Indholdsfortegnelse for November 2005 i Hot Rod

THE MARAUDER THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN Ford had a great idea with its '03-'04 Mercury Marauder: a big rear-wheel drive sedan with a powerful V-8 dressed in sinister black duds. It worked for Chevy in 1994 with the Impala SS, but even though the Marauder had more horsepower and a tauter suspension, it never struck a chord with buyers and the model disappeared after a short two-year production run. Its undoing was most likely weak performance, for despite the 302hp 4.6L DOHC V-8 underhood, it accelerated like a slug by virtue of its portly 4,200-pound curb weight. What the Marauder needed from the start was a blower. The ideal engine— the '03-'04 Mustang Cobra's 390hp supercharged DOHC 4.6—was in the Ford arsenal while the Marauder was still in production, but…

“I could have never visualized anything as nice as this. It almost makes you cry.”—Dr. John Teverbaugh. Old race cars are a dime a dozen— a quick flip through National Dragster or a session of eBay surfing will tell you that. But historic race cars, well that's a different story. The problem is, what can be considered historic, and what should be considered just another worn-out old race car? Historic is often in the eyes of the beholder. If it was grandpa's post-WWII hot rod, then it's historic to you but probably not to anyone else unless it's exceptionally bitchin'. It appeared in HOT ROD, you say? Well, that certainly lends credibility. It won the Oakland Roadster Show? Done deal. It was the first car to run a parachute at…

SIX-SPEED AUTOMATIC PG.80 Think you're trick with a 4L80E automatic? Hah! Just wait until GM's new 6L80 six-speed automatic hits the streets. And it looks like swapping it into an early car is going to be a piece of cake. The line forms to the right. DREAM CHEVY PG 88 Finally, the last of the Dream Engines is done. This month, reader Steve Hammonds designs an old-school, twin-carb, high-revvin' Chevy 302 that made 1.34 hp/ci. HOT ROD'S HUGE GUIDE TO FLATHEADS PG 94 We told Marlan, “We want you to tell us everything possible about the flathead Ford, including who makes parts for it and how to build one.” He succeeded as only Mad Dog can, and we're all the beneficiaries. COBRA PROJECT, PART 2 PG 108 Last month we…

Street rod, musclecar, race car—whatever you drive, if you are reading HOT ROD, it means you just can't resist the urge to make it stronger, faster, and better. But unlike a typical government contract, you'd like to get the job done on time and within budget. To that end, Pit Stop is here to help resolve your technical problems. Whether it's theory, resolving a thorny driveability problem, recommending the best combination, or helping to locate a hard-to-find part, we'll answer as many questions in these pages as space permits. When e-mailing, don't forget to include “Pit Stop” in the subject line, as well as your real full name and hometown or military unit, base, or ship in the message. If you have quality digital photos of the car or problem,…

WHO KNEW POWER-STEERING FLUID IS FLAMMABLE? We've seen fuel fires and oil fires, and even the occasional brake fire, but a power-steering flameout? That's a new one. Paul Brown of Tiger Racing sent us this shot of their team's SCCA World Challenge '03 Mustang trailing flames thanks to a power-steering failure at the Portland race on July 31. Driver Carol Hollfelder pulled it off the track and set the grass on fire. Carol, a paraplegic, got herself out of the car just as the safety crew arrived to extinguish the flames, and the car was only a little worse for wear. The Mustang is a marvel of technology, with the throttle, braking, and shifting controls all integrated into the steering column (there are no pedals in the car], and a…

DISCO DAZE Psychologists say that your basic personality is formed in the first few years of life, but I'm not buying that. I believe it was high school and college where I really became who I was and figured out what I liked. Those formative years were the '80s, so it seems logical that I would be into stuff from that era. That's true of the music (rock and hair bands, not that whiny European mama's boy crap like The Cure), and it used to be true of the cars (Fox Mustangs), but why do I find myself dreaming of project cars based on the most reviled junk from the '70s? At the top of my latest list of lust is the vehicle synonymous with the low point of HOT…

FROZEN IN TIME I recently went back to my mother's small hometown of Westgate, Iowa, that I used to visit as a boy. In spite of its small size, the town had a Chevrolet dealership until it closed in the mid '60s. It sits in the same building and they never cleaned it out. As I gazed through the dirty windows, I was amazed to see row after row of Chevrolet parts from the '40s, '50s, and '60s sitting in their original boxes on the shelves. Half-moon hubcaps hung on the walls. Chrome body parts wrapped in brown-paper-lined shelves. It was as if time has stood still as this once-bustling farm town struggles to maintain life. Behind the building I came across this old Chevrolet that I am standing beside.…

“I've always had a hard time thinking of cars as collector's items. They're just too damn fun to drive.”—Boo Carter It's no surprise that musclecars, most notably early Camaros and any Chrysler built between 1968 and 1972, are fetching stupid dollars these days. Guys paying millions for Hemi cars don't help, but regardless of where the value has come from, musclecars are hot and getting more expensive every day. It's finally to the point where it takes some real cojones, or enough money that you don't care, to cut up even a six-cylinder Camaro. When guys have lots of money, they hire the best to build their hot rods for them. When you think about who's the best, a handful of street-rod heros comes to mind—names like Foose, Alloway, Coddington,…

It's amazing what people buy on eBay. Broken bottles, rusty nails, a grilled-cheese sandwich with the image of a deity … any damn thing. Joe Germann bought a genuine piece of Canadian drag racing history. When Germann bid on an altered-wheelbase '65 Ford Falcon in May 2003, he recognized it as a car that had spent its entire life running on dragstrips in and around London, Ontario, Canada. It had changed hands a few times, but its pedigree as a genuine and period-correct A/FX racer was apparent, including the rare factory fiberglass front fenders, hood, and doors; a straight front axle; and a Holman Moody-built 427 SOHC engine. The Falcon had acquired a few extra paint jobs through the years, but despite being neglected, it was remarkably intact when Germann…

