Indholdsfortegnelse for April 2013 i Hot Rod

This is traumatic, so if you’ve got a heart condition or if you’re an expectant mother, look away now. Here it is: If you could only own one car for the rest of your life, what would it be? Abhorrent, I know. But what’s intriguing about the question is not the buzzkill of imagining you could never buy another car, it’s that your answer says everything about who you are as a car person. Like, if your first thought was, “Hmm, I’d need something big enough to haul the family,” then you need to get your priorities straight. You might not be a hot rodder. Kids love the bus. I suspect most of you answered with a particular year, make, and model of a vintage muscle car or hot rod.…

Imagine for a second that you are both a mechanic and a musician. You’re wrenching on a car when your hand slips and the ratchet smacks the water pump pulley, which rings out the perfect, clear C# of a well-tuned glockenspiel. This is how Jordan Hill’s car-part drum kit started. After that first greasy-fingered discovery, Jordan began actively searching for automotive components with musical qualities. “If I was working on a customer car and realized the defective part had a good sound, I’d keep it and add it to the kit,” Jordan says. “If I noticed a good tone but the part wasn’t bad, I’d have to go to the junkyard to find something similar. I’d be in the yard with a wrench and my chromatic tuner, hitting on things.…

// Got pulled over one night in my T coupe because he thought my car was on fire! There were flames coming out of the zoomies. He didn’t say anything about the cheater slicks and no fenders. He just laughed and said it was a cool car! Phew. — Michael Northcott // I picked up two cute hitchhikers, then got a ticket for impeding traffic. The girls were hot! —Michael Beeson // First day of junior year before class, I was doing donuts in the student parking lot in my ’88 Trans Am, filling the air with smoke. When it cleared, I was looking straight at my school’s police officer and the dean of students. — Jacob Spence // I was driving a ’72 Buick Gran Sport with a 455.…

The SEMA Show is the automotive performance industry’s most important yearly shindig—a trade-show gathering of parts manufacturers and car builders representing every kink in the gearhead world. It’s where business gets done, it’s the launching point for thousands of new products, and it has become one of the nation’s most interesting and diverse car shows. The project cars on display are advocates of the newest components and styles in the niches of hot rods, muscle cars, imports, street trucks, and 4x4s. At HOT ROD, we look at the SEMA Show as an indicator of trends coming and going, and staffers walk the aisles looking for consistent themes in the creations of car builders nationwide. Here we present the fruit of this year’s hunt, compiled with help from Rob Einaudi and…

Angeles Crest is a narrow, two-lane stretch of California Highway 2 in the San Gabriel Mountains north of Los Angeles. It winds for 66 miles through Angeles National Forest and reaches an elevation of 7,000 feet with 1,000-foot drop-offs. The road has claimed many lives since it was built in 1949. And I was ripping through it in a full, unadulterated, NASCAR-engine-powered, carbon-fiber-bodied race car built for Le Mans—not LA county roads. The owner and driver is Tom Secora, a quick-talking 40-year-old who doesn’t look 30 and acts 20. When he isn’t talking, he’s laughing, and when he isn’t laughing, he’s driving. The car is a ’00 Saleen widebody that competed for four seasons in the Speed Channel World Challenge GT series; Tom was a part of the construction team…

The Viper is an anomaly. It’s a V10, not a V12 or a V8. The car has too many amenities to be called a race car, but not enough to be a real exotic. It has never offered cupholders, traction control, or an automatic option. When first introduced in 1992, the Dodge Viper was America’s middle finger to the high-end sports car market. Now the Viper is back for 2013, with an SRT name badge and slightly less middle finger, because now it has traction control. “I’m sick and tired of all the mess about the car. When you have rumors it’s really hard to debunk them,” said President and CEO of SRT brand Ralph Gilles during the media launch in Sonoma, California. After a presentation in which SRT execs…

