Indholdsfortegnelse for September 2007 i Hot Rod

NOT RODDING Some readers are obsessively compelled to explain to us what a hot rod is or—more often—isn’t. “It says HOT ROD on the cover, but there isn’t a single one inside,” and “Baskerville would roll in his grave” are common refrains, but fall short of the ever-popular “You need to go back to what this magazine was in the ’50s and ’60s.” For those people I have two words: selective memory. From the start, HRM covered everything with an engine, from oval-track racers to boats, go-karts, motorcycles, 4x4s, four-bangers, dune buggies, and on and on. As rodding culture expanded and other magazines spun off to cover niche interests, HOT ROD was left with the massive core that it supports today: mostly musclecars with some vintage rods and late-model cars…

1975 HOLLYWOOD BURNOUT Prowling the HOT ROD archives we came across some images of an oft-recalled event: the Top Fuel burnout on Hollywood Boulevard. It was the evening of Thursday, March 20,1975, at the gala grand opening of Petersen’s Motorama Cars of the Stars. When it opened it was billed as “Hollywood’s newest and most exciting attraction,” with “a film world automotive collection valued at $2,000,000.” The museum included the “Bat Fuzz” ’66 Batmobile, the Munster Koach, the Bonnie and Clyde ’34 Ford movie car, and many others from the worlds of Hollywood, hot rodding, and racing. The grand opening itself showed the power of Robert E. Petersen, drawing personalities such as Jim Garner, Ron Howard, Mickey Dolenz, Jimmy McNichol, Gary Owens, Robert Stack, Adam West, Burt Ward, Buzz Aldrin,…

FROM FASTBALLS TO FASTBACK Five-time All-Star former pitcher for the Detroit Tigers Jack Morris is no longer rocketing split-finger fastballs, but once Neal’s Custom Metal in Blaine, Minnesota [763/2100633), gets finished with his ’69 Mustang fastback he can rocket himself past 100 mph in the twisties. Beneath the smoothed and mildly modified exterior sheetmetal lies a full-tube chassis designed for serious open-track driving with a Heidt’s IFS and custom four-link rear suspension. A 454ci aluminum Roush stroker packing 630 hp and 602 lb-ft of torque and a Tremec TKO-600 five-speed trans will provide the speed, and wide 18-inch BBS wheels shod with sticky rubber will help keep it on the track. Those quarterscoops are now functional and cooling off the rear set of 14-inch, six-piston Wilwood brakes. It should be…

What we have here is a street-driven, 7-second, 1,300-rear-wheel-horsepower, four-door, turbocharged ’64 Rambler Classic. It’s a Dare to Be Different sleeper on steroids. That’s the short version of our rationale for inviting Brian Anderson and his 175-mph family sedan to the ’04 and ’05 Pump Gas Drags™—we just had to see this thing run. Next thing we knew, Brian showed up for a leg of Power Tour® ’06 just to prove that his creation was actually highway friendly. Impressive! Why a four-door Rambler? Because it was there. About 10 years ago when Brian was 16, his interest in cars was just budding since he finally was able to legally pilot one. Brian was looking for something old, simple, and even more critically, cheap, since much of his fun money came…

The M&V. It sounds like a freight train in a blues song, but it was the furthest thing from it. It was a light, little, spindly grasshopper of a drag roadster. It had half a Model T body and half a Model A pickup bed. The frame looked like it was made of Tinker Toys. With a 288ci small-block Chevy engine, it still needed 90 pounds of dumbbell weights behind the rear axle to make the weight break for the NHRA B/Altered class. The M&V roadster wasn’t a famous drag car. It raced mostly locally in Southern California, but that was in the early ’60s when there were plenty of tracks so that racers didn’t need to go anywhere else. Still, the car set the B/A national record several times,…

