Indholdsfortegnelse for January 1995 i Hot Rod

THE DUKES OF YOSEMITE Michael Hendricks knows how to get his car in Readers’ Rides: Spend some time to get killer photos with a spectacular background. While his ’68 Dodge Charger is a 100-point restoration, apparently Michael doesn’t mind driving it, as witnessed by this photo. The engine is the stock 440 Magnum backed by a 727 automatic, all the correct assembly-line markings are still on the undercarriage, and the Imron paint is seven years old. Say, Michael, any thoughts on giving it the Morton treatment? (see below) PRO Z/TREET This one’s gonna upset the resto crowd. Dale Morton’s Pro Street ’69 Camaro is (was?) a real Z/28. The original DZ-coded 302 is still under the hood, backed by the stock four-speed. All the outer sheet-metal is likewise unmolested, but…

In the ever-changing world of hot rods, it can be difficult to keep your thumb on the pulse of the sport, to know what’s hot and what’s not. There is so much going on, and hot rodding has diversified into many smaller segments over the past few years. There isn’t necessarily one thing that’s cool or trendy but half a dozen rages happening all at once, which means even more directions to go with your project It’s really no longer a case of going with the trend or not but rather deciding which trend to go with. There is literally something for everyone’s taste and budget. However, if we did have to pick one universal trend this year, it would be drivers. That’s nothing new, but for the majority of…

Billy Roberts has this thing about finishing a project. He bought a $500 ’67 Chevy II only to discover it was a rolling rust bucket. “When all was said and done,” Billy said, “all I really bought was the VIN number and part of the dash!” With a vision in his head and a Springfield, Missouri-based obsessive-compulsive, never-say-die attitude, Billy started by repairing, replacing or modifying every single body panel on the Chevy II. The entire roof was replaced, along with new quarter-panels with a 9-inch stretch, new front fenders (also stretched 2 inches), both door skins, a ’glass hood with a Billy-built Pro-style scoop and ’glass bumpers. Billy built the whale-of-a-tail Pro Stock-style aluminum rear wing, and he also managed to cut the entire floor out of the car…

After a lengthy absence of a decade or so, Petersen Publishing’s first year back in the event business was a success. The third and final 1994 HOT ROD Power Fest, which was presented by BFGoodrich and sponsored by Dodge, was held near Altanta, Georgia, the weekend of August 26-28. It was considered by some to be the best of the three. The weather was hot, but not unbearably so, and the humidity was very tame, especially considering how muggy Georgia can get in August. The mild weather brought out a slew of savory street machines and rods, and this one had something the first two didn’t—drag racing! We listened to the questions, comments and curses from the Norwalk and Indy Power Fests in order to customize the ’95 events to…

Those of you new to the rodding hobby may find yourselves in awe of your more experienced friends when they walk up to a car and immediately identify its make and year of manufacture. If you’re of a certain age (say, under 40), you might find that problem compounded when you are looking at street rods. Chances are you probably know about the different generations of Camaros, Mustangs and Chevelles, because those were the cars you grew up with. But spotting the differences between Model As, or knowing what makes a ’33 Ford different from a ’34, is tougher since you’re dealing with cars that were never a part of your life. With that in mind, we asked automotive illustrator/designer Thom Taylor to sketch some of the distinctive features of…

The guys on the staff here at HOT ROD really are “car nuts.” It’s our job to enjoy cars and share that with you, and to do that we need a certain amount of passion. Sometimes, though, it can make life interesting. For example your ol’ dad, Gray Baskerville, and resident Chevelle fan Jeff Smith maintain a constant banter over which is better: street rods based on ’48-and-earlier cars or street machines based on ’49-and-later cars. Dad is an original SoCal hot rodder; he has owned a ’50s-original. red ’32 roadster since 1966. Jeff, a thoroughly Midwest-bred street machiner, has owned Chevelles since 1971. We thought it would be fun for you to share in one of their spirited discussions in which they try to prove which type of hot…

