Indholdsfortegnelse for March 2014 i Hot Rod

Life rarely gives second chances, but to meet one of the most talented race-car fabricators in the history of hot rodding, life gave me five. The name Nye Frank (1939–2007) will be known to some of you from the twin-engine dragsters, streamliners, IndyCars, and off-road racers he designed and built. All of you will know the men he built them for: Mickey Thompson, Craig Breed-love, and Smokey Yunick. I began my magazine career writing about one of Nye’s (pronounced “NI”) creations: a CORR Pro-4 Ford F-150 race truck in Petersen’s 4-Wheel & Of-Road magazine. The truck was a chrome-moly masterpiece with a 455ci V8, four-wheel drive, and Nye’s liquid-cooled bypass shocks. But I was new, under a deadline, and failed to call Nye or his protégé Dave Clark to talk…

It occurs to us now that it might have been mildly insulting when our first question to Power Wheels racer Jon Halverson was, “Is this the kind of racing very drunk people do on hills?” The answer is no, that’s something altogether different (search “downhill Powerwheels” for that). The Power Racing Series is much less about alcohol-fueled bad ideas that result in hilarious crashing, and much more about innovative technology and teamwork that results in hilarious crashing. Power Racing follows the LeMons or ChumpCar philosophy of running a racing series with a low financial cap to make entry affordable and encourage clever engineering. In the Power Racing Series, instead of fullsize cars, the participants run small autocross courses in modified electric “ride-on” toy cars. Powerplants and batteries vary from winch…

The all-new ’15 Ford Mustang is officially here, and its December 5, 2013, world debut means Ford plans to celebrate the car’s 50th birthday throughout 2014. Leading up to the official unveiling of the car on Good Morning America, gearheads around the globe were certain we’d lost our ponycar forever. We endured years of rampant speculations about how the new “global” version of the Mustang would ruin the icon we’ve come to know and love. First there were the rumors that retro styling was dead, small-displacement engines would replace the V8s, and that the new car would be significantly smaller than the ’14 model. Ten came the online theories that the ’15 Mustang would have a corporate grille like a Fusion—which is exactly what many of you told…

Introduced during the ’66 model year, many auto journalists wrote of the frst-generation Charger as nothing more than a Coronet with a fastback treatment—because that’s exactly what it was. Tough fastbacks would become popular and AMC, Ford, and GM would ultimately all offer midsize cars in this configuration, early Charger sales were soft. Really soft. Less than 16,000 units were sold in ’67. Yet, rather than kill of its new fastback, Dodge treated the Charger brand to an entirely new design for ’68, and the public fell in love. When the second-generation Charger debuted, almost 90,000 cars sold in that one year. Like the stock-car racing term that some say this iconic Mopar got its name from, this B-body raced to the front of the pack. Jim Brown’s…

It’s tempting to want to fabricate every single part on your hot rod so when the opportunity arises to take credit for the build, you can honestly say it’s all yours. However, there’s a limit to the capability of the tools we can all ft, aford, and power in our home garages—and consequently, the awesomeness of the components we can traditionally fabricate. We’ve shown you the traditional fabrication tools on page 80 that have built hot rods for the last 80 years. Many of you are also familiar with machine tools, TIG welders, and tube benders—but there are far more advanced technologies in use by hot rod builders who’ve embraced modern-day manufacturing equipment to make their own one-off parts. Some of you may ask, “Did I really make…

The Back Up Pickup was just a wadded-up wheelstanding memory until the Galpin Ford gang in Van Nuys, California, decided to re-create one of the legendary exhibition race cars of drag racing’s golden age. Head Galpin Auto Sports (GAS) builder Dave Shuten was tasked with the wheelstanding re-creation, which was fast-tracked to be the feature attraction at the annual GAS party and car show. Then it was on to the ’13 SEMA Show for its public debut. Here’s the short six-month build. VAN RODS The Ford Econoline (E-Series) vans debuted for ’61 and were based on the Ford Falcon platform till ’67. The power in this re-creation of the Back Up Pickup was provided by a mechanically fuel-injected 427 Ford FE engine that dyno’d at 950 hp—a bit more than…

Tom “Moon” Perito runs Moonlight Garage on Long Island in New York. Moonlight specializes in race cars, specifically transmissions, axles, and third members. He gave us a look at the Moonlight Wall of Shame, a collection of busted axleshafts and enough broken gear teeth to impress a UFC fighter. Tom pointed out shredded gearsets and mangled bearings. “You won’t believe it,” he told us, “But everyone who came in here with one of these said they hadn’t heard a thing.”…

