Indholdsfortegnelse for June 1997 i Hot Rod

It’s that time again. This year we thought a little regional competition was in order, as in rides from the Wild West, the montage from the Midwest, and the raiders from the East. They’re all cool as far as we’re concerned, but we wonder what you think. If you want to be included in the next go-around, send a color photo of your car along with a complete description to: Readers’ Rides HOT ROD Magazine 6420 Wilshire Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90048 The Right Coast Tearing Cartlidge Al Cartlidge Apopka, FL, ’34 Ford Five-Window Coupe Al Cartlidge didn’t wax poetic in his letter to Readers’ Rides; he relied instead on a simple fact sheet to describe his street rod. It’s an original steel body that’s been chopped 3 inches, smoothed,…

Your nerves are twitching, crackling, fibrous ends. Traffic is slower than a sloth on barbituates. The guy in the BMW is too involved with a phone to notice your inquiry about cutting into his lane. Somebody’s just back-ended an egg truck while the radio station plays sunspot music—and you left your CDs at home. Worst of all, the needle on the coolant temp gauge has just crept past 220 degrees. Images of scorched cylinder walls, cracked heads, and puking coolant begin to crowd your skull. C’mon already—move! Sitting helplessly as your cooling system approaches meltdown is one of the worst feelings in the world, and there seem to be only two solutions: Fix it, or don’t drive when it’s more than 60 degrees outside. Musclecars were never blessed with killer…

Slip into a new Camaro or Mustang and you’ll be more than impressed with how smooth and silky these cars drive. Compared to the musclecars of the ’60s, modern factory hot rods outperform those legends by a country mile—except when it comes to horsepower. Regretfully, low-octane unleaded gasoline and the need for mild factory camshaft profiles have forced the power and torque portion of the ’90s performance equation to recede into the 200-pony range. Does this mean hot rodders are forever doomed to a life devoid of ’60s-style, head-snapping acceleration? We think not! We have applied advanced engineering technology to design the 350 engine that Chevrolet should have built. Using a stock block, crankshaft and rods, and only a few exotic parts, you can enjoy the savings of cheap 87-octane…

Headers are one of the best high performance investments you can buy. They not only improve performance by decreasing exhaust backpressure, they also contribute to better fuel economy and reduce weight. Unfortunately, headers live in a brutally harsh environment. Exhaust temperatures in excess of 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit accelerate oxidation, and we’ve all seen what this does to mild steel tubing headers. Paint won’t stick for long and chroming immediately turns blue. But there is an alternative. The new generation of ceramic-metallic header coatings, as used by Jet-Hot and other companies, is a great way to prevent corrosion from attacking your headers. The best approach is to coat a brand-new set of headers, both inside and out, thus sealing the mild steel tubing to prevent the formation of rust. Jet-Hot has…

If you want to be noticed, do something different. Since the U.S. Marine Corps has been conducting business like that since its inception, the organization recently committed six armor-plated Hum-Vees to help promote recruits. The first of six High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles were built from the bones of more than 60 “retired” vehicles. They include bullet-proof glass, Kevlar-reinforced doors, and a top turret that accepts anything from a 7.62mm machine gun to a TOW antitank missile launcher for those patience-draining freeway jams. While military Hummers are spartan to the bone, the public relations version sports Viper Red paint, black carpet, and upscale upholstery. Storage areas have given way to a complete civilian electronics system (actually a mobile mini-theater) with a 25-inch color TV, VCR, six-disc CD changer, 10 monster…

Power Tour sponsor Summit. Racing will brandish the Quadradeuce once again, this time joining up with us in Springfield, Illinois, and continuing on to Mount Clemens, Michigan. The mail-order kings are also bringing an ’87 Corvette with a 383ci small-block worthy of 625hp via a Vortech Strim supercharger, and all the good parts. Too bad we’re not going through Montana for a wee test of the “safe and prudent speed” law. Taking The Cool Road Two of the stars of last year’s Tour were Vintage Air’s Jack Chisenhall and his beyond-awesome 219-mph Studebaker. Well, Jack is following that act up with his daily-driver-cum-product-test-bed ’39 Ford sedan. We’ve been in this piece in summertime San Antonio and know all about it’s turn-ya-blue A/C system. SVO Takes On Sin City! Ford SVO…

So help me, this is the truth. When I was growing up in New Yawk City, I had three dreams. The first was to drive a fuel car. The second was to become a hot shot automotive journalist and write for big car magazines. The third one, of course, was to see my ride in the pages of HOT ROD. I’ve been messing with fuel cars most of my adult life. I’ve sucked clutch dust and tweaked, tuned, and built enough stuff over the years that you could say I’ve got a well-rounded background within the world of cars that go boom. The only thing I hadn’t done was actually sit in the seat and steer one down the strip. Why? Because my empty pockets run pretty deep, and as…