Wayne Hansen’s ’40 Chevy coupe may not be a daily driver, but the mechanic from Wabash, Indiana, gets his car on the road at least every week, so it’s no trailer queen. Wayne built the car himself over a four-year period, and, remarkably, it’s his first effort at building a street rod. We think he’s built one fine ’40. Wayne started on his rod project by modifying the Chevy’s chassis. He smoothed the framerails and grafted on a boxed front subframe section to hold Mustang suspension pieces, including ’69 Mustang spindles and springs. He fit a ’69 Nova rearend with 3.08 gears in back and hung it on Posies leaf springs. All four corners are damped with Gabriel shocks, and Posies antisway bars keep the car level through the corners.…

The chant for “more power” is common among hot rodders, whether they are on four wheels or two. One of the best ways to up the power is by swapping in a healthy cam for improved breathing at high rpm. While swapping in a cam is not as easy as bolting on an air cleaner, it can be done at home if you use the proper tools, follow the directions and take the appropriate amount of care during the installation. To illustrate how a cam swap can pump up a big V-twin Harley, we followed along as Bumpus H-D in Memphis, Tennessee, installed a V Thunder cam by Competition Cams along with a set of its Velva Touch lifters into an Evo motor. SOURCES Bumpus Harley-DavidsonDept. HR015669 Summer Ave.Memphis, TN…

Clutch linkages are one of those items no one thinks about until they fall apart. According to Bill Hays at Center force clutches, you should inspect the linkage anytime you have the bellhousing off the engine. The prime suspects in a balky clutch linkage are the ball stud and the release arm. When changing a clutch, few hot rodders take the time to clean and inspect these items for wear. In performance applications, the ball stud can suffer from abuse, especially if subjected to high-static pressure plate loads. These increased loads accelerate the wear on the ball stud and create poor wear patterns on the socket in the release arm. If you detect any abnormal wear patterns, replace both the ball stud and the release arm. Center force also recommends…

ULTIMATE COLLECTIBLE HOT RODDER BUYS SHELBY TURBINE Carroll Shelby recently auctioned much of his collectible cars and automobilia in an effort to raise money for the Shelby Heart Fund. Among the treasured items sold was the Shelby Turbine car entered by Bruce McLaren at the ’68 Indy 500. Longtime hot rodder and now nostalgia collector Matt Hay purchased the car in its unrestored condition for around $27,000. Matt intends to restore it to as close to original running condition as possible. According to Matt, the car was entered in the ’68 Indy 500 with a matching car driven by Denis Hulme. The cars were all wheel drive with General Electric T-58 turbine engines making around 1250 horsepower. Unfortunately, neither car was permitted to compete in the Memorial Day classic after…

Tucked in amongst hot rodding’s flam in’ facets are some forgotten Fords, those FoMoCo produced during the latter part of the 1930s. Thirty-sevens and ’38s, particularly ’37s, are white-hot. They’re hot because their fenders, doors, hoods and tops contain a wonderful array of highlight-producing peaks, ridges and contours. Besides, their grille shells, grille bars, hood sides and headlight lenses have art deco written all over them. Yet the ’37 Ford roadster you see here isn’t what it appears to be. The name we generally give these flights of imagination is phantom—body styles the original equipment manufacturer never offered during that particular model year. Phantoms remain somewhat hot, too. But there is a vague middle ground between creating a roadster that never was and recreating a facsimile of a roadster that…

Last spring, we wrote a story about a couple of very special, Rat-powered Camaros that came from the Chevrolet/Geo Special Vehicles team (“Fat-Block F-Bodies,” May ’94). The team did a painstaking job of transplanting a 510-inch, Marine-based big-block into a ’92 Camaro, and then went one better by planting an all-aluminum, 572-inch Rat into a bad, black ’93. Little did we know that we were watching the start of a good-old-fashioned horsepower war. You see, those Camaros got under the skin of John Coletti, who manages Ford’s Special Vehicle Engineering (SVE) team. Coletti, who calls his group “Toys R Us,” was behind two of Ford’s recent hipo offerings—the Lightning F-150 pickup and the Cobra Mustang. He hated the idea of Chevrolet hogging all the big-cube thunder. “You have to give…

