Words Craig Metros Photography Luke Ray

This article first appeared in Fuel Magazine issue 24.

Ryan Ford is a well known and respected name in the Australian circles of traditional hot rods. His passion and motivation revolve around that culture. He is a prolific artist, painter, pin-striper, builder, publicist and promoter. It’s no wonder… Ryan was raised around his father’s love for American cars and hot rods on a farm in Castlemaine, Victoria; known as Australia’s hot rod capital. His father Eddie started building hot rods in the ‘50s. Ryan estimates his father now owns 50 to 60 American cars and hot rods. Eddie was involved with automotive and hot rod magazine publishing. He still runs ‘Restored Cars’ magazine from his home.

Of all the Custom Culture aspects Ryan is involved in, he is probably best known for his Kustomlinez brand that encompasses his illustration, painting, and pinstriping. That and the Chopped Rod and Custom festival. Both Ryan and his brother Kyle promote and organise the annual three day festival not too far from where they grew up. We featured the Chopped festivities in FM issue 09 and you can see a few images from last year’s event on page 47.

I recently caught up with Ryan to discuss his latest car project. This one has been in his family since 1970. It’s not a ‘32 Ford Roadster and no, it’s not a custom sled. It doesn’t even fit the Chopped Festival requirement of a pre-1965 style custom or rod.

It happens to be a 1968 Super Sport Camaro. “The car was imported to Australia as a debt recovery from California in 1970. It was a fully optioned car, everything you could get. The better interior, the rosewood steering wheel, Corvette brakes, all the extra stuff,” Ryan explains. “It was a pretty cool car!” The original big block motor and four speed manual transmission had been stolen. The car was shipped to a car importer based in Shepparton, Victoria where Eddie purchased it. As Ryan puts it, “my old man went and bought it from the guy there and they dropped a Chevy small block and power glide in the car just to get it driving.” The car came back to the farm and Eddie used it as his daily driver for the next ten years. “Being the farmer, my dad would occasionally use the Camaro as his farm vehicle,” Ryan recalls.

Eddie would tow with it to relocate machinery or to even move animals from one field to another. “I can remember my dad getting caught in a flood on the property and abandoning the car for a few days with both doors open to allow the water from the creek to flow through it. There was water up to the dashboard! And then my mum was using it while she was nursing just as her daily driver and for shopping. She always struggled with the manual steering box and found it really hard to park. She stopped driving it after the last time she was reverse parking and the steering wheel spun back around and the centre spoke nearly ripped her thumb off,” Ryan recalls.

“Eventually my dad swapped the small block for a big block 396 and automatic transmission. Basically the car spent the ‘70s and ‘80s as the family daily hack-about around central Victoria,” Ryan describes with a chuckle. “The car was geared for the highway so my dad was always flying in it at 100-120 mph. When I was about five years old, I couldn’t even see over the dashboard but I remember staring straight at the speedo sitting at 120 mph so many times,” Ryan adds while now laughing.

About five years ago, Mrs Ford officially handed down the family Camaro to her son Ryan. According to Ryan, many people and different shops had worked on the car that were not great over the past forty years. “It really needed a mechanical ground-up,” Ryan explains. As Ryan began to go through the car's mechanics, his mild performance upgrade intentions began to shift toward even higher performance. “During the last few years of working on the car, I kept changing my mind. I replaced the automatic trans with a M21 Muncie four speed and kept the 396 with the 12 bolt rear end.

Then I wanted to get a bit more race with it so I replaced the twelve bolt with a full floater nine inch rear end with 35 spline axles. From there I just started to get crazy with it,” Ryan explains. The Marshall Speed Shop outside of Melbourne fabricated a chromoly roll cage while Ryan put a full chassis in the car. The car was back on the road and Ryan drove it for a month before he decided to take it to the next level. ”I took the car off the road and pulled the motor. I replaced the normally aspirated system with a F1Z Procharger water/methanol injection, completely went through the 396 big block, and added lots of crazy race computers. I pretty much stripped the car out and rebuilt it as a race car in two weeks,” Ryan pointed out.

Ryan’s short timeline was to insure his chance to enter the Camaro in the Australian Street Machine Drag Challenge event last year in Victoria. The Drag Challenge requires entrants to race five times in five days and drive from drag strip to drag strip in the same car that they race. The cars need to be registered and insured, with working street equipment (horn, blinkers, brake lights, etc), and will need to drive at least 1500km during the week. There are no support vehicles allowed – all the people working on the car need to travel in the race car and any spares and tyres need to be carried either in the race car or in a small trailer towed behind. Five track, five days, 1500km!

Ryan had never drag raced before or at least never formally on a proper drag strip. On his very first pass at the drag strip Ryan blew up the four speed Muncie transmission right off the line. “I was only running 5 PSI, revved it up to about 5000 RPM, sidestepped the clutch and sent first gear straight to the bottom of the gear box. It gets good traction!” Ryan explains with more laughter.

After that not so successful first test run at the drag strip, the transmission was repaired and Ryan participated in the Drag Challenge. “I just started a bit slower off the line to keep from breaking the gearbox. With ten pounds of boost she was pushing over 600hp and clocking twelve second passes,” according to Ryan. Unfortunately, Ryan and his Camaro were knocked out of the running for missing a track with fuel supply issues.

That didn’t seem to affect Ryan’s enthusiasm and motivation. “I just picked up a two speed ultra glide transmission and we’re already down to ten seconds at the track. On the street, the car is pretty crazy,” confirms Ryan. Moving forward, Ryan plans to pull the 396 out again by mid year to upgrade the big block with racing forged pistons, rods and a crank to allow for a boost increase to 25. “I’m hoping to hit low nines before we go back to the Drag Challenge later this year,” explains Ryan. We wish Ryan the best of luck back at the strip!

Engine

396ci Big Block Chev

Arp stud mains

Stock rods and pistons

MLS head gaskets

John Bennett ported iron heads

Solid lifter cam

Roller rockers

Single plane intake

Quick Fuel 650 carb

F1C Procharger

Snow performance water/meth injection

MSD Digital 7 ignition.

Driveline

McLeod 900hp twin plate clutch

Steel flywheel

M21 4 speed Muncie

Strange iron 3.5:1 Detroit Truetrac

35 spline chromoly Billet axles

Race Products 35 floater hubs.

Chassis

Mini tubbed

Chassis connectors

Marshalls Speed Shop Chromoly roll cage.

Wheels

15x4 SS Cragars with Michelin 165s

15x10 SS Cragars with 295 60 M/T ET Streets.

“I’d like to thank Darren and Brenton Farr from Farr Faster Race Engineering for all their help and support during the build. Also I’d like to thank my mates who all pitched in last minute and helped me get the car to Drag Challenge, you know who you are and I couldn’t have done it without you guys. Finally a big shout out to my sponsors for backing me on Drag Challenge and my family for all the support.”—Ryan Ford.

Follow Ryan: @hard.metal // @kustomlinez

HARD METAL | Ryan Ford's 1968 Chevrolet Camaro Super Sport