Indholdsfortegnelse for May 2019 i Hot Rod

Network Content Director @douglas.glad FCA doesn’t advertise that it will tow, but the 2019 Redeye makes enough power to tow like a fishing trawler. The red-key-fob mode on the center display told me 798 hp on pump fuel from the 6.2L Hemi. While it’s bringing in the nets, it can warm your hands, your butt, defrost the windows, connect to your phone to make calls, and do just about everything else you can think of in terms of “connectivity.” That’s just the new-car stuff. It also does muscle-car stuff like make copious, whistling horsepower and deliver fantastic burnouts—glorious, sideways burnouts. In fact, it’s so aggressive that it will break the tires loose at almost any speed south of 100 mph. Fun colors? Check. Hood blisters and functional airscoops? Check. Muscle-car…

Detroit has long been home to some of the most impressive, ground-pounding drag cars that the racing community has ever seen, and an insatiable desire for speed seems to course through the veins of those who live there. John Wilhelm spent his childhood riding his bike around a suburb of the Motor City that was full of people working on cars in their driveways and knew at a very young age he wanted a part of the action. So much so that he got into a bit of trouble for driving cars before he even had his license. He actually had to sell his first car, a 1969 Camaro he had bought at 15 years old, to pay for his sister’s car after one of those joyrides went sideways. Despite…

On the fall of 1969, Tony Palmieri accompanied his dad to their local Pontiac dealer to purchase a new Catalina. While dad was signing the papers, 10-year-old Tony was perusing the showroom. One car, in particular, captured the impressionable lad’s imagination: “There was a brand-new 1970 GTO, and I was able to sit in it,” Tony says. “Then and there, I promised myself that one day I would have my own GTO!” Everything about his first GTO encounter—the look, feel, and even the smell—was seared into Tony’s brain. Ten years later, when he was finishing college and getting ready to buy a car, there was no question what it would be. With help from muscle-car pal Don Schwenker, he located a sweetheart of a GTO in December 1980. “It was…

441 cubic inches. 2,625 hp. 1,767 lb-ft. 40 pounds of boost. That’s the current state of engine-builder Ken Duttweiler’s latest Bonneville land-speed-record (LSR) engine that, when fully developed and debugged, he hopes will recapture Bonneville’s fastest piston-engined crown, currently held by Danny Thompson in the refurbished, 50-year-old “Challenger 2” Streamliner originally first driven back in 1968 by Danny’s dad, the legendary Mickey Thompson. Danny’s new high-water mark of 448.757 mph over the 5-mile-long salt flats course set just last summer surpasses the previous 2012 Bonneville SCTA high-water mark achieved by a single Duttweiler-built, 347ci small-block Chevy in George Poteet’s Speed Demon (HOT ROD, April 2012). Running in AA/FS (AA/Fuel Streamliner), Challenger 2 needed two 2,500hp, nitro-fueled, unblown, old-school, 500ci, dry-block Hemi engines to get the overall two-way record. Duttweiler plans…

Dart’s 10-degree Gen III oval-port, CNC-ported, cast-aluminum heads are designed for maximum competition LS engines with a 4.155-inch-or-larger bore. The valve order is reversed from “standard” LS motors, placing the No. 1 exhaust valve closest to the “China wall” (front valley bulkhead) on the driver side. Dart claims this layout offers more power potential in a Wedge-style engine, but on Duttweiler’s extreme motor, it may have contributed to a valvetrain issue (see Oiling sidebar). “We don’t touch the heads.”— Ken Duttweiler…

On the eve of Halloween at the 2018 SEMA Show, Mopar unleashed the demonic mother lode of all crate engines that will scare the living hell out its Motor City rivals. Aptly dubbed “Hellephant,” the new supercharged Gen III 426ci HEMI monster will knock down 1,000 hp and 950 lb-ft of Goliath-stomping torque on 93-octane pump gas, and for the Pentastar faithful, this crate motor checks all the right boxes. From its legendary cubic-inch displacement, all-new aluminum block, massive supercharger, and plug-and-play electronics, many customers will be lining up to plunk down their cold, hard cash to install this modern-world crate HEMI between the fenders of a 1968 Dodge Charger or 1971 Plymouth ’Cuda. To create an engine of this magnitude, Mopar knew it would have to start with a…

The “best” small-block-based engine may not be a pure LS block and heads but an amalgam having the best attributes of both the early classic (Gen 1) and the LS (Gen III/IV) series. About 10 years ago, Bill Mitchell developed the Motown Warhawk III block that essentially has a classic Gen 1 small-block lower end for improved windage; uses the higher LS deck height with raised LS-type large-journal cam (but with a rear distributor gear added on); and directly accepts the LS heads, lifters, valvetrain, valley cover, and intake manifolds. Back in 2009, World Products and Mitchell compared similar 427ci small-block engine packages but with different-generation blocks and heads: a Gen I–style small-block built using its Motown block and Motown 23-degree-valve-angle, conventional, small-block Gen I–style cylinder heads; a Gen III…

