ABSOLUTE POWER

THREE MATES JOIN FORCES TO BUILD ONE OF THE TOUGHEST POWER CRUISE TAXIS WE'VE EVER SEEN

- LIAM QUIRK

DAMIAN Baker and Mick Green of BG Engines have screwed together some of the nation's toughest engine combos for Powercruise entrants, pro burnout competitors and drag racers (including Street Machine Drag Challenge's Radial Aspirated king, Alon Vella). They've even churned out a long list of highly strung marine racing mills. But after years of sitting on the sidelines, Damian and Mick decided to get involved in the action themselves.

Jotting down a quick list of the spare parts they had hidden under benches and stored in the rafters of their shop in Sydney's semirural north-west, the boys figured they had enough good bits to slap together a pretty tidy little engine to thrash at Powercruise in this VE Commodore, which they co-own along with BG customer Adam Hodge.

Much of the mill you see here was originally meant for the famed BG Engines HQ drag ute, which campaigned in the mid-2000s and was at one stage the quickest carburetted LS in the country. "We'd pulled the engine out of that, and I was actually using the block that's in the VE as a step up to one of the machines in the workshop," says Damian, alluding to the super-rare and wildly underappreciated World Products Warhawk LS7X block that now occupies the Commodore's engine bay.

The blown, injected LS combo is stacked full of so many good bits, we've featured it in Mill of the Month as well (see p.146). There you can read about the technical trickery and machining magic that helps this healthy small-block crank out over 1300hp at 8900rpm.

"Even with the LS7 heads that aren't ideal for this combo, it kept making power all the way to 9000rpm, so we kept turning it!" Damian laughs. "However, in the interest of reliability, I've got the shift light set at 8000rpm for Powercruise, which means you're probably shifting at around 8400rpm."