Indholdsfortegnelse for February 2009 i Hot Rod

THE YENKO LIVES! I was barely 2 when the first Yenko 427 Camaros were built, and in all the years since, I’ve yet to have the pleasure of driving one. But just hearing the word Yenko brings a chill to any Camaro lover’s spine. Don Yenko came up with a brilliant idea back in the ’60s in terms of marketing his dealership and in building a kick-ass car—drop the Corvette’s awesome 427ci big-block into a Camaro. Chevrolet wasn’t willing to do it, so an enterprising dealer did and firmly cemented his name as an automotive legend. Yo, Don, it’s time to do it again. As you can see by this month’s cover story, Chevrolet is done teasing us with the new Camaro. The company’s building them now, and word is…

LES PAUL AND ME Thank you for teaming up with Gibson Guitar to make a genuine work of art. Here is a picture of Les Paul and me at the Iridium Jazz Club in New York City. We are each holding one of the limited-edition Gibson Les Paul HOT ROD 58s that Les signed. The guitars have since become known as the Gibson twins, Holly and Molly. One Dog One Bone Enterprises Goodyear, AZ Art Director Edwin Alpanian and ad guy Mark Dewey are hard-core guitar collectors and wor-ship at the altar of Les Paul, Ray, so your letter and this photo have them all atwitter.…

SLICK ’66 ’66 Chevrolet Corvette • Jeff Hess and Sheila Williams • Woodland Hills, CA A ’66 Vette is a great-looking car just as GM designed it, so when they decided to customize one, Jeff and Sheila sought to keep the mods subtle and the body lines pure. When the hood flips forward, an LS7 mated to a 4L60E automatic greets you. The interior still feels very ’60s Vette but is wrapped in gray leather, and the gauges are replaced by Auto Meters. Chassis-wise, SSBC discs are behind custom Budnik wheels with carbon-fiber transverse springs and Bilstein shocks smoothing out the ride. LIKE FATHER … ’66 Ford Mustang Don Davis Virginia Beach, VA Here we have two great Fords: Don’s ’66 fastback Shelby clone and his son Jack’s raceready little…

3M ACQUIRES MEGUIAR’S We’re always a little disheartened to see a family business bought out by a huge corporation, which is why we initially shuddered to hear 3M’s agreement to acquire Meguiar’s, the 100-year-old family business that manufactures car care products for cleaning and protecting car surfaces. But it could end up being a good merger. “The addition of Meguiar’s builds on our professional offering for the automotive industry and brings the expertise of Barry Meguiar in the growing enthusiast market for car care products,” said Ian Hardgrove, vice president, 3M Automotive Aftermarket Division. “Together, Meguiar’s and 3M will collaborate to deliver even more innovative high-performance products for enthusiasts around the world.” “Combining with 3M will greatly enhance our ability to serve and support car crazy people on a global…

GM RACING CAMARO My, don’t we feel special today. It’s a pleasant and sunny autumn morng and ROD has been granted access to a place few civilians will ever see: Building 27 at the General Motors Proving Ground in Milford, Michigan. As this is GM’s version of Hangar 18, the security is squeaky tight here. When we enter at the main gate, we have to turn over the serial numbers for our laptops and camera equipment. There is no patdown or cavity search, but it’s close. We are here to pay one final visit to some very special cars we have been following for some weeks now: a unique group of prototype ’10 Camaros GM has been constructing for the SEMA show in Las Vegas. Once our photo shoot is…

Once upon a time, not that long ago and not so far away either, before Internetinduced antisocialism was common, most hot rodders knew their neighbors and what was on jackstands in their garages. There were little shops in nearly every town where they congregated to get sage advice, buy parts, or just hang out and bench race. The guys behind the counter weren’t the same variety of robotic keyboard jockey who inhabit most big chain parts stores; these guys knew their stuff and could guide you with expertise. And as a bonus, some of them even had machine shops in back, making them truly onestop destinations where you could reach gearhead Nirvana—you know, just like Salem Speed Shop, which we profiled last month. Real speed shops are few and far…

HYBRID SMALL-BLOCK PG.98 World Products builds a Frankenstein: a Gen I smallblock Chevy with tatemodel LS heads. ZZ4 UPGRADES PG.102 The most popular crate motor ever is GM's ZZ4 350. The company's sold roughly 50,000 of them, so we figured it was about time to see what some upgrades do to this workhorse. How's a gain of 117 hp sound? TEST AND TUNE PG.108 new, stronger six-speed from Tremec, high-flow big-block Ford heads from the master himself, and plenty more cool stuff that'll make you slobber. PIT STOP PG.118 All about balancing with Mallory metal, and the secret to poor Buick oil pressure.…