Editor’s Note: Cole Quinnell joined the staff of HOT ROD in 1990, a year ahead of me. I well remember his beat ’66 Chevelle at the time, moving it from his apartment to a house and later cross-country to Detroit when he left the mag. When Cole completed a long-awaited rebuild last year, I asked him to write this first-person account of his life with the car, up through the makeover. — DF I’m writing this from the driver seat of the ’66 Chevelle you see here. There’s no better place from which to share the story. I’ve spent the last 25 years driving this car to school and work, racing it regularly, and making change after change to it. This car has been with me through some of my…

Mike Martin’s ’65 Pontiac Tempest Rear-Wheel Horsepower: 208 hp at 4,970 rpm Rear-Wheel Torque: 240 lb-ft at 3,175 rpm Time on HOT ROD Autocross: 1:17.2 Quarter-Mile: 16.3 seconds at 86 mph 60–0 Braking: 172 feet HRM Staff Average Ranking on a Scale of 1-10, 10 Being Best: Competence in Its Intended Purpose: Here we judge the car only against the reason it was built. The tempest gets points for being cheap, it put smiles on a lot of people’s faces, and it’s actually pretty quick. The only detractor is that it’s handling oriented, yet the tires lose in that realm. Ranking: 7 Performance vs. Potential: It has a mild 326 and 15-inch, 50-series tires, so the acceleration and handling aren’t great. For what he has in the car it works…

“It’s ugly.” “Yeah, but kind of cool-ugly, right?” “Um, no. Just ugly-ugly.” So went a recent staff meeting when the topic of what to do with HOT ROD’s project ’67 Impala convertible came up. The drop-top Chevy had been used as a daily driver and later pressed into magazine service for an engine-swap story and a how-to on vinyl wraps, but its most recent iteration—a bilious matte green so vile that none of us could bear to look at it—let alone drive it—had led to a discussion regarding its fate. Projects don’t always turn out as planned, so what can you do when you love your car but hate the paint? “We could paint it,” someone suggested, and the room got quiet. “We could?” Did we have the gumption and…

The steering wheel is on the wrong side. This was the problem faced by Australian hillclimb racer Jim Hodgson during his first attempt running a Ford Mustang at Pikes Peak in 2011. Jim drove a borrowed car up the mountain, but the unfamiliar lefthand drive position had him uneasy in the saddle, so he decided to swap seats for 2012. Jim regularly does these types of conversions in his native Brisbane, so he knew what to do when he headed to Colorado well ahead of the July race date to move the steering wheel in an American Mustang to the more Aussie-friendly right side. Along the way Jim and his team fought clearance issues, race-delaying firestorms, and creatures in the cooling system, yet he still made it to the summit…

We bow to the Aussies’ application of boost for punishing hapless rubber, as you read earlier in the issue (page 74). While visiting Queensland Raceways to witness free-form tire spin from some Powercruise regulars, we witnessed a little, tan Holden VK Commodore (bottom right, foreground) giving a twin-turbo Lamborghini Then the intake blew like Daffy Duck a full-on, pants-down spanking. after drinking a generous portion of gasoline, some nitroglycerin, a goodly amount of gunpowder, some uranium 238, shaking well, and swallowing a match. Boost pulled 30 nutserts out of the sheet-aluminum intake manifold, blowing the lid with enough power to taco the shock-tower brace and Carlton-Fisk the hood like a Louisville Slugger. Lesson learned: TIG that junk and turn up the steam.…

Q: I have a ’72 350 Chevy engine without the original heads. Can ’90 350 throttle-body injection (TBI) heads off a 1500 Chevy truck work? Some engine shops told me yes, and some said no, because of the water jackets and that they are low-performance heads, anyway. My engine is bored 0.040-over with Sealed Power pistons with 10.0:1 compression. The engine is going in my ’77 C10 pickup truck. It is just transportation, not for the dragstrip. A: Wendell, your heads share similar characteristics with ’87–’95 iron production small-block Chevy heads (not to be confused with ’96-and-later Vortec heads or reverse-cooling ’94–’96 Iron-headed Generation II small-blocks). These ’87–’95 heads have the same water jackets as early heads and still retain a street-carburetor-friendly exhaust heat-riser passage, but there are other differences…

