Indholdsfortegnelse for August 1983 i Hot Rod

Mustang GTP Ford’s new IMS A Mustang GTP is an incredible blend of sophisticated automotive and aerospace technology. The chassis was constructed by Ford Aerospace and Communications Corporation using state-of-the-art computer-aided design techniques. It is made entirely of plastics and carbon fiber materials. The body material is carbon fiber by Celanese and Fiberite Corporation. The Mustang GTP is a unique front engine, rear-wheel drive, ground-effects, two-passenger coupe (IMSA Camel GT Prototype) powered by a 600 hp, 1.7 liter turbocharged 4-cylinder engine. By 1984 the car will get a modified version of the 2.3 liter EFI turbo-charged engine currently available in the 1983 T-bird and soon to be released in the Mustang. The car was designed to showcase Ford’s technological expertise and it is expected to be fully competitive from day…

Car builder Mike Johnson, assisted by Tony Noto, had completed a superb frame-up restoration on the ’69 Chevelle. Painter extraordinaire Rob Spoon’s color scheme was bright enough to require “shades” when viewing it. All the finishing touches were complete, too—Hooper’s Rearend Exchange had installed the Moroso Brute Strength Posi unit and Chevy 4.56:1 gears in our 12-bolt rear; Andy’s Auto Stereo had completed the installation of the Clarion stereo system; and the engine had been fired, driven around for about 50 miles, and rid of nagging wiring problems. We all knew it looked pretty. But still the question remained: how well would the Competition Engines’ hydraulic-cammed, 8.7:1 compression 454 really run? After all, there was but one carb, no blower, and no nitrous. About the only thing on the car…

Van Nuys, California’s Dan Dupont isn’t what you would call a “speed ball” when it comes to building a weed-scraping street rod. Dan (along with the likes of Curt Hamilton, Dr. James A. Torre, George Gray, Craig Lewis, Gene Ackerman, plus the boys at Washington Polishing, Casa de Chrome, Milodon, B&M, and Special Interest Auto Interiors) has been working on his ’33 Ford closed-cab pickup truck since 1970. In fact, Dupont has been truckin’ around in his “double three” since he was 16.. and he won’t say how long that’s been. But he will tell you he took 3 inches out of its top, channeled the rest 5 inches over the stock frame rails, and shortened its bed a good 7 inches. He will also let you know he boxed…

There’s a strange essence of déjà vu operating here. It puts us in mind of a time some 30 years ago, when civic organizations such as the Lions or the Ki-wanis, and local police departments or individual officers such as Pomona’s Chief Parker, supported, sponsored, or actually constructed dragstrips in various parts of the country. They realized that hot rodding-embryonic as it was—showed no signs of dissipating despite some local forces to squelch it, and that street racing would obviously continue unless the rodders were offered an alternative. The logical solution was to provide street racers with a safe, organized, sanctioned strip where they could run their cars without endangering themselves or anyone else. The plan worked beautifully and dragstrips were set up throughout the country in the 1950s. The…

Like an old general building contractor once said, “You can’t mess up a martini if you pour straight gin on the rocks.’’ The same holds true for highboy roadsters. You can’t mess up “the father of all hot rods,’’ according to Gil Ruiz, by photographing them at Bonneville. And especially if they are as nice as Gil’s candy dandy. Goleta, California’s Seth Hammond was responsible for the rod’s ride, an unusual combination featuring a conventional front suspension (6-inch dropped chrome-moly tube axle, cross-leaf spring, Gabriel shocks, and 4-link radius rods) used in conjunction with a Corvette (“it follows the salt’s surface better’’) I.R.S. The roadster’s ’glassic body is a fiberglass ’29 replica which was painted a brilliant candy apple red by Goleta’s Sam Foose. For the record, Gil is an…

Not all that glitters is gold, “ said the monkey as he peered into the exposed engine compartment (featured on this month’s cover) of Hank Gallegos’ ’56 Chevy two-door hardtop while checking out its paint job. The engine glitter comes from 350 inches of Chevy V8 which has been fully balanced, blueprinted, and blown by BDS… not to mention an NOS nitrous system. And as for the gold, it’s strictly a lot of Corvette yellow enamel which covers the all-steel body. Other visuals include chrome by Maddog, a set of Center Line wheels (15x3.5 front, 15x8.5 rear), and both Semprit (165SR-15) and Kelley Super Charger (L-60) tires. Yellow Metal’s interior is graced by a four-point rollbar, Autometer gauges, and Pape racing seats. And. as for chassis components, the speed parts…

The big 747 eased into Gate 23A and shut down its engines. The turbine blades coasted to a stop inside their huge round cowlings. Spinning blades compressed air. That’s the heart of a jet engine—the source of its unfathomable power. It was time to leave. The whirring strips of steel lifted the giant craft. They spun for 11 hours and carried us from Los Angeles to London at 600 miles an hour. We were headed for Austria to experience the power of another turbine, a smaller one—but no less impressive, and far more intense. Unlike the suburban comfort of an airplane cabin, we would sit on the very back of the beast, inches from its screaming heart, enveloped by furious acceleration and horsepower. The result of spinning blades compressing air.…

