Daniel Andrews is well on the way to achieving all his goals

speed and
style
STORY simon telford PHOTOS chris thorogood
Daniel Andrews is well on the way to achieving
all his goals for this stunning tonner
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N
EED a bit of inspiration to get in the
shed and finish your project car?
There are any number of motivational
speakers, internet shysters and
weirdo cults that will eagerly give
you advice on how to achieve your
goals in life – and usually for a hefty
fee. But we reckon you should save your money and
just listen up to how Melbourne’s Daniel ‘Gumby’
Andrews went about building his razor-sharp HQ
tonner. You could call it ‘Gumby’s Guide to Creating
the Car of your Dreams.’ And we will.
Step 1: Know what you want. Too many of us
start a build with only the vaguest idea of what the
finished product will be, which isn’t good for planning,
motivation or knowing what the hell you are doing. Not
our Daniel: “Before setting out to build the HQ, I knew
how I wanted it to turn out,” he says. “I was after power,
style and reliability. My long-term goals for it were to
get a feature in Street Machine, score a place in the
Top 60 Hall at Summernats and run a nine-second
pass.” So that’s one goal down, two to go!
Step 2: Get yourself some skills and surround
yourself with good help. “I’m a boilermaker by trade.
My dad is a diesel mechanic and my father-in-law
owns an engineering business, so I knew I had the
brains and the tools behind me to get the job done.
And reading Street Machine since I was 16 gave me a
fair idea of what was a good idea and what was bad.”
Step 3: Know what you are dealing with. “The
project started with two $500 cars. I stripped them
both down and found one had a straight chassis with
a rusted-out cab. The other had a twisted chassis and
a good body. Perfect.”
Step 4: Marry well. Sure, attraction, compatibility
and shared values are all factors when choosing a
life partner. But if he or she also supports your hobby,
well, you’ve hit on something very special. Daniel’s
new bride Bobbie not only understood his dedication
to the project, but also had an EH of her own in the
build. Which dovetails nicely with Dan’s last point:
Step 5: Have a deadline. “At one stage I was pissed
off and sick of the car, so I left it in the shed for a year
and raced a season of motocross to clear my head.
Then when I proposed to Bobbie, I decided that I really
wanted to drive the tonner to the wedding, so Bobbie
took care of the wedding planning and I got stuck fullsteam into the tonner.”
Sure enough, the HQ was finished in time for the
big day and as you can see, she’s a very neat thing.
Crawl underneath and you’ll notice that the chassis is
as well-detailed as any high-class hot rod. Remember
that bit about knowing what you want? Well Daniel
didn’t want any daggy bits anywhere on the car, so
Crawl underneath and you’ll notice that the chassis is as
well-detailed as any high-class hot rod
got wood
The top of the tray is 20mm blackbutt,
knocked up by Nabby, a mate of Daniel’s
father-in-law. “Nabby is a retired builder
and he wanted a trailer welded up for his
Bobcat, so that was a good swap”
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INTERIOR
Daniel’s attention to detail and eye for
style extends into the cabin too. He
started by selling off the genuine GTS
dash, bought a repro item and had Phatt
Audio modify it to accept the Auto Meters
neatly. Small sections of perforated
leather keep things interesting trim-wise,
and we can report the $200 ex-BMW
buckets are damn comfy!
ENGINE
Daniel put a lot of effort into making an
immaculate engine bay, from the flat
firewall to the neat infill between the
raditator support panel and the nose
cone. He’s also quick to credit Dave
Caruana, who volunteered to wire the car.
“I said: ‘I’ll be stoked with your work if
it’s invisible,’ and that is exactly what he
delivered”
beneath
Lift the tray and you’ll reveal a lovingly
smoothed set of chassis rails and neat
details everywhere. The 70-litre fuel tank
is a work of art and contains an internal
eight-litre surge tank and baffles. The
filler is a road bike item sunk into the top
of the tank. An HQ bonnet latch secures
the tray, with gas struts for easy lifting.
The mufflers are Black Mamba items
he started by ensuring its foundations were topnotch. “Once I had it down to a bare chassis, I cut
the leaf-spring rear end out, fitted a four-link kit and
shortened nine-inch. While I was at it, I boxed the
chassis and welded and smoothed everything that
was going to be visible.
“When I was happy with that, I got stuck into the
body. I cut out all the rubbish on the firewall and
flattened it off, and I cut off the back section of the
cab, braced it and welded in a flat panel to make
it look smooth.”
From there, Daniel stuck the cab on the chassis,
bolted on a set of rims and saw that it was good.
The next step was the LS1 conversion. “It is such an
easy swap – engine mounts, a Camaro sump and
off-the-shelf extractors, job done.”
Then a mate came over with his HQ Monaro with
a turbo LS1. “When I saw how easy that was to do
and how good the power was, I bought a Garrett
GT4202R turbo, a wastegate, blow-off valve and an
air-to-air ’cooler. Then I ditched the extractors and
spent a fair few nights welding up a set of steampipe turbo manifolds and some stainless-steel
’cooler piping. I do a lot of similar stuff at work, so
it was a piece of piss.”