UNDISCOVERED Just when we’re sure there can’t be any good, undiscovered, unmolested ’30s Fords out there, somebody sends us a picture like this one. Ron Reolle wanted a ’34 Ford sedan for years, so when he caught wind of a ’34 Deluxe tucked away inside an old paint booth at an impound lot, he swooped in. It’s absolutely original, right down to the 85hp flattie. Right now, Ron says he’s pondering whether to keep the flattie or swap in a more driveable late-model engine. We’ll offer our opinion in the form of a picture.…

1948 THE FIRST HOTROD SHOW You’re looking at the birthplace of HOT ROD magazine. This was the crazy scene inside the Los Angeles Armory during the first HOT ROD Exposition, organized by Wally Parks and the SCTA, and promoted by Robert E. Petersen. Pete created the very first issue of HOT ROD magazine as the program for this show, selling ads to whoever wanted to display as a vendor and hawking copies on the steps outside the Armory. Photography prior to mid-1955 is very difficult to find in the HOT ROD archives because no one kept track of or archived it back then, and stuff from 1948 is impossible to find … or so we thought. Rummaging around for something, Jerry Pitt stumbled on a folder labeled “"HOT ROD EXPOSITION…

MAXED OUT Though Brent Jarvis’ candy-orange ’66 Corvette racer (“No Poseur,” Feb. ’06) pulled 1.3 g’s on street rubber and came close to the anticipated 200-mph top speed, the C2’s bad aero made it a handful to control. The next Vette to roll out of Performance Restorations (www.performancerestorations.com) seeks to right all those wrongs. This ’65 was actually road raced in the late ’60s and early ’70s, but no documentation or logbooks could be found—so all’s fair. The custom front and rear suspensions have zero bumpsteer, tons of negative camber, and a roll center supposedly better than a ZO6. This time mucho work was done to keep air out from under the car, including a complete bellypan with a rear diffuser. And just like the original six ’63 Grand Sport…

SEMA encourages parents to “take a kid to a car show” to initiate the next generation into the hot rodding fold and get them set on the right path. But for Bob Brown, it was more like take a kid to a race. Bob grew up in a Chevy dealership in the '60s, back when any self-respecting dealer was running or sponsoring a car at the local dragstrip. His dad was the operations manager, but years of listening to customers whine about broken parts curbed much of the appeal for him. Thankfully, he didn't discourage Bob's budding interest. No, Bob's dad actually gave him an outlet for his curiosity by letting him hang out around the dealership and learn what he could from the guys in the shop. Bob was…

• QUICKEST WITHOUT A TRAILER: 7.9786 • QUICKEST CHEVY Forget what you think the lines are between a race car a real street car, because Larry Larson’s Pepto-pink Chevy II blurs them all. The first time he attended Drag Week™, in 2005, Larry had a practice of showing up, making one 8-second run, then packing up and leaving. We were so sure he was cheating that Editor Kinnan shadowed him to make sure there wasn’t a trailer waiting somewhere. There wasn’t. Larry just knew what the car could do, and once he had his number, he was satisfied. He did the same thing in 2007 with the same combination: a 14-71 atop a 555ci big-block Chevy backed by a Lenco, netting a best e.t. of 8.08 and winning the title…

Most engine builders play the what if game all the time: “What if the cam were a little higher in the block?” or “What if I could get another 0.250-inch stroke?” But most engine builders aren’t like Bill Mitchell. For the past 35 years, he’s made a business out of acting on the what if thoughts that pop into his brain, and that’s led his Long Island, New York-based company, World Products, to not only build high-performance street and racing engines but also cast the cylinder blocks, heads, and intakes of which they’re composed. That includes Chevy small-block, big-block, and LS-style engines; Ford Windsor-style engines; and, more recently, Chrysler Hemi/wedge blocks. So when you’re the guy actually pouring the molten metal into the molds and you get an idea, you’re…

T56 MAGNUM Tremec 800/401-9866 www.ttcautomotive.com Tremec's new T56 Magnum is a T56 six-speed on steroids. The Magnum ups the ante with more precise shifts and a stronger case, gears, guts, and output shaft to increase the power handling to 700 lb-ft. Rather than forging the gears and clutching teeth all as one unit, for the Magnum, Tremec laser-welded the two together for a much more intricate design of the teeth. On top of that, the Magnum is physically narrower and equipped with wider gears as well as some extra meat to the front and rear of the main case. The T56 Magnum will be available in configurations for 4.6 and 5.0 Fords, LS-series engines, and smallblock Chevys, but custom bellhousings for other applications will be available through most distributors. Price:…

