Project Cactus Was A Literal Shell In A Field Two Years Ago, Now It’s An Excellent Daily-Drivable Ute

I still get the comments today, ‘Gee, you’ve got a lot of work ahead of you’ and other statements to that effect when members of the public see Project Cactus. They don’t realize the hard work was already done, on a cold shed floor over two years ago. Less believable still is that someone elected to fly nearly ten thousand miles to do this hard work for weeks on end, with just a few hours sleep every night and some of his greatest fears lying in wait in dark corners of said cold shed.

Adding a layer to this cake of un-believability is that a celebrated and renowned hotrod builder would voluntarily give up massive amounts of his own time in which he could be building another Summernats Top 60 vehicle to weld together scrap metal in the faint hope that a long-abandoned vehicle body could somehow return to a functional and roadworthy state. Not only functional, but which has been functional for at least 6,000 miles (~10,000km) and across the full length of the state of New South Wales.

Greetings again from Dubbo, Autopians! It’s been a while since I last wrote for this hallowed site, the old cliche of life getting in the way rings true. I’ve been extra busy with work, collecting parts for the Regal SE build (including some strong wins on harder-to-find items in Australia), and some road trips in between.

Neither of these road trips have involved Project Cactus, but my own Valiant Ute, a 1970 (‘VG’) Wayfarer known as ‘Lenny’, was the inspiration for David to come Down Under and revive a Valiant ute of his own.

I’ll try and write something up about these trips at some point as there were some interesting situations, but let’s focus back on our hero, our Rocinante of rot and rattles.

As always, the links and videos below often feature unfiltered ‘Strayan and so are probably Not Safe For Work unless your boss is pretty cool!

After getting back from the Brisbane roadtrip there was still plenty of work for this revived ute to put in, moving more loads and getting me around in general.

Merry Ute-mas

As the end of 2023 drew near, I decorated Cactus again in the spirit of the season:

My mate Matt was picked to be Santa at an event for Ballimore Pub, a village not far from Dubbo. He asked if Cactus could be Santa’s Sleigh and I accepted.

All went well, until the combination of a hot day and constant use of the clutch at low speed nearly sent old Saint Nick going for a tumble!

Catastrophe avoided, we made it back safely and a few coldies were had.

From there, the ute stayed as my holiday lights display into the New Year:

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C1Eif24h6HD/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

Bucket List

Whilst ol’ Cactus hasn’t had a big road trip this year, I started 2024 with an upgrade to make future road trips a little more comfortable, but more importantly, much safer.

The bench seat we pulled out of the parts ute had surprisingly okay springs and padding. A strip of bedroll foam over the driver’s side of the cushion followed by a cheap seat cover and it made for a decent perch. The trouble with these old benches is that there is absolutely no whiplash protection, and in these utes with the parcel shelf being directly behind the seat your neck has the ability to make at least a 90-degree bend before your occipital bone meets a steel ledge.

With some bucket seats being in my parts stash, I decided this was a better option since this ute is seeing more usage than the original build had ever really intended. We retained the three-seater capacity, using an original ‘dickie seat’ which doubles as a centre armrest. I also retained the usage of the behind-seat storage area by adapting the buckets to flip forward, just like they do in my Charger using spare coupe seat hooks to replace the solid links these sedan versions originally came with.

Crashing Another Prestigious Car Show

We attended the Gnoo Blas car show in Orange, about 90 minutes east from Dubbo in February. Named after a historic race track in the area that closed in 1961 with several victories going to Sir Jack Brabham who went on to become the only F1 driver to win a championship in a car designed and built by their own company.

With more twisty roads and a history of hill climbs and circuit racing in the area, the Orange/Bathurst region has a much higher concentration of European classics. It was a wonder we made it through the gate in our rolling collection of parts that have gained registration with such a prestigious company.

I continued to drive this utility-from-futility as essentially my main ride when I wasn’t using the company car. With the ute working as it should, it was the car I’d most often find with the keys in my hand as I walked out the back door to head into town. Ever since I had a specialist wheel alignment done, sitting on 110km/h (68mph) was a breeze and the high-profile tyres soaked up the bumps and potholes in our crummy NSW roads. Unless it was excessively hot outside that day, there really wasn’t any reason not to drive it!

Sure, the fuel economy is worse than my 2006 WRX, but compared to my ’74 Charger with triple DCOE Webers, it’s nowhere near the biggest drinker in the fleet, even if you give it some jandal to hear the glorious 245 bark.

Livin’ At Night

With winter arriving and daylight savings ending, I kept driving the you-puke-ute because A: five-poster bullbar with a V-profile that has already proven itself against macropods and is at least emotionally capable of bouncing ‘roos, pigs, camels, donkeys, in-laws, outlaws, pylons and pythons, and B: less stress in case of Skippy getting past the bullbar, on a vehicle with a sale value fluctuating to the octane rating and quantity of fuel in the tank.

