Indholdsfortegnelse for January 2017 i Hot Rod

I’ve had my share of project cars, most of which didn’t run when I got them and several more still didn’t when I sold them. Time and time again, I’ve let the spastic and unruly thought of, “Must have _____!” overcome the harsh reality that I already have too many projects. The car guy side of my brain is quite the salesman, easily burying any rational thoughts such as: “When will I find the time to work on this?” “What about the other three cars in the driveway?” and “She’s going to be mad at you!” Time. That is really what it all comes down to. Every year I spend more hours behind a desk, stuck in traffic, or on an airplane. Painfully, that means less time in my garage…

To say Speed Week 2016 was highly anticipated would be an understatement. For many land-speed racers, Speed Week at Bonneville is the only event of the year. Cars that had been prepped to run in 2014 sat in mothballs, waiting—along with their impatient drivers—for the chance to run wide open for miles at a time. There’s simply no other place on Earth like Bonneville, and when the SCTA announced Speed Week was on with both a short and long course, entries poured in. The Bonneville pits were packed with near-record numbers of cars and motorcycles as the race week started, including many cars new to the salt. The racing surface wasn’t quite as good as it had been in previous years, but competitors tried all of their usual tricks to…

As a 15-year-old gearhead growing up in the shadow of Chicago, Greg Zoetmulder set his sights on a 1967 RS/SS Camaro with the intentions of buying it and becoming the next local hero—until his dad pointed in the driveway at the 1980 Jeep CJ-7 you see here. “At the time, I was like OK, I’ll just do some bodywork, clean up the engine, put a quick paint job on it, and flip it. I wondered what I got myself into,” Zoetmulder says. What he got himself into was a lifelong project, one that has seen many configurations, countless late-night “cruise” sessions, and maybe a wager or thirty-seven. You see, Zoetmulder wasn’t afraid to play—Chi-Town and the surrounding areas have always been a hotbed of street and grudge racing—and he wanted…

At a crowded lunch table at the Las Vegas Convention Center in November 2014, Randy Grubb revealed his plan to assemble an aluminum-bodied roadster the likes of which hadn’t been seen in nearly 80 years. In attendance was legendary engine builder Ryan Falconer and representatives from Kugel Komponents, Dayton Wheels, and TCI. Armed with only a sketch and his reputation for metal-forming, Randy explained his goal to pay homage to a pair of exalted French classics. It would be a massive undertaking, and Randy planned to finish the whole project in less than two years. Randy was confident and convincing. As he told us, he’d been shaping aluminum for years and this epic plan “didn’t just fall out of the sky as my first attempt.” Everyone was on board. The…

My dad would say the best artists hide their mistakes. I don’t know what an accountant was doing giving advice to his budding car designer son, but there is no better example of this adage than Earl Bruce’s Gullwing Mercedes. Back in the 1950s, the hardest custom color to shoot was Candy Root Beer. I’ve asked the custom paint greats like Larry Watson and Junior Conway about this odd phenomenon, and they said it was something about the pigments; after laying down the perfect Candy Root Beer, it would sometimes blotch for no reason. It was a peculiar color unto itself. So for those in the know a nice Candy Root Beer paint job with no blemishes had a certain cache. In 1955 Bruce had his then-new 300…

Q: I have a 1971 Chevelle SS that I bought new. It is a 402 big-block, four-speed car with 3.31:1 gears and is stock. I want to freshen the engine up by increasing the compression ratio from 8.5:1 to about 9.5:1 (I still want to run pump gas). I am thinking of a Comp Cams 280HR Magnum hydraulic-roller cam and kit, an Edelbrock Performer RPM oval-port manifold, and Edelbrock Performer RPM oval-port heads—either PN 60435 or 60455. My stock heads are open chamber with 113cc chambers. The 60435 head has 100cc chambers, with 60455 having 110cc chambers. Which head can I use to achieve about a 9.5:1 compression ratio? I have gotten all kinds of opinions on this; they are all over the board and I am totally confused. My…

This is Harry “Hand Grenade” Hibler in Mike Butler’s Top Fuel dragster at the 1971 March Meet at Famoso. Harry ran San Fernando Drag Strip for years in the late-1950s until it closed in 1966, as well as running HOT ROD Magazine as its illustrious publisher all through the 1980s and up to 1996. The Hand Grenade moniker was from his reputation for never lifting, tending to blow stuff up. A lot. Harry was the previous year’s runner-up at the 1970 March Meet, losing to best friend Tony Nancy in the final. This dragster ran an Ed Pink cast-iron, 426ci Chrysler on 95-percent nitro. Butler owned the car and wrenched, while actor Lloyd Haynes supplied some dough to keep the operation afloat. Doug Fisher, who crewed on a number of…

There’s no money to be made in land-speed racing. The Southern California Timing Association (SCTA) racing community knows that. It’s part of what makes the racing so pure, and it keeps Speed Week filled with those passionate about the pursuit of speed. All of the studying, the bench racing, and eventually the building of the car and the racing itself never leads to a purse or even a shiny trophy you get to keep forever. It’s all for a record, just a temporary entry into the books. But there is the cap. SCTA 200 MPH Club members get one of the most sought after pieces of embroidery in existence: a red baseball cap stitched with the 200 MPH Club logo. Danny Thompson already had one of those, earned in…

