Indholdsfortegnelse for February 2016 i Hot Rod

I once got in trouble with our former creative director for doing a cover story about predicting the future. He said it was a terrible idea, and that I couldn’t possibly know what was going to happen. While he may have been right in principle, I also know that forecasting what’s coming is powerful. It’s not that I have a crystal ball, but I think it’s possible to recognize the path we’re on, talk about our trajectory, and make the future we want come true. To that end, here are my predictions for the New Year. Factory Performance Cars: Te Ford Raptor and Dodge Hellcat proved that halo cars that are attainable are more powerful—and profitable—than supercars ever will be. What does that mean for the…

There’s nothing phony, made up, or arbitrary about HOT ROD’s Drag Week™. It’s real drama, real competition, real conflict, and real up-in-your-face speed and desperation every day—for five days. Take all that reality TV nonsense—every stupid, made-up situation, dialogue, and challenge—and fling it at you flat screen. Drag Week™ is more than 300 street-legal cars fighting for dominance on 1,000 miles of lumpy streets, for five days on different dragstrips, with all the havoc and unpredictability Mother Nature can bestow. And, yes, you’ve got to pay a few tolls along the way. Presenting Sponsor Co-Sponsor & Live-Stream Tey say insanity is repeating the same behavior but expecting a different result—that’s exactly what Drag Week™ 2015 was: street and strip insanity. Tis year, the 11th time Drag Week™ has run,…

CHRIS BISHIR // 1982 CHEVROLET S-10 Te Street Race Small-Block Power Adder class was right up against the 8.5-second minimum e.t. for all Street Race classes. On Monday, three drivers parked their times close to that mark with just 0.09 second separating the top four of Kyle Bemount, Chris Bishir, James Bailey, and Rick Anderson. However, the Mustangs of Bailey and Anderson failed to get past the second day of racing and a bad Tuesday time of 10.000 seconds for Bemount—which ultimately put him in Fourth Place for the week—lef Bishir wide open for the win with a staggering 8.574-second average e.t. Bemount and Bishir met again on Saturday for the HOT ROD Heads-Up Shootout final, where Bishir’s 1982 LS-powered Chevy S-10 again topped Bemount’s turbocharged LS fourth-generation Pontiac Firebird,…

JEFF SIAS // 1990 FORD MUSTANG In 2013, Jeffrey Sias won the Street Race Small-Block Naturally Aspirated category with his 1990 Ford Mustang. Sias sat out last year, but this year he moved up to the Super Street class and made it two-for-two with a convincing victory in the category. Like Vincent Rasch in the Big-Block category, Sias was the only car to log a single 9-second pass, let alone average better than 10 seconds in the class with his 9.9770-second average. Ray Meyers joined one of a handful of early risers all week to run down the track in the first few minutes of racing. Friday found his 1968 Plymouth Barracuda first through the finish line in the day’s opening pass, making him the first driver, unofficially, to finish…

SUPER STREET BIG-BLOCK POWER ADDER // WINNING AVG: 7.760 SEC. AT 189.21 MPH GEORGE GALLIMORE // 1970 MONTE CARLO The Super Street Big-Block Power Adder category was relatively small with just six entries and only three who finished, but the top two in class put on a hell of a show with every pass. George Gallimore’s 1970 Chevy Monte Carlo continued its assault on the fastest-ever e.t.’s in the class with his 190-mph personal luxury coupe lighting up faces in the paddock and in the stands. Gallimore did not finish last year, but he made it all the way through the week in 2015 with a 7.7606-second average e.t., good for Sixth overall in addition to his first class win. His car remains one of the most spectacular to watch…

TOM McGILTON // 2013 CHEVROLET CAMARO ZL1 Only five of the 12 Pro Street Power Adder entries managed to finish. Among the notable casualties for the week was threetime class winner Mike Roy, whose big red Chevy Monte Carlo failed to get past the first day of competition, but the big story for much of the week was likely Matthew Blasco, whose matte-black 1972 Dodge Dart led the very competitive class for the first three days in Blasco’s Drag Week™ debut. Blasco ran a pair of 7.7-second passes before the transmission called it quits on Day 4 at Cordova International Raceway. That dropped him from the lead permanently, but he mended the broken trans and returned to Gateway to complete his first official Drag Week™ with an average of 9.59…