The GTO may be gone (again) but there are still plenty of them out there, and with a few choice bolt-on parts they can be made brutally fast. Case in point: Ken Duttweiler’s ’04 GTO equipped with the 5.7L LS1 all-aluminum engine. HOT ROD readers know of Duttweiler’s stellar reputation as the high-tech turbo Buick and Chevy engine builder and nationally competitive competition Eliminator drag racer whose 1,800hp, 287ci, small-block Chevy twin-turbo car is currently well into the 6s. With a pedigree like this, no way could Duttweiler leave his new GTO stock. On the other hand, the GTO was and remains his daily driver. It still runs on 91-octane pump gas, and all the creature comforts remain functional. But with a quick change to sticky Mickey Thompson tires and…

The story of Ray Croll’s ’50 Ford is one of those cliched tales that rings almost too good to be true, but it is. His ’50 Ford was found sitting in someone’s barn, with the original flathead six-cylinder and just 40,000 miles on the clock. Croll, when not busy selling wood products out of his business, Grove Lumber in Ontario, California, is happily enlarging his all-Ford car collection. Brian Noppert and Frank Franquez at Ultimate Customs are Croll’s preferred choice when it comes time to turn ’em into hot rods. They’ve built Croll’s cars before, but for the ’50 Croll wanted something really different, even farther out than usual—a daily-driveable custom with a thoroughly modern drivetrain. The result is a car that except for the Budnik rims and Nitto tires…

Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for life. Here at Pit Stop we provide a helping hand for solving your hot rod related problems, so you can learn to help yourself and your friends better. We’ll answer all the questions we have room for in these pages. 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, and if they’re at least 300 dpi at 4x4 inches or larger (the bigger the better), send ’em in, too. HEADER DESIGN THEORY I have been trying…

FAIRLY FAST FAIRLANE ’67 Ford Fairlane 500 • Scott Walters • New Orleans, LA Scott’s been a fan of ’66-’67 Fairlanes since he saw a beautiful black ’67 at the drags back in his younger days. His current Wimbledon White ’67 Fairlane 500 spent its entire previous life in a garage, so it’s supersolid and rust-free. The car still looks like a nice, clean small-block Fairlane with 289 badges on the fenders and even the original Medium Aqua interior, but the 289ci quickly left and a Dove-based 13.5:1, 514ci packing 796 hp pirated from a bracket car went in. So far traction has already been a real issue, but Scott wants a streetable car in the 9s, so his next step is to throw in a 4.5-inch crank to create…

WE BOMBED Did you read last month’s Gearhead Life? We told the story of having blown a tire at Bonneville and spinning the HRM Spl. Camaro at 215 mph, then of getting greedy with the nitrous button and bassack-warding the thing at 189 mph at El Mirage. The best thing that can be said about this month’s adventure is that at least we were in the passenger seat this time. And it was in the F-Bomb project Camaro instead of the HOT ROD land-speed car. Which brings us to the bad news: This month’s issue does not have the F-Bomb tune/drive/race story we so wholeheartedly promised last month. You may have seen the F-Bomb episode of HOT ROD TV on ESPN2, but there’s some big news that wasn’t caught on…

Anyone who has ever seen a professional football game has marveled at the speed and agility of NFL linemen. These behemoths normally run well over six feet tall and tip the scales in the 300-pound range, sometimes more than that. They are freaks of nature—nothing that big or that heavy should be that fast. Most sport a healthy set of love handles and a little tummy spillage over their belts, yet they can run and jump like Olympic athletes. They are also often described as the smartest guys on the team. This Trans Am is a defensive lineman. It’s a ridiculous 848hp, 9-second, 3,860-pound street cruiser that idles like a Honda and accelerates like a Super Gas car. The best part is that it’s sporting Pontiac power and a pair…

