Indholdsfortegnelse for January 2018 i Hot Rod

The couple hundred sunscreen-slathered and boonie-hat-wearing men and women that were gathered around the Southern California Timing Association (SCTA) trailer for the driver meeting had recently moved to the starting line for Speed Week’s long course. George Poteet had just officially been awarded the HOT ROD trophy, which has been given to the fastest single flying mile at Speed Week each year of competition since 1949. For several teams, taking the trophy comes second on their list of goals only to setting a record, if at all. George and the Speed Demon team had earned the trophy at Speed Week 2016 with a 429.099-mph pass. It may seem odd to award the trophy a year after winning, but the driver meeting is the only time each Speed Week where most…

If you’re looking to buy a quick family hauler and still fly under the radar, your options are limited. Chevrolet has ended production of its confusingly named but remarkably capable SS sedan, and thanks to the Hellcat’s viral marketing, everyone does a double take each time they spot a Charger to make sure it doesn’t have that telltale supercharger whine or roaring kitty emblem on the fender. A 707hp Jeep, on the other hand—they’ll never see that coming. We’ve been eagerly awaiting our chance to drive the Trackhawk since its unveiling early in 2017 at the New York International Auto Show. The first iteration of the Grand Cherokee SRT8 was shockingly quick with a 425hp Hemi V8 and all-wheel drive. We drove one way back in 2006 and took every…

We need a better universal sign language for highway use. I’ve written before about shouting answers to car questions at stoplights, but it’s an entirely different process to grasp what’s being said as you pass one another at 80 mph. The first challenge is just trying to figure out if your commuting conversationalist is hoping for a friendly chat or trying to tell you that you’re in imminent danger. That guy waving at you from the carpool lane, what’s his deal? Let’s see, it’s a roundy-round gesture and pointing to the tires. Do you have a flat? Is there a sea serpent wrapped up in the axle? Is a wheel falling off? Oh, he wants you to do a burnout. No, no wait—he wants you to know your hubcap is…

THE COMBO Jeff Smith has been writing about and working on hot rods just about forever. His squadron of first-generation Chevrolet A-bodies is a legend among fellow automotive journalists. But even legends have to deal with real-world problems. Smith recently had trouble getting the Muncie four-speed manual trans in his 1965 El Camino to go into gear. Judging from the volume of mail I get, shifting and clutch-engagement issues seem to touch a nerve with many of our readers. Here’s how Smith ultimately rescued himself. THE PROBLEM Several years ago, Smith installed a brand-new GM 350-HO crate engine in the El Camino. The late-style, one-piece rear-main-seal motor requires a different flywheel than earlier blocks that use two-piece rear main seals, both because of the late unit’s reduced flywheel-to-crank flange mounting-bolt…

Seventy years of HOT ROD. It freaks me out that I recall assembling the 50th anniversary issue. I was no longer a staffer at that point, but having started here in 1991, I’ve been on the masthead or at least closely involved with HOT ROD for well more than a third of the magazine’s existence. Yikes. That longevity has made me sort of a liaison between the pioneers and the new generation, as I was the last HRM editor to have personally known many of our early staffers. I feel it’s my responsibility to honor those gearhead forefathers with constant reminders of their legacy. Hence—and with apologies to countless editors who inspired us, but are not included here—I present what I consider to be the most influential HRM staffers of…

Kenny Arnold is behind the wheel of the brutal, heavily gusseted Scotty Fenn 100-inch dragster at the 1956 National Drag Championship campaigned by the Yeakel brothers. With a Cadillac engine built by Ted Griffin, the dragster would become the prototype for Fenn’s Chassis Research model TE 440 slingshot chassis; one of the most popular chassis of the 1950s, but that’s just the beginning. Fenn sold this dragster to two racers from San Diego to help fund his budding Chassis Research Company. Cliff Bedwell and Emery Cook initially ran the dragster with a flathead Ford, then a 331ci Chrysler, before heavily reworking the chassis and dropping in a nitro-fed, 354ci Hemi with an early Isky overlap cam that Fenn suggested be named “5-Cycle,” which Isky did, and one of Crower’s U-Fab…

The Woodward Dream Cruise, held each year in Detroit, attracts more old, American iron than almost any other event there is, and I stumbled across a yard packed with treasure on my way home. In the owner’s driveway was a C3 Corvette, a 1967 Dodge Coronet R/T convertible, as well as a 1962 Dodge Dart four-door he was modifying into a two-door. However, it was what was hiding in the garage that excited me most of all. The first thing I saw was an extremely rare four-cylinder Henderson Motorcycle leaning against a 1968 Camaro convertible. Further in was a fully optioned 1967 Camaro RS 327, but the car that made my jaw drop was the Sassy Grass Green 1971 Plymouth ’Cuda convertible with a 340 under the hood. These cars…