HOW COULD ANYTHING GO WRONG? The biggest issue Brown had on Drag Week™ was a fuelstarvation issue that only manifested when the car was on the track. He diagnosed the odd electrical gremlin as a wire on the fuel-pump relay that would flex back from the acceleration forces during launch, turning the pump off. OK, it’s a clone, but Jay Brown’s Modified Naturally Aspirated class 1969 Shelby GT500 was the only Ford Cammer engine in the entire 300-car field. Brown is well known in Ford FE circles, continuing to tinker and improve Ford’s single-overhead cam (SOHC) 90-Day-Wonder more than 50 years after the engine was banned by NASCAR and pressed into quarter-mile service with some of the biggest names in drag racing. Brown’s engine began with a block from Shelby…

In nine months, you can have a baby or a carbon-fiber 1969 Camaro capable of 963 street miles and running five drag races in a row with an average e.t. of 6.78 seconds in the quarter-mile. For Tom Bailey, his 3,625hp baby is still going through some growing pains, even if it did just take the Drag Week™ 2015 overall win. “I did better with my old car,” he says, referencing the gold Sick Seconds Camaro with which he claimed the 2013 HOT ROD Drag Week™ Fastest Street Car in America Title. “This year we figured out the street with this car [which they call Sick Seconds 2.0]. Next year we’ll have the track.” The original Sick Seconds car was a fiberglass body over a tube chassis, but it was…

John Scialpi’s blown 1957 Chevy and Dave Riolo’s 1955 Chevy square off in 1988 at Sears Point in Sonoma, California. Their “prostalgia” antics would morph into what we now call Pro Mod race cars. The origins of Pro Mod are murky and a bit complicated, but let’s take a stab at it. Tere was a revolution taking place in Sportsman drag racing in the late-1970s. Te lighter and quicker Vegas and Monzas were pounding the larger shoebox 1955–1957 Chevys and Willys coupes in the Top Sportsman classes. But once blowers and nitrous for carbureted engines showed up in the door-slammer brackets, some of the larger, heavier cars gained parity—and fans loved seeing the shoebox cars whip the smaller cars. Te 1970’s fast-bracket racing (called Bracket One on the West Coast)…

This is a 1962 Oldsmobile Jetfire, one of 3,765 produced, and, along with the Chevrolet Corvair Monza, one of the first turbocharged production passenger car ever made in the United States. Te car was still sitting on its original biasply tires. A peek in the trunk revealed two gallons of Olds’ Turbo-Rocket water-methanol injection mix still stashed away. Inside, a nearly perfect silver and black bucket-seat interior. Te car had only rolled a little more than 44,000 miles—this thing was like new. Making the car even more rare was its factory four-speed with the one-year-only console and that turbocharger fluid-injection gauge, which was basically an early boost gauge. If you were cruising, the needle was in the green Economy zone; if you were hard on it, it would be in…

DANNY ROBERTS // 1980 CHEVROLET MALIBU Entering the 2015 running of HOT ROD Drag Week™, only nine passes in this class had ever been made faster than 10 seconds. In 2015, six drivers averaged better than that, and five of those drivers clocked an e.t. faster than the previous fastest in the class. Combine that with the least attrition of any of the big classes—27 of the 31 starters finished the week—and you have the recipe for not only more close racing this year but for years to come. Danny Roberts led the class from Day 1 in his metallicgreen 1980 Chevy Malibu, but newcomer Jason Tabscott chased Roberts all week with his white 1975 Chevy Camaro. Te final margin of victory was a mere 0.015 second, and starting Tuesday,…

