Indholdsfortegnelse for November 2014 i Hot Rod

This issue celebrates the 20th running of the HOT ROD Power Tour®, a trip that evolved from a HOT ROD Magazine staff banzai run across country into a yearly gathering of car owners escaping the confines of traditional car shows to hit the open road. For as large as the Tour has become, it’s still the best way to be a part of the HOT ROD experience. It’s sort of like joining the magazine staff for seven days. So for those of you who have been Long Haulers every year, or those racing to get your project done to join us for the first time in 2015, I’ve got a few rules for the road to share from nearly 14 years of magazine road trips to make your next trip…

Here’s something you don’t need: an amphibious vehicle. But come on, aren’t the best things in life the ones you blow a wad of cash on because they’re impractical? So meet your next $155,000 purchase: a custom WaterCar Panther. Hold on, a bargain can be had: a rolling chassis is available for $75,000, or you can go turnkey minus engine and transaxle for $126,000. What are you getting for your six figures? Basically a 2,900-pound, Jeep-like, waterproof vehicle that can be driven or boated (the tires tuck up into the body with the push of a button once in the water). Think of it as the toy to bring along on your motorhome journeys; use it to get to town for supplies, then use it to play or putter on…

HOTROD.COM/ Dodge is pretty proud of the ’Cat, and of all the new-model Challengers, enough so that Dodge CEO Tim Kuniskis brought a bright-red Hellcat and a sleek-silver Scat Pack to the HOT ROD studio to show them off. We mentioned the visit on the HRM Facebook page and offered to ask Tim your questions. There were a ton of responses ranging from “Will you give me one?” to “Why is Dodge suck? [sic]” Those are silly questions. We didn’t ask them. But we did go through and find some questions that we also wanted to hear more about, and threw those at Tim. Here are some of his answers. HRM] Why are the cars so heavy? TK] Sound-deadening, airbags, technology—cars are heavier now, but also much safer. HRM] Has…

If you grew up in the 1960s and 1970s, you know the name Craig Breedlove. He’s the builder and driver of the Spirit of America jet car and the first person in history to reach 400, 500, and 600 mph on land. In 1962, he averaged 407.45 mph with the first Spirit of America, a Shell Oil–sponsored, three-wheeled car with a GE J47 jet engine. Breedlove upped the mark to 526 mph in 1964, but ended up in a lake at the end of the salt flats when a parachute didn’t work. The car was fixed and placed in the Chicago Museum of Science and Technology, where it resides today. Breedlove went on to build the four-wheeled Sonic I with a J79 engine and entered the FIA record book with…

The Tiger. The Goat. GeeTo. The Great One. The Humbler. Call it what you will, but when the Pontiac GTO was introduced to America in September 1963, it created an entirely new market segment that sparked a reaction throughout the auto industry. Today we know that reaction as the muscle-car era. By 1966, all the domestic automobile manufacturers had their response to the GTO. Some were good, some were hastily slapped together, and others missed the mark altogether. It could be argued that none of them possessed the combination of performance, style, image, and affordability of the GTO. 1964: BRINGING A LEGEND TO MARKET Pontiac Chief Engineer John DeLorean encouraged engineers to come to work on Saturday mornings for informal meetings. One such Saturday, he and engineers Russ…

WHAT IS THE ENGINE MASTERS CHALLENGE? The Engine Masters Challenge is a yearly competition Popular Hot Rodding magazine has hosted for more than a decade. The emphasis of the Challenge is to build hot street-style engines using OEM-replacement-style parts while retaining the factory engine architectures. In 2013, the invitational brought together engine builders from around the country to dyno-test motors modified to produce horse-power and torque in the 3,000–7,000-rpm range. Key limitations were a 7,000-rpm redline, a compression ratio max of 11.5:1, hydraulic cam, and OEM-replacement-style heads and valvetrain. Testing was conducted at the University of Northwestern Ohio’s School of High Performance Motorsports dyno facility using a Superflow Powermark engine dyno, running on VP unleaded fuel. In 2014, HOT ROD will have the privilege of covering the AMSOIL…

