Indholdsfortegnelse for January 2012 i Hot Rod

IN NO REAL ORDER: 1. I love getting a new engine running for the first time. It’s not so much the thrill of accomplishment that makes it good—it’s the sensory experience, starting with the scent of cooking paint, RTV, and headers. It’s the sounds of power, the snap of the throttle, and meeting the new mechanical life you’ve created. All very Gene Wilder in Young Frankenstein. 2. There’s no feeling in the world like blatantly outpowering someone else’s junk. On the dragstrip, it’s a huge ego pump to run down the other car and pass it like it a dog that hit the end of its chain. It’s even better on a road course—or a rent-a-kart track, whatever—when you chase a guy lap after lap and finally get the line…

Little People Customs (LPC), the Ventura, California, shop currently working on the land speed racer Buick Riviera dubbed “Hemi Under Class” that we showed you in our July ’11 issue, has a new Hemi project. After it appeared on Car Craft’s Oct. ’77 cover, Gary and Sharon Foersch sold this ’71 Challenger at an auction. The car made its way to the West Coast and was put into a storage locker where the current owner purchased it, minus the Hemi, more than 15 years ago. Since then it has been stored in a barn. Its paneled candy paintjob is remarkably intact, but the interior needs a thorough restoration, having housed untold generations of rodents. LPC owner Paul Bartlett plans on freshening the car and keeping it as a survivor by…

Hang out smack in the middle of the Missouri Ozarks long enough, and you’ll likely come upon a group of fun-loving hot rodders that have never really grown up and are proud of it. They call themselves the Recycled Teenagers Gang, and their eclectic mix of traditional rods and rusty trucks frequents all the local cruise spots and watering holes. We ran into four of them during an ’11 Power Tour® gas stop and checked out their Long Haul transportation™. “We’re gonna try to be teenagers ’til we’re 6 feet under.”—Kim Keith 1. Kim Keith’s father-in-law bought this ’39 Chevy in 1944, worked the 700-acre family farm with it, bought a Ford dealership in 1955 and used it to run parts, and then parked it because no self-respecting Ford man…

Cruise-ins and car shows are just glorified parking lots. If you’re ready for action and adventure, you might be thinking about trying a little drag racing. There are tracks everywhere, and drag opportunities are offered at many events, such as some Goodguys shows, nostalgia reunions, Holley’s LS Fest, True Street competitions within the NMCA and NMRA sanctioning bodies, and even our own Power Tour®. Every track has bracket races, and virtually any car can race. You don’t need to be competitive—you can just run at test-and-tune nights to get your personal best times for nothing but fun. Besides, muscle car bragging rights are anchored in quarter-mile times. Even if you spend most of your time at cruises and shows, you’ll hold your head higher when you can put an actual…

There’s a time-proven formula for running 10s in a Chevelle: You build a fairly simple 496ci Rat motor. Done. Or you go even milder, then throw some nitrous on it. Easy. But some guys just won’t roll that way—“bottles are for babies” and all that. Jake Stelter is that guy. He took the tough road, building a screaming, 8,500-rpm, 402ci, 730hp small-block. His car was all wrapped up for the first time in April 2011, then he subjected it to the flagellation of Drag Week™ just five months later. And we love him for it. People say you can’t build a let-it-all-hang-out motor and run 4.88 gears with a 6,900-rpm converter on the street. Well, meet Jake. You should know about his wife Christina, too, since she was there back…

You’ve seen it at the dragstrip, at car shows, and on rare occasion, at the local cruise spot. Retro stacks and mechanical fuel injection are hot, but magazines are duty bound to say, “You can’t drive it on the street.” Hmm. Let’s just say it isn’t the optimal fuel metering system for street driving. But it’s an ego stroke. You do it for the fans, for everyone who gives you a nod of approval when you snap the butterflies open within earshot. The fuel economy is dismal, and you will tinker with it constantly if you drive your car a lot. But man, there is nothing quite like the look and sound of a set of stacks perched atop an angry V8. Augie Delgado has spent the last decade driving…

THE PREMISE Putting your hot rod on a diet is an easy way to increase its performance (“Caddy Hack” in Feb. ’87 and “Vette Hack” in Nov. ’10 proved it). But once you’ve removed every ounce of excess sheetmetal in your car, lightened the engine with aluminum pieces, and gutted the interior, what’s left? How about shedding 30 pounds or more from the engine compartment or trunk with a super-lightweight battery? The Lithium Pros brochure describes the company’s lithium-ion batteries as God’s gift to electrical systems: safe, powerful, ultralight, and with a shorter recharge time than a standard lead-acid or dry-cell battery. It sounds like the perfect battery, so of course we must test it. With a price tag of more than $1,395 for the battery and a dedicated charger,…

