Video: Billy Shelton's SICKEST VL

UPDATE: Billy and SICKEST have taken out the 2021 Red CentreNATS Grand Champion gong in Alice Springs, by just one point over WA's Nigel Warr. Read the full story on the car below and check out full coverage of the Grand Champion chase here.

First published in the August 2021 issue of Street Machine

HELPING out your friends is an integral part of the car enthusiast life, and Billy Shelton’s immaculate VL build started off exactly that way. While his SICKO HQ Monaro (SM, Nov ’07) is going through a bare-metal rebuild, he and a team of mates have turned out this killer first-gen Commodore, packing a 1000rwhp turbo LS and immaculate detailing everywhere you look.

41

“We’re going to Willowbank and we want to run deep in the eights at this stage, and maybe go for a seven later on with a different motor,” says Billy. “I’ve got to crawl before I walk, so this engine will do me for now. I got my licence and will go through making it legal and getting to know the car”

Billy and his mate Paul Butler of PB Automotive started off with a 90,000km-old, RB30-powered ’86 Commodore SL that Paul hadn’t got around to rebuilding. The pair then pushed through COVID and a crazy 12-month timeline to debut the eye-bashing sedan at the inaugural Rockynats. It was only meant to be a cheap project to have some pressure-fed fun in – until Billy’s OCD kicked in.

41

“I love red on red; you can’t beat it!” Billy says. “I don’t care what other people tell me; I do what I want, and I built this car like this for me. It has to be comfortable, because I love driving it, and I want to get it out to events like Street Machine Drag Challenge with some of my mates, like Trent Brimble with the VILLIN VL”

“We were in the process of building Billy’s SICKO Monaro when COVID hit,” Paul says with a sigh. “We were unsure how long the show scene would be affected, so our plan started with Billy buying my VL Commodore – which had sat in a Longreach storage yard for 10 years – as well as the turbo LS from my TX Gemini coupe so I could build him a budget street/strip car to have some fun with.

“To say it got out of hand is an understatement. Billy is hardcore into the show scene, so he wore me down to make what you see today.”

41

We’re no strangers to hearing the familiar tale of street car builds being made nicer little by little until the owner accidentally winds up with a show-winning machine ready to take scalps at the track. Given Billy’s past with the 630hp small-block in his HQ, SICKEST was never going to be thrown together or sport Sloppy Mechanics-style junkyard speed parts.

“Just before Christmas 2020, Billy hit me with his revised plan of unveiling the VL at Rockynats, which was Easter 2021!” Paul says. “The car was already painted in our custom-mix Sicko Red and the engine had been installed, but I decided it needed to come apart to be flow-coated if it was going to Rockynats. This was so it would be of a standard I’d be happy to have unveiled.

41

Sitting next to the fuel cell in the boot are the custom water/meth tanks. These are set up in the Haltech ECU to pulse into the intake when the engine temp gets to a predetermined trigger point. Pump E85 is supplied from the fuel tank via a pair of Holley pumps (890 and 1800) to Siemens Deka injectors

“We pulled the VL apart again and flow-coated everything, with Nathan Hunt helping paint it so I could concentrate on the rubbing, blocking and buffing. There were long hours in the final week to get the paint up to scratch, and we couldn’t have done it without Nathan’s help.”

Paul fitted a tube front end from Spot On Performance to get the weight down, while the rear end was tubbed to the rails and the standard triangulated four-link arms were replaced with adjustable chrome-moly items. A triangulated link bar and Enemies Everywhere anti-roll bar were also added.

41

“A rear-mount radiator was a must, so I drew up what was required and Adam from Red Devil Radiators made a killer custom radiator with twin fans,” explains Paul. “This set-up works unbelievably well with racing and cruising, and it has no problems”

This was mandatory work given the grout-filled 1053rwhp 5.7-litre LS up front, built by Peter Phillips Performance for Paul’s drag-spec, tube-frame Gemini. The tough Gen III copped plenty of good gear, including a Callies crank and rods set, CP slugs, custom-grind Lil Johns Motorsports hydraulic-roller cam, LS7 lifters and Melling oil pump. Trend pushrods and BTR valve springs handle head upgrades in the #241 cathedral-port castings, while the smoothed and painted Holley Hi-Ram intake has been squared-off with a 102mm Plazmaman throttlebody.

The hot sauce comes from a front-mounted Proboost GTX45 snail running without an intercooler, though it does have water/methanol injection set up in the Haltech Elite 2500 ECU.

41

While it appears clean and simple to start with, the VL hides a lot of Paul’s work, like the de-seamed engine bay and trans tunnel, which he opened up to make space for the Powerglide and its shifter

“I’ve got a ProCharged small-block Chev, but I wanted to do an LS, so I got this engine without even having a car to put it in,” Paul explains. “We tested the set-up in a mate’s VH to make sure it all worked before we put it in Billy’s car. We’re basically out of turbo, as it’s only a mid-frame turbo, but it drives really well. The VL isn’t a full-blown race car; it’s meant to be a driver.”

Behind the boosted late-model small-block is a Vasco Powerglide and custom turbo-spec torque converter from The Convertor Shop, while a nine-inch packing all the fruit gets the four-digit power to the ground.

41

“Our Proboost GTX sits in the centre, with a short cold side that has one smooth bend, giving us all the boost the turbo has to offer,” Paul explains. “A Snow Performance water/meth kit takes care of intake temperatures, and a dry nitrous kit is there in case we need it”

“I went roll racing the other day, and when we looked at the datalogs we realised I was only using 89 per cent throttle,” laughs Billy. “I still ended up in the top six, which isn’t bad. Since Rockynats I’ve done 57 hours of driving in it. I take it everywhere; I even do my quotes for concreting in it. I’ve never had a car like this!”

The judges at Rockynats clearly also felt they hadn’t seen a car like SICKEST before, rewarding it with a swag of tinware including Top Comp, Best Engine Bay, 2nd Top Paint and a Top 10 plate. Not bad for a “budget street/strip” build, but still not a patch on what Billy says we should expect from his rebuilt SICKO HQ Monaro when it debuts at Rockynats next year.

41

“Cam at North Coast Custom Trim knocked the job out of the park,” says Paul of the VL’s schmick interior. “The dash, door cards, console and the Kirkey seats are all done in leather, with a little suede.” The rollcage is weld-in at the rear and bolt-in at the front, so the front half is removable for street use, yet ensures the car can be IHRA-teched down to 7.9sec

“SICKO will be off its head, but we’ll also have SICKEST there as well, and I want to go for Grand Champion in both of them,” he says with a sinister laugh. Billy sure has the car-building illness!

Update, 29 August:

Billy has been driving and racing the wheels off his VL since returning from Rockynats, with including two Willowbank test days and two Roll Racing appearances (including a podium spot) at Queensland Raceway. On Friday, Billy set a new PB in the car, to the tune of 8.390-seconds at 163mph!

41

BILLY SHELTON
1986 HOLDEN VL COMMODORE SL

THANKS
Paul Butler at PB Automotive; Nathan Hunt; Peter Phillips Performance; Nick Cooper at Coop’s Auto Electrics; Justin Simpson at Horsepower Solutions; North Coast Custom Trim; Adam at Red Devil Radiators; Jeremy Hassel at Weldworx; Todd Protheroe; Jeremy Platt; Concept Paints; Suspension Dynamics; my wife Michelle and kids Chase and Chloe

41