’07 MUSTANG BOLT-ONS PG.78 In three stages, we throw the entire Ford Racing Performance Parts catalog at a new Mustang GT and are rewarded with high 11s and 500 hp. You can do it too. ’04 GTO POWER RECIPE PG.84 Kenny Duttweiler spills the beans on how his daily-driver GTO runs mid-11s with the stereo blasting. NEW HEMI SPEED PG.92 Once someone can figure out how to break into the computer, the new DCX Hemi cars will be beasts. In the meantime, here’s how to get the most out of them using bolt-on parts. ’57 CHEVY MAKEOVER PG.100 For our latest project car we got a raw deal on a back-halved ’57 Chevy, so we decided to turn it into a totally different car. Here’s what Pure Vision accomplished in…

If you’re familiar with the adage “the cart before the horse,” you understand how hard-core Hemi enthusiasts feel these days. While the Ford and GM guys are riding waves of late-model performance bliss, the Mopar-or-no-car guys have mostly gone begging—begging for tuning. Sure, there are options—the Magnum SRT8 on these pages is a prime example—but holding back the flood of Hemi parts is the simple fact that the tuning capability—fuel mapping, timing adjustment, and so on—is still in the crawling stages. Yes, some clever tuners have done wonders with singular combinations, but the basic programming to, say, pull timing for a blower or nitrous is unavailable. Camshafts, ported cylinder heads, and beefier reciprocating parts all are available for the 5.7L and SRT8 6.1L engines, but their effectiveness is limited by…

There was a time when the name Keith Black, KB for short, was the only one that counted. You either ran with KB or you ran second. In the pro drag racing categories, KB’s Chrysler Hemi has been the standard mill in the Fuel classes for several decades. Keith went from peddling parts to service stations to dominance of the Fuel market in the ’70s, and his obsession with improving existing designs was evident throughout his career. Though he wasn’t the first guy to build an aluminum Chrysler Hemi block, his design soon became the industry standard. He introduced his aluminum version of Chrysler’s 426 Hemi in 1974, and it became the Fuel category’s standard-issue engine for the better part of the next decade. Sadly, KB passed away in 1991,…

COMING NEXT MONTH As we go to press this month, our ears are still ringing with the sounds of pump-gas-fueled horsepower, screaming fans, and competitors both outraged and ecstatic in the wake of HOT ROD’s Fourth Annual Pump Gas Drags ’ held in Memphis, Tennessee, and sponsored by comp Cams. Just when we thought it’d be hard to top last year’s 8-second showdown, this year’s combination of upsets and victories delivered the most dramatic PGD yet. You can see the action unfold on video right now at www.powerperformancetv.com, then come back to HOT ROD next month for all the behind-the-scenes stories and photos. The October issue goes on sale August 21.…

As we mentioned at the beginning of his epic story “The $98 Paint Job” in the July issue, when staffer Christopher Campbell came to us with his idea to paint his car with a roller and a can of Rust-Oleum fence paint, we gave him a glare that said, “What’s wrong with you?” But he got the idea from a few message board posts and showed us the strings, and man, it looked like it was feasible. Paint and body stories are always among the most popular we do, so we gave him the OK, and after Chris killed himself for three weeks it came out surprisingly well. The end result generated a lot of mail, so far none of it negative. Here’s what you thought. EXACTLYWHAT I’M WANTING This…

NHRASOLD On May 31, NHRA sent out a press release that said, “HD Partners Acquisition Corp. and NHRA, the world’s preeminent drag racing organization, today announced the signing of a definitive agreement under which HD Partners will acquire all of NHRA’s Professional racing assets, including the NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series, together with a broad set of rights to commercialize the NHRA brand. Upon consummation of the transaction, the acquired assets will be held in a wholly owned subsidiary of HD Partners named NHRA Pro Racing. NHRA, which will remain a nonprofit 501(c)(6) corporation, will retain all its non-Professional racing, safety, and educational activities and continue to be the sanctioning body for all NHRA racing activities, including the NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series.” We’re not sure yet exactly what this…