THE COMBO Mike Lamz purchased a ’70 Chevy Monte Carlo four years ago. Initially equipped with a 350 small-block, an auto trans, and a 10-bolt open rearend, he swapped in a 425 hp, 454-HO big-block crate motor, a Muncie M20 (wide-ratio) four-speed manual trans, and a 12-bolt Posi rearend with 3.42:1 gears two years ago. The new 454 developed an internal vibration, requiring it to be rebalanced. While the motor was apart, it was refreshed with a hotter Comp Cams custom-ground hydraulic roller cam, roller rockers, and associated valvetrain parts. The existing factory rectangular-port iron heads were heavily decked to raise the compression ratio into the mid-10s. Despite the large head mill, Lamz’s Edelbrock RPM Air-Gap high-rise dual-plane intake bolted right up to the heads, initially sealing-up OK…

01] CURRIE ENTERPRISES CurrieEnterprises.com; 714.367.2676; $719.90 (polished); PN CE-2011S Currie Enterprises ofers dozens of variations of Ford 9-inch housings. The polishedaluminum housing (shown) measures 7½ inches deep and 20 inches wide. Available polished or natural, the housing comes with installed studs, along with a gasket and the necessary hardware. Currie also ofers a factory-appearing, beefed-up housing that includes a removable rear cover. 02] STRANGE ENGINEERING StrangeEngineering.com; 847.663.1701; $605; PN H1115CG Strange Engineering ofers its 9-inch housings in multiple configurations: bare tubeless centersections, fully welded centersections, and even direct bolt-ins for Mustangs and GM A- and B-bodies. Featured is the complete housing for GM G-bodies, available with your choice of bearing ends. The mounts and spring cups are already welded in place, and the housing includes a drain plug and filler.…

Hot rodding started with two divergent schools; one we call “Go” and the other is called “Show.” Though HOT ROD has mainly focused on the “Go” since 1948, we have also tried to feature the best that car enthusiasts had to offer in terms of style, finish, and craftsmanship—ergo the car show. One of the most active, organized, and thus prominent shows in HOT ROD’s backyard was the Renegades of Long Beach annual car show held at the old Long Beach Municipal Auditorium from 1958–’60. This show was a mirror of what was taking place all over the country where local car clubs would hold a show with the proceeds going to some charity or otherwise worthy cause. If you were in a car club that put on a local…

Britt Reed // Raber Township, Michigan Britt is a retired carpenter who wanted to learn how to weld, so he built this ’82 Ford mustang LX with help from his son. Robert // Tennessee This camaro started life as a california car but has lived with robert in tennessee for almost 25 years now. It’s powered by a 350 V8 and th350 transmission. Dennis Etter // Shippensburg, Pennsylvania Dennis says the best part of owning this ’67 amc ambassador is having everyone guess what it is. It’s powered by a 290 with an Edelbrock intake. Tom Castellucci // Altoona, Pennsylvania Tom received this true survivor ’69 camaro as a hand-me-down from his grandmother in the late ’70s. he’s done a beautiful restoration. Jim Powers // Lakin, Kansas This ’58 Impala…

The Jersey Shore is traditionally a quiet, relaxed place in October. The beaches are empty, hotels get ready for their winter shutdown, and the boardwalk hawkers close up shop—yeah, pretty boring; that is, unless you invite Meldon Van Riper Stultz III and the Oilers Car Club into town. For its second year running, The Race of Gentlemen hit the beach in the Garden State, this time laying bias-ply tracks in the resort town of Wildwood, a bustling beach community 30 miles south of Atlantic City. The usually tranquil offseason in the touristy town erupted into a rodder’s version of Boys Town, as gow jobs, hop ups, street rods, and vintage American two-wheeled iron invaded the beachfront for the now infamous The Race of Gentlemen series. Mel and his Oiler crew…

“By the time Ben got the car, we had to go through the entire drivetrain to make the car more streetable and reliable. Everything mechanical was scrutinized, replaced, powdercoated, or anodized.”—John Hays In a world of “me too” car builds and Lawn Chair National events, it’s refreshing to see hot rods built to be driven hard. Few spectacles are more entertaining than a guy who shows up to the local open track day in old American iron with big power beneath the hood, a capable suspension, and the skill to go deep into a corner, brake hard, and pass a supercar on the exit. It’s a visual that defies convention and one that doesn’t occur frequently enough. We haven’t witnessed this scenario involving Ben Tomas and his ’57…

