My First Time Driving a GTR Torana | Full Review

What a fantastic example. It takes me back.

Back in 1984 I had a 1973 model LJ 2850 (173 CI). It was gold with cheviot turbo mag wheels, rear window louvres, houndstooth seat fabric and a pair of yellow fluffy dice hanging from the rear view mirror. 😜 I built a custom central console for it, complete with gauges. I had a tach mounted on the top of the dash. All the classic boy racer stuff! 😄 Those torana's are built like the proverbial brick outhouse. Rest assured, if you hit any modern car, you will definitely come off best. 😉

Have had a couple of XU1 toranas over the years top little car

Been decades since I had to do this, but from memory, unscrew the speedo cable at the transmission and put some grease on the cable driver. That'll stop the flickering of the needle. Preferably lube the entire cable.

Brocky and his son did a project GTR like this same color years ago...wonder where it is now ! they lived not far from me and used to see it in the shed.

Fantastic. Great cars. No leather though lol ;)

Listen to that!

Holden man thru and thru but those GTR,s were to me the biggest bucket to drive, JMHO

Nice little cars, fun, quick, handle for what they were. Nice to look at but couldn't own one now. Not any real fun these days, just falling apart and have to be fixed every time they are drven if you even drive then. Had 3 toranas.

HP does not equal 179. It is 2600cc, a 161 Cubic inch engine. I believe 161S = Steel crank, like the 186S The LC GTR-XU1 had the 186 engine with triple Carbs. The LJ GTR had the 202 engine with a 2 barrel carb while the XU1 variant had the 202 plus triples.

My LC GTR felt like a Vauxhall viva with a red motor in it , that car should have had the Opel gearbox that m20 is not stock , however nice example of a survivor

HP on the block means it has forged crankshaft, 2600 is 161 cui. 2850 is 173cui..