I think I have a water-pump leak. —Anthony Haywood Now watch as Z-Max penetrates and makes it run like brand new. —Dennis Jones Is this what it means to “sea foam” your engine? —Justin Gagen The insurance company’s never gonna believe this. —Kyle M. A little Gunk and it will shine right up. —James A. Casabona Year? Make? Model? A: It’s one of the two hood vents on a ’97 Ford Mustang. HOT ROD (ISSN 0018-6031), April 2013; Vol. 66, No. 04. Copyright 2013 by Source Interlink Magazines, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Published monthly by Source Interlink Media, LLC, 261 Madison Ave., 6th Floor, New York, NY 10016. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY, and at additional mailing offices. Subscription rates for 1 year (12issues): U.S., APO, FPO…

Freaks are the result of mutations in a rapidly evolving species. That was especially true in the mid-’60s for what became the Funny Car class. Experimentation with stock-bodied vehicles ran rampant within the classes of Factory Experimental and Experimental Stock and with plain old match racing. Dragstrips saw everything from rear-engine cars to multi-engines to all-wheel-drive. More common was the assortment of wheelbases—lengthened, shortened, and otherwise altered. Soon, racers settled on the tube-frame/front-engine/fiberglass-body configuration that has endured through today. In 1964, Chrysler was heavily involved in drag racing and wanted some promotion for pickups. The regular D100 was already represented in drag racing, but not the compact, forward-control A100. In Detroit, Chrysler had Jim Schaeffer and John Collier make a new ’64 A100 to race in A/FX. A tubular subframe…

The easiest part of working at HOT ROD is making mistakes. Everything else rapidly gets harder, including mea culpas like this one. In the “200 MPH Reunion” article on the Ed Pink/Don Long ’65 Top Fuel dragster in the Jan. ’13 issue, I erred twice in one sentence. Contrary to my statement, the Old Master did not win either the Winternationals or March Meet in 1966. The ’66 Winters were won by Roland Leong’s Hawaiian with Mike Snively driving (Leong also won in ’65 with Don Prudhomme driving). The ’66 March Meet champs were the Surfers with Mike Sorokin at the helm. That win came when James Warren red-lighted in the final, netting the Skinner/Jobe/Sorokin team $6,650 in winnings. These wins were significant and should have been obvious to me…

Dave Doucette // Dunedin, Florida Dave shot this photo of his ’56 Chevy Bel Air at the Dunedin, Florida, marina during sunset. Dave has owned this Tri-Five since 1985. It’s powered by a 327. Ryan Dutra // Fair Oaks, California Ryan drives his ’07 Mustang to high school. It might be a V6 with a five-speed, but we like it anyway. Ryan plans on adding a cold-air intake and lower springs soon. Richard Kiser // Texas Richard Kiser and Richard Kiser Jr. are onto their next project after finishing a ’67 Mustang. It’s a ’36 Dodge truck. Louie Smith // Miami, Oklahoma This ’79 Malibu wagon was at our ’12 Power Tour®. Louie and wife Sherry stopped along the original Route 66 as a part of their road trip. Paul…

Meeting famous racers is cool. Getting to interview them is even cooler. Getting to spend a day hanging out with them at a historic racetrack? Well, that’s absolutely subzero. We recently had a chance to spend a day with Top Fuel driver, multitime NHRA champion, and team owner Don “The Snake” Prudhomme at the NHRA California Hot Rod Reunion held at Auto Club Famoso Raceway in Bakersfield, California. Prudhomme was promoting the upcoming Snake and Mongoose movie (see SnakeandMongooseMovie.com) and graciously let us tag along while he talked tuning with former crew chief Roland Leong, mused on the future of nostalgia racing, and reminisced about the joys and dangers of the early days. Read the story, then hit the video page on HOTROD.com to see more of our day with…

News flash! As hot as turbos are today, they’re far from new. Guys have been screwing around with turbos at the drags since the early ’60s with varying levels of success—though the most common level was zero. For that reason, many of the early experiments have been lost to history. Here, in no particular order, we present 10 of the coolest examples of successful turbo drag cars you probably never knew existed. JERRY AND GARY MALLICOAT’S ’40 WILLYS Twin turbos drawing through twin Carter carbs and feeding a 327ci small block Chevy made 720 hp and allowed the twin brothers to win the AA/GS class at the ’65 Winternationals and go on a national tour. At the end of 1965, the guys pulled the motor and turbos out of the…

