1961 EK ute- originally sold through Walla Walla Motors (D.E, Lieschke and Son), which is still a Holden Dealership to this day in south-western NSW. According to the rego stickers and paperwork on the ute she last ran out of rego on January 1981, (when I was three months old!), so she only ever saw the road for 20 years, the last 30+ have been spent in the previous owner's and my own garage. My parents bought her for me for my 18th birthday, complete with original grey motor, diff and three speed, all of which made its way into my brother's EK due to mechnical failures.. because it was my daily driver and, um, i had no real mechanical sympathy...
When we bought her she was in grey undercoat, but after some small body ding repairs Dad and a mate blew a couple of coats of &*#@'s Glacier Blue over her. This was only ever going to be a stopgap- we're looking to strip her back properly, do a few more repairs and I've been thinking about a few silvers, basically anything but blue to be honest.
So the original plan was to build her up to run a buick V6 which 10 years ago would have been pretty cool, nowadays its fairly commonplace, and due to a host of reasons my build on the ute stalled. We installed a CRS chassis kit, trans tunnel hump, custom sump and power steering deletion pulley, and V6 conversions supplied all the EK specific engine loom, speedo convertor and couple of other things (i'll have to go through my box of bits again...). Dad built and installed the HR front end, with a torana rack and pinion setup on the front of the crossmember, and we used torana stub axles and a mix of bearings to allow us to run VN discs. A touch of light machining and the calipers went right on as well
I think CRS does a setup similar to this now- Dad sorted this about 10 years ago... We've also chucked in the VN steering column and auto pedal box, I'm still amazed at how these two items just bolted in with damn near no modifications. And the booster went on easy as pie with a couple of alloy plates behind it to mate to the firewall. I also had the original radiator re-cored to a late model fin setup to replace the stock one that wouldnt have cooled anything bigger than the 138. I also have a complete rubber kit for the windows and doors, a repro hoodlining, a custom stitched carpet to clear the tran tunnel and some mint NOS door trim cards that have never been covered. Basically everything i need to deck the interior out... oh and a resprung bench seat that just needs some recovering. Right now the majority of these bits are packed away in plastic tubs in the garage, waiting for when the time is right...
So yeah, thats where I'm at now, however its been a good 8 or so years since I've done anything with her, and I've been pretty close to selling her in that time, so now that i've got the marriage/kids/house thing all checked off its time to get her finished. As the wife's El Camino is more of a long term project (rust repairs, dash conversion then big block) we thought it might be best to get the EK going first, and to that end i've decided to actually ditch the V6 and go back to a straight 6 holden
The reason is that i can drop a 202 and trimatic straight in and have it wired up and running within a week, and driving around with brand new suspension and commodore brakes is going to be pretty good. That, and I'll end up building a new motor to suit the Raptor centrifugal blower i pinched off the wife's VS ute- got a few bits of holden 6 speed gear hidden away... Will definately have to have it all engineered, but there's no huge emissions hassles or EFI plumbing to contend with this way, and I can offload the V6 gear if i need the money. In fact, being in canberra, It'll have to be engineered, but I still expect hassles. ACT rego = bane of my existence.
Anyhow, i'm gonna wrap this up, its gone way too long! Comments and feedback most appreciated, hope you like
Oh look, more photos...
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