Indholdsfortegnelse for September 2005 i Hot Rod

WILSHIRE BLVD. MUSICAL CHAIRS There’s a certain fondness for HOT ROD that not even the most die-hard, longtime reader or collector can understand. It’s a passion for the brand and legacy that’s shared only by those of us who’ve actually worked here, and it’s an odd feeling because there’s pride of involvement that’s tempered by the overwhelming reverence of HOT ROD being so much bigger than us. The magazine is an institution, we are its keepers, and we don’t really get to attach ourselves to the glory of having been here until we’re gone. Only then do staffers become part of the legacy. With turnover a near joke in the industry, the community of former staffers is well populated. There’s been a reasonable balance of dorks, but some of our…

VINTAGE BIG DADDY Check out this vintage photo of Don Garlits in Swamp Rat I, complete with whitewall recap slicks. The photo was taken in the summer of 1958 at the North Texas Timing Association [NTTA] dragstrip outside of Caddo Mills, Texas. Races were conducted on an old abandoned Army Air Corps concrete practice runway in a field outside of town. There were no buildings and no electricity-the NTTA used a trailer with an office and portable generator for electricity. I was in attendance at the races that day Don WooldridgeArlington, TX…

THE UNTOLD FIRE STORM Ed Pink’s final season of supplying fuel Hemis came to a spectacular climax with Super Shops’ unprecedented giveaway campaign of a Plymouth Arrow Funny Car. It got off to a bad start in the winter of 1980 with Ed McCulloch’s fiery maiden voyage at Orange County International Raceway (shown). McCulloch won the U.S. Nationals with the replacement car, and at Ontario Motor Speedway’s NHRA World Finals, Super Shops handed that car to a lucky customer. Never previously revealed is the behind-the-scenes drama that accompanied HOT ROD’s decision to publish this picture the first time (in May ’80). Super Shops owner Harry Eberlin threatened to pull all advertising from both HOT ROD and Car Craft if the photo ran, “because it makes me look bad.” Eberlin also…

BIG BROTHER TARGETS CHEAP CHINESE PARTS Last month we printed some responses to Freiburger’s column on Chinese speed parts, and this month the story gets broader. It seems that Chinese knock-off speed parts might not be so cheap much longer. The Chinese invasion into not only the automotive aftermarket, but into the entire American economy, is being contested by the U.S. Congress for unfair exchange-rate manipulation. According to the Senate and the House of Representatives, China intentionally undervalues its currency’s market value by 15 to 40 percent. That makes Chinese products cheaper than they should be, resulting in an unfair advantage price-wise. Ohio Democrat Timothy J. Ryan introduced a bill sponsored by California Republican Duncan Hunter that calls for a 27.5 percent tariff on all Chinese products if the country…

This is the year it got real. The inaugural Pump Gas Drags in 2004 will remain as historic as the first HOT ROD Fastest Street Car ’Shootouts of the ’90s, but-2005 will be remembered as the race that anchored the PGD as the relevant street shootout of its day. Not that the details really changed that much: HOT ROD asked for applications and selected 50 of the most legitimate street cars to meet at Comp Cams in Memphis, get loaded with Rockett Brand 93-octane pump gas, and then drive 30 miles in rush-hour traffic to Memphis Motorsports Park where they each made three drag-strip passes in an attempt to score the lowest average e.t. and be named to the HOT ROD Top 10—or better yet, to take it all and…

13 MICHAEL MEINTS Panama City Beach, FL ’68 Nova Average e.t.: 9.476 sec. Best e.t.: 9.464 @ 142.31 This one should look familiar; it’s the Third Place finisher from the 2004 PGD. Previously owned by John Cunningham (this year’s 18th place finisher), the car was bought by Michael Meints and brought back pretty much the same as it raced last year. No problem there, since this car had posted the quickest single pass with a 9.08, though a 10.12-second third pass knocked it down to third. This year, Meints couldn’t coax it to go as fast as before, posting a best pass of 9.46 and a 9.47 average. The nitrous’d 540 big-block ran like a bracket racer, with passes of 9.496, 9.464, and 9.476. 14 RICHARD TANGORRA Machesney Park, IL…

Ed Pink’s 15,000-square-foot facility contains an eclectic combination of state-of-the-art equipment and useful antiques that Pink has collected during four decades at the same Van Nuys, California, location. There’s an exotic Spintron test machine and a gigantic fuel flowbench that was custom-built 35 years ago by Bob Skinner and Tom Jobe, two-thirds of the famous Surfers racing team. The rolling flowbench that Lil’ John Buttera built for testing EPRE’s dry-sump oil pumps sits in the same room as the CNC-machining center that carves out their billet housings and gears. Noisy old lathes and mills that The Old Master himself once operated coexist with silent electronic measuring machines. “We measure and record a percentage of every batch of parts that comes in here,” says Pink. “If you had to sit there…

