Rod Hadfield's all fired up in smokin' hot rod
WITH 18 speed machines in his garage, Rod Hadfield puts the Rod into hot rod.
Hot Rod's dream machine
- Terry Brown, Herald Sun, February 17, 201212:00AM
But it is his old family sedan, the mid-1990s Commodore, that's set to blow a world racing record to bits - if it doesn't blow itself to bits first.
Next month the Chewton 65-year-old is taking it to Lake Gairdner, a South Australian salt lake, to try to become the first person to push a four-door sedan to a crazy quick 300mph (480km/h). The last time he tried, though, he took a slower return trip in the back of an ambulance.
In 2006, after torturing the car to a blistering 260mph (420km/h), oil leaked on to the exhaust, caught alight, set fire to the fuel tank and set off the nitrous oxide bottle in the engine cavity.It peeled the steel open like an aluminium can. Rod was out cold when rescuers got to him but says now: "I was all right."
"What makes a guy play golf, or fish, or jump off a bridge with a rope around your feet?" he says. "If it was easy, what's the challenge?"
The rebuilt Commodore, dubbed Bronzed Aussie, is far from a standard people-mover. Rod reckons about $300,000 has gone into it. And a team of locals has sweated together for 18 months to resurrect the wreck, which had its first rev yesterday since the explosion.
Nankervis Performance Boats' Leo Nankervis, who works on the motor, says the 572-cubic inch engine (almost 10 litres) sucks down more than a litre of fuel a kilometre. But the tricked-up Holden has a few tricks of its own.
"At 230mph we had all the glass explode in the doors. The air pressure pulled them out," Rod grins. "We found out another time that we were running on three wheels. "The torque of the engine was pulling one wheel off the ground. It gets your attention."
Rod has been building hot rods since he was 15 and still races them, but his real dreams ride in the Commodore. "We'll try to get to 260 (mph) and from there we've just got to sneak up on 300," he says.
Rod's road car is a 1932 Ford Roadster but he finds highway driving a bit of a bore. "This (Commodore) does nearly twice the (highway) speed limit in first gear," he says.
"It's extremely difficult, very frustrating, when you're stuck behind someone going 70-80km/h and you've just been doing 440."