Most magazine covers are incredibly labor-intensive affairs, with unruly models, irritated photographers, and uncooperative landlords or weather. But this month's cover, while time-consuming, went fairly smoothly, thanks to the efforts of photographer David Freers (that's him on the ladder setting up the shot), GM Performance Division's Mike Copeland (back to camera), and staffer/organizer Bill McGuire. Bill grabbed this shot of the scene as it went together for our cover in the GMPD shop where the four SEMA Camaros were built. GM gets really nervous when you even utter the word camera near its skunkworks [kind of like saying bomb in an airport], so a big thanks goes out to the company for giving HOT ROD this exclusive look at the new Camaros and how they were built. HOT ROD [ISSN…

Before he became the host of the Tonight Show, Jay Leno used to have a shtick called “What’s My Beef?” where he’d rant about things that irritated him. Back then, Jay’s platform was Johnny Carson’s guest chair, but HOT ROD readers have Bench Racing to air their frustrations. Email us at benchracing@hotrod.com. This is also the place to show us your hot rods (read-ersrides@hotrod.com), present ideas or opinions, or comment on something you’ve seen or would like to see in the magazine. C’mon, we’re here. HAS BEEN SACRIFICE The Starting Line column in the Dec. ’08 issue about Mickey Thompson hit the mark dead on. I help manage a small company where I have worked for almost 17 years, and I see the very problems you describe regarding younger workers.…

There never was a greater hot rodder than Mickey Thompson. The man did it all, set too many records to count, and definitely lived a full life. In the Dec. ’08 issue, we attempted to explain who he was, what he did, and what he meant not just to hot rodding but to the world in general—but even 12 pages in the world’s largest automotive enthusiast magazine (that would be this one) can only barely skim the surface. Still, the story and its subject seemed to touch a lot of people, and here’s what a few of them had to say. THE SWEET SPOT I wish you had offered more weight to who Mickey was as opposed to what Mickey did. Smokey’s comments may serve to enhance the mystery of…

RETURN OF THE COBRA JET We’ll give you the historical backgrounder first. For the ’68 NHRA Winternationals, the Ford Motor Co. introduced a limited-production, big-block Mustang called the Cobra Jet. Only 50 of this initial run of Cobra Jet Mustangs were built, all of them 2+2 coupes in refrigerator white. Ford distributed these Cobra Jets to its roster of factory drivers, including Dyno Don Nicholson, Gas Ronda, Al Joniec, and Hubert Platt, and in the car’s very first NHRA appearance, Joniec took home all the marbles, winning Super Stock Eliminator honors at the Winternationals. The Cobra Jet name was launched in high style and another Ford racing legend was born. Now back to modern times. Ford Racing is relaunching the Cobra Jet name with a new bunch of factory-built Mustang…

SHELBY’S BULLRUN Carroll Shelby and his old pal Bill Neale, a coconspirator in the historic ’67 Terlingua (Texas) Chili Cookoff, returned to the scene of that great time 41 years later and invited a few hundred delighted friends, media, and owners of Shelby-designed cars from across North America to join the party. There was competition—drag racing on the 7,700-foot runway at Lajitas International Airport—and high-speed blasts as dozens of Shelby cars made 300-mile round trips to Alpine and Fort Davis for auto shows that attracted hundreds of fascinated fans. Shelby and Ford wanted this festival to be a showcase for the Terlingua V-6 Mustang, which is priced at less than $30,000. “Our V-6 is one of the few cars we can market with a price low enough that young people…

Let's just address the cost issue right off the top, since it is what first made us take notice. This '67 Mustang has had $1.3 million invested in its build. That's right, a one, then a three, then five zeros, followed by a decimal point and two more zeros. “What the hell?” you may ask. That's OK, so did we. This car came about after many conversations between owner/financier Steve Groat and Matt Couper of Autoworks International (www.autoworksracing.com) in El Cajon, California. As with many projects, this one snowballed in a big way, with midbuild changes and alterations that took enough labor and parts to put some clarification on that enormous price tag. There is not one square inch on this car that has not been touched in some way,…

General Motors' ZZ4 350 is arguably the most popular crate motor ever sold. According to Nicky Fowler of Scoggin-Dickey, a leading GM Performance Parts dealer, the General has sold somewhere between 45,000 and 65,000 of these engines since 1996. As popular as the ZZ4 is, by today's standards its performance leaves a lot to be desired: The aluminum heads are basically the same as late-'80s L98 Corvette heads; the dual-pattern hydraulic roller cam is lazy; and the low-profile intake manifold, although it offers ample hood clearance, just doesn't flow the air. But never fear. We're here to help. HOT ROD associate Ed Taylor yanked a ZZ4 crate engine originally purchased from Scoggin-Dickey out of its home in a street rod. This ZZ4 was originally purchased as a basic (long-block) engine,…