Location: Kinnan’s backyard, Burbank, CA 1,000-CFM CARB TEST PG.96 What happens when you back-to-back a 1,090-cfm 4500-flange and a 1,000-cfm 4150-flange carb? Freiburger spends quality time with a pair of Demons in Westech’s polygraph room to find out. AERODYNAMIC TRICKS YOU CAN USE PG.100 Marlan wanted to fill this story with illustrations, graphs, and mathematical for mulas, but we made him focus on providing information we can all use to make our cars slippery, and therefore faster. DEADLY DIESELS PG.110 You see ’em in everything from Kenworth big rigs to little European econoboxes, but the big performance diesel scene is actually in pickup trucks, and you’d be shocked at what guys are doing with these compression-ignitors. Stephen Kim got oily as he unearthed what’s going on behind all the smoke.…

Most people are content with a comfortable cargo hauler they can use for work and then drag race on the weekends, but others want to redefine the diesel-truck segment entirely. Richard Madsen of Springdale, Utah, bought his Ford F-350 crew cab 4x4 brand-new in 1995, but after a while the 7.3L Powerstroke diesel just didn’t cut it anymore. The power potential of the Cummins beckoned, so he dropped one in and now runs 10.59 at 130 mph. It takes about 1,000 hp and 1,700 lb-ft of torque at the wheels to pull it off, and the Cummins experts at Piers Diesel Research made it happen. Additional fuel flow comes courtesy of a Bosch race pump and injectors by Industrial Injection and Jeff Prince. The main attraction is a pair of…

As soon as John Pearley Huffman pitched us the story idea on Bill Wiemann’s ’71 ’Cuda convertible (“Five Million Dollar Baby,” July ’05) and the enormous amount of money spent on his collection, we knew it would generate a ton of comments. We also knew many of them would be negative, and that turned out to be true. Even Freiburger’s column in that issue talked of the tradeoff between a valuable “collector” car and a beater that drives just as good and has good modification potential. This is HOT ROD, after all, which means we’re all about taking those valuable musclecars and modifying them for more power or better looks, or both. If it seems like a crime to modify any ’Cuda or Charger based strictly on how ridiculously expensive…

FRANKENTRUCK People talk, and through the grapevine we hear about some pretty crazy factory freaks running arou nd the streets of Detroit, but rarely do we get a chance to see them in person, let alone take pictures. This is an exception. Take a close look at the GMC Yukon on the next page. Do the front fenders look a little odd? How about 15 inches too odd? Popping the hood reveals the big shocker. Inside the stretched engine bay lies a million or so bucks of General Motors’ engineering capability. So what’s a one-of-a-kind V-16 engine doing in an SUV? The Yukon was built as a mule to calibrate the V-16 engine in the Cadillac Sixteen concept car GM unveiled at the 2003 Detroit auto show. GM execs mandated…

THE SLOPER Designer Eric Black (www.eblackdesign.com) penned The Sloper, this ’46 Cadillac Sedanette being built at Steve’s Auto Restorations (SAR) in Portland, Oregon. Sitting on an SAR chassis, the body is “sliced and diced” to make it low and mean, and the wheels are one-off 20-inchers that SAR calls “Sombrero pseudo-hubcap” billet wheels. They say it’ll have a “special” engine, but we can only hope it’s a 500-inch Cad. There’s no owner for the car yet, so if you’ve got some coin, call Steve Frisbie at 503/665-2222. —ROB KINNAN LEAD RAT “Homebuilt Hot Rods” (Mar. ’05) inspired Jeff Shuman of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, to send photos of his ’51 Mercury four-door. He bought it on eBay and is building the car himself with the help of his stepdad and friends—that is,…

“The addiction, is here.”—Ken Close 1 KEN CLOSE (JOE MARTIN, DRIVER) Munhall, PA ’34 Ford coupe Average e.t.: 8.853 sec. Best e.t.: 8.72 @ 154.19 Controversy dogged 2005 Pump Gas Drags winner Ken Close and his big-block Chevy-powered ’34 Ford Coupe from start to finish. First, the 2004 PGD runner-up nearly got himself unofficially disqualified for running over our photographer’s camera bag while hot dogging around the Comp Cams parking lot on his golf cart during tech inspection. But more seriously, he was very nearly officially DQ’d for touching the fender of his ’34 Ford coupe right before the car’s third and final pass at Memphis Motorsports Park while signaling driver Joe Martin to back up despite rules that clearly state no one may touch a car after it completes…

