Indholdsfortegnelse for May 2010 i Hot Rod

UP ON TWO WHEELS Readers who have been with us many years may recognize the title of this column, as it was taken from the monthly road tests we used to do on motorcycles. I’ve liked bikes ever since I got an XR75 at age 12, but even to me it seemed odd to have them appear in HOT ROD, even if it was just one page out of 100. In the mid-’90s, one of our executives forced the situation again, demanding eight monthly pages devoted to Harley-Davidson tests and tech stories. The editorial staff put up a fight against it, but in vain. Supposedly, we would get eight extra pages of ads from the motorcycle aftermarket to support the edit pages, and since potential ad dollars turn the sales…

Inspiration often comes from the efforts of others, and nowhere is that more appropriate than in the world of building cars. That’s one of the reasons car guys like to read magazines and go to car shows: Seeing how someone else’ built a car, solved a problem, J or created something unique generates even more ideas to use on your own project. It’s even better to watch a car being built, since you can get down and dirty under the sheetmetal and come up with even more ideas because a car is much more than just what it looks like on the outside. For that reason and to also show what’s going on in the great shops and home garages of this country, we’ve put together a collection of the…

In the past, we’ve presented metal-shaping articles that showed the average, inexperienced Joe how to create just about anything from a flat sheet of steel, provided he has access to the right tools. The problem is that many of those tools are large, expensive, and more fitting for someone planning to do a lot of shaping on a regular basis. Honestly, as much as we might like to daydream about crafting custom panels on an English wheel, the truth is it’s just not realistic for the average hot rodder. So what do you do if you just want to create simple patch panels or repair or modify existing steel? You go back to the basics. After all, there are only four things you can do to metal: cut it, bend…

“In the old days, we just put more pressure into the clutch. Now we let the friction do the work.”—Will Baty, Centerforce It used to be a 500hp street car was a big deal. Today, even a stock LS9 Corvette makes 648 net horsepower straight off the showroom floor, and a real 700hp (or more) hot rod is not uncommon. The rise in streetable power and torque levels was coupled with a rise in driver expectations. “Today’s customers want a clutch as smooth as stock with stock pedal pressure that will last forever and still hold 1,000 hp,” says RPS Performance’s R.J. Smith. Add in the hydraulic linkage used on most new cars, lighter and more compact drive-trains, and the removal of asbestos friction materials from the market, and manual…

Welcome to the Hot Rods section of the mag, where all the car features live. Know of a great ride that should be here? Got killer photos of cars in action along with details about them? Tip us off: email HOTROD@hotrod.com or mail to HOT ROD Hot Rods, 831 S. Douglas St., El Segundo, CA 90245. Ya know what’s a bummer these days? Guys don’t build hot rods for hot rodding. Instead, the cars that traditionalists insist are the only real hot rods are usually for profiling—or at best, for cutting donuts at the Pabst-fest of choice. In the seminal stages of the hobby, hot rodders built their roadsters for the street, the lakes, and the drags, and eventually some rodders took on the world, racing in Mexico, at Pikes…

“Dealing with track managers and the companies that were into drag racing really helped me, but was pretty intimidated for a long time because of my ethnic status.”—Roland Leong When you get to Roland Leong’s house on the west side of Los Angeles, a sign in the front yard politely requests that the visitor “enter with the aloha spirit.” Roland lives off of the marina and is “never far from the beach.” With that in mind, we make our way to a seaside mini-mall in search of sushi, where he can tell us about the arc of his career in drag racing. En route, somewhere around Pacific Coast Highway, Roland tells us that a very prominent multicar team owner recently asked him to oversee his drag racing operation in Indianapolis,…

Even if a part already exists in the aftermarket, it’s still more fun to make it yourself, and perhaps one of the easier fabrication projects is making an export brace. Sometimes called a shock tower brace, these are pieces of steel tubing that connect the underhood shock/strut towers to each other and also to the firewall to stiffen the front end of a unibody-construction car. They are most often seen on early Mustangs, but there are kits for a number of cars. Handing is becoming more of a priority with hot rodders, but there are still models out there with no aftermarket support in this area. So the answer is to make your own. We visited Jeff Lilly Restorations in Texas to find out how the company fabricates a custom…