Like the people who would ban books with titles like Kitchen-Made Fertilizer Explosives, there are those who don’t want you to know what we’re going to tell you here—some for the holiest of motives, others for reasons more base. Not the government, GM, or even many professional tuners want you playing around in the knickers of your on-board computer—and one of the main barriers to entry has been secrecy. On one hand, computerized electronic fuel injection almost always outperforms carburetion. On the other hand, those magic numbers stored in onboard computer memory (which have the power to improve performance or alter your engine control system to match engine performance upgrades) might as well be on the moon if you can’t get at them or don’t know what they mean. And…

Fast Eddie thought he had it knocked. “I know all about that bracket racing stuff. Write a number on the window of your car, run the number, and collect your money. It’s a snap.” Fast Eddie pulled off the bluff—right up until he lost first round. He was later than a sundial on the Tree and broke out too—losing twice in one round. “This is bogus,” he told his buddies. “I think they just didn’t want me to walk away with their money! Let’s get outta here.” Unfortunately for bracket racing, Fast Eddie never returned. While this little tale is fictional, it’s surely happened a thousand times. The more questions we asked of supposedly knowledgeable hot rodders, the more apparent it was that few enthusiasts understand the nuances of drag…

DRAG RACING Series Are you ready for the 1997 HOT ROD Magazine World’s Quickest Street Car Drag Racing Series? The first event of the year was held at Moroso Motorsports Park and the action was as spectacular as the cars that battled for supremacy. While our coverage is almost like being there, you really need to experience the rush. See the events schedule on the following page. It’s A Bumpercar! In a qualifying session on Saturday, Chuck Samuel had it set on kill and subsequently found himself in a monster wheelstand in his newly repainted ’86 Camaro RS. After saving it from flipping over, Samuel slid into the retaining wall and broke two wheels, the steering, and some other stuff. He patched it up and swung through six rounds on…

The other day one of our readers took the time to drop us a note. He had seen Kenny Bernstein’s Budweiser King Top Fuel dragster light up the clocks with a 4.60, 318-mph pass. His question was simple: What does it take to build an engine capable of accelerating a 1,900-lb vehicle from a dead stop to nearly 320 mph in just 1,320 feet? 1 didn’t know the answer, but I know a guy who does—namely “Double-A” Dale Armstrong, the Bud King’s crew chief and one of drag racing’s most thoughtful innovators. Top Fuel racing is unique because there are few restrictions to inhibit the engine builder. A cursory look at the rule book indicates that only the displacement, induction system (fuel injector and supercharger), cylinder head configuration, and electronics…

It used to be so easy. Spend a couple of years skinning your knuckles on old Studebakers, Dodges, and Fords, and you eventually became a mechanic. If you paid attention to your craft, you gained knowledge by learning from your mistakes. Those days are long gone, friends. Today’s cars are far more complex than a ’55 Chevy. Like any other profession, a couple of years spent at school is the best path to advancement. Though this might sound like a high school counselor’s litany, the truth is not always easy to take. The lure of the high performance car is strong, and it’s tempting to bypass wrenching on a greasy old Taurus in favor of the glamour of working on a Pro Stock race car. While many accomplished race mechanics…

It turned into an ugly name-calling, finger-pointing, disparaging-remarks-about-your-mother melee there for a while, but the dust in the Indy Racing League versus the Indy-Car/CART feud has finally begun to settle down. The IRL’s vision of the future has become a reality with the onset of the 1997 season, and it’s business as usual at CART—with one big exception. Neither side is completely happy about the deal: The tasty carrot that is competition in the Indy 500 is all but unavailable to CART teams, and the IRL is without most of the household names that align themselves with CART. What the hell’s this all about? Back in the early days of American racing, there were two distinct paths to the big leagues, and both sprouted from East Jesus short oval tracks—“bull…

It’s hard to imagine where street rodding would be without the following: One: WWII. Two: The hop ‘n’ chop byproducts of lakes, drags, jalopy derbies, and roadster racing. Three: The founding of HOT ROD magazine. Without those events, we would be up to our ying-yangs in genuine Ford sheetmetal. Wartime scrap drives claimed a zillion tons of neat old steel. And what the boneyards didn’t claim, the rodders have—legged on by the editorial pages of HRM. To be sure, there remains a number of solid survivors, but their ranks are fast diminishing. Nonetheless, the popularity of street rodding continues to escalate because of the easy availability of high quality repro parts and assemblies. Unfortunately, many Streeters constructed from aftermarket reproductions have been branded “kit cars,” a derisive put-down stemming from…