The two-time national hillclimb champion luckily had his beloved 1999 Pilbeam MP82 outside of the workshop when fire took hold of the building on the night of October 19.

It's believed the fire was caused by batteries which were being charged at the time.

While West lost spare parts and many materials in the blaze his house directly next to the workshop was unaffected.

He almost considered pulling the pin on the trip from Western Australia to the other side of the country but West

"The night before we put the car in the trailer to go to Barbagallo, where we'd have a run to see if it was okay for Bathurst, so things could have been a hell of a lot worse," he said.

"It was so close to the house, too. We're talking almost gutter to gutter, about a metre. The firies did an amazing job. There's not even a burn mark on the house.

"Life goes on. It's just the years of collecting and all the parts with these cars because they're all hand made. Any moulds and spares you have are very time consuming to replace ... but we're lucky enough to be over here with a car.

"It's nice that we'll be able to switch off for a couple of weeks and enjoy this."

West will have to take on Mount Panorama with limited resources due to the fire.

His only change of parts will be a spare set of tyres which were also in the trailer.

"We were wondering afterwards 'Do we still go?'," West said.

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"We said 'Let's go' and we could deal with it when we get back. I think already the trip itself has been really good for us, coming over in the motor home with the kids."

West had the opportunity in May to have a run up Mountain Straight, to sort out suspension and gearing, and has the car fined tuned for a crack at the overall title.

However, he's playing down his chances against a strong field of contenders for the national crown.

"We're going to be up against Malcolm [Oastler] and Dean [Tighe] and they run here quite a lot. We haven't had the opportunity to run here a lot but I'd really love to jump onto the back end of the podium," he said.

"That's the goal. You don't do this amount of work to not aim for that."

West will hope his luck improves at Bathurst because the track has dished out nightmare moments for him in previous years.

In 2006 his campsite at Mount Panorama and he suffered mechanical dramas on the first day, then more troubles struck his car two years later.

However, he was able to take the victory with his final run of the championship on both occasions.

Oastler has won four of the past five Australian Championships and enters this weekend's event as the defending champion in his OMS 28.

The Formula Libre 2001cc and Over class - which West, Oastler and Tighe contest - also includes the likes of regular Bathurst competitors Ron Hay and Doug Barry.

The 75^th Australian Hillclimb Championship takes place from Friday through to Sunday.