CURT JOHNSON // 1991 FORD MUSTANG Only two drivers had ever won their classes five times at HOT ROD Drag Week™ before 2015, and this year saw Curt Johnson join the elite club that includes Larry Larson and Eddie Miller. Johnson’s win in Street Race Big-Block Naturally Aspirated was his third consecutive, and the 15 timeslips he has turned in during those three wins are, no surprise, also the 15 fastest runs in the class. In short, Curt Johnson is as close to a sure thing as you’ll find on Drag Week™. Johnson always turns up at the track before dawn to run down a huge preparation checklist before the gates even open. He is among the first few pairs down the track, usually throwing down a big number—he was…

Of the many new cars that came to Drag Week™ 2015, one ratty, bumperless heap quickly became a favorite of participants. Harry Haig, “Pyro” Jennings, and Brett Ford, a team of Australian drag racers, bought the 1969 Chevelle SS 396 four-speed car for $1,500. They pulled it out of a field in Independence, Kansas, where it had been sitting for 20 years and got the car running on the old gas left in the tank, thanks to a Holley carb that was sitting around in a friend’s trunk. They then blasted out the rodent droppings and headed for Gateway Motorsports Park, and the start of Drag Week™ 2015. The 396 ran, sort of. The old carb needed to be swapped out, but the team wasn’t hoping to set any e.t.…

BRYANT GOLDSTONE // 1973 AMC JAVELIN After an exciting preliminary entry list showed some big names in this new class, only two cars showed up to run, but both proved to be potent weapons in the quarter-mile. Bryant Goldstone’s AMC Javelin contended with Tom Bailey for the overall win all week and eventually finished Second in the overall standings with a 6.9544-second average, which is only the fifth 6-second weekly average in Drag Week™ history. Goldstone sat poised all week to inherit the lead if Bailey hiccupped, leaving Indianapolis just 0.07 second behind the eventual winner. A best run of 7.132 seconds at Great Lakes Dragaway also foiled Goldstone— a former class winner with his 1970 Chevelle—from becoming only the third driver to log a week with all 6-second passes.…

What’s it like to take a race car that’s extreme (even by track standards) and cruise it over Midwestern country roads? We hitched rides with two of the fastest cars ever to run at Drag Week™—Jeff Lutz’s mean, flat-black Pro Mod Camaro and its pretty sister, Tom Bailey’s gunmetal-gray Camaro. Both men are previous Drag Week™ champions, and both cars were new to Drag Week™ this year. Lutz’s car made the quickest and fastest run we’ve ever seen during Drag Week™ competition at 6.051 at 251.95 mph, but his record was nullified when he wasn’t able to continue racing on the second day. Why? There was a reoccurring starter problem that made co-driver Scott Murray and Lutz have to take the car’s front end off and bang around under the…

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BUILT IN 9 MONTHS Cut Keith Harrison some slack for not knowing his 1934 Ford might toss a door on the dragstrip—he’s only owned the car for 10 months. The last nine of those were spent prepping the car for Drag Week™. The car is powered by the same 700hp, 500ci big-block Chevy that Harrison raced in his 1955 gasser for the last three years at Drag Week™. Power passes through a TH400 backed with a Gear Vendors overdrive to a Ford 9-inch with 4.11 gears—and only has 2,500 pounds to push down the track. If you’ve ever heard the term “suicide doors,” it’s slang for frontopening doors—most notably used in 1933–1934 Fords. Owners of these cars know to double-check that the doors are latched, or the force of the…

Having driven on the Nürburgring, Le Mans, Hockenheim, and more than 200 mph in the standing mile, Kimmo Nevalainen from Helsinki, Finland, knows the real action and fun is at Drag Week™. Watching Drag Week™ 2014 from his home in Helsinki, he decided if he could get into Drag Week™ 2015, he would be there—and he was. He registered his 1965 Corvette in the Street Race Small Block Naturally Aspirated class. But a lot has happened to get there, and stay in the Drag Week™ hunt. First, he tested his Corvette back home, blowing up the engine in the process. So he stuffed a fresh 427ci small-block into it before shipping the car off for a three-week pond-cross to Baltimore, Maryland. It uses a Gaerte aluminum block, 235 AFR heads,…