Ed Pink has probably given hot rodders more credibility than any other drag racer in history. If that statement sounds debatable, consider his accomplishments since he delivered the last “Pink Elephant” to a Funny Car racer a quarter-century ago and dropped off drag racing’s radar. Ed Pink Racing Engines (EPRE) had so impressed IndyCar engine-manufacturer Cosworth with its machine work that in 1980 the company asked Ed to assemble and dyno-test its customers’ engines. Within four seasons, Pink’s turbocharged, alcohol-burning DFX engines were powering six Indy teams simultaneously and winning the Indi-anapolis 500 (with Tom Sneva in 1983). When champ-car teams moved to leased engines, Pink again adapted to unfamiliar territory. He built six-cylinder engines for the road-racing 962 Porsches campaigned by both Jim Busby, an old drag-racing buddy, and…

All of a sudden, a quarter-mile seems like a freeway onramp. Long before anyone had a concern for elapsed time over 1,320 feet, hot rodders raced for a more innate need: mph. They ran the salt, the sand, and the dry lakes in distances of a mile and up, seeking ultimate top end. Even once the quarter-mile drags came to be, they were initially ruled by mph and not e.t., and the late ’50s also saw longer Kilo Drags and Mile-Long drags. Why? Higher speeds. Think about it: No gas-station gremmie has ever asked you how quick your car is—they want to know how fast it is. It’s a distinction lost on most rodders, and case in point, this issue’s HOT ROD Pump Gas Drags should really name the Quickest…

Z2Z ZZZZZZ You may remember ’when we announced the Z2Z Big Red Challenge in our May ’05 issue. Held in conjunction with the Silver State Classic Open Road Race, Z2Z was a small sideshow where R.J. Gottlieb and his legendary Big Red ’69 Camaro challenged all takers in a 0-200-0 mph shootout. Competitors had two shots to accelerate to 200 mph in a standing mile then brake to a complete stop in the remaining mile. Of the six cars that showed, not one of them hit two bills, meaning nobody took home the Z2Z Perpetual Trophy. Part of the problem was no doubt the 9,000-foot density altitude at Highway 490 just outside Ely, Nevada, about 30 miles north of the famed Highway 318 Silver State course. Big Red could only…

THE REAL CHARGER ’69 DODGE CHARGER R/T HOLLY GRAVES LAS VEGAS, NV The proper amount of doors isn’t the only thing proper about Holly’s Charger. It’s got a complete numbers-matching drivetrain comprised of a built 561hp 440 Wedge motor, a four-speed stick, and a 4.10:1-geared Dana 60 rearend. Hooker 17/s-inch headers and Flowmaster mufflers spit out the rasp. As the story goes, a very similar Charger that Holly had in high school prompted the quest to build this car. BYE BYE VETTE ’57 CHEVY BEL AIR BILL RITTER CLARKS SUMMIT, PA Bill worked hard to restore his ’75 Corvette only to realize he needed something more practical to haul the kids into town with to get ice cream. He lucked out by finding a clean ’57 sitting in his neighbor’s…

Ford’s original GT40 may have seemed swoopy in its day, but that day was nearly 40 years ago. When Ford decided to resurrect the classic ’60s GT40 as a limited-production high-end sports car, Ford SVT development engineers borrowed an original from a museum, configured it like the ’69 Le Mans winner, and tested the vehicle in Ford’s high-tech wind tunnel. Although considered an effective race car in the ’60s, the original had, in the words of Ford aerodynamicist Kent Harrison, “an incredible amount of front-end lift.” Engineers wanted to ensure the modern incarnation remained stable at 200 mph, yet radical alterations would mean it wouldn’t look like the original—which, of course, was the whole reason for bringing the GT40 back in the first place. “We agreed as a team, we…

HOT ROD OUTLAW DRAG RADIAL SHOWDOWN Last year, Rick Head proved himself to be the fastest man on drag radials when he scorched the Memphis Motorsports Park dragstrip with a 7.76 at 181 mph at HOT ROD’s first Outlaw Drag Radial Showdown. The class was added to the NMCA’s World Finals so HOT ROD could determine once and for all who had the fastest radial-tire-equipped vehicle in the land. Head’s crown will be challenged at this year’s World Finals as HOT ROD returns for the second Outlaw Drag Radial Showdown at Memphis. It’ll happen the weekend of October 6-9, 2005, at Memphis Motorsports Park in Memphis, Tennessee, and the rules are the same as last year—which, as you can see below, are few. The purse is $10,000, with five grand…

