I've been a mad max fan for about 23 years and a fan of Peter Barton’s website for about 6 years. Unfortunately I only found this forum a week ago and wish I found it earlier.
My name is Brad and I am a former member of "The Bronze". I was a member of the Victoria Police force for 8 years before leaving back in 2004. Most of that time was spent working the CBD in Melbourne. Looking back now, I probably joined the police because of influences like Max and the notion of being one of the good guys. The truth is, it’s not your profession that defines you as being good or bad. I worked with a lot of really good people and an equal amount of dicks. That goes with any job though. Unfortunately it’s the idiots that tend to stand out.
As a wise man once said "A dick can leave a bad taste in your mouth"
I now undertake vehicular and collision investigations on behalf of the state government's public transport department (DOT). I work 1-up and spend most of my day on the road, as the area I cover is the north east region of Victoria.
I’ll take this opportunity to say hello to such a great community of mad max enthusiasts on this forum who want to share their love of the genre and the intricate makeup of the films (you can count the 3rd film as mad max if you really need to)
And of course let’s not forget the vehicles. I want to introduce mine.
I started my mad max replica journey back in 2002 when I purchased a rolling shell 73 XA GS hardtop coupe body from a guy in the trading post. It had been sitting in a garage in an unfinished state for 10 years as a project car and he agreed to sell it for $1,500. That seemed expensive at the time. It's laughable now.
I continued its automotive coma by garaging the car and doing nothing with it for a further 3 years. In that time, my girlfriend Kelly and I left the police force and lived in Japan for 2 years working under contract with the Tokyo MPD. We came back to Oz in 2004 and I still did nothing with the car. I have no body-building knowledge or experience let alone a trade that was even remotely related to automotive. I had joined the police after finishing high school and knew nothing else. I was then lucky enough to bump into a friend named Bradley who was a panel beater by trade who was looking for somewhere to stay. I let him live at my place on cheap rent if he would help me with the car down the track and he agreed.
In late 2005, Kelly and I set a wedding date of 18th Feb 2006. I cunningly suggested to her that we do up the coupe as a wedding car and Kelly though that was a great idea. She had not seen the films and was probably thinking the end product would be a nice cherry red muscle car or similar. I rang my mate Bradley and asked if he would help me with the car and he agreed. To complicate matters, I was now living in Rutherglen on the NSW border which was three and a half hours drive and he had lost his license.
In October 2005 I purchased a 79 XC sedan with a 351cu Cleveland and a body full of rust for $2000. The idea was to transfer the running gear from the sedan to the coupe to save money and time. It would also save the effort of sourcing all of the parts individually to do the build. Bradley took the 4 hour train journey to Rutherglen to look at the car which was now sitting in the backyard. Admittedly, I was stupendously naive as to how much work lay ahead of us. He tried to explain this to me but I was more focused on the end product and the deadline to really listen to him and asked for his help anyway. He agreed to do the project as he loved the films and most likely felt obliged due to our arrangement. I was thinking that 3 and a half months would be plenty of time to build a mad max coupe.
Poor Bradley made the 4 hour train ride to my place every weekend to work on the car. Aside from the work he put in on the vehicle itself, it was a remarkable effort for him to spend 8 hours of his weekend on a train let alone the time, welding sanding and sculpting the car. When we started, the ass-end was full of cancer as most coupes are and a lot of fabrication work was needed to cut and replace the rust. While Bradley was welding, I was on the phone trying to get one of those supercharger thingies. Boy was I ignorant of the enormity of this project.
I managed to get hold of an 871 supercharger which had come off a GM truck from a diesel workshop in Adelaide. The cost was $1000 plus $40 postage and it arrived within 5 days. We stripped the blades and bearings out of it and left it as an empty shell.
I wanted to get a hold of a scott hat for the top of the charger and started to look them up on the internet. By fluke I came across a picture of one on the internet with an email address. I then got in contact with the fabulous Marke Kemp. He had recently acquired an original Scott hat and was selling his replacement. It transpired that he himself had already built the NSW registered replica coupe MFP-058
He had created a full Mad Max 1 fibreglass kit and still had the fibreglass moulds. He made me a set and posted them within the week. Not only did he supply me with every fibreglass component needed to create a replica, he also supplied me with templates for the headlight covers and the inner headlight boxes. What a champ. Kudos to you Marke.
Meanwhile, we pulled the 5.8 litre Cleveland out of the sedan and donated the rest to scrap metal.
