Indholdsfortegnelse for December 2014 i Hot Rod

As best I can tell, that famous invocation dates back to the 1948 running of the Indianapolis 500. It’s a clever verse (as old as HOT ROD itself) that’s unleashed the fury of eager drivers and new technology for more than 60 years. But it’s more than just starting-line speak. It’s a call to action that reminds us every great automotive accomplishment begins with new engines coming to life. The ladies and gentlemen of Detroit have started new engines once again, and hot rodders can rejoice. We cherish our piston-powered, torque-producing devices. We celebrate them by sticking ’em through hoods, swapping them into cars, and assembling them with the same love and care we show our newborn children. But why? What is it about these assemblies that capture our imaginations?…

Saleen Tesla Foursixteen. It took a minute for us petrol-burners to make sense of it. Saleen: the name we’ve seen on generations of tuner Mustangs, and which we know for the amazing Saleen S-7 supercar. Tesla: a brilliant Serbian electrical wizard, a hair band, or the only electric car company that’s made noise in our part of the performance industry, mostly thanks to its South African power-house of a founder, Elon Musk. Foursixteen: that was new to us. Apparently, it refers to the 416 hp in a base-model Tesla Model S sedan, one thing that Saleen didn’t mess with. It all adds up. Saleen Tesla Foursixteen. Are you ready for an electric tuner car? Our first glance at the photo of the Four-sixteen’s nose made us think it was a…

If you’ve paid attention to Freiburger and Finnegan’s Roadkill episodes or any of our recent guides to buying a project car, you’ll know that we’re fans of Craigslist. Now Craigslist has added size, type, drive, fuel, transmission, and title status to their search function, so if you’re looking for a specific type of vehicle—like a 4x4 truck or a diesel sedan—your quest may have become easier. The only required terms when posting a car for sale are year, make, and model, and the status of the title (clean, salvage, rebuilt, or parts only). As has always been the case, the accuracy of the search depends entirely on the accuracy of the post.…

It’s mind blowing that HOT ROD is based just three hours south, yet we had never been to Turner’s Auto Wrecking in Fresno, California. That changed recently, and we hung out there to bring you this photo tour of 100 acres of great junk and barn finds. Yup, 100. The place seems like it never ends. Yet more amazing than the grounds is the story of the owner, Jerry Turner, who has lived on the property since he was four in 1932! The house he grew up in still stands, and Jerry says the center part of it has been there since 1888. His dad farmed the land back in the Grapes of Wrath Era, and he bought Jerry a Model T for $10 when he was seven. By 10,…

A coachbuilt Jag? In HOT ROD? Hmmm, a coachbuilt anything doesn’t sound like a hot rod, does it? But that’s not how this project got going. It started as an old Jaguar sedan getting some attitude adjustment of its profile with a healthy chop and lowered modern suspension. You know, like a hot rod. It’s easier to start a project from thin air if you’re Rick Dore and the car you’re building belongs to Metallica’s James Hetfield. Rick has been the facilitator of close to 50 custom cars and hot rods in the last 20 or so years, first out of his shop in Phoenix, and then continuing after making a move to its current Carlsbad, California, location. As for Hetfield? Well, if you don’t know the name,…

PERFORMANCE AS TESTED Rear-Wheel Horsepower: 368 at 5,500 rpm Rear-Wheel Torque: 360 at 5,070 rpm Time on Streets of Willow: 1 minute, 18.62 seconds Quarter-Mile: 12.459 seconds at 114.03 mph Speed Through 420-Foot Slalom: 32.427 mph HRM STAFF AVERAGE RANKING ON A SCALE OF 1–10, 10 BEING BEST: Competence In Its Intended Purpose: Chick’s roadster is visually exciting, low, fast and comfortable, with decent handling and 18-mpg average from a dualquad Hemi, to boot. And to top that, it was a contender for the AMBR award at the 2013 Grand National Roadster Show. We don’t know how anything could have been done to improve on this. Ranking: 10 Performance vs. Potential: Surrounding the ancient Hemi with EFI and an overdrive automatic transmission, and using the most contemporary approach to heads…

“Hey, what are you doing Monday?” asked Dave Smith, owner and founder of Factory Five Racing (FactoryFive.com). We were at the Factory Five annual car show in Huntington Beach, California, and Dave was holding the keys to two brand-new Factory Five roadsters. He gestured to the cars, which included the HOT ROD roadster, an all-new, blown 5.0L Coyote Aluminator–powered ’33. “Want to take the cars out?” he asked. We were happy to oblige. We decided to play tourist around L.A., looping through downtown and back to Venice Beach, but our first stop was a dyno shop: Racer’s Edge Tuning in Downey. After an hour in traffic, our tires had barely stopped moving before the rollers of the dyno started spinning. We laid down a screaming 436 hp and…