Contact HOLLEY; Bowling Green, KY; 270.781.9741; Holley.com…

Batteries are rated according to standards developed by the Battery Council International (BCI). For car guys, the most important specs are: Cold Cranking Amps (CCA): The discharge load in amperes that a new, fully charged battery can deliver at 0 degrees Fahrenheit for 30 seconds while maintaining a voltage of 1.20 volts/cell or higher. This measures the battery’s ability to start (crank) an engine under low-temperature conditions where the chemical reaction inside the battery slows down: A battery puts out 100 percent of its rated power at 80 degrees, 65 percent at 32 degrees, and only 40 percent at 0 degrees. CCA is great for comparing battery performance in cold climate areas, but in hot climates lead-acid batteries with extremely high CCA ratings may actually have a shorter life than…

Magazine-endorsed, cross-country blitzes in hot rods have been happening since the 1950s when Bob Hirohata took his Barris custom 1951 Merc to an India-napolis car show, and it was chronicled in Rod & Custom magazine. In 1970, R&C sponsored a gathering of pre-1949 hot rods in what has become the Street Rod Nationals. Their aim then, as is ours now with the Power Tour®, was to take your car out and drive it. It’s no better conveyed than in this 1971 shot by Bud Bryan, from his A-V8 roadster, of Jake Jacobs and Tom Senter in Jake’s restored Niekamp roadster—the first Grand National Roadster Show winner, somewhere along the Texas plains. The occasion is the trek to the second Street Rod Nationals in Memphis. Bud, Jake, and fellow trekker Ron…

Want to share your car with the whole world? Send photos and info to HOTROD@HotRod.com. Scott Richner //Bellefonte, Pennsylvania Here are Scott and his girlfriend Linda’s Mustangs. Scott’s (blue one) is a 289, five-speed car while Linda’s (red one) is 351 Cleveland five-speed. Ted Garza //Tucson, Arizona Ted’s owned this 1970 Plymouth Duster since 1996. Since then, he’s rebuilt the 360 with a Holly 750, Edelbrock manifold and heads, and TTI headers. 10 Things We Learned at NASCAR’s Sonoma Road Race Picking a driver and watching them wrestle their car around lap to lap, collecting dings, scuffs, and patches of duct tape could easily keep you entertained—but the real action at a NASCAR road race is in the pits. HOT ROD scored a hot pass for the Toyota/Save Mart 350,…

HOTROD.COM/ SKYDIVE Google “GM Building BASE Jump” to see a 2010 video of three daredevils parachute from the top of the 73-story Marriott hotel that occupies the center tower. Don’t even think about attempting that today!…

I absolutely enjoyed every minute with HOT ROD—what a kick!—Ron Meis Ron Meis will tell you he’s been reading HOT ROD cover-to-cover longer than he’s been driving, and it has added fuel to his fire for building cars since he first started turning wrenches at 14. When his buddies were getting into 4H, rodeos, and other single-horsepower pursuits, Meis was building custom cars and has stayed deeply involved ever since. He’s not sorry about the direction his life took. Though a marketing business paid his bills, Meis was always wrenching on cars. He’s put together some impressive machines and amassed a notable collection. After he sold his business and retired in 2007, Meis decided it was time to let someone else do the heavy lifting so he could…

Mike Diaz has owned plenty of GM G-bodies, so when he posted a wanted ad on Craigslist for a project car, he wasn’t thinking of picking up another one. When someone offered him a 1984 Buick Regal T-Type with what they claimed was a twin-turbo 3.8L prototype engine, Mike began to look into the pedigree of the powerplant. After some Internet searching, he learned that if the engine was what the seller was claiming it to be, it had been featured in HOT ROD in 1981 and it was built and tuned by Gale Banks and Kenne Bell for a car called Sunday Driver, a nod to the car’s NASCAR aspirations. It was at least worth checking out in person. Despite the car’s poor condition, Mike decided the engine was…

Contact OPEL GT SOURCE; Tuolumne, CA; 800.673.5487; OpelGTSource.com…

Long before he was building SEMA show cars, Bryan Fuller of Fuller Hot Rods (FullerHotRods.com) swapped a 351 Cleveland into a 1950 Plymouth for his own amusement. He later stored the car in his friend Smiley’s barn. One day, Smiley tried to move the Plymouth. He says the motor had barely turned over when he heard a loud bang—and then silence. Terrible silence. Water had filled at least one cylinder, hydrolocking the engine and bending a connecting rod at almost a 45-degree angle. Without telling Fuller, Smiley tore the Cleveland down and replaced the bent rod and its piston. That’s a good friend—sorta. IF THE CURRENT OWNER ONLY KNEWÉ The Plymouth now belongs to the punk-band Pennywise’s lead-guitar player, Fletcher Dragge.…