That’s me in the middle grinning like I knew what I was doing.
The engine then went into the coupe with some persuasion. While Bradley finished off the welding, I hit the floor pan with a grinder and took it back to bare metal.
Then the bracket for the now sandblasted 871 was made.
We soon realised that the fibreglass nose cone needed bracing if this was to be driven at anything above 40kmh. A brace was made for the front. A second brace was added later at the base of the nose cone in the event of gutter scrubbing. (not pictured)
The fibreglass kit was tech-screwed and fibre-glassed to the body. This phase involved 4 litres of bog and 3 weekends.
The shed doors were closed and the car was undercoated over another weekend.
The final weekend before the wedding, the car was rubbed back with 800 and then finally taken to the spray booth for the black coat. We were cutting it fine.
Disaster, the gun we borrowed for the spray was too fine and the paint ended up clotting and shooting out stringy on the car. This was bad news. The car was towed to Benalla on Tuesday 14 Feb where another painter agreed to redo the top coat. He just needed it rubbed back first and finished on 1000 grit paper before hand. I was asking for a miracle at this point.
On the eve of the wedding, the car was then towed back to Rutherglen where the airbrusher painted the decals on the quarters while we fitted the interior. We were still frantically fitting seats and dashboard on the morning of the wedding. Looking back I dread to think if we had have started the project a week later. There would have been no way of finishing it on time.
At 12:00 noon that day, Kelly was picked up in our mad max coupe. The only thing missing were the headlight cover decals and vehicle registration and insurance. But they are only minor things right.
The picture below is aptly called “I love you”
Kelly was happy that she made it to the wedding and the wedding car wasn't impounded.
And I was smiling smuggly that I now had an interceptor..........oh and a wife, of course
That was all 3 years ago and at the time of the wedding I had arranged the build to be movie correct. I’ve made some changes since then. While I enjoyed the car being movie correct, I wanted to make changes that I thought would lend the car a far tougher appearance in my eyes. The coupe is now registered as MAX-V8 in Victoria (unfortunately the strictest state in Oz for modified vehicles).
The car has since been rubbed back again and resprayed in 2-pack. It’s not black on black, but a full gloss. I have retained the chrome door handles and fuel cap just to break up the profile of the car and to compliment the zoomies. I lost the air brushed MFP badges on the front quarter panels when it was resprayed and I have not had them redone as yet. (Oh my gosh look at those rear fats)
The floor has since been re-sanded and given 3 coats of silver hammer finish paint. The gear selector shroud was sandblasted and then clear coated before being refitted. The trims and parcel shelf have all been stripped and replaced with alloy propeller plate. With the floor plugs removed, the car interior is now practically hoseable.
The car has been lowered further to 105mm just to give it a broader stance front-on and bring it closer to the road. Overall this gives the car a ‘positive’ perception of motion as opposed to the ‘negative’ perception of motion experienced in modern cars. Unfortunately the supercharger had to come off in order to obtain full registration and the scott hat alone on the bonnet sits at a height of 156mm, just under the 160mm maximum allowed for a bonnet protrusion.
The move correct 15x8 rims fitted with 265’s came off the back and were moved to the front and a set of 295’s were imported for the rear. My turning circle has unfortunately increased two fold but the fats on the front look great. (small sacrifices) The rear 15x10 sunraysia rims were then machined with a massive offset of 235mm to bring the rubber out level with the flares.
With full registration, the car gets a lot more use nowdays.
Now that the car has become a common sight in my small town, I’ve taken the risk and reinstated the now polished supercharger.
Whilst most replica builders exhaust every effort to make the car movie correct, I have taken a different path. I wanted the car to meet my own expectations. While some of you may criticize this decision, at the end of the day, the biggest critic is yourself, so you should satisfy you. After all, it is your car.
Kelly has since seen the films and is not quite sure what the fuss is about the car (women are strange creatures)
As for the modifications, the local coppers know that I’m ex-police and I was hoping for some leniency in that regard. Unfortunately, in their opinion, “I should know better”
Up until now, the car has been street legal but with the 871 on the bonnet, I’m crossing into the unroadworthy category. I think I will start to see canary stickers on my windscreen over the next few months. The charger bolts off and on, so it will be easy to clear these canaries and to be perfectly honest, it feels good to be the bad guy for once.
Nice to meet you all.
,mate your mate deservies top marks for helping so much with you beast good one him,and getting the car ready for the wedding OMG i can emagin the stress going on,great story,post some more pics of your beast around town cheers pat