Faking a modern Shelby Mustang isn’t nearly as easy as it was faking the 1960s version. Modern Ford GT500s are such a different beast that if you spy a supercharged 5.4L or 5.8L under the hood, it’s quite likely you’re dealing with the real thing. However, it is still mechanically possible to swap everything over a standard GT, or even V6 car, so an unscrupulous shop could combine a crashed GT500 and clean base-model car to try and turn a profit. We’ve even seen a few homebrewed projects pulled off the same way. The guy who built it might be honest with you, but a few years and owners later, the truth might get muddy. ONLINE DECODER If you want to get a full rundown on the VIN for any…

Photographer Bob D’Olivo catches AJ Foyt in the Sheraton Thompson Fairlane, pole winner Curtis Turner in Smokey Yunick’s famous 1966 Chevelle, and LeeRoy Yarbrough in the Jon Thorne 1967 Charger midway through the 1967 Daytona 500. With Chrysler boycotting NASCAR racing in 1965 and Ford doing the same for most of 1966, the 1967 Daytona 500 saw a real big-block rivalry with Chrysler, Ford, and Chevy all back in the hunt. Chevy had its 427 big-blocks, Chrysler its second-gen Hemis, and Ford was running 427 FE engines for 7.0L nirvana across the board. Mario Andretti won with Fred Lorenzen in second—both racing Holman-Moody–prepped 1967 Fairlanes. Dodge and Plymouth took the next three places, and the highest position for Chevy was Donnie Allison in a 1966 Chevelle coming in 11th.…

Jim Brady // Pocomoke City, Maryland Jim’s grandfather purchased this 1963 Bel Air in 1962. Originally a straight-six car, it now has a swapped-in 327, four-speed trans, and 3.70 gears. Todd White // Merced, California This 1970 Ford Mustang Mach1 is hiding a 436ci Kaase Boss 429. The motor was one of Jon Kaase’s entries in the 2008 Engine Masters Challenge, where it produced 746 hp. Chad Freemany // Huntsville, Alabama Chad began with a rotted-out, six-cylinder car that didn’t run and built a 408ci V8 topped with a 750-cfm Holley double pumper. Kit Whitey // United Kingdom You’re looking at a Rover-V8-powered Austin A35 riding on a Reliant Kitten chassis, Ford Anglia front axle, and MGB GT rear axle. Shaun Wintersy // Lake Mary, Florida This is a real…

“Guess, just guess what this is,” said Gary Cerveny, pointing at the engine in his Hisso Special roadster. We examined the mill, noting its canted stance, bare aluminum finish, and mix of cast and custom-fabricated components. We went frantically through our memory banks searching for the answer before admitting defeat. “Uh, airplane engine?” was our lame guess. As it turns out, we were half right. The dragster’s four-cylinder is a custom construction made by removing one bank of a 1914 Hispano-Suiza aircraft V8. The resulting 358ci four-banger is often referred to as a “Half-a-Hisso,” thus the Hisso Special name on Gary’s machine. To understand why anyone would cut up a perfectly good 718ci V8, you’ll need to go back in time to the end of WWI. Surplus military…

“You take the blue pill, the story ends…you take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.”—Morpheus, offering Neo a chance at enlightenment from The Matrix. In The Matrix, Neo takes the red pill and discovers a world ruled by machines. We took the red key and discovered a frighteningly powerful machine, the 707hp 2015 Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat. We, for one, welcome our new high-horsepower overlords, but even if new cars aren’t your thing, you might want to pay attention to what’s coming out of Detroit these days. Why? Three reasons: 1. You might want to buy one. The opportunity to purchase, with a warranty, a passenger car that will beat European supercars and classic-car legends will not…

When Tadge Juechter and the rest of the Corvette team were tasked with building the C7 Z06 Corvette, the best factory Corvette ever, they had to engineer a car that could be wielded on a track with surgical precision by the best of drivers, yet behave as a daily driver and sell in high enough volume to justify the expense of the vehicle’s development. One of the ways the team was able to create such a formidable car and help widen its appeal is the addition of the 8L90 eight-speed automatic. Before any purists cry foul, the Z06 is still offered with a seven-speed Tremec transmission, yet the sports-car market is definitely moving away from traditional manuals, so it was a matter of evolving the car to survive. From day…