Big power means you’ll need a big fuel system,
and Daniel planned out a beauty. “I don’t have a
welder to weld aluminium, so I worked with D&F
Racing Products to fabricate the fuel tank. It has
a built-in eight-litre surge tank, a false floor, baffles
and three Bosch 044 pumps. I’m pretty happy with
how it turned out.”
Other highlights include the tray – always a make
or break item on any one-tonner build. “I wanted
something really smooth,” Daniel says. “I used four
trailer guards to make the wheel arches, which gave
them nice rolled edges.”
The whole thing hinges at the back, with gas
struts for ease of use and an HQ bonnet latch and
catch to lock it in place.
Once the tray was built and the car wired, Daniel
prudently decided to get the car running smoothly
before embarking on the paint. No point dragging
the engine in and out of your beautifully painted
engine bay, right? At this point, fate gave Daniel the
finger; with the car on the dyno and pumping a mild
7psi, something let go. That something was soon
revealed to be a bent conrod.
With reliability one of his prime objectives, Daniel
outsourced the build of a new donk to LS guru
Nathan Higgins. Starting with a cast-iron LQ9 block,
Nathan came up with a 403ci rotating assembly
and went to town on the heads. Stainless-steel
valves, one-piece pushrods and a custom Isky cam
add up to tidy package. This time around, the tonner
made 330kW at the treads at 7psi, with nothing
going bang and a whole lot more to come.
When it came to the paint and panel, Daniel
A mate came over with his HQ Monaro with a turbo
LS1 and I saw how easy it was to do
DANIEL ANDREWS
HOLDEN HQ ONE-TONNER
Colour: Custom Gold Mix
DONK
Block: LQ9 cast iron
Capacity: 403ci
Inlet: Edelbrock Pro Flo XT
Turbo: Garrett GT4202R
Wastegate: Turbosmart 50mm
Throttle body: FAST 92mm
Injectors: Bosch Indy Blue 1600cc
ECU: Wolf
Ignition: LS2 coils
Heads: Higgins-fettled 243 castings
Cam: Higgins special
Crank and rods: Callies
Pistons: CP forgies, 9:1
Exhaust: Owner-made manifolds, 4in dump
into 3in system
SHIFT
Box: Turbo 400, transbrake
Convertor: TCE, really tight!
Diff: Ford 9in, Strange centre, Motive 3.45:1
Tailshaft: 4in
BENEATH
Front: HQ, 90/10 shocks
Rear: Four-link
Brakes: Wilwood four-spot calipers and 11in rotors
ROLLING STOCK
Rims: 15x5 and 15x10 Pro Stars
Rubber: Mickey Thompson Sportsman S/R
THANKS
My dad, Tony Andrews; my father-in-law, Eddie
Hannema; my sister-in-law Suzie Hannema; Polo
Body Works for paint and panel; Sew Fine Auto
Interiors; Phatt Audio Concepts; 4B Fabrication;
Nathan Higgins; Dave Caruana for the wiring; D&F
Racing Products; Arron Mates for fuel, brake and
hard lines; Jeff Ebbott from Speedpro for all the
advice and putting up with my calls; my friends
and family who helped; and most of all Bobbie, my
wife, for letting me live out every man’s dream
I had the biggest smile on my face arriving at the
wedding. No words can describe the feeling
nose JOB
The outer edges of HQ grille bars sit
almost 100mm back into the grille shell
– which doesn’t leave much room for
intercoolers! To remedy this, Daniel cut up
three HQ grilles and plastic-welded them
together to bring the bars further forward.
He then smoothed and painted them
for that almost-factory look. The ’cooler
piping also didn’t leave enough room for
the stock HQ blinkers, so he cut the backs
off a pair and fitted shallower LEDs
remembered Step 2 of his Guide – surround yourself
with good help. “I went to Vito and Tom at Polo Body
Works. They were great to deal with. They would
come up with great ideas, so I’d go home, fabricate
what we needed and bring it back for them to make
pretty. Stuff like the infill between the nose cone and
the radiator support and the custom bonnet latch. It’s
not stuff many people notice, but I think it makes a
big difference to the overall result. Once the chassis
was painted, I took it home to fit the suspension and
driveline – that way if I scratched something, the only
person I could blame was me. Then I took it back to
Polo and the boys mounted the cabin and hung the
panels to make it look like a car once again.”
From the paint shop, the car went straight to Tim
Parsons at Sew Fine Auto Interiors, decking out a set
of BMW buckets, and anything else they could get
their hands on in cream leather. “Tim was great to work
with as well. He opened his factory on the weekends
and at night so I could keep working on the car while
it was getting trimmed, finishing off all the little bits
and pieces.”
The car was completed a week before the wedding.
Yes, a whole week! That gave Daniel and the lads at
4B Fabrication & Dyno time to iron out a few bugs
that could have nixed the tonner’s appearance at the
last minute, such as buggy injectors, melting ignition
leads and a vibration in the tailshaft. “After a massive
team effort, the big day came and I had the biggest
smile on my face arriving at the wedding,” says Daniel.
“No words can describe how good that feeling was.”
Since then, the HQ has already grabbed some
tinware at a couple of local shows, but now Dan is
focused on that nine-second pass. “I’ve bought a set
of 28x10.5 slicks and I’m booked in for a new tune and
a heap more boost. I can’t wait!” s
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