In HOT ROD Magazine’s extensive project-car history, few machines earn more respect than the Specials. These are competition vehicles that HRM has personally raced, supported, or sponsored—from land speed to marathon boat racing, and everything in between. Without a doubt, mechanical maniac Ak Miller and intrepid HRM Editor Ray Brock share a bulk of the responsibility for these insane adventures, reaching from the deserts of Mexico to the peaks of Colorado in everything from homebuilt, aluminum-chassis hot rods to near-stock Rancheros. With these racers and their machines, HRM has been able to leave its mark on legendary races like the NORRA 1000, Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, Bonneville Speed Week, and the Mille Miglia. AK MILLER’S CABALLO DE HIERRO (CABALLO I) HRM first sponsored Ak Miller’s Horse of Iron, aka…

Making a 20L, 1,200ci V12 completely from scratch seems beyond most all of our reaches, but here are a couple hot rodders in San Diego who have done just that. Land-speed racer Pete Aardema and offshore boat racer Kevin Braun have created a number of scratch-built engines, overhead-cam conversions, and crazy combos of homemade and aftermarket components. But our dynamic duo didn’t just jump into making engines, but rather eased into it when Aardema’s interest was piqued after seeing some rather exotic Pontiac Iron Duke four-banger “Super Duty” Cosworth heads. These were aftermarket 16-valve, double-overhead-cam (DOHC), aluminum heads. He and Braun reconfigured them for small-block Chevy applications, and Aardema Developments (AD) was born. Their next step was creating cam boxes to mount on stock Chevy heads, creating a single-overhead-cam (SOHC)…

With all of the radical changes we see in the design and execution of some professional and garage-built projects, it’s puzzling to look at a car like this 1928 Ford roadster—originally built by Fat Jack Robinson in the 1970s, though this is a contemporary shot—and not see a thing we’d change. We’ve come to expect design changes made to many professional builds, but sometimes you’ve got to wonder if it’s because it’s an improvement or a desperate grab for attention. All these decades after Jack built this hot rod, it still stops people in their tracks and swivels heads. Yet, there is not a single body modification performed on this 90-year-old design. The body is exactly as it came from Ford. The drivetrain was obviously improved, and stance and relationship…

Q: I ran into a problem while doing a top-end rebuild of the stock 350 Chevy small-block in my 1974 El Camino. I discovered while trying to reinstall a new factory-style balancer bolt and ¼-inch-thick washer that the previous owner had stripped the threads in the crank, so I could not tighten it to the 60 lb-ft the factory manual recommended.After doing some research on solutions and consulting with a mechanic friend, it appeared the best route was to get some 7⁄16-20 Grade 8 threaded rod, and use a lock washer and large nut. That would reduce the stresses on the remaining threads past the stripped area to pulling torque only. But after some fruitless searching, I had to abandon that idea. Grade 5 rod is available; Grade 8 is…

Growing up, you can’t help but compare your toy box to someone else’s. When the Joneses on the block get a new mini-bike and your parents give you the predictable “no fun allowed” safety talk, you tend to remember these things as an adult. “You know the story, it’s like when the kid down the street has one and you’re like, ‘aw man, c’mon, why not,’ but your parents say you’ll kill yourself,” Murray Pfaff, of Pfaff Designs, jokes. “For me, that was a kid named Joey. He’d go out and jump like 30 trash cans with a Trail 70!” This manifested until Murray was sitting at Chuck Yee’s shop, gawking at the Trail 70s he was restoring. After reminiscing about the mini-bikes of yore, he decided the 125cc Honda…

What can be said about a Model A that hasn’t been said before? Better question: What can be done to a Model A that hasn’t been seen before? This is what Andy Leach, owner of CAL Automotive Creations in Bennington, Nebraska, had to ask himself when a header-fabrication job snowballed into a full-kill build for the 2017 Detroit Autorama—ultimately, landing him a seat as one of the Great 8 finalists for the coveted Ridler Award. Early Fords have been the de facto hot rod canvas for nearly a century, and for good reason. Henry and his factories produced more than four million units, which made them cheap and plentiful for hot rodders and customizers, but after seven decades of chopping and channeling, you begin to feel like you’ve seen every…

At the dawn of drag racing, it was easy to tell which cars were fastest. They were the ones that looked like two rails, an engine, and four tires that someone sat on. Those stripped-down “bugs” or “rail jobs” were always the fastest, because they were pared down to the absolute minimum necessary to blitz the quarter-mile. The evolution of the dragster has seen leaps and also years that seemed they hit the limit of physics and technology for any further reduction in elapsed times. Then, the continued march of lower times and increased speeds would erupt, with teams and builders sharing or otherwise divining the factors for the latest chop-chop to conquering that familiar strip of concrete and asphalt. The advancement happened natively, with trial and error or a…

The introduction by Cadillac and Oldsmobile of overhead valve V8s in 1949 set off a wave of V8 fever that swept through the U.S. auto industry, starting with the premium brands and working its way down. Pontiac and Chevrolet were the last of GM’s divisions to get their versions in 1955. The Chevy 265 had the smallest displacement and was the most compact of The General’s group of new V8s, but it had the internal room to reach 350 ci by 1967. Just nine years earlier, the little V8 was thought to be close to maxed out with 283 ci and was joined in production by Chevy’s first big-block, the 348ci W-engine (best known as the 409), 2 ci smaller than the 350ci small-block. Fifty years ago, there were doubts…

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