From 1961 through 1970, the gleaming-white Chaparrals from Midland, Texas, showed the racing world the way in aerodynamic development, not only cheating the wind but also putting it to work. Located 5 miles south of Midland on the Rankin Highway, Chaparral Cars consisted of three single-story buildings grouped around a courtyard with “Rattlesnake,” a seven-turn, two-mile test track out of sight from the highway. There was another unseen resource at Chaparral’s Midland shops: the support of Chevrolet Research and Development, which came about after Chaparral owner Jim Hall met Frank Winchell in 1962. The head of Chevy R&D, Frank was impressed with the Cal-Tech graduate engineer and saw racing as the best way to test some of his group’s new technology. But racing was against GM corporate policy, so Chaparral…

If you attend a drag race where the drivers’ meeting includes the sentence, “There will be four more trains coming through, watch for the lights,” you’re probably at a Roadkill Show event. Roadkill put on its third Roadkill Nights race and car show in August 2016 at M1 Concourse in Pontiac, Michigan. There were Dodge thrill rides in Vipers and Hellcats. There was a band competing with the sound of a dyno. Roadkill cars were on display. Freiburger and Finnegan were mingling and signing autographs, and we were drag racing on Woodward Avenue, just inches from a train. Freiburger and Finn made it in to Pontiac late the night before the event, and they immediately tore the “Dirt Track” Challenger apart in the parking lot. “Why doesn’t this car…

Camshaft duration is the key factor separating a torque cam from a power cam. On a traditional 9.5:1-compression 350 small-block with a hydraulic cam, the crossover point is around 220 degrees duration at 0.050-inch tappet lift, assuming the typical 110-to 112-degree LSA (lobe separation angle). Under-220-degree cams have good low-end torque and driveability, and generally run fine through 5,500 rpm. Above 220 degrees, you start to trade-off driveability downstairs for power upstairs. Solid cams need about 8–10 degrees more 0.050 duration to have a comparable powerband in the same engine. For each 50ci increase or decrease from a 350-sized engine, add or subtract, respectively, 5 to 7 degrees from the 350 crossover baseline (assuming equal heads and compression ratio). For example, if you want a torque cam…

DO YOU HOT ROD EVERYTHING? If you’ve hopped up anything that’s not a car, let’s see it! Hot leaf blower? Bitchin’ gas grill? Customized kitchen cabinets? Anything goes. Email pics and details: HOTROD@HotRod.com. Why worry about having a place to relax at car shows or races when you can cruise the venue/pits in your own driving picnic table? That is apparently what Bryan Kordus and John Varga did. Bryan and John’s crazy contraption is capable of seating up to 10 people and cruising around a parking lot at a leisurely 5 mph. It’s not fast, but you likely wouldn’t want a 100-mph bench anyway. Brian and John started with a basic garden tractor and built the whole thing initially with wood. Once everything looked as it should, they tore…

While visiting a body shop, my friend pointed to the corner, saying there was something I’d be interested in. Taking a look, I was surprised to see a 1971 Oldsmobile 442 convertible! Walking around this car, I noticed it was wearing its original bias-ply Firestone wide ovals. Upon closer inspection, the odometer only read a hair over 14,000 miles. The Olds was one of only 1,304 convertibles built in 1971 with the standard 455 and backed by a four-speed with a Hurst shifter. The car sat outside for some time, and the original owner finally sold it to allow it to be saved. The new owner brought it to my friend’s body shop to see what it needed. Unfortunately, after years of neglect, the car needed just about everything body-wise.…

Bonneville is both the alpha and the omega of speed, a universal beacon for all that is fast. It was that calling that inspired Colin Walker, his cousin, Steve Walker, and David Chapman to make the pilgrimage from their home in Derbyshire, England, across the Atlantic Ocean and the better half of the eastern United States to make their mark at SCTA Speed Week 2016. The team’s weapon of choice: a 1961 MGA, coated in Porcelain Green paint, swept by countless hand-fabricated touches, and powered by a Ford 5.0L Coyote V8. The trio of guys met by happenstance when Colin and Steve wandered into Milner Offroad, the shop Chapman works at. “They walked into the shop, asking about building a roll bar,” Chapman said. “I’m thinking it’s a quick…

It’s hard to describe Fat Jack, but it’s easy to tell when he’s built a car. Actually, it’s easy to describe Jack: short, fat, foul, with a wicked wit and an eye for building cars that doesn’t come from following what other builders are doing. And for 40 years his cars have a reputation for being low, fast, and smooth. You may remember seeing him on the cover of HOT ROD’s July 1985 “Fat Attack” issue along with his 1946 Ford coupe that ran 9 seconds in the quarter-mile at 150 mph. He still builds cars, mainly for customers, but was able to put this one together for himself. When you look at his 1951 Ford F1 that has taken more than 25 years to complete— fitting in between customer…

The number one question I hear is, “How do I make my wife/kids/boyfriend/grandma love cars?” OK, actually, the number one question I hear is, “When will your Challenger be done?” and the answer to that one is, soon. Eventually. Maybe. As for making a car person out of a non-car person, well, you can’t force anyone to love something, but you can make it easier for them to not hate it. Here’s how. Prepare. Car shows and races tend to be long, hot—sometimes cold—events. Bring snacks, sunscreen, and a sweater. Be willing to leave early. It’s impossible to love anything when you’ve been starving and sunburned for nine hours in a swap meet parking lot. Share. If your soon-to-be car buddy can drive, let them take a turn behind the…

The Power of Just Driving Around I can’t deny it: I have the most fortunate car-guy job in the world. People ask me all the time how I got there, and the standard answer is getting into mags as a kid, taking high school auto shop, working at a Dodge dealer then a machine shop, finishing part of college for auto tech and management, working in the aftermarket, finally landing a staff position at HOT ROD in 1991, and then editing a bunch of mags over the years. That’s the résumé version. I think the real gearhead lessons were on the streets. There’s a lot of power in just driving around. At least there was when I was a teen. Today I fear that youth is too involved in…