Roadkill @davidfreiburger Family vacation turned into automotive life lessons! Here’s the setup: I flew to St. Louis for a family Christmas and bought a cheap 4x4 to drive home to Los Angeles (through blizzard conditions) with my 11-year-old boy. When I got home, I flipped the SUV to a friend for cheap. So what? Here goes. Lesson 1: I’ve preached for years, but take road trips on the tiny byways whenever possible. The absolute highlight this time was running into an old guy who gave us a tour of a bank building that his grandfather built in 1906 in a block-long town in Kansas. The place was never renovated and is a time capsule of long-lost America. In Colorado we stumbled into Bishop’s Castle, a crazy-brilliant edifice built by one…

Executive Editor @john.mcgann I recently spent several hours behind the wheel of Lucky Costa’s 1967 C10. It’s a vehicle the HOT ROD Garage co-host and I assembled from a pile of parts buried under a tarp and turned into a rolling chassis on a Saturday about a year ago. Since then, he has filled the vacant engine compartment with a take-out 5.3L and 4L60E combination that runs on Holley’s HP EFI engine-management system. The engine fires at the first twist of the key, idles at 700 rpm, and the coolant never gets above 195 degrees. A big aluminum radiator and electric fans help keep the engine temperature in check, while the underdash Vintage Air HVAC system keeps cabin temperatures cozy. Braking comes from stock square-body C10 discs up front and…

Body swaps are difficult to successfully pull off. Consider the oddly proportioned Ferrari bodykits on C4 Corvette or Fiero chassis. Unless the dimensions of both cars are nearly identical, like a Tri-Five body on a B-body Caprice frame, your average body swap usually looks a bit off because of the work required to make the two line up. Given that, we were dubious of the success of this swap—a 1969 Charger built on a 2016 Hellcat chassis—when we first heard about it more than a year ago. The shop that performed the entire build in-house, Cleveland Power & Performance (CP&P), performed some sleight of hand by disguising its subtle craftsmanship with a set of garish-looking chrome wheels in its in-process build photos. “Yeah, we did that on purpose,” CP&P owner…

Dart’s new LS NEXT race block essentially offers big-block–like displacement possibilities in a narrow, compact package. The cast-iron version can be built out to 454 ci (4.200 bore x 4.100 stroke), but Duttweiler stayed “conservative” with a 441.4ci build (4.165 bore x 4.050 stroke), just enough to make the A/BFS class’s 441ci minimum displacement requirement. Despite its short-skirt configuration, Dart’s block accepts LS-style side motor mounts, LS lifters and camshaft, stock front timing and rear block covers, starters, and water pumps. Dart claims a short skirt improves oil windage issues, permitting deletion of a stock block’s internal hollow windage passages to yield a rigid casting with no need for stock-style cross bolts. However, the new configuration does require an oil-pan spacer (available from Dart) to use standard LS-profile pans and…

Rigidity and dependability is the mandate to survive Bonneville, so hang the weight: Cleveland-size main journals on a custom Crower billet crank, thickened-up-profile Crower steel rods, robust Diamond pistons, and unbendable, thickwall H-13 tool-steel piston pins. Then there’s the geometry: You want a sufficiently long con rod to maintain a decent rod/stroke ratio with the stroker crank, but on an engine that must last long enough for at least four 5-mile passes under extreme power and boost levels, a thick piston deck and ample distance between each ring groove and the top groove and the piston deck is also needed. Getting there mandates moving the pin hole down on the rather short 1.175-inch, compression-distance piston, which impacts piston skirt configuration. Yet the piston pin still impinges into the oil-ring groove,…

Traditional automotive ignition systems can be either inductive discharge or capacitive discharge. Traditionally, old-school stock engines had inductive discharge systems that rely on the coil to do most of the work. The coil takes in battery voltage (typically, 12 to 14 volts) and steps it up to thousands of volts to create a hot enough spark to jump the spark-plug gap. The time it takes for the coil to transform battery voltage to output voltage is called dwell or coil saturation. At higher rpm, there may be insufficient time for the coil to recover and step up the battery voltage between firings. The ways around this are hotter coils and aftermarket add-on inductive ignition boxes. Capacitive discharge (CD) systems, usually designed around an add-on CD box, have an internal transformer…