Cylinder heads are the key to engine performance. Heads not only locate the valves, but also include the intake and exhaust ports, the combustion chamber and the water jackets. The design of cylinder heads has evolved from merely a cast-iron lid like the early flatheads (the valves were located in the block) to current sophisticated overhead-cam engines that stuff as many as five valves into one cylinder. We’ll limit this discussion to typical domestic automotive-cylinder-head designs, including hemispherical combustion chambers and four-valve heads, as well as why different valve angles affect engine performance. Regardless of whether your heads are stone-stock iron castings or the latest set of bitchin’ four-valve heads, understanding cylinder head basics is important information for any hot rodder. This month’s approach to basic cylinder heads is a…

Street rodding is mega, meltdown hot. What was once the sedate side of the hot-rod movement has become a potpourri of stylish statements and mechanical memories. Naturally, rod runs—epitomized by the Goodguys West Coast Nationals—reflect this newfound energy and are no longer a collection of reconstituted old cars. Rather, they contain a massive mix of motorized metal-phors that represent every make, model and era that rodding has gone through. So to better illustrate why street heat is neat, get ready for a two-page tale of show-and-tell.…

The essence of hot rodding has, from the get-go, always been acceleration. Old-timers called it gow, my generation called it dig, and now the new guys call it launch. To achieve gow, dig or launch requires a very favorable power-to-weight ratio. Henry Ford did it by reducing his Model Ts to their bare essentials, then heating up their four-cylinder engines, leading to the term “stripped-down gow job.” Influenced by Ford’s feather-light racers, the youth of the “Roaring ’20s” began putting the heat in their fender-free flivvers with a series of hop-ups that has run the gamut from Ts to KBs. So we continue our Beginners’ Guide To Rodding by honoring 70 years of hot rodded “gowerhouses.”…

Project Freeway Fats is a ’39 Ford Tudor sedan. In this series of build-up stories, we’re detailing the fabrication, restoration and assembly of the car using some of the top builders in the country as sources. Many of the build-up techniques involved are common to all street rods, and many more are common to all types of hot rod pro-jects, regardless of year, make or model. Project Freeway Fats is designed to draw upon those techniques and illustrate how to build a reliable, durable, daily-driven street rod the emphasis is less on dash than on function, ana the greatest stress is being placed on the car’s handling, performance ana safety. When we stripped 55 years of paint from Freeway Fats at Drezek Environmental Stripping Systems (DESS), the results left us…

One thing about these Harley guys, they don’t waste time when it comes to bike projects. Take Robert McLeod of Waterford, Michigan. In the course of only four months, he transformed his stock ’93 Fat Boy into “Un-Easy,” the bruiser cruiser you see here. The bike was built at Robert’s shop, Roberts Too Graphic For Words, where the stock frame was fitted with bars, grips, pegs, a mirror, a taillight and gas caps from Arlen Ness, a Doss headlamp and dash, a cool Dakota Digital speedo, Razor Back boards, a Corbin seat, Fournales Pan Cruise rear shocks and Gardner-Wescott chrome fasteners. Performance Machine (PM) four-piston calipers clamp down to stop the PM Aero/Metzler Comp K rolling combo. Under the tank sits a breathed-on 80-inch Evo mill built by Tony Canales…

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When last we left it, the Crusher Camaro was in the hands of Jim Sleeper at Precision Alignment, where it was to be torn completely apart and get not only a full suspension rebuild, but also a sparkling underside. Our plan of attack this month is to strip the front clip, sub-frame and rear suspension from the car, clean it, paint it and rebuild everything. Before bolting everything back on, how-ever, the floor pans will need to be cleaned and painted, and any small problems would have to be fixed. The good news is that we had all-new, clean suspension parts and polygraphite bushings from Performance Suspension Technology (PST). The bad news is that we were going to get very dirty cleaning 27 years’ worth of dirt and grunge from…