2 ROBIN ROBERTS Glendale, AZ ’76 Trans Am Average e.t.: 8.955 sec. Best e.t.: 8.795 @ 161.11 Call him the Comeback Kid times two. Robin applied for the 2004 Pump Gas Drags but was not chosen as one of the 50 invitees. We rectified that this year and got a sneak peak of the car when the Car Craft Anti-Tour came through Robin’s hometown of Phoenix. While racing it at Speedworld with the CC staff, the Pontiac 472 (cool, it’s not a Chevy) let go in spectacular fashion, and that was about two months before he was to be at the Pump Gas Drags. Shockingly, he and his buddies built a new combination, this one a 536 Pontiac. On his application, Robin said the best the car had run with…

Suppose you asked John Buttera to build a portable flowbench for the testing of dry-sump oil pumps. Ed Pink did just that, and what he got from his old friend was a piece of functional sculpture-complete with trick front wheels and tires from somebody’s old dragster. Ironically, the oil-pump division of EPRE is located inside the same rear shop that formerly housed the Buttera-built Funny Cars that dominated drag racing in the ’70s. The day we wandered through, one of EPRE’s own midget pumps was up on the bench. Among the functions being measured were oil flow, scavenge flow, oil pressure, scavenge back pressure, vacuum pressure, and air/oil-separator flow. Each new or rebuilt EPRE oil pump gets the full treatment before it’s allowed to leave the shop. The results are…

Following the tradition of 200 MPH Clubs that award red hats at Bonneville, maroon ones for the El Mirage Dirty 2s, and blue ones at Muroc, the ECTA maintains a 200 MPH Club that decorates racers with untold grandeur and a green hat for setting a class record over 200 mph. I needed one, and since we failed to get the HOT ROD Spl./So-Al Racing Camaro prepped and delivered to Maxton for the event, I was only a little ashamed to take up Wayne Jesel of Jesel Valvetrain Innovation on his offer to grab a seat in his former Busch Grand National car. Jesel had previously helped us with valvetrain for our Bonneville 200 Club record. There are no classes for purpose-built, non-vintage circle-track cars at Bonneville or El Mirage,…

Ever stick your hand out the window at highway speed? Do it palm-first, and the air pushes your whole arm backward. Hold your hand out palm down and you can control arm movement, even against the air pressure. Tilt your hand upward, and air pressure forces your arm higher. Go the opposite way and tilt downward, and your hand gets pushed downward. You’ve just experienced the aerodynamic properties of drag, lift, and downforce. Air flowing over, under, and around a car acts the same way. DRAG AND FRONTAL AREA Palm-first, your hand has lots of resistance. That’s why air pressure pushed it back. Engineers call this drag. Measured in pounds, total drag is a combination of the vehicle’s frontal area, dynamic pressure (air density and velocity), and a shape factor…

It’s like an eyewitness account of Jabba the Hutt showing up to an NFL training camp and running the 40 in 3.9 seconds. Poppycock! Aside from being a massively flabby extra-terrestrial slug, he got killed by some scrawny chick for goodness sake, and his existence is purely fictional. And what about these rumors of daily-driven 7,000-pound diesel tow rigs running 10s in the quartermile? Preposterous! But what’s even more preposterous is that these rumors are entirely true. What’s been known by a small fringe group of enthusiasts for the past 20 years has finally started migrating into the mainstream. Diesels make for unlikely drag racing platforms, but ironically, it’s their extreme workhorse genetic coding that works to their advantage. Robust short-blocks (sometimes industrial-based), built to last hundreds of thousands of…

BP IS LOOKING FOR THE GOLDEN MECHANIC BP is looking for the best of the best auto technicians to be the Amoco Ultimate(r) Golden Mechanic. If you, or someone you know, has top-notch skills, a trustworthy track record, and a genuine concern for his or her community and the environment, enter yourself or your favorite technician at www.bpgoldenmechanic.com between August 1st and September 15th, 2005. Entrants must be professional mechanics and auto technicians over the age of 21 with five or more years of hands-on experience. One lucky winner will be chosen to become the Amoco Ultimate(r) Golden Mechanic and receive $25,000, receive free Amoco Ultimate(r) fuel at BP, and serve as an Amoco Ultimate(r) spokesperson. The gas prize alone is valued at $1,200! THE MONEY MUST BE IN TV…