1985 Holden VK Commodore wagon - Our Shed

By: Guy Allen

Date: 16.07.2022

After a long and unintended lay-off, project VK is the centre of attention

Good grief. This is embarrassing. A quick check of my files reveals I’ve owned the VK Commodore wagon for five years. It has been absolutely nowhere in that time, at least not under its own power.

The story so far is that, somewhere in the dim and dark past, I was chatting with young Mick, our workshop columnist at Glenlyon Motors. The discussion was about getting a wagon that could be used as a tow car.

Uncle Phil and Mick get to grips with our 355 stroker

Something like a base model VK would be beaut, on the proviso we stuffed a fresh V8 into it. His Lordship confessed to once having similar evil plans, and pointed out this thing. Formerly a Berlina with a 202 six and Trimatic in it, the engine had given up the ghost and had been reefed out. Then Mick refreshed the steering, suspension, and brakes and then kind of got sidetracked.

So I happily bought the rolling car and he quickly tracked down a partially-completed 304 Holden project engine, which had been stroked to 355 and given a warm cam plus VN heads. Perfect. And then the project stalled.

We all got busy (I think I’ve bought three other cars in that time), Covid shutdowns got in the way...you name it.

However now we’re underway. The engine has been dusted off and we’ve been on a shopping spree.

Mick has set up the Howard 1.65 roller rockers on the valve gear and we’ve shot a video with Uncle Phil on how to install them. Keep an eye out for it.

Mick reckons the 355 should make an easy 400 horses at the crankshaft

Covering that lot is a pretty nice set of Holden-branded rocker covers, locally made by Kilkenny Castings in sunny South Australia.

For a manifold, we’ve gone with an air gap design for better cooling and dual plane (rather than single) for road use. One unexpected glitch was Mick needed to cut a little ‘meat’ out of the nook for the distributor.

So here comes a Mick tip: always trial fit your components before anything is bolted down. In this case, he discovered the dizzy glitch without having to pull apart freshly-installed manifold gaskets and start again.

Speaking of distributors, Performance Ignition Services, which has worked on lots of our project cars over the years, set the unit up to Mick’s specs.

Next, the carburettor. The choice here, along with the manifold, reflects the intended use – which is a road car, likely to haul a load from time to time. So we want something that’s both docile and has a nice deep well of grunt.

We’ll be breathing through a 650cfm Edelbrock carburettor running a vacuum secondary and electric choke.

Nice new roller rockers go in

You might have noticed the extractors. They’re made in Castlemaine (Vic) and got held up by a shortage of raw material. Now we have them, Mick has sat them in place for the moment, so he can make up a set of ignition leads that don’t foul the plumbing. We’re using a set of chrome lead ‘racks’ which don’t just look pretty but help to keep everything in place.

And yes, we have a transmission

Our next big breakthrough was finally finding a transmission. A five-speed Tremec was quoted at more than the entire car has cost, while we considered a few other options, including a beefed-up Trimatic auto. In the end, we’ve settled on a reconditioned TH700 four-speed auto, which should do the job nicely.

There is a lot more to come... watch this space!

From Unique Cars #466, May/Jun 2022

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