DOUG FLYNN // 1972 CHEVROLET NOVA Te Big-Block Power Adder category saw a huge number of experienced competitors—including three different former class winners—mixing it up. When the dust settled, however, none of those previous winners finished even in the top three. Instead, it was Doug Flynn’s red 1972 Chevy Nova, which he has owned since he was a teenager, coming out on top with an 8.8236-second average e.t. Kyle Coy’s 1967 Camaro squeaked past Randy Belehar’s wheelstanding 1968 Pontiac Firebird by just 0.0194 second for Second Place. Coy’s 8.9718-second average put him less than 0.015 second behind Flynn, so it’s conceivable we’ll see him challenge for the class next year. Belehar had raced a different Pontiac in previous years, finishing with two Second Places and a Third Place. His Third…

OWNERSHIP Goldstone has owned this car for almost 30 years. ULTIMATE STREET/STRIP DRIVETRAIN Like many of the quickest cars on Drag Week™, Goldstone runs a Rossler three-speed based on a Turbo 400 backed by a Gear Vendors overdrive. Goldstone’s car sends power back to the tires through a Strange 9-inch axle with 3.89 gears and 40-spline axles. The HOT ROD staff cruised alongside Goldstone and Baker for some of the highway portion of the Day 2 drive, and the car seemed to cruise just fine at a low rpm and low throttle position that keeps the boost from building. We wanted to see how Bryant Goldstone’s 1973 Javelin car managed on the highway, so we tried to leave Indianapolis to follow him on the most grueling route of Drag Week™…

TOM BAILEY // 1969 CHEVROLET CAMARO With a couple of exceptions, most Unlimited cars push the boundaries of a streetable race car, sacrificing creature comforts for outright speed to give the chance for an overall win. In many cases, reliability suffered as well, with only 5 of the 15 Unlimited cars reaching the week’s end still in competition. The natural question with such an open rule set becomes, “How extreme are people willing to make a car that must survive more than 1,000 miles of road driving between racetracks?” In 2015, former overall winners Tom Bailey and Jeff Lutz answered that question by bringing serious Pro Modified race cars that had been licensed and registered for the street. We had expected Lutz versus Bailey to be the race to watch.…

Recently, we’ve all been encouraged by the NHRA’s attempts to fix some of the nagging problems Pro Stock has been experiencing. Besides their recognition that fuel injection is needed to bring Pro Stock into modern times and that fans can’t get near the cars in the pits, they’ve also attempted to keep the “stock” in Pro Stock by eliminating the giant scoops. So in three areas—technology, fan perspective, and appearance—the NHRA has implemented changes. Appearance also needs to be considered in the Funny Car class. The Funny Car above was Fearless Fred Goeske’s Plymouth Duster from 1971, but you knew that just glancing at it. If we showed you a side view of Fast Jack Beckman’s current ride, could you identify what it’s based on? No. Should it matter? Absolutely.…

Q: I have a customer with a 1969 Nova 307. He bought an ATK engine with aluminum heads. He would like to keep the “idiot” light and do an aftermarket gauge. The gauge is no problem, but the light might be. Late-model heads have a small hole for the temperature sender; the 307ci V8 had a large hole. Also, the 307 had a two-prong sender; I’m used to a one-prong or button sender. What sender might work with the late heads and keep the idiot light? A: That two-prong sender is an anomaly. Nearly all GM cars from at least the late-1960s well into the 1980s had a one-terminal temperature switch. That includes the 1969 Nova. There were some early-to-mid-1960s GM two-terminal switch applications, but this was a unique dual-idiot-light…

Street-Legal Drags, Full Circle I literally choked up. It was tech day at HOT ROD Drag Week™ 2015, and I was surprised to stumble upon the car that helped launch the whole Fastest Street Car racing scene, especially for me. That yellow 1969 Camaro used to belong to loudmouth promoter Rick Dyer and was part of the memorable C.A.R.S. Inc. racing team that made a huge impact on HOT ROD readers. In 1992 I took my first trip to Detroit as a HOT ROD staffer and met with Dyer to drive his car on the street—my first experience with a Lenco transmission and with an 8-second car. Upon returning home, a staff meeting found Joe Pettit discussing the Top Gun Shootout in Atlanta, where more 8-second,…