Narrow Bench-Seat Cruiser Console Cup Holders Plus // 888.978.6300 // CupHoldersPlus.com As awesome as bench seats are, they lack essential cupholders for road-tripping your classic ride. Cup Holders Plus presents its made-in-the-USA Cruiser Console for vehicles that have bench seats. It is narrow enough to not take up real estate when strapped down to the seat while providing ample storage in the felt-lined storage compartment to go along with standard cupholders. The lid is padded and serves as an armrest as well. Cup Holders Plus offers 48 colors, and you can request free color samples before you buy. For events like Power Tour® or Drag Week™, this would be an ideal addition! Price: $109.90 LS Classic Fuelie Intake LS Classic // 330.241.9520 LSclassic.com The LS Classic 63 Fuelie Intake is…

A tip led us to this historic, two-story brick building that originally housed a department store many decades ago. The first floor was being used mostly for storage of several people’s cars, with the second floor mostly warehousing an eclectic cache of speed parts. A 1969 Camaro is still trapped up there because the freight elevator no longer works. This is just another example of gearheads buying old buildings in small towns, where your money can get much more.…

There—did you feel it? It wasn’t much, perhaps a tiny spike on the seismograph at Cal Tech way out in Pasadena, California. But the origin of that anomaly wasn’t underground in some antediluvian West Coast fault line; Mike Moran was making a pull on his dyno in Taylor, Michigan. And the earth moved! All that torque has to go somewhere. That might be a slight exaggeration, but 5,300 hp is no fairy tale. It is just another workaday effort for Moran. HOT ROD readers should be familiar with Moran. We can trace his quarter-mile footprints in these pages all the way back to the 1992 Fastest Street Car event in Memphis, where he showed up with an 8-second nitrous Pinto. He’s been pushing the seismic envelope ever since. But this…

Due to their reversed valve order, Dart’s splay-valve heads need a custom Gen V LT1-style camshaft. Duttweiler’s solid-roller cams are ground by Comp Cams from a tool-steel billet. Duttweiler explains, “Tool steel is better material; it’s more wear-resistant, thanks to one-pass machining that results in the same hardness all the way through.” Driven by an RCD geardrive, the cam rolls on regular Dura-Bond babbitt bearings in standard LS 55mm cam journals. “If we went with rollerized cam bearings, we’d have to bore the cam tunnel oversize,” Duttweiler says. “With our already oversize Cleveland main bearings, that compromises the strength of the block.” “With normal cam billet alloys, you often will see a lifter-roller mark on the lobe. Not with Comp’s tool-steel billets!”— Ken Duttweiler…

As of January 2019, the 441ci LS has pounded out highs of 1,767.2 lb-ft of torque, and 2,624.9 hp (both at 7,800 rpm). Low-end (under 6,600 rpm) output is restricted to prevent traction loss at lower rpm. A peak 40.16 psi of boost and 120 psi of fuel pressure occur at 8,100 rpm, the highest point tested. Oil pressure is as high as 110 psi at 7,500 rpm. If everything holds together, this combo could put Speed Demon into the 480-mph-plus range over a 5-mile Bonneville Salt Flats course. “This engine will make 2,200 lb-ft at 6,000 rpm, but it will break parts. We have to carefully ramp the boost up as rpm goes up to avoid wheelspin.”— Ken Duttweiler…

Q:I have two questions I believe are related: 1. Why do LS engines rev higher and reach peak horsepower and torque at greater rpm than a traditional small-block with similar cam-duration figures? 2. Why do LS engines not seem to benefit as much as a traditional small-block from the addition of long-tube (equal-length) headers? A: Back in 1955, you (or your grandpa) might have posed a very similar question: “Why does that newfangled small-block Chevy make more peak power and torque at a higher rpm than my trusty Flathead Ford?” The short answer: “Technology marches on.” Broadly speaking, modern Gen III–and–later LS engines benefit from nearly a half century of progress since the original small-block’s debut, many of which are thanks to the tribal knowledge gleaned by racing traditional Chevy…

Phillip Thomas Staff Editor @texasthomas The Cheeseburger Budget I get called out for this enough that have to explain myself: I tend to value everything around the price of a cheeseburger—give or take, $10 to $15. We can be talking about used parts, and I’ll tell you exactly how many cheeseburgers that costs. Why? Well, they’re my favorite vice (with bacon), and life is about weighing opportunity costs—or the sacrifice of making a mutually exclusive decision, if you slept through economics. You spend money on what you prioritize most, be it speed parts or cheeseburgers. Your greenbacks are finite, so it’s up to you to decide if a cheeseburger is worth more than whatever is next on the cardboard punch list. Especially when you’re young and dumb with no real…