We saw it happen ourselves. Mike Bruell’s sleepy little Mustang ran 10.91 at123 mph down the quartermile strip at New England Dragway. We heard that it was a twin-turbo car and naturally thought it was a prefabbed kit from one of the turbo specialty houses. We were wrong. It’s the complete opposite of that: a homebuilt, junkyard, and eBay-sourced combo made of tractor parts and local parts-store goodies dreamed up by a 22-year-old college kid. Let’s cut right to it. The motor and turbo setup on this car is worth all of two grand. “I always wanted something with twin turbos,” Mike says. “I went hunting around on eBay and found an ad for two hybrid T3/T4 turbos that were listed for $250 each, brand-new in the box.” That’s where…

Right after the August issue went to press with our coverage of Year One’s new Burt Reynolds-backed Bandit Trans Ams, we got wind of a group of hard-core Smokey and the Bandit devotees preparing to commemorate the anniversary by making the fabled run from Texarkana, Texas, to Atlanta, Georgia. Instead of trying to match Bandit and Snowman and drive it in roughly 14 hours (half of the movie’s 28-hour round trip), the idea was a leisurely three-day tour following a hypothetical 665-mile route that kept true to the feel of the movie. And since Coors is now widely available east of the Mississippi, the final stop—rather than the county fair with Big and Little Enos waiting in matching yellow suits for their bootleg beer—was Road Atlanta for a little track…

You know, there’s no trick at all to just bolting some parts onto a car. Any girl or boy with a little skill and a pail of handtools can do that. And there’s the beauty of it: Bolt-on components can be the quickest, easiest, and most cost-effective path to performance. When the parts actually bolt on, that is. And provided the parts actually work as advertised. So the trick, really, is in knowing which bolt-on parts to bolt on. Which components truly fit without welding or machine work, and with a minimum of hacking and butchery? Which combinations of parts will work best together in your specific application? With the amount of equipment now available for late-model musclecars, wading through all the possible choices (and all the conflicting claims) is…

Hot rodding is all about modifying your vehicle for better performance, to make it look cooler, or to just to suit your interests and aesthetics. It can take a long time to get the car just right, but it’s worth the effort. Some folks get the car finished, drive it for a while, and then feel the need to tear back into it to do something different, basically starting over. That’s especially common when it takes so long to build the car that the style becomes dated, or the owner just changes his mind. Of course, you can always buy someone else’s project or finished car, but the downside to that is that it’s never truly yours. Drastic change is necessary for it to really come home. The latter situation…

AUTOMATIC DRIVETRAIN KIT FOR MOPAR BAND E-BODIES Keisler Engineering 865/609-8187 www.keislerauto.com If your Mopar could use longer legs but you don’t want to make permanent changes, Keisler Engineering’s overdrive conversion kit may be the ticket. Keisler has reworked the GM 4L6OE with new bell and tail housing to be a complete bolt-on that requires no cutting or modification to install. You can even keep your original shift linkage. The transmissions are available with choice of stall speed and three power levels: 450 lb-ft, 550 lb-ft, and 650 lb-ft of torque. Kits are available for all small-block, big-block, Hemi, and new Hemi applications. Price: Stage 1, $3,795.00; Stage 2, $4,495.00; Stage 3, $4,995.00 MUSCLECAR DOOR-PANEL RESTORATION Just Dashes 800/247-3274 www.justdashes.com Believe it or not, Just Dashes swears it can make your…

POWER TOUR® ON HOT ROD TV With over 1,400 Long Haulers on this year’s ’07 HOT ROD Magazine Power Tour™, presented by GM Performance Division and co-sponsored by Flowmaster, America’s biggest and baddest tour of pavement, polish, and power comes to you on ESPN2. We’ll check out the action from Cleveland, Ohio, to Little Rock, Arkansas, and every stop in between, focusing on the firsts. Ride along with first-time participants and sponsors, dig the bands, and best of all hear the power. Power Tour™, the show you cannot miss on HOT ROD Television. Produced by the creators of Overhaulin’™ and RIDES™, HOT ROD Television’s HD broadcasts will bring you closer to the roots, trends, and performance of America’s best street machines. Consult the times and dates below and tune in.…