Remember back when a four-speed manual transmission was the hot ticket? Overdrives came into fashion during the gas crises of the '70s and soon you needed at least four gears in an automatic or five in a stick shift to keep up with traffic. Then it was sixspeed manuals and five-speed autos. Gear proliferation has been on the rise for the past 30 years, and now General Motors is launching its first-ever six-speed automatic transmission, the start of a new family of modular gearboxes that will set the standard for its rear-wheel drive vehicles for the foreseeable future. The first variant in the lineup, the 6L80, debuts this fall in the '06 Cadillac STS-V and XLR-V behind a 440hp super charged Northstar V-8 (see “World Standard,” May '05) and in…

By definition, a Factory Five Cobra is a kit car. You pay a set price, and at some point in time a big brown truck pulls up to your house and unloads a couple of very large boxes full of parts made of fiberglass and steel. But for decades, “kit car” meant missing parts, shoddy workmanship, horrible chopper-gun fiberglass, and a bundle of parts destined to gather dust in the garage with no realistic hope of getting put together. If that's how you define a kit car— and many people do—then a Factory Five Cobra needs a different label, as it comes complete as advertised, and if you can't finish it in a year or so … well, you're just not trying. Factory Five Racing (FFR) owner David Smith realizes…

This just in: HOT ROD's August issue, with the General Lee Charger on the cover, is the best-selling issue of HOT ROD in the past three years. We're relieved, since we had considerable reservations with that cover. There were several bets on whether that issue would sell, so to everyone who grabbed one off a newsstand, thank you! But every pro usually has a con and that happened with our September Pump Gas Drags cover. We don't have any sales numbers on that yet, but we certainly got a lot of feedback on the fact that we promised two covers (one with a Mustang for subscribers and a newsstand version with a Camaro) but delivered one. We'll throw the printer under the bus for that one, but man, did we…

THE VANNED EXPRESS There was a time when HOT ROD staff members were busier taking aerial photos of vans parked to spell out “keep on truckin,” or in the shape of a peace sign, than they were making horsepower. Late-model musclecars were on the wrong side of a death rattle and the magazine was deep into Pintos and Vegas. In March '72, HOT ROD had its first of many van covers. It was clearly an influential time, as a week never passes before someone reminds us of “the van craze,” usually by begging us to never, ever let it happen again. Thing is, we're twitching that direction. We know we're following the wrong path to the retro trend, but deep inside we've got a craving for a '73 Chevyvan done…

“We hit two [6-second] milestones with the same car. That's pretty cool”—Mike Moran The biggest or fastest of any-thing in the world can be an ephemeral distinction, as the pace of technology often moves so quickly that developments outpace the speed of the record-keeping. But thanks to the immediacy of the Internet and the fanatical diligence of the virtual community of gear-heads on LSItech.com, the status of the exploits of those who push the technological limits of General Motors'Gen III small-block V-8 can be maintained with up-to-the-minute accuracy. So it was that Kurt Urban and the crew at Michigan's Wheel-to-Wheel Powertrain knew where to go to boast to the world of their efforts to post the fastest quarter-mile elapsed time with a Gen Ill-powered vehicle. That's also how they knew…

“This is simply and purely how I've made my living. If I didn't have the proper backing, I wouldn't go racing.”— Warren Johnson Professional-level NHRA drag racing has as much to do with bookkeeping as it does with drivers, engines, chassis setups, and clutch packs. Each team is a small enterprise that has to raise funds either by attracting sponsors or a deep-pocketed benefactor, meet a payroll, manage purchasing and logistics, run a transportation system, handle a million accumulated details, and make sure everyone is fed. Warren Johnson has been handling those challenges so well for so long that even though he's been known as “The Professor” for decades, fans forget that the subject he's been teaching his competitors all this time is business administration. The Professor's '05 season has…

THE CRADLE ROCKS Universal Racing Enterprises 818/590-0120 www.universalracing.com Not just another run-of-the-mill transportation cradle, this U.S.-built engine stand for Chrysler's big-block (B/RB) V-8 is constructed from beefy 11-gauge, 1x1.5-inch box-steel tube that's TIG-welded for ultimate reliability. It's just one of a series of equally stout, professionally constructed engine stands available for most domestic engines from Robert Landy's Universal Racing Enterprises, purveyors of a full line of engine-building aids and performance equipment. Landy says these stands incorporate “won't cut your fingers technology” and “are so strong not even crash-test dummies can knock them down!” EDELBROCK: MADE IN USA Edelbrock 310/781-2222 www.edelbrock.com Of all the contributors over the years to this life we call hot rodding, probably none have been more influential than the Edelbrock family. Even those of you new to…

10 GREATEST ENGINES EVER What are the greatest or most significant hot rod engines ever built? We're compiling our list but are curious what all you readers think. We're not talking about factory performance stuff, like the ZL1 or L88 big-block Chevy, or the Ford SOHC motors. No, we mean hot-rodded engines, like the Hemi that powered Kenny Bernstein to the first 300-mph pass, the 427 FEs that powered the GT-40s to victory at Le Mans, or Wheel To Wheels' twin-turbo LSI you see featured in this issue. That's the kind of list we want. If you have a favorite, let us know at HOTROD@primedia.com. WHERE IT ALL BEGAN, AGAIN One of the most popular single-issue publications [SIP in publishing-speak) we've ever done was last year's Where It All Began…