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.…

Before this year’s Power Tour, I spent a week shooting cars sitting and rusting in North Carolina. My friend told me about a shop with a row of Mopars out front—’Cudas, Darts, and Road Runners. Out back there was a real B5 blue Challenger and a 1975 Dart Sport. Beyond those were a Lil’ Red Express, more Darts, a Road Runner, a GTX, and a Coronet. Even farther into the lot they had half a 1970 Road Runner, a 1969 Road Runner with a tree growing up through the engine bay, and an AMX. Sitting right there in the open were a 1969 Barracuda convertible and what remained of a 1968 Charger. Inside there were a bunch of restored cars, including a 1971 Challenger R/T and a 1971 Hemi ’Cuda…

Gene Fulton has won 14 IHRA national events. He’s a five-time IHRA Modified Eliminator champion, built the first ever 5-second Pro Mod nitrous motor, barrel-rolled a 1964 Chevy II wagon and then buried it behind his shop, and has his name next to Don Garlits over the grandstands at Bristol Dragway. When a man with his credentials decides to build a gasser over lunch, you better believe it’s going to be just a little out of the ordinary. To start with, Fulton’s 1941 Willys isn’t bogged down in retro-fussiness. It has the right stance and vibe to make you fantasize about the nose-high gasser wars of the 1950s and 1960s, but a closer look shows that like any good racer, Fulton values performance and power over making a…

Here’s your Long Haul Gang for 2014. These sometimes rowdy, sometimes mild-mannered folks ventured the full width and breadth of the Power Tour®, staring at zMAX Raceway in North Carolina and ending 1,600-plus miles away in Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin. Care to be part of the fun and bragging rights that go with Long Haul righteousness? Follow HOTROD.com for all of the info on next year’s Power Tour®, starting in Wisconsin. It could be one of those bucket-list experiences you’ll repeat year after year. For thousands more photos, visit HOTROD.COM/2014/POWER TOUR For a week’s worth of Power Tour® videos, visit HOTROD.COM/VIDEOS…

Contact LOKAR PERFORMANCE PRODUCTS; Knoxville, TN; 865.966.2269; Lokar.com…

The most maddening thing about electrical faults is their intermittent nature. Sometimes it seems as if they choose to happen only when there are no witnesses. A sort of volted gaslighting, designed to cause madness. So it has been recently with the Polara’s overcharging habit. It didn’t happen often. Every three months or so, I’d turn on the car and notice the voltage would peg high. The throttle response would be labored, and the turn signals would stop working. One time it happened late at night, and by the time I got home I’d burned out both headlights from overcharging. As is often the game plan with hard-to-repeat problems, we changed parts at random—a battery here, a voltage regulator there, both headlights. There would be a period where all seemed…

THE COMBO In 2005 Jake Robb bought his wife Rebecca a 1987 Buick Grand National (GN) as a first wedding anniversary present. Since then, the Robbs racked up only a few thousand miles per year on the car, storing the GN during the winter and taking it out of hibernation for summer cruising and sundry car show appearances. The Robbs say the previous owner had mildly hopped up the original, non-rebuilt, turbocharged 231ci V6 engine, adding typical bolt-ons but leaving the engine internally stock. Among those upgrades were an aftermarket inlet duct and air filter; a cat-back exhaust system plus a “replacement catalytic converter test pipe”; a water-methanol injection system; a 160-degree thermostat; and custom-burned chips for the stock GM ECU (electronic control unit). The fuel-supply system was…

I’ve owned two foreign cars: a 1978 Toyota Land Cruiser and a 1967 VW Bug. I four-wheeled the Cruiser everywhere until I couldn’t live with myself for driving an import and got a Bronco. I never drove the clapped-out VW before I sold it, but these days I think I might be able to live with myself if I had a good one. Not sure yet. I’m very into history, and I assign so much sense of self to the cars I drive that I have trouble getting past the fact that the Beetle was born of a Hitler brainstorm. Even so, the Bug has become part of our culture such that it’s Americanized in many ways—especially hot rodding ways. I’ll argue that air-cooled VWs are the most acceptable import…