We know you’re hungry for Memphis action, and we won’t disappoint. But for this month, we wanted to purge your systems with news and photos from the last National Muscle Car Association (NMCA) Fastest Street Car race before those World Finals in Elvis-land. Even with low volume in our Pro Street class, the pressure was high with underdog, back-halved contenders like Bruce Kimmen’s ’69 Camaro taking on the full-tube-chassis leaders in the class. Our Super Street class was packed with almost 30 cars registered to race. For those new to Fastest Street Car racing, Super Street cars cannot be tubbed (101/2-inch-wide tire limit), can only use a plate nitrous system and are limited to 565 cubic inches. This brings out everything from underfunded, iron-headed small-block cars to the high-buck, symmetrical-port…

Hot rodders’ love affair with Fords didn’t just happen. Henry, with the help of his driver Frank Kulick, caused it to happen! The most influential man of the 20th century shrewdly perceived that successfully racing his products would increase their salability: “Win on Sunday, Sell on Monday.” The racing success of Ford’s “cut-down, hopped-up” Model Ts wasn’t lost on the youth of the teens and twenties. Their collective demand for go-fast goodies spawned what would become a hugely diverse performance-parts aftermarket for model Ts. However, this homegrown phenomenon reached its zenith in Southern California. The Southland’s combination of year-round summer, high-tech industries (both movie and aircraft), hungry race-car builders, wide streets and dry lakes generated what were called “hot jobs,” essentially denuded Model T roadsters augmented by the offerings of…

The latest trend in street rods is really not a new trend at all: Building cars with engines other than the belly-button Chevy small-block. While this might not be the easiest way to make power, if you want to stand out in the crowd, you need to do something different and/or better than everyone else. But this practice poses a problem for the neophyte hot rodder. How can you identify what’s under a cool car’s hood if it’s not the easy-to-spot Chevy V8? Or how can you go shopping for that different engine if you don’t know what to look for? To make it easier to determine which engines are which, here is a spotters’ guide to the more popular nostalgia engines. Included here are Buicks, Cadillacs, Chevrolets, Chryslers, Fords,…

From the outside, Mike Harden’s “resto-lay” appears to be as stock as the day it left the Chevrolet show-room some 40 years ago. From the out-side, it would be in the near-100-point zone at a classic convention. From the outside, Mike’s seemingly stock Bel Air says nothing more than, ’They sure don’t build them like they used to.” Nothing could be further from the truth. In reality, Mike’s ride is the quintessential sleeper, and the only reality check is the thundering exhaust note emitting from those four tailpipes peeking out of the rear bumper. Should the term “sleeper” generate a question mark, fear thee not! Think of it as a performance put-on—stone-stock appearance mixed with howling-hot performance. Mike’s story is a familiar one, an American Graffiti scenario that started on…

It’s got cop tires, cop shocks, a cop motor, a cop transmission. It’s a model made before the trendies latched on, so what d’ya say, is it the new Bluesbike, or what? If Jake and Elwood had a Harley, it would no doubt be a duplicate of Steve Bailey’s ’85 FXRP. For those of you who don’t know what the P stands for, it means Police Special, as in “cop bike"! Bailey bought his two-wheeled law machine when he was living in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and drove the wheels off of it, racking up over 15,000 miles every year. But coming home from work one night, some brain-donor pulled out in front of him in traffic. Needless to say, the nose of the bike was wasted, with roughly $4000 worth of…

A-BODY UPGRADE Q I have a Formula S ’68 Plymouth Barracuda fastback with a 31 8ci engine. I am rebuilding the car and was thinking of putting a 383 or a Commando 360 engine in it. Which do you think would be better? Tom RiverBozeman, Montana A From an ease of installation stand-point, the 360 would be a very good choice since it will bolt onto the 318 engine mounts and to the existing transmission. The best exhaust manifolds to use came on 340 engines. The 383 (or a 440) can be installed in a ’67-and-up A-body such as your Barracuda, but the K-member must be replaced with one that accepts a big-block, and you will probably have to use headers for that application. If you use a 383 or…