Over the course of 24 hours, we witnessed a Camaro SS and a BMW M3 trade paint on a road course, saw grown men chase each other on 50cc dirt bikes and drive golf carts in a muddy autocross, and got shot with a paintball gun. Looking back, none of that surprises us. We were at Carolina Motorsports Park in Kershaw, South Carolina, for the taping of Speed Channel’s newest series, RU Faster Than a Redneck. The show pits some serious, American-made Pro Touring cars head to head against a whole menagerie of imports in a series of elimination races on the mile-long, seven-turn West Course of Carolina Motorsports Park. We were initially leery of the premise, because it seemed like it could very easily be more about the drama…

The staff of HOT ROD magazine collects some odd things, and, depending on the individual, each desk can either be a neat and tidy workstation or a wasteland where press releases go to die. One quick trip into the offices and cubicles netted us some interesting doohickeys, speed parts, and toys you might enjoy seeing.…

In motorsports, drag racing is the 100-meter sprint, NASCAR is middle distance, Le Mans is the marathon, and drifting is gymnastics. You can’t argue that it’s easy to slide a car sideways, tires blazing, around corners, avoiding obstacles, coming as close as possible to the walls, and dancing in sync with another car doing the same act inches away. The driver must have absolute control over the machine, but the naysayers still counter that it’s not the same as a race because it all boils down to judges who score the aesthetics of the performance. You can’t remove the subjective part of drifting, and that will always rub some traditional race fans the wrong way. However, like any form of motorsport, the more you know about the particular discipline, the…

Over the last 75 years, hot rodders have tried souping-up their engines with every possible exotic fuel and power additive. After trial and error, they settled on nitromethane—a dry-cleaning solvent and sometime rocket fuel—as by far the most potent. High loads of nitro are so volatile and add so much power that engines run with it are literally skating on the edge of destruction. Nitro’s volatility, its unique cackling sound, the flames shooting out the exhaust pipes—it’s all become the source of myth and legend. To get the straight scoop on using nitro, we consulted a number of experts, including nitro pioneer Gene Adams, who still builds fuel Hemis; Jim Archer, who has mixed just about every possible fuel with every other fuel; Jeff Prock, purveyor of high-end nitrous oxide…

RON COVELL SAYS “Aluminum takes more heat than steel, and the puddle size will generally be larger. Molten aluminum is a little more ‘gummy’ than steel, so the way you move the torch, the puddle, and the rod will be just a little different.” Next Month: Rebuild an 8-71 Blower Contact LINCOLN ELECTRIC; Cleveland, OH; 216.481.8100; LincolnElectric.com…

My friend Alan’s dog, K.B., is a bad, biting, destroying kind of beast, and he is famous in certain swap-meet circles because he once peed for two full minutes on some poor sucker’s parts tarp. Needless to say, he’s not real welcome at car shows these days. Many classic cars have similar fluid-control problems, leaving little coolant puddles in every parking spot and show space. My Challenger certainly does, and it was starting to annoy me, in addition to it being a minor cooling issue. Most ’70 Challengers did not come with a coolant overflow bottle—those were the “vent it to air” kind of days. When I first started racing, my rigged overflow used an empty oil quart bottle with a hose duct-taped to the top. Later, in an attempt…

01] VDO GAUGES VDO-Gauges.com; Price: Not yet set; PN GPS 347-786 Here’s the VDO GPS Speed Sender. If you purchase the sender with the gauge, there is no programming or setup needed—simply hook up the power and ground, and start driving to read your speed. No more messing with instructions like, “Drive X miles, press button, wait X seconds, press button, drive again.” 02] CLASSIC INSTRUMENTS ClassicInstruments.com; 800.575.0461; Price: $1,400; PN BOG-AN-C Classic Instruments’ awesome BOG—Big Ol’ Gauge—comes with a speedometer, tach, and readings for fuel level, voltage, oil pressure, and water temp. The gauge is in a custom-machined aluminum bezel and features curved glass. It mounts into a 75 ⁄8-inch hole and includes all necessary hardware and sending units. 03] E-MOTION PRODUCTS E-MotionProducts.com; 815.692.9300; Price: Varies; PN nGauge Analog…