Screen Test I’ve been working with fiberglass flares, spoilers, and other body pieces for several years now and I’ve found that you can sandwich pieces of decorative fireplace screening between two bonding pieces to prevent cracks at stress points. Riveting the screen adds extra strength in critical areas. The screen is easily shaped along perforated lines to blend and form new lines to the shape you require. Around here it costs about $10 for a large piece and I have found a building supply store that saves bent pieces and sells them to me for a buck or two. Jim Jaxheimer Bethlehem, Pennsylvania Coil Bound A cheap yet effective anti-theft device for your street machine or street rod can be made by fashioning a dummy coil wire with spare ignition…

Murphy’s Mustang I thought you might want to see a few pictures of my ’68 Mustang. Under the hood I have a 289, with a 3-speed trans mission. It has N50-15 tires in the rear and E70-14s in the front. The paint was done by Edward Balderas. I hope you find my car interesting. Keep up the good work. Dan Murphy Round Rock, Texas Tempting Tempest I always wanted a car that was unusual; the kind you rarely see at car shows or on the street. Well, three years ago I purchased a rust-free 1964 Tempest Custom wagon, and spent two of the three years restoring it. I replaced the 326 with a 400 from a GTO, and the more I worked on it, the more I liked it. This…

Think of it this way—if you had to make car bodies, how would you do it? Would you make them out of easily formed sheetmetal, in several pieces so they could be assembled or disassembled without a lot of trouble? Most of the cars built on this side of the planet are assembled on production lines in mere minutes. Next time you think you can’t get to any part of the car body to pound it from behind, take a second and reflect on this fact. The assembly follows a tried-and-true formula established way back in the early days, when the people in Detroit discovered the easiest way to build a body was to fabricate a main section including the roof, firewall, and rear fenders (actually, let’s call ’em quarter…

If you do something often enough, you’re bound to get pretty good at it. Tom Prufer has been doing hot rods for a long time … not street rods, or show rods, or drag rods, but just plain, essential, no-bull hot rods. If that statement doesn’t make much sense to you, perhaps you need to have cruised the drive-ins in the ’50s, campaigned a Top Fueler in the ’60s, and driven to all the rod runs and roadster shows in the ’70s, like Tom has, to understand. But if you’ve lived and breathed hot rods all your life, you know just what a hot rod is supposed to be—the color, the make, the stance, the wheels, the tires, the engine. But having all the right parts certainly isn’t enough. A…

If you think aluminum engine components—especially cylinder heads or cylinder blocks—are a new arrival on the scene or are strictly for racing, you’re probably still waiting for the postman to deliver that check or the confirmation for that bridge you bought in Brooklyn. We say that because aluminum components have been used by the automobile manufacturers for 85 years. They began when the Haynes-Apperson Co. (of Kokomo, Indiana) pioneered the use of aluminum in 1898. Since the turn of the century, such famed marques as Steven Duryea, Bugatti, Marmon, Cadillac, Auburn, Franklin—not to mention VW, Corvair, Buick, Olds, Chevrolet, ad infinitum—have spent more than a few dollars fashioning both block and heads out of the lightweight metal. However, it’s been the racers who have relied, for the most part, on…

You may remember “TwinCity” Cary Weisner. He’s the guy who put a full-on Jag I.R.b. under his blown ’56 Bel Air. He also helped paint Gary Kollofsky’s incredible ’36 Willys and is in the process of painting one of the wildest ’34 coupes currently in captivity. So in order to tune up for the coupe, Cary turned himself onto a ’34 roadster. “I bought the roadster at the NSRA’s ’Columbus-nationals’ in ’81 and took it immediately to Greg Fleury for some chassis work. Then Rick Klugherz, the same guy who wired Kollofsky’s Willys and Fleury’s yellow pickup, started wiring the roadster. Meanwhile, Jack Wolkers-tofer chromed everything I didn’t paint, and I had either Ty’s Metal gold plate or Steve Grimmer upholster the rest. … Got’cha—what we didn’t say is that…

Restrictive Thinking I have a ’65 Ford van; it’s a beater, and I like doing crazy things to it. Sometimes I fabricate my own inventions to add on it; a lot of times it turns out for the worst, but it’s fun trying. Well anyway, it has a 1-barrel carb, and I wondered if I could get an adapter and make it into a 2-barrel, then get another adapter and make it into a 4-barrel. Is that possible? If it is, how will it run? Matt Leskowicz Racine, Wisconsin Anything’s possible, but practicality’s something else. Most, if not all, of the potential flow gains offered by the 4-barrel will be lost due to the restricted size of the existing intake manifold’s 1-barrel orifice, not to mention the additional restrictions incurred…

