NoPistons -Mazda Rx7 & Rx8 Rotary Forum

ONE INSANE VAN“It’s all just budget tightarse” is how Andrew Bartlett describes his Mitsubishi L300 series van. Andrew’s van has certainly raised a few eyebrows up at Heathcote Raceway. “It just started off as a joke, I wanted to put a V8 in it so I could pull my ‘digger’ for work and before I knew it I was up here running 10s in it” chuckles Andrew. It took Andrew a few times to dummy up the engine using an LH Torana sump to sit right in the short wheelbase work van. When looking under the bonnet, or should I say seat!, the 350 certainly fills the undercarriage compared to the original four banger. Andrew adds “The engine and trans are from a previous car I owned, its a 350ci chev, we pulled it down for a freshen up and fitted some cleaned up Bow Tie cylinder heads that I already had as well as a solid lift camshaft. The bottom end however is totally standard and that’s without a word of a lie. "Andrew Blackwell of Blackwell Engines is a brilliant machinist and he’s showed us a few tricks to get it all up and running”.

Up top, the Chev is supplied unleaded fuel from the Holley 800dp carburetor with ignition taken care of via the factory distributor with a beefed up spark from a Crane Fireball ignition system. Giving the van a kick in the arse is a 150hp home made Nitrous system from spare parts. A turbo 350 3 speed auto transmission with a 3000rpm stall converter with upgraded shift kit to 2nd gear was needed to cope with the increase in torque. Amazingly the standard diff is holding up just fine. “We pulled it out and welded it up, as it’s already a 4:1:1 centre its just perfect for the track”. Walking around the Van, Andrew shows us some of its finer points. “I bought that truck air filer at a wrecker for $35, which was a bit of a bargain. I made the extractors myself as you obviously can’t buy them off the shelf for this application; they owe me around $200".

The only thing Andrew says he's really spent money on is the recently added custom alloy 4 core radiator so that he can enter burnout competitions; "I’ve also added twin thermo fans onto it. I originally ran the standard 3 core radiator and it was fine like that too”. But the killer is when Andrew points to the roof rack still attached to the roof after a days drag racing. “Yeah look, without the rack, she’ll pick up 2 tenths over the quarter mile but how funny does that look, gives it the real sleeper look hey!”

How much power the Van is currently making is anyone’s guess. Andrew Continues “It weights around the 1450kg mark. The best time to date is a 10.80 at 125mph but it’ll run 10.8-9s all day long. I have run it off the bottle for a best of 11.3, the Gas just gives it that bit extra punch off the line, it doesn’t have much trouble pulling the wheels up, the standard suspension has a bit of squat too but she does tend to wonder a bit in the top end. I know a few people won’t believe how standard the bottom end is but I know what’s in there and we’ve fed that much Nitrous into the motor that if there was a problem we would’ve certainly known about it by now. At the moment the van owes me a total of around 4 grand, I had a few of the parts lying around before we started it so that helped, it really is tight arse racing! It drives great on the road on regular unleaded petrol; I drive it quite often to work and it never misses a beat.

By Muzza & Mates