In September 2011, HOT ROD Drag Week™ visited the SRCA Dragstrip in Great Bend, Kansas. It was a homecoming of sorts, as HOT ROD was heavily involved with the NHRA when that organization held its first Nationals on the very same site in 1955. Then and now, the WWII B29 airstrip is operated as a dragstrip by the Sunflower Rod & Custom Association, which was founded in 1954. As you can see in the photo, the surface was pure government concrete in 1955, just as it had been since it was surplused by the feds in 1946. According to SRCA’s website (SRCAdragstrip.com), the location was recognized as a Kansas Historic Site in 1994, the track was resurfaced using a grant from the Kansas Department of Transportation in 2003, and a…

A household name in racing, Mario Andretti has won in four different decades—one of only three drivers ever to do so—the other two are named Foyt and Petty. He is one of only two to win in Formula One, IndyCar, the World Sportscar Championship, and NASCAR. He also did a little drag racing and competed in Midget and Sprint Cars. There aren’t many people on the planet with as much seat time as this guy. We were fortunate enough to get some face time with the legend at the MagnaFlow display during this year’s HOT ROD Power Tour®. We asked our Facebook fans to deliver the questions, and here’s what Andretti had to say. HRM: Have you ever gotten a speeding ticket and had an officer say, “Who do you…

1981: FORD RETURNS TO ROAD RACING After a full decade in motorsports exile, Ford of North America returned to road racing in 1981 with this Mustang for the IMSA GTX competition series. Except it wasn’t really a Mustang. Surprisingly, it was a Zakspeed-built, FIA Group 5 racer with the Euro-spec Capri body peeled off and Mustang panels slapped on. Under the hood was not an American V8, but a 1.7L Cosworth BDA turbo four tweaked to roughly 700 hp. Ford executives Walter Hayes and Michael Kranefuss had been transferred from Europe to Dearborn to resuscitate Ford’s performance image in the U.S., and they brought the good stuff with them. With Klaus Ludwig at the controls, the faux Mustang, prepared by Bill Scott Racing, won two IMSA races in 1981 at…

The HOT ROD and Car Craft Cruise Night continues at the Automobile Driving Museum in El Segundo, California. Usually held every last Friday of the month from 5 to 8 p.m., the days and hours will change in November through March to combat dark winter nights. During those months, we’ll be hanging out on Saturdays, including November 12 and December 17, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Learn more at the museum’s website (TheADM.org), or follow HOT ROD on Facebook. ECTA AND THE HOT ROD TOP SPEED CHALLENGE MOVE TO WILMINGTON, OHIO If you’ve followed HRM with regularity, you know that the East Coast Timing Association is the organization we visit every April for the HOT ROD Top Speed Challenge. Until now, that event’s been held at the old WWII…

“I just want to see what I can do without a power-adder, without tearing into the engine.”—Steven Mashburn This guy has a really cool approach to going fast: Leave the engine stock and hop up everything around it. His formula has delivered an 11.62 e.t. at 117 mph from an untouched LS1 in a ’99 Camaro. How? Traction, gears, and weight reduction. It reminds us a lot of how HOT ROD used to test muscle cars back in the ’60s. The dude is Steven Mashburn of Independence, Missouri, and this SS is his first street/strip car. He got it for $11,000 two and a half years ago, scoring the hard-to-find, one-year-only Hugger Orange paint. Th is stripper also had perks like manual windows, no T-tops, and a stick. Drag-wise, it’s…

Isaac Newton knew what he was talking about, and Randy Belehar can prove it. He’s got a mountain of junk parts that scientifically demonstrate that a big hankin’ Pontiac at rest wants to stay at rest, and it’ll chew up a warehouse full of ring gears, Posi units, TH400 sprags, and rear control arms when you try to urge it into motion. Sir Isaac never planned on the mass of a 4,100-pound car and driver being accelerated by a 467ci Pontiac, but somehow his laws must explain the cracked block and pile of destroyed roller lifters. Why persist in such folly? Because you still have your first car, it’s a ’70 Grand Prix, you build everything with your own hands, and owning a lightweight or a Chevy never crossed your…

THE PREMISE In our world, engine accessories are a power-robbing necessity. That’s why aftermarket companies have come up with parts to minimize the losses. But is the power lost by spinning these accessories worth the money spent trying to offset the losses? We wondered how much power it took to spin a high-flow water pump versus a stocker, so we dyno-tested both setups on an engine, then compared the results with the same engine using an electric water pump. We went a step further and bolted up a set of underdrive pulleys to see if we could get back some of the power eaten up by the mechanical water pumps. Finally, we put a high-output alternator into the mix to see how much power it ate up when under a…

CARL ASKS: We’re getting ready to put an engine and trans into our ’56 Corvette. The engines we’re looking at are the 5.3, 6.0, or 6.2L LS-type motors. We plan on using the 200-4R trans. Who makes an installation kit for this? We will be using a carb. Which engine would you recommend? MARLAN ANSWERS: The question of which engine to use depends primarily on your budget. Most of us will go for the most powerful engine we can afford. On the other hand, newer and lower-mileage engines will generally be pricier. Larger displacements are more costly, as is aluminum. Also take into account that many late-model engines are set up for variable valve timing and/or active fuel management. These must be disabled to run without a computer, which calls…