I grew up with these motors. The 161S was basically analogous to the 179 X2 motor based on the HP with the steel crank and high compression, but where the X2 used twin single throat carbs the S motor used a single dual throat carb and had an iron crank. It's a sort of strange capacity pheneomenon across the red motors, which is basically halfway between a 7 port grey motor and 12 port blue motor having 10 ports, the central four cylinders fed by two wide, split intake ports. Grey motor did the same treatment on the exhaust for four header pipes on the six cylinders and three split ports for intake, whilst the red motor got 6 proper exhaust ports at least, but only 2 individual intake ports and the 2 split ports. So this was basically a 40s-50s design GMC derivative based off a 1930s Buick. Didn't really look at a European export market because they'd laugh at you and ask why you're driving around with a 1920s tractor motor, so yeah a 70s red motor is a time machine all right. Yella Terra did a lot to help these engines by a ton of machining to remove material from those two central ports so they could properly feed the central four cylinders, which were otherwise the big performance restriction on these motors and making the 200hp mark the golden number few could achieve without gutting the head like Yella Terra did in a street mod slightly ahead of the time the XU-1 was introduced, which essentially borrowed from their toolshop in the head department to cope with triple carbs for 160hp. The other big thing the XU1 did was use the small chamber 161/173 head as a base instead of the 186/202 head, which gave about 11:1 compression with the bigger bores and meant strictly 100 octane minimum, cam lobe overlap a must and an ignition recurve to make it run. But you know with all the removed head material and a big cam that all meant you could feed it with some real caburetion, multiples off a Euro motor or a four barrel off a small V8 with some custom manifolding work. The XU1 of course went with triple stromberg sidedraughts, Euro style. Streeters immediately swapped those out for bigger SU types that love performance driving. So basically what a lot of people were doing with red motors in the street mod scene, just ahead of the XU-1 was hunting down HP 179s for the steel crank with big bores, sending the head to Yella Terra, putting a camshaft in, set of extractors and a holley for around 150hp and you had a pretty quick late model EH or HR for 1969-70 Aussie roads without the significantly greater expense of a V8 in those days, and I mean it was almost just as quick in the lighter Holden sedans. Noteworthy that without counterweights and purely workmanlike manufacturing one of the greatest improvements to existential performance on any red motor was tearing it down just to be machined and balanced. It just wouldn't rev very cleanly without doing that, certainly not like any European contemporaries. In fact without doing it these ancient, shared port OHV designs really are a 50s motor. As mentioned there was a strange capacity phenomenon between 3 generations of red motor, from the EH/HD/HR days with the 149/179 options to the HK/T/G/LC days 138/161/186 options and the HQ/LJ days with the 138/173/202 options. The 149 was of course the original base red motor engine with 179 "special" upgrade in low or high compression form with the high compression ones marked HP and fitted with a steel crank. All 149s are high compression and have a steel crank FYI, so only the LC 179 had an iron crank. This is how I learned it but it does conflict with Wikipedia which says all red motors had a steel crank before 67 regardless of capacity, including 161/186 so maybe that's true. But then Holden introduced two domestic chassis sizes with the HK through HG and the Torana using a common engine base to cut cost, so keeping a dual capacity engine option theme but sized for two different chassis they needed three engine sizes, and also had discovered the steel crank was unnecessary and so was a low compression engine which was specifically for rural areas and questionable fuel quality that wasn't really an issue like it was ten years earlier. So simplifying the story they rebored the 149/179 for 3 sizes for the Torana to offer a 138/161 i6 options and the HG 161/186 i6 options, with some fours also available in a short nosed Torana and the new 253 V8 also available for the HG. But then later for the HQ which was heavier than the HG they wanted more torque from the base and special i6 engine options, so increased the stroke on both the HQ i6 red sixes, turning the 161 into a 173 and the 186 into a 202, dropping the 161 from production so the LJ Torana facelift also had to use the 173 in place of the 161 on the luxury engine option and the GTR. However due to the 173 benefitting with more power from the stroke increase from 161, the GTR no longer had a modified S motor but was just a stock 173 but kept the sport exhaust system and had an Aussie four speed which was introduced in the LJ. So, the big street mod insights were: the original red motors made for 100 octane fuel for a 30% power increase over the grey motor layout which ran on 85 octane just fine, but were expensive because they all had a common steel crank expecting a cast one to break and differed in bore size. Since remote areas often didn't have 100 octane available a special low compression 179 was also produced, didn't need a steel crank so had a cast one and was stamped LC on the block, whilst the high octane one had HP stamped. All the 149s are high compression so don't need that. This is important, because there are a lot more LC 179s than there are HP 179s but there are a lot more 149s than both of them and all those have steel cranks that go right into any 161 or 186, which are all high compression also but have cast iron cranks. As red motors don't have counterweights this is big. Again this conflicts with Wikipedia but that's how I grew up learning it from the modders, though I only had two vanilla 186 sedans and a 202 XU1 homage mod myself. The vanilla 173/202 has bolt down non-adjustable tappets, but the 161/186 has fully adjustable, and if you don't adjust them very regularly they break and snap your valve stem off. Happened on mine as I used to spin it to 7200 on 36/72 valve timing and big lift. So that's why the later bolts down braces, but the issue there is they don't like big cams those braces, tappets don't generally but you need adjustable ones. This is important for the next part. To bump your compression to 11:1 on a stock bottom end you put a 161 head on a 186 or a 202, but don't use a 173 head because of the tappets. Then you send that head to Yella Terra for the full workover. It's still not quite as good as a machined blue motor 12 port head, but it's a far cry better than the vanilla red motor head which limits power to about 135hp and a twin carb it's so bad. With a carefully balanced but basically stock bottom end, Yella Terra head, cam and big holley or triples treatment, some exhaust manifolding, a 179 should do 150-180hp, a 186 about 160-200 and a 202 no problem for 200-230, that's a good engine dimension. Mine had about that in an LC. They're still not oversquare like the high revving Euro motors, so a lot of streeters do prefer the 179/186 to the 202 since two things, the same cam grind acts rougher so it's got more atmosphere to it and it spins a little nicer up top but the 202 has more power potential, sucks up more carburetion easier and is more drivable on the really big cams, so you'll see a modded 186 and a 202 act and sound identical but the 202 will have bigger carbs and about 30 more horsepower and one with the same power as a very lumpy 186 will act a lot milder, they definitely act differently. It's the same deal between the 161S and the vanilla 173, which actually has the same performance from a stock engine without the mild cam and twin throat carb. A 173 is better than a 179, but for the HP crankshaft, although it takes a 202 to beat a 186 which is both better and revvier than a 173. If anyone read all that, now you're a red motor expert. 😂

Nice car. Seat belts work much better if they're tightened.

In the early 2000's my daily was kindly written off by an inattentive driver, I looked at a good Indy Orange LJ GTR and an AE82 Corolla twincam hatch, both advertised for 3 and a half grand. Guess which one stupid me bought..

Wait until that clutch rod breaks

You adjust the seat belts after you put them on..

I had one 115 mph no problem

Lethal in the wet

Lets see more of the car and less of the talk fest.