Pete Aardema marches to the beat of a different drummer. For years his niche has been one-off overhead cam (OHC) conversions on mainstream V8 pushrod engine architectures, starting with the production block and adapting existing OHC cylinder heads—usually from a variety of imports—to them. He firmly believes OHC engine architecture is superior to pushrod-engine technology due to its higher rpm capability, greater valvetrain stability, lighter weight, and suitability for multivalve combustion-chamber configurations that permit more valve envelope area (and hence more airflow) for a given bore size. Also for years, Aardema has raced old Ford Model A–based four-cylinder engines in Bonneville’s nostalgia classes. As Pete’s Model A motors evolved, he treated them to ever more radical OHC conversions and later extreme block deck-height modifications that included shortened deck-height blocks…

We were walking through the pits at the Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion at Laguna Seca, when we saw a sight more commonly associated with our garages—a man waist-deep in the engine bay of a 1970 1/2 Camaro. “Dude, you’re gonna have to push really hard to power this thing,” we teased him, and to his credit, he laughed. “It blew up,” he told us. “Another one is on the way.” Before we could sigh and seethe with jealousy about the luxury of having another engine on the way, he told us that the engine that was coming was in a running car, so they would have to take that one out, put it in the race car, and hope it ran as well as the high-revving 302 they just blew…

Black, Plain and Simple Lokar // 877.469.7440 // Lokar.com Lokar has long been the place to go for stuff like pedals, throttle cables, and linkage kits. Now it offers most of those parts in black stainless steel. Included in the black line are Lokar’s engine and transmission dipstick housing (with matching black anodized aluminum fittings) for GM, Ford, and Chryslers; its cable mounting brackets; and the kickdown and throttle cables. So go ahead, murder out your engine compartment! Price: Starting at $16.64 (brackets) to $129.95 (Anchor-Tight locking trans dipstick) Fuel Sender Classic Instruments 800.575.0461 Classic Instruments.com For hot rods that have unique fuel-tank situations where a stock-style, swing-arm, fuel-sending unit won’t work, Classic Instruments has a new tube-style fuel-sending unit. Tube-style sending units are also less susceptible to erratic readings…

Wes Allison is so hardcore he once punched a man for ruining his shot. We can only imagine what a jerk that guy must have been, because normally, nothing fazes Wes. He’s been shooting automotive photography for 25 years, and he’ll crawl under cars and hang out of moving vehicles—including helicopters (despite the fact he hates heights)—all to get the shot. He can coordinate a moving multi-car shoot with nothing but hand signals and grunts, and we wouldn’t be surprised if he’s shot more car-magazine covers than any other photographer ever. “There was a period of time where I’d sometimes have five or six covers on the newsstand at once,” Wes says. But he didn’t start out with a plan to shoot cars: “After getting out of school, I did…

The 50th anniversary of the 1964 Winternationals marked the NHRA’s lifting of its “fuel ban.” What was the fuel ban? Wally Parks, head domo of the NHRA, was concerned about the speeds dragsters were running and the violent nature of engine failures burning nitro. So it was that after five-plus years of gasoline-only racing at NHRA-sanctioned tracks that Parks decided to run the 1963 Winter-nationals without the ban as an “experiment.” Then it was back to gas-only until the ban was lifted for good at the 1964 Winternationals. There was rejoicing in the streets and a week-long holiday was imposed nation-wide to celebrate. Not really, but drag-racing fans were more than glad NHRA was back to Top Fuel. Not that you had to look far to find nitro burning at…

I traveled to the center of Michigan to follow up on a lead about a field of dreams. A reader had told me there was a field full of Chevrolets hidden in a suburban neighborhood. I met the property owner and saw a rare Chevelle convertible and 1956 Chevrolet he had in the garage, but it was out back where things got interesting. We jumped in a truck and drove over a hill to a patch of first-generation Camaros sitting in a small valley. The owner said at one time the whole bowl was filled with Camaros. Over another hill, we came across a group of Chevelles, El Caminos, and a few Monte Carlos. The most noteworthy car was a 1970 Chevelle SS. The Chevelle’s front end had been removed,…

Many high-end hot rod builders throughout the country choose the SEMA Show in Las Vegas to debut significant cars that showcase their shops and skills. What better way is there to get a new build in front of the after-market industry and enthusiast attendees? HOT ROD readers love seeing these finished cars, but maybe more so the process and progress leading up to the final product, so we have assembled a few in-progress builds by some of the stalwarts in SEMA Show car debuts. The SEMA Show continues to forecast the direction and trends in the after-market, while telegraphing the depth and breadth of modifying old and new cars alike. Make sure you look for the these cars at SEMA 2014. We’ve come to expect a Pure Vision/Steve…