To enhance the night-driving experience, I had already replaced the old sealed-beam incandescent 7″ round headlights with some Halogen units last year. This really improved the brightness and reach of the lights, but with increasing numbers of wildlife feeding on the green grasses of the roadsides it was time to really upgrade the night-vision.

Being Project Cactus, I wasn’t about to just walk into ARB and spend four figures on some fancy LED system. We’re all about recycling here!

I had some unknown-brand driving lights gathering dust in the shed, and chatting to my uncle who lives up the coast he said he had some mismatched lights floating around the shed, their opposite number likely having become a casualty to said clumsy masupials.

My uncle rebuilt a higher amp (55A) to replace the current puny 35-amper so that the lights could be installed. An alternator warning light resistor was installed in-line to make the alternator compatible. In June, on a road trip to Melbourne in his HX Statesman with a stopover at my place, we set about wiring up these extra beams.

With adjustment, the combination of two ‘floods’ and two ‘spotties’ means there is no shadows at all for a distance much greater than the braking ability of the four-wheel drums for once and with extra brightness to hopefully pick up the eyes shining back in the dark at a greater distance so that we can all keep converting energy and atmospheric gasses in peace.

My uncle and I also added low-coolant alarms in all three Valiants. The Marketplace-find big-block V8 radiator is still doing a great job of keeping the Hemi-six around 180F/82C in most situations but this light and buzzer helps avoid making a six-cylinder kettle should we spring a leak somewhere.

High Voltage Rock ‘n’ Roll

The upgrades didn’t stop here, either. A few weeks ago I changed the ignition system once again.

In the original build we were running points without a ballast resistor. Not wanting to burn through the limited supplies of genuine Bosch points I have stocked away, I swapped in an Ebay-sourced cheap HEI distributor and high-energy coil.

This dizzy had already seen over 20,000km in the Charger when it got back on the road seven years ago. Being a cheap copy, the bearings were starting to get a bit suspect and the 245 never had the same throttle response it did with the points. This was pointing to the advance curve also not being quite right for our $200 monster of an engine, so I decided to replace the distributor with an original hemi-six electronic unit that would have run with a Mopar ignition box, the kind that love to leak their waxy potting all over the engine bay.

Wiring this unit up to a Bosch 024 module was a literal five-minute job, with a heatsink made from 10mm aluminium [Ed note: I’m leaving in the rest of the world spelling for “aluminum” – Pete] there shouldn’t be any risk of the module getting cooked and dying young.

Being a standard lightning-whirler, the ignition curve seems to better match our power pack with the pink valve cover, and throttle response is largely back to when the breaker was controlling the sparks.

With daylight savings set to return soon and the days warmer, I have a few more things I am hoping to get sorted on the multi-hued ute:

• Fix the fuel gauge (finally!)
• Make a radiator fan shroud, for improved cooling on the odd hot day in traffic
• Fix the drainage of the cargo tray so the cabin doesn’t resemble a swamp
• Seal the cabin fully against wind/rain/small rocks
• Make a glovebox to store stuff off the floor
• Ditch the Ryobi 18V radio and install proper tunes

Our rust-rocket got meme’d thanks to Jason, and it also made it into Truck Astrology:

Whilst I didn’t take our mechanical mad-lad on any extended trips this year, in frequent use this year as my ride when I’m off-the-clock has seen faultless service. This has been especially encouraging when this year both of the other Valiants encountered moments when they “failed to proceed,”including the very first time my Charger has ever done so in my 17 years of ownership.

That this ute that we slammed together in under three weeks of long hours in a cold shed during one of the wettest years in recent memory is a real testament to the team of dead-set legends behind David and I who gave all they could to make this silly project running, driving reality.

Sure, I have made a good number of changes and upgrades in the intervening two years, but the overall product remains and always will remain the result of these dedicated people whose slowly fading Sharpie-made marks adorn the cargo tray.

Many hands can and do make light work of anything, physical or emotional. Check in with your mates, be generous with your time and generosity will return to you tenfold. We all only get so many kays on our odometer, don’t run down someone else’s clock with your own selfishness and make their life harder.

And with that, I’ll sign off for this anniversary update. I’m still looking for more places to take Cactus within Australia, time and logistics permitting. Feel free to throw some suggestions in the comments.

Cactus’ donor ute (“Tottenham ute”) body is still out at the farm. A spark of inspiration recently has some wheels turning with what to do with this old hulk, please stay tuned…

All photos courtesy of the author unless otherwise noted.