Normally if someone mentions Ferrari, Pontiac, and custom bodywork in the same sentence, we’ll run away before we have to see another Craigslist ad for one of those Ferrari-bodied third-gen abominations. Look it up—no, wait, don’t. But don’t run away, either, because while Sid Tracy’s ’69 Firebird is indeed a modifed F-body inspired by Italian supercars, he and builder Troy Gudgel ended up with a road-ready muscle car that we were happy to spend some time with. Te project came to our attention more than a year ago when we saw some bare-metal images at Troy’s Illinois-based shop, BBT Fabrications. We liked what we saw, so we caught up with Troy in Bakersfeld, California, during a rest stop on the 2013 Goodguys Texas Road Tour. Te BBT crew…

Ask five fabricators how to do one job, and you’ll learn fve diferent ways to do it. While they won’t agree on methods, they will agree on what tools they use. Everyone has his or her favorite item for a particular job, but you can fnd all 17 of these tools in any fabricator’s toolbox. Every job requires innovative thinking. Saying that a task needs an expensive tool is ofen the easy way out; day to day, most fabricators use simple handtools. Tis list will teach you ways to do the jobs with things you probably already have in your garage. Buy the ones you don’t have—only when you need them—and never use the “I can’t do that because I don’t have the right tool” excuse again. Few of…

How to MIG-Weld a Cracked Aluminum Block, Cont’d Contact J&S EAST VALLEY GARAGE; Montecito, California; 805.969.4147 Next Month: Install Vinyl Graphics…

I had to file the oil-passage holes in a new set of Speed Pro main bearings because they were offset in the block by nearly 0.100 inch. I tried another brand of bearing with similar results. Whose fault was it that the parts didn’t fit properly; the bearing or engine manufacturer? Laying blame isn’t important; identifying and solving the problem before the crank turns black from oil starvation is. I’m not always so clairvoyant. A week prior, I went to install the new Milodon geardrive cover on my Hemi, and it didn’t fit. It wasn’t even close, and the block needed machining in order for the geardrive to clear a pair of casting protrusions present in late-model crate engine blocks that isn’t there in the originals. This was work that…

Vintage Wiring Painless Performance // 817.244.6212 // PainlessWiring.com No, not actual vintage wiring, this new Nostalgia wiring kit from Painless Performance features a 14-circuit modern fuse box designed to work on street or rat rods that want wires hidden. All of the wires are black but still feature thin markings for easy identification. It’s simple, clean, and perfect for any custom car. The kit has fuses and wires labeled for lighting, ignition, horn, wipers, gauges, fans, electric choke, and electric fuel pump. The fuse box is simple with four keyed fuses on one side and four battery fuses on the other side. Price: $669.79 High-Torque Starter IMI Performance Products, Inc. 562.907.9400 //HiTorque.com If you have an LS engine in your hot rod for performance or reliability, then don’t get stranded…

SEND YOUR PHOTOS To be included in Scene by Readers, send low-rez photos and some information about them to HOTROD@HotRod.com. If we elect to use your photo, we will email back with instructions on how to send us a high-rez photo for publication.…

On a recent visit to New York City, we tracked down the owner of a ’68 Dodge Dart GTS that has been mystifying automotively minded tourists for decades. It’s always parked in the same East Village neighborhood with current tags and an active inspection sticker. Searching “Manhattan GTS” online brings up multiple Flickr.com pages and forum posts devoted to the battered A-body, but nobody seemed to know its story. New York is not the kind of town where a car can sit immobile for any length of time, but who could be so hardcore as to drive a ’60s muscle car in the middle of Manhattan? The answer is 75-year-old Alex Harsley, who came to NYC as a child and made a place for himself in the New York art…

I was hunting for barn finds in Central Illinois with some friends of mine. My buddies and I heard about a guy who supposedly had a few old Dodges tucked away. When we made our way to the house in question, we found the owner was home and more than happy to show us what he had. It didn’t hurt we’d pulled into his driveway in a ’70 Plymouth Superbird. The first garage held a Dodge Polara and Plymouth Barracuda. The ’64 Polara 500 was a Golden Anniversary convertible, one of just 2,624 built. The option was created to commemorate the fact that Dodge had been an automaker for 50 years. The car had special interior trim pieces and gold exterior emblems. It was originally a 413ci big-block car, but…