SEND YOUR PHOTOS To be included in Scene by Readers, send low-rez photos and some information about them to HOTROD@HotRod.com. If we elect to use your photo, we will email back with instructions on how to send us a high-rez photo for publication.…

The HOT ROD readers are awesome. After the “Raccoon-Ravaged Shelby” column in the Nov. ’11 issue, I got a deluge of tips about cars in barns, and have been able to follow up and shoot some of them. One reader emailed me about a ’68 Camaro convertible his brother-in-law had tucked away on his family farm. I have a friend and fellow car hunter who lives near the hidden Camaro but had never heard of it, so we took a trip to meet readers Mike and Jim. Inside the barn built in the 1890s was the convertible—a factory 396/four-speed car. Next to it was a ’60 MGA Jim had driven while dating Mike’s sister. When he got the Camaro, it had a bad engine, so the guys dropped in a…

You may know the track as Sears Point Raceway, Infineon Raceway, or its current name: Sonoma Raceway. In addition to swapping names over its 44-year history, Sonoma has added a dragstrip and hosted a broad variety of racing groups, including drifting. Its core, however, is a 2.52-mile road course. And being located in mostly sunny California, there are on-track activities scheduled 340 days out of the year. The racetrack opened in 1968, in the heyday of SCCA Trans-Am and Can-Am racing. It’s situated on what was the Sears Point Dairy Farm, which is where the racing venue got its original name. The quarter-mile dragstrip was added in the ’80s, and the first NHRA-sanctioned event was hosted there in 1988. The road course can be run in various configurations. The full…

“I can’t say that I know of another street car out there that has raced at Daytona.” That’s what we were told by Ray Evernham—the famed NASCAR crew chief—as we sat in his office at the NASCAR business park in Mooresville, North Carolina. Outside was his freshly built ’64 Plymouth Belvedere with the body atop a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Car of Tomorrow chassis that raced under the Dodge Valvoline car at the ’07 and ’08 Daytona 500. Its Dodge R5-P7 engine was used in superspeedway cars driven by Kasey Kahne and Bill Elliot. In the first race for the then-new 426 Hemi, Richard Petty, Jimmy Pardue, and Paul Goldsmith finished 1-2-3 at the ’64 Daytona 500, all in ’64 Plymouths, so Ray thought the body style would be a…

Starting a project with a four-door takes some guts, but it has its perks. Mike Martin scored this ’65 Tempest four years ago for less than $2,000. It was a low-mileage driver and it was complete, but it had some rust that had to be addressed. Back then it was stock, with a 326ci V8 backed by an auto trans, but some thrifty eBay shopping netted him the parts to swap in a Richmond six-speed and suspension widgets to make it handle just right. This Poncho is a great example of a low-buck, homebuilt ride. Mike is a regular at the HOT ROD/Car Craft Cruise Night held at the Automobile Driving Museum in El Segundo, California. After seeing the car at so many of the events sporting a Targa California…

There must be a law in Australia stipulating any used-car purchase must include a Roots blower, because half of the hot rods at Powercruise had aluminum lungs busting through the hood. How do we know this? Because we were there. How did we get there? Good question. It all began innocently enough: We wondered what would happen if we stuck our 1,160hp drag-boat motor into a hot rod and then drove it on the street. What would 900 lb-ft of naturally aspirated torque feel like if the tires managed to hook up? Would the brute force break the rear tires loose on the freeway and send us straight into the guardrail with a mix of sheer terror and joy on our faces? We had to know, but we didn’t have…

