on the umbrella-style handbrake lever before the dyno crew reversed it up.

After a good laugh and jokes made about ‘brake horsepower’, it was decided we would do one more run, with the handbrake completely disengaged:

That’s more like it! I know the handbrake cable is stretched and could do with some adjustment (re: more wheel nuts for spacers) but to only knock off 10hp is a little funny. Lucky it’s a manual, then!

Three Years Of Feral Ute And Less-Feral DT

I have since bumped up the initial timing from the factory 5 degrees to 10 degrees BTDC and have an even crisper throttle response, on top of what was already a darn good performer. Next step I might finally pull the fuel bowl off (carb has not been opened since before 2011) and see what jets are inside.

The spark plugs read as pretty clean, and fuel economy is great overall with highway mileage around 20 US MPG / 11.5L/100km but if we can get even better results and more power with some more fettling, why not? 

I have been talking to a few people more seriously about forced induction once the brakes are improved from the all-wheel manual drums. May as well be the architect of your own consequences!

Three years have now passed since I spent the better part of a month helping a madman who flew out from Detroit slam together a functional-ish vehicle out of two abandoned utter heaps that somehow avoided the demoliton derby circuit, with their only future in becoming whitegoods or food cans.

With the immense help of Hud and a cast of a good dozen others around Dubbo and some fellow Valiant maniacs around NSW helping with parts and advice, we made the goal of the Deni Ute Muster. 

It was a slog for all involved, but it was a great experience and an example of the incredible things that a couple of like-minded people can accomplish.

I had fully expected to either part-out or sell this shitbox Dodge at the end of the first year. That seems impossible now, with this ute still bringing smiles and even influencing some mates kids into car enthusiasts:

I’m positively chuffed to see David kicking major life goals and enjoying himself without burying himself in iron oxide every day, I’m also supremely grateful for the opportunity to write for the Autopian and share a little bit of Australia and our car culture that may not be as widely known as the shouty, shiny stuff that gets more air time.

Don’t be afraid to share your goals and aspirations, you never know who might be able to lend a hand. Learn something, teach something and pass it on. 

Rage against a soft-close existence. Rage against being average. RAAAGE!

Have a pearler of a time, until we meet again!