George Rumore, sales manager at Stainless Works, didn’t build the headers on Ben Thomas’ Chevy, but if he had, these are the questions he would have asked Ben before starting the build. HRM] What specs do you need from the customer? GR] There is a lot of information required to build a custom set of headers. Horsepower level, cam duration, static compression, cylinder head design, and the style of performance driving the client intends to use the car for. The reason that this is important is to make a set of headers that supports the volumetric efficiency of the motor. This information is also key to design a header that works best in the rpm range the client plans on using the vehicle. HRM] What are the various grades of…

Each November, the Specialty Equipment Marketing Association (SEMA) Show in Las Vegas serves to showcase new products from the top automotive brands in the industry. Te show has long garnered the attention of both original equipment manufacturers and the media, as it ofen sets trends for the market for the year to come. While last year’s hot-rodding themes were immediately apparent, we had to brainstorm a bit to see what this year’s show might foretell for 2014. C7 STINGRAYS This one we saw coming. Chevrolet’s new Corvette Stingray has been a hit with every media outlet that’s climbed into the entirely redesigned sports car. Te performance is there, the look is stunning, and it ushered in a new generation of direct-injection small-block, so it was only natural for the…

When a 4L60 won’t cut it and a Turbo 400’s lack of overdrive has your engine howling on the highway, a 4L80E might be the solution to your transmission woes. Tracing its roots to the Turbo-Hydramatic 400 automatic transmission introduced for ’64 Cadillacs and Buicks, the 4L80E transmission is a four-speed, electronically shifted overdrive transmission based on the three-speed TH400. GM retroactively called the TH400 the “3L80” when the 4L80E debuted. The 4L80E (and its 4L85E derivative) are candidates for heavy, powerful vehicles in need of an overdrive transmission. These transmissions’ versatility, availability, and strength means companies like TCI (TCIauto.com) now offer retrofit kits to put them in all kinds of vehicles—and even behind non-GM engines. There are drawbacks to the 4L80E. Its electronic transmission controller presents additional complexity and…

Not everyone has access to a dyno or even a racetrack for A/B comparative testing. Is it possible to determine whether a given cam profile should be installed advanced or retarded when you first plug it into the motor? Assuming the goal is achieving the most overall power (broadest powerband) and you have an assortment of advance or retard keys, a multikeyway timing chain, and/or other suitable method of adjusting cam position relative to TDC of the No. 1 piston, first install the cam as recommended by the manufacturer. (For many street-level cams, the manufacturer grinds the cam 4 degrees advanced by default.) Next measure the cranking compression in the No. 1 cylinder. This can be done even if the engine is not fully assembled. The No. 1 cylinder’s piston/rod/ring…

Every time I call an I.T. help line, I get the classic computer repair suggestion: “Have you tried turning it off and on again?” Automotive problem-solvers have their own magic fixes, with the most popular being, “Have you tried wiggling it?” Do the lights keep going out? Try wiggling the switch on the dash. The car won’t start? Wiggle the battery cables. Recently, the Polara had starting issues that even the most vigorous wiggling didn’t seem to fix. I cleaned the terminals and checked the starter connections. Sometimes I’d turn the key and just—nothing. It didn’t matter what gear it was in, no click, no starter grumble, silence. Clearly, the electricity was not going where it was needed, but how to find the cause? Much like my dog, electricity does…

Q: I have an ’84 Corvette with a 350ci motor, a 700-R4 transmission, and the factory Cross-Fire fuel injection. I am currently building another engine for it and am planning on using a carburetor instead of the stock Cross-Fire system. I plan on using a Weiand Team G intake manifold, so hood-clearance will be an issue. The engine will have a Comp Cams’ cam (0.525-inch valve lift, 310 degrees advertised duration), and 11:1 pistons with 76cc heads. What stall-speed converter do you recommend? Who makes a carburetor that will support the 700-R4’s TV cable? Will I have to go to a vacuum-advance distributor, or can I use the stock one? I have also heard I will need to install a fuel-pressure regulator to keep the factory electric fuel pump;…

Considering how long I’ve been with HOT ROD, it seems ludicrous that so many of my cars are—how should I put it?—junk. At least that’s how they are seen in the eyes of many. I’m often derided for it by peers in the industry, as if I’m a buffoon simply because paint and polish are at the bottom of my priority list. Past editors have said I’ve disgraced the magazine because of it. Yet I still defend beaters. See, I like my cars to be mechanically clean—both grime-free and thoughtfully executed. I’ll buy an ancient car and Gunk the engine for three days so there’s no grease packed on the block, then not care if it carries its patchy original paint. However, I’m super picky about how plug wires are…