archives

In this line of work you're presented with insanely cool and funny stuff on a daily basis. It's what keeps us sane and it works too! (mostly)

Sometimes though it's good to go through the various apparatus cluttering your office and have a bit of a purge. There's plenty of cool stuff saved on hard drives, memory sticks, old laptops, phones and the thousand or so unlabled CD's and DVD's around the place and while it can be cool and nostalgic, do you really need it?

Probably not. That said, it seems a shame to not give some of the more random, amusing or plain ridiculous stuff a final hoorah on the interwebs and so as I wait for my first bucket-o-caffeine of the day to kick in, that's what I'll do.

Rob Campisi's car has been called a lot of things since it hit the scene late last year but the least accurate of these has been "American-Built". Thankfully the track commentator has since been re-educated and the quickest and fastest turbo car in the land is proudly Australian made. This is a shot from the SCF Race Cars sheds in South-West Sydney where every bit of the car was built.

The annual Jamboree held at Queensland's Willowbank Raceway is already considered Australia's premiere Sport Compact drag racing event attracting a world-wide audience keen to see what the Aussie scene has to offer. This years event is shaping up to be bigger and better with some oversea's visitors making the trip to the land down under.

Earlier this month we recieved confirmation that the worlds fastest 13B rotary-powered vehicle, the Sporty Motorsports RX7 would be making the long trip from Puerto Rico along side the Pica Motors El Yankee RX8 to attend the event and take on the local competition.

Read more over the fold

OCT/NOV 1996 (ISSUE 4)

Do-it-yourself head jobs? What?

Feature Cars

• Turbo LJ Torana

• Blown Seca

Engine: 4A-GZE conversion, 100hp nitrous kit

• Honda CRX

• Stroked VK Commodore

• Mazda 929 turbo

Engine: B2600, 75mm throttle body, ported and polished head, 7.5:1 Ross pistons, RX7 Series 5 Turbo

Made 350hp at the wheels!

• VL Turbo Commodore

Engine: RB30 with AVO turbo, race ported head and pistons

Only made 175rwkW!

• 10sec Valiant

• Evo III Lancer

Tech Features

• Aerodynamics

• Mandrel vs. press bends

Julian Edgar compared 45deg, 90deg, 120deg and 180deg press bends and mandrel bends for flow

• Spark plug shootout

• EFI modification Pt. 3

• DIY head porting

• Project Skyline Pt. 1

     Zoom Aug/Sept 1996

Zoom issue 3 had a 10sec Datsun 1200 ute, a model of vehicle that has become standard Zoom fare.

Sending $112k on a Holden Commodore-derived Senator was not perceived to be madness!

Turbocharging a Mazda MX5 and a Datsun 240Z is typical of standard Zoom tech-based stories. 

Other feature cars included:

• De Tomaso Pantera

• Porsche 930 Turbo twins

• Twin-turbo rally Pajero

• V&E Rigoli Datto ute

• Nissan NXR

Tech Features

• Budget exhaust upgrade

• Cylinder head modification

• Multimeter how-to

• EFI modification Pt. 2

• Water-to-air intercooler how-to

• No-frills upgrades

• Budget buyers guide

In 1996 Australia voted in a coalition government of the Liberal and National parties that stayed in power for a decade and Zoom was educating an enthusiast readership used to small-block V8s and carburetor-based fuel systems. Turbochargers were considered ‘cheating’.

Apologies for the quality of the cover image. We don't actually have a copy of the mag so I pulled the image from a PDF and the details below from the backup of the working files (including actual negatives!).

 ZOOM JUNE/JULY 1996

(ISSUE 2)

 Car features

- Ultimate home-built Statesman

 - 4AGZE-powered home-built beach buggy

 - 1983 EFI XD Falcon

Specs: 351 Cleveland MoTeC injection with Edelbrock hi-rise manifold, MoTeC D2 ECU, ported 4V heads, Crane Hydraulic roller cam, TRW forged flat top pistons, Genie extractors, Tremec TR 3550 5-speed, ET Clutches modified McLeod street/strip clutch, Ford 9in diff’ with 3.56:1 ratio LSD

 - Supercharged 500hp Commodore

 - LJ Torana GTR

Specs: 179 Holden Red motor, twin SU carbies with Holley float bowls, Garrett T04 turbo

 Tech Features

- Modifying EFI basics, and by ‘basic’ we mean basic! Such tech wisdom included points like, modifications to the engine will require changes to the EFI. ‘EFI’ was discussed as if it was a single thing rather than a complex system with various parts each of which can be upgraded for different reasons.

 - DIY boost controller on a VL Turbo using a brass needle valve, it made 132rwkW!

 - ‘Chipping’ the Ford XR6 (XG ute) and Mondeo. The ‘chips’ didn’t work that well!

 Events & Lifestyle

- Buying used –Nissan GTS

- Targa Tasmania in the Zoom BMW M3R. Somehow the early editors of Zoom managed to wrangle a sponsorship deal with a Targa Tasmania team in a E36 239kW M3R

Apr/May 1996

(Issue 1)

Almost exactly fourteen years after the publication of the first issue, Zoom has a website through which the editorial team can publish content. It has been a long haul, that is for sure, but the work has only just begun for us. We shall be delivering all the best content online just as we do every month in the magazine.

The website will not have the same content as the magazine; this is not simply an online version of the print magazine. Instead we are going to use it as an opportunity to deliver even more content to our readers.

A big change is that this is an interactive medium. Sign up as a member of the website and leave comments and feedback. We shall be running a number of competitions over the first few months to get you involved so stay tuned for more info on this.

As a regular feature of the website we shall be posting a retrospective of previous issues. For the first post it is fitting then that we have the first issue of Zoom, found over the fold.