What do you do when the Deuce roadster of your dreams is stolen from the parking lot of the Grand National Roadster Show and never recovered? You give up hot rods and build a blown ski boat for the river, right? Not Chick Koszis. When his insurance company paid off on his claim, he jumped right back into the roadster parade with some unfinished business of one-upping his former Deuce by plenty. Chick wanted a serious hot rod roadster that was also a driver. “I like to take long-distance trips in my roadster,” Chick says. To prove it, he’s amassed more than 12,000 miles on this roadster’s ticker in the year-and-a-half since he debuted it as a contender for the America’s Most Beautiful Roadster crown at the 2013…

The C7 Corvette Z06 was always gonna happen. Back in 2008, even when the U.S. economy was down a few cylinders and the C6 ZR1 had yet to start production, Tadge Juechter, Corvette chief engineer, knew he wanted an engine above LT1 for a track package on the C7 Corvette. By 2009, the project was underway. The development team, led by Jordan Lee and John Rydzewski, considered all options, but the lightweight, compact, power-dense small-block was a shoo-in. It was the best option for packing enough power under the Corvette’s low-slung hood, and the recent addition of direct injection opened up even more room to make power. Because the engine was destined for the Z06, engineers were trying to replace the LS7, so the initial target, shaped in…

Chrysler has always had an odd relationship with its motorsports involvement, never as officially hands-of as GM, nor as “Destroy All Enemies No Matter the Cost” as Ford. Even in the heyday of powerful Pentastars, during the development of the 426 Hemi, there were a comparatively small number of engineers working on racing projects. Many of the famous Ramchargers spent their own time and money to get cars to the track for testing and grassroots marketing. Judging by the Chrysler engineers we met at Summit Motorsports Park during Power Tour® 2014, the spirit of the independent Ramcharger is still alive and well. There were several Dodge (some-times SRT) Vipers on Power Tour®, and three of them were straight from Detroit, with current or former Viper engineers behind the…

In its OEM form, Ford’s 1970–1974 351ci Cleveland small-block could be considered a case of “too much, too late.” Starting with the basic architecture of the Windsor small-block, the Cleveland was built with a unique 9.206-inch-deck-height block and cylinder heads that used a canted-valve layout. This head design minimizes valve shrouding and unlocks the space for massive valves. Ford produced Cleveland heads in small-port, small-valve versions for 2-bbl applications and in big-port, big-valve configuration for 4-bbl engines. In 4-bbl form, the Cleveland heads were in a league of their own in comparison to other small-block heads. If there is a flaw in its design, it is the compromised exhaust port, which hooks downward at a steep angle toward a low flange to facilitate exhaust manifold installation in vehicles.…

“At this price, it’s not worth my time to haggle, so either show up with the cash or don’t buy it. I won’t pick up the phone again.” I think of myself as a pretty friendly person, but last weekend, I said the above words to a total stranger. A total stranger who just wanted to buy a cheap truck or, at least, wanted to talk to me about buying a cheap truck. For hours. I am the worst at selling vehicles. The problem is that I like all my cars, and I don’t want to sell them. I certainly don’t want to sell them to a bad home, which leads to conversations like this: Dude from Craigslist: Will it tow a detailing trailer with a 90-gallon water tank? Me:…

THE COMBO Over the last five years, Noah Keyes has been helping build his dad John’s 1965 Mustang fastback into a Shelby G.T. 350 clone that will someday be his-wise, that includes a G.T. 350-style Cobra aluminum intake manifold, a Holley 715-cfm carb with rare Le Mans float bowls, and Cobra aluminum valve covers. Other “correct” Ford Hi-Po 289 parts include an original factory dual-point distributor, a rare button-top Carter fuel pump, and the thick factory harmonic balancer. THE PROBLEM After the car’s 289ci engine developed an internal problem, Noah yanked it for rebuilding. When the Windsor block came back from the machine shop, it was washed and thoroughly scrubbed. All of its threaded holes were chased with a tap. Unfortunately, a ¼-20 tap broke off in one of…

Last month I asked you if VWs can be cool hot rods. This month, mini-trucks. I see them coming back. Before I continue, allow me to gratuitously and generously congratulate HOT ROD for a pretty solid track record in predictions of this kind. HOT ROD saw the straight-axle/altered-wheelbase thing coming long before it hit big—though I admit I was the wet blanket back in 2002, when I thought former staffer Steve Magnante’s AWB Wilshire Shaker Nova was way too niche for its own good. Today, it’s iconic of the trend. I did, however, forecast today’s 1970s street-machine blip, even if I was on it too early. Same with the current van craze. I bring these up because the audience has guffawed and rebelled each time we’ve provided distant early warning…