SELL—A/EA ’ 32 Bantam Roadster pro built tube chassis. MoPar 440 and Torqueflite. Two-layer Nomex suit and 20-foot diamond deck trailer. All $11,000, turn-key. Fred Klein, Box 740, Folsom, CA 95630. SELL—Cross Boss intake and Autolite inline carb. Still in boxes. Also block, crank, rods, pistons, stock intake, and miscellaneous Boss parts. (216) 773-7745. SELL—1970 Buick GS 455 Stage 1, 455-c.i.d., B&M hydro, positraction, high rise, headers, cold air intake. New tires. Engine completely rebuilt, good condition, strong runner. $2500 or offer. John Rudolph, P.O. Box 545, Summerland, CA 93067. (805) 969-1323. SELL—Two Lamborghini Muras, both red, 1971 and 1972. Price for both: $60,000. Payment to be made by letter of credit with a Kuwaiti bank. Contact Abdullah Al Fahad, P.O. Box 20554, Safat, State of Kuwait. SELL—1975 Cordoba, 360…

Brins Back R&C…Part 23 Seems like ever since the demise of the late Rod & Custom there have been nearly continuous efforts to revive it. The latest was exerted by the Orange County Cruisin’ Association with a “Bring Back R&C” night. Almost 600 of those in attendance signed a petition to exhume the magazine. Later, Lee Kelley, publisher and editorial director of Petersen’s Specialty Publications, was presented with the petition and a shirt commemorating the event. Petersen Publishing Company produces an annual Street Rod book, and Lee may change its name to the fabled (and revered) Rod & Custom. He won’t guarantee anything yet, but the enthusiasm displayed by president Russ Verbael of OCCA was a little overwhelming. That’s Russ presenting the shirt to Lee. If you are interested in…

Do you remember the first time you ever went to the drags? I do. I went to visit a fuel-burning ’36 three-window, one that was being run at Santa Ana, California, by a whale-bodied senior who attended the same high school I did. By today’s standards, that blue ’36 was a pile. But in ’52 it was a killer… as was Art Chrisman’s No. 25 dragster. The three-window, like its owner, is long gone. But not Art and his elongated lakes modified. They, like fine wine and old fiddles, just keep getting better with age. Unfortunately, there are many hot/street rodders who aren’t aware of a growing trend toward run-what-you-brung hot rodding as epitomized by Tom Prufer and Brian Burnett’s “Nostalgia Nationals.’’ It’s true that these time warps aren’t new.…

I suppose when it’s time to bow out, you might as well do so in “Tabasco Trucking” style. What had been a hearse for 18 years has now become, thanks to Petaluma, California’s Bob Kendall, one of the nicest final riders this side of Forest Lawn. According to Kendall, who bought the sedan delivery in ’77 with only 55,000 miles showing on its odometer, “The Chevy was in exceptionally good shape. With the help of my friends [Kendall is confined to a wheelchair], the ’59 was completely blown apart then totally rebuilt using either new or reconditioned pieces.” The only changes Bob made were in the driveline (he replaced the thrifty six with 235 inches of truck motor fitted with solid lifters, Corvette exhaust manifold, and a chrome rocker cover…

When Larry Hall bought this ’68 Plymouth Road Runner more than a decade ago, it was strictly a family car. Little by little, however, the transformation to full-time race car continued. For the past few seasons the matador red “bird” was a weekend regular at the local Medford strip. When the Halls finally decided to begin construction of a new car, they looked hopefully for just the right family to adopt the Road Runner. Who should respond but the Hall family—Dean, Nadine, Torie, and Tracie—from nearby Central Point, Oregon. Under the ’glass Six-Pak hood resides a 030-over 383 equipped with TRW 10.25:1 pistons, Crane cam and kit, mildly ported heads, MSD ignition, a Milodon 8-quart oil pan, Hooker headers, and a Holley 750 on an Edelbrock Tarantula intake. Backed by…

It was the weekend of the Kentucky Derby. Mother’s Day, and the annual gathering of Gran Sports (no “D,” please) in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Though the GS is probably the most frequently overlooked marque of the musclecar era, these two-ton beauties had their day in the sun, being rolled out of seclusion from all over the country for the event. The ultimate production sleeper crept out the doors in Flint, sleek as an apartment building, but armed with enough torque to give you that giddy feeling in the pit of your stomach when you stood on the throttle. The feeling is the engine will simply never stop making power; the 70 GS cars would rip off e.t.’s in the high 13seeking over the century mark right out of the show…

Block Machining—II Boring—The enlargement of the cylinder bore diameter. Boring is a rough-cut operation that requires additional finishing before the rings and pistons can be fitted. Boring is performed to increase engine displacement, remove cylinder wall scratches, or, if the cylinder wall is severly damaged, install a repair sleeve. Precise setup is required to ensure the cylinder centerline remains perpendicular to the crank centerline. Honing—A finishing operation that prepares the cylinder wall surfaces for mating with the pistons and rings. Honing is always required after boring, but it is also often done during overhaul to achieve the proper finish for new rings, even if the engine has not been bored first. Piston ring type and design, intended engine application, type of honing equipment, cylinder bore material, and operator experience and…