The golden age of drag racing wasn’t all paint, polish, and 50-row grandstands. It wasn’t always about top competitors from across the region vying for big prize money. Nope, in the good ol’ days, it was mostly young guys in primered hot rods and family sedans filling the pits at dragstrips nationwide. For one August Saturday a year, when the Jalopy Journal’s H.A.M.B. Drags are held at the 60-year-old Mo-Kan Dragway (MoKanDragway.com) in the middle of a corn field on the Kansas/Missouri border, it’s just about like the way it was. Strict limits on pre-’65 cars and a ban on tubs and tube chassis keep the scene period correct, and everyone there is racing for nothing but fun, glory, and bragging rights. Check out HAMBdrags.com and Jalopy Journal.com for more…

Holley’s second annual LS Fest (sponsored by HOT ROD and GM Performance Division) in September 2011 in Bowling Green, Kentucky, brought dozens of LS-powered cars and trucks onto the dragstrip and autocross course in a display of modern horsepower. While the newest versions of Chevy’s small-block make it easier to make absurd amounts of power, GM engineers clearly didn’t put aesthetics high on their list of priorities. That’s just a nice way of saying LS engines are ugly. It’s no secret that modern engines are far more cluttered and industrial looking than just about any ’60s-era engine. We wound through the field of drag racers, autocrossers, and spectators to find the most appealing engines and see how they got the right look. To see action from the event, search “LS…

Very cool: During the ’11 HOT ROD Drag Week™, our stop at Great Bend, Kansas, produced about 1,200 spectators, one of whom was Ed Ward. He was also there in 1955 for the very first NHRA Nationals, racing his mom’s car, and he brought us this original, perfect-condition dash plaque from the event. How many more of these are out there? Way uncool: Tulsa Raceway Park was another stop during Drag Week™, and the track surface there may be the best we’ve ever seen. In a surprise announcement just two weeks after we were there, track owners revealed the venue would forever close on October 24, 2011. It opened in 1965 as Tulsa International Raceway, but thanks to the lousy economy, it will soon be a gravel pit. Can we…

With their standard Blue Flame six-bangers, the ’53 to ’55 Corvettes could never be called fast—not even remotely quick by today’s standards—but that’s not what made people love them. At a time when new cars were big and heavy, the Vette, and its Ford Thunderbird cousin, offered a smaller and sportier package that allowed the bucks-up new owner to score chicks at will. Even today, you’ll get a lot more looks in an early Vette than you will a new one. Now, what if you mix that ’50s-sportscar vibe with the latest and greatest parts from the baddest Vette of all time—the new supercharged, 638hp, 205-mph, $110,300 ZR1? That’s exactly what Tony Tesaro of Thousand Oaks, California, ordered up from Jason Pecikonis at Timeless Kustoms in nearby Camarillo. Tony’s a…

We’re not certain why Danny’s called Bubba, but he is—at least at HOT ROD Drag Week™, where he’s raced and finished every single one of the seven years we’ve thrown that party. Five of those thrashes have been in this ’66 Ford Fairlane. It actually belongs to his father-in-law, who’s known as nothing more than Pop. But Danny drives it, racking up something like 10,000 trouble-free miles. Oh, yeah—one time he needed to shim a U-joint with a slice of aluminum from a beer can. Danny, a Harley-Davidson technician from Springville, Alabama, was on a bike test one day when he spotted the car behind a house where a garage had been torn down. It was the perfect project to build for Pop. It’s not a real GT, but it…

YOUNGBLOOD ART 888/367-9830 YoungbloodArt.com Motorsports memorabilia collectors know the name Youngblood. Kenny Youngblood has built an art career focused exclusively on drag racing, and he did it with intricate detail and authenticity that make his paintings look like realistic. This isn’t a photo of Don Schumacher’s U.S. Army–sponsored Top Fuel dragster, it’s a high-quality reproduction of the painting Kenny did for Don. Now you can have your own Youngblood print for a fraction of the cost of an original work. Price: $49.95 MODERN MUSTANG TRACK PACK SUSPENSION Hotchkis Performance 888-735/6430 Hotchkis.net Ford might have it right with the new Mustang 5.0L Coyote V8, but Hotckis thinks there’s room for improvement when it comes to making the car handle. The company’s new ’05 to ’12 Mustang Track Pack is made to…

THEY DON’T CARE WHAT YOU THINK Hot rodders are supposed to have a rebel attitude, aren’t they? There’s a big revival of contrarian rodding going on—not just raging against the billet rods, but also flipping the bird to the retro rodders who themselves have fought the billet rodders for lo these many years. And there are a bunch of guys who feel that patina cars don’t have to be true junk—they can feature some awesome fabrication and can be used in new and fantastic ways. We’ll introduce you to some of those guys—and their cars—in the next issue of HRM. Also watch for more of the combos from HOT ROD Drag Week™ 2011. SEE THIS AND MUCH MORE IN THE FEBRUARY ’12 ISSUE OF HOT ROD MAGAZINE On sale December…