CHALLENGER BLOWER KIT DC Performance Inc. 310/841-6996 www.dcperformance.com DC Performance is the L.A.-based go- to shop for late-model Mopars, and the company recently completed a Magnuson supercharger kit for the new Challenger SRT8. DC has a turnkey blower package using a Magnuson Magnacharger that increases rear-wheel horsepower from a 6.1’s stock 383 to 484, and torque goes from 338 to 428 lb-ft. The best part is the design of the blower provides big low-end torque—between 2,000 and 4,000, DC says the Magnuson made 70 lb-ft more than a competing centrifugal supercharger. The kit comes with a DC/Magnuson dyno-proven tuneup, and if you live in Southern California, DC will install it for you. Price: $6,650.00 (polished is $7,150.00, polished and installed is $9,900.00) GLAS SPACK HEADER MUFFLERS Cherry Bomb 866/869-9704 www.cherrybomb.com…

Jim Ireland’s ’33 Plymouth rolled from the East coast to Bonneville last year, and he said the trip was “the best time of my life.’’ With the Rollin’ Bones gang, he had pumped out 700 miles a day in a gypsy-style caravan that included five traditional hot rods and two trailered race cars. Laughing, he colorfully describes a long list of cramped hotel rooms, greasy diners, endless fuel stops, a magneto problem with Dans ’39 Ford, and a slew of devoured fan belts on Richie’s fresh Deuce. Oh, and there was that little in with the law in Wyoming. Read all about it next month. SEE THIS AND MUCH MORE IN THE JUNE ’10 HOT ROD MAGAZINE On Sale April 20, 2010 Meanwhile, Get Your Car Fix at HOTROD.com…

SEND STUFF IN: EMAIL: HOTROD@HOTROD.com MAIL: HOT ROD, 831 S. Douglas St., El Segundo, CA 90245 PHOTO REQUIREMENTS: Minimum size 1,600 x 1,200 pixels MESSAGE BOARD: HOTROD.com CAMARO PACES THE INDY 500 For the second year in a row, General Motors and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway have selected the Camaro for pace car duties at the Indy 500. “We’ve enjoyed a great partnership with the Indianapolis Motor Speedway throughout the years and are proud to once again have the privilege of pacing the Indianapolis 500 in a Camaro,” said Jim Campbell, Chevrolet general manager. Camaros have paced the Indy 500 field in 1967, 1969, 1982, 1993, and 2009. This year’s edition is a 400hp RS with special paint, graphics, and badging. —BILL MCGUIRE RIP BOB TASCA On January 8, 2010,…

There’s no better way to say it: This car is just 100 percent badass. Many projects, most notably those of the Pro Touring genre, have combined big-time performance with modern car convenience. This car eschews that in favor of a barely disguised race car with license plates, but also with some creature comforts and serious custom show car build quality. Remember George Poteet’s Sick Fish ’Cuda built by Rad Rides By Troy, the HOT ROD of the year in 2007? That was a pure land speed race car with Ridler-level detail. The TransCammer, as this ’70 Mustang is known, is a street car with Trans-Am race car-level performance, and if Cobo Hall allowed muscle cars to compete for the Ridler, this one might make it into the Great Eight. We…

Bending a rollbar is typically done by professional shops for two reasons: It requires special tools, and most of us don’t have a clue how to do it. Neither of those are justification to pass on attempting the project. If you can weld (and we mean weld as in creating structural integrity, not gluing together pieces of metal), then there isn’t a single reason not to tackle rollbars. The limiting factor for most is the cost of the tubing bender. Proper mandrel tubing benders are somewhere between $800 and $1,600 by the time you get done buying dies and the accessories required for bending rollbar-sized tubing. That’s a chunk to shell out for a piece of equipment you’ll rarely use, but paying a shop to bend a bar will cost…

Mopar’s 5.7L and 6.1L Hemi engines are certainly potent, but they haven’t garnered the attention of hot rodders to anywhere near the level of GM’s LS-series engines. That’s too bad, since the new Hemi has a great deal going for it even in stock trim. Like the current LS3, the SRT8 Hemi is blessed with tremendous cylinder heads. Impressive even in stock form, the 6.1L SRT8 heads respond to precision porting every bit as well as the General’s heads. A properly ported set of 6.1L Hemi heads (like the ones employed in this buildup from Dr. J’s) can flow more than 350 cfm at just 0.600 lift. That is some serious head flow. The SRT8 version of the modern Hemi also sports an impressive factory aluminum long-runner intake, a sizable…