If you’re building an early Ford hot rod with a traditional buggy-spring setup in front, you’ll need a pair of spindles for your I-beam or tube axle. There are various types that work better than others, as you’ll see. Surprisingly for 70-to-80-year-old parts, there are still plenty floating around old-car swap meets or collecting dust in enthusiasts’ garages. And if you’re not up for searching, there are places like Bill McGrath’s Early Ford Store (EarlyFordStore.com) in San Dimas, California, that carry all years, or you can buy new reproductions from places like Super Bell Axle Company (PeteAndJakes.com). In general, kingpin diameters are the same from ’28–’48, but there are differences in kingpin lengths, locator slots, and the configuration of the tops. Remember, some of these front ends ran mechanical brakes…

Last Halloween got me thinking about stuff that scares me. Severed limbs, warm beer, and flashing red-and-blue lights in the rearview still give me the heebie-jeebies, but other than that I’m a pretty calm individual. When I was a kid, though, lots of automotive stuff spooked me. My first taste of horsepower came at an early age, thanks to my parents’ love of boating and waterskiing. Long before I could walk, they owned a big-block-powered jet boat, and my summers were spent on the water. This wasn’t your dad’s fishing boat but rather the kind of boat that’s nothing more than a fiberglass tub with a car engine bolted inside and a set of seats stuffed right in front of it. The proximity of the engine to my siblings and…

What if you could turn your supercharger on and off with the flick of a switch? Many gearheads have had that dream ever since it was seen in the Mad Max movie in 1979. The aftermarket was slackin’, but 34 years later, Procharger has made it real. Or close. The all-new i-1 supercharger is a beltdriven centrifugal deal that Procharger is known for, but this one can be programmed for the boost curve of your choice by way of a computer-controlled, continuously variable transmission (CVT) that dynamically changes the blower-drive ratio. The i-1 blower has an 8:1 geardriven reduction augmented by the CVT that runs between 0.6:1 and 1.9:1. The drive ratio alters the blower speed and therefore changes the boost. How is this Mad Max–like? Because you can dial…

THE COMBO Dale Berry spent 10 years rebuilding his ’56 Chevy Bel Air, replacing everything in the process. The car’s 0.030-over 327 has a mild cam and a 500-cfm Edelbrock Performer carb. A TH350 automatic transfers the torque back to a 3.08:1-geared rearend. Modern upgrades include a Vintage Air air conditioning (A/C) system, power disc brakes, and a 100-amp, one-wire alternator. THE PROBLEM As Dale describes it, “About four years ago, the car was rewired by a friend who ran a shop that did wiring and is no longer in business.” Dale didn’t notice any electrical problems until recently, when he began driving the car at night. Dale explains that with the lights on, the instrument panel and rear tail and brake lights “start to blink when stopped at a…

We like to poke holes in metal—a pastime that loses its appeal roughly the second time you rip into something with a hardware-store hole saw. The sadist who invented those things had a flawless solution for making oblong, jagged-edged holes while also gouging the surrounding metal and breaking your wrist when the drill motor snags. A couple years ago, we stepped up to a set of Blair Equipment’s Holcutter and Rotabroach tools. It was like jumping from a three-toothed hacksaw blade to a scalpel. The Blair tools are true cutters, sort of like machine tools. They come in two types: Rotabroach and Holcutter. The Holcutter is available in sizes from 11⁄16 to 3 inches and cuts materials up to ⅛ inch thick. The Rotabroach can be as small as ¼…

Quick Openers Drive the Wheels Off //DriveTheWheelsOff.com Cut from 12-gauge stainless steel, these keychains and bottle-cap openers are silhouettes of cool hot rods. From Drive the Wheels Off, the openers are about 4 inches in length and the rear wheelwell is where it snags a bottle cap. The keychains, at the moment, are available in ’66–’67 GTO, first-gen Camaro, ’70–’74 ’Cuda, late-model Mustang, late-model Challenger, and DWO just started making Tri-Five Chevys. The team is working on more models in the future. If you want to request a particular model or want to order one, check out their website. Price: $13.95 opener; $9 keychain Round and Round Big Power Toys //Yo-Wheels.net This1 ⁄16-scale wheel yo-yo is modeled after a slotted dish mag, one of the most popular wheel styles of…