Indholdsfortegnelse for March 1999 i Hot Rod

By the time I was 10, I was already mesmerized by the images in Car Craft. In those days, CC was a customizer’s bible produced in a small format that was easily hidden within the pages of a school text. Hah! If the legions of Rome only knew about Bennie Saccomano’s chariot. Bronx-born (maybe it was Brooklyn), Bennie and his chopped, primered ’50 Merc with the wide whites really grabbed me down low. On the how-cool-I-am scale, Bennie had all the right moves— thick, black hair swept back into a DA, the requisite Sal Mineo curl dangling between his eyebrows, and a baleful gaze to go with his turned-up collar, rolled-up jeans, and bad-boy engineer boots. Saccomano was the antithesis of my one-horse town; if I’d seen his mug on…

Avanti Returns? The performance, the forward-thinking design, the struggle to make it as a pocket-sized independent—all of this marks the Avanti as an American classic. Studebaker debuted the original Loewy-designed Avanti in the summer of ’62 to breathless, gushing praise from the automotive media. Hundreds of people wanted to buy one on the spot, but Studebaker had not yet geared up for production and plenty of angry potential customers walked away. A Paxton supercharged version went on to set class records at Bonneville but to no avail. Just a few thousand were built in ’62 and ’63. Instead of saving Studebaker, the Avanti helped kill it—although the problem was not with the car itself. Avanti, however, was kept alive by a small band of investors and car builders, and it…

Car racing games are all the rage these days, and a preponderance of go-fast titles are cluttering gaming departments of computer and toy stores near you. Two of the more interesting ones we’ve uncovered are Need for Speed III and Vintage Grand Prix. Need for Speed, by Electronic Arts, lets you take any one of a dozen outrageously fast sports cars (including a C5 Vette) and do what every one secretly fantasizes about… outrun the cops! Vintage Grand Prix, by Sierra Sports, puts you on the Formula 1 circuit of 1967, where you can dice with Jimmy Clark, Graham Hill, and all of the other GP legends. And how can you get a grip on all this video-driving madness? A computer keyboard just doesn’t give you the same sensation as…

A new release from the Superior Automotive Video Library, Rebuilding the Holley Carb, takes the fear out of reconditioning and modifying the Holley 3310, 4160, and 4150 series four-barrel carburetors. Accompanied by easy-to-understand narration, this 30-minute video takes viewers through a typical rebuild where the smallest details are explained via close-up shots. Numerous performance modifications are made to the example Holley 4150, including air-horn removal, milling the carb body for enhanced metering-block gasket seal, drilling the primary butterlies for smoother idle with wild cams, installing a metering-block vent baffle, idle feed-restriction hole enlargment, beveling the jet orifices, installing secondary jet extensions, replacing the secondary metering plate with a metering block, and more. To prove the value of the modifications, the 4150 is bolted onto a big-block Camaro and tested on…

Steve Hamer, a factory worker and dedicated Ford freak—from London, Ontario, Canada—had a problem. He wanted to make the inaugural Power Tour East in one of his ’64 Fords—a Galaxie 500, XL 500, or Ranchero. Unfortunately, none were up to par. So he did what any Fordophile would do: He found an other Ford and made the scene. He located a one-owner ’70 Maverick, with a thrifty-six under its black hood and a price tag of $1,400 Canadian on its windshield. The last time I saw Hamer he was on his way back to Canada with a promise that I would be riding in his Ranchero next year.…

For some reason, hot rodders consider bodywork a daunting task. Most of us have no problem ripping into an engine or transmission, and we’ll even attack electrical gremlins without regard for incorrectly wired components, but the thought of prepping our own car for paint? Better leave that to the professionals, right? Well, sort of. It is true that quality body-and paintwork require skill and experience, but that doesn’t mean that the average rodder can’t participate in the process. Anyone who has ever had a car painted knows how quickly the costs can add up, particularly when refurbishing vintage tin. While you may not be able to take your machine from rust to restoration by yourself, you can certainly handle the basics, which will help contain your budget. In time, you…

As I sit here in LA and iook at Scott Killeen’s shots of what was undoubtedly the wildest and most-talked-about car on our inaugural Power Tour East, I am dumfounded, flummoxed, flabbergasted, and confounded. Where does one begin writing about Cam-Aero? Do we delve into owner Warren Prout’s proprietor-of Centerline Vehicle Designs of Boone, North Carolina, and his extensive background as a Winston Cup, Craftsman Truck Series, and SCCA Trans-Am chassis fabricator, aerodynamicist, and vehicle developer? Do we delve into the psyche or the man who ’never liked having a car like someone elses, and this is about as different as [he] could get?” Do we blame his wife, Pat, who wanted a Camaro to drive around in? Pointing fingers won’t do any good. All we can do is receive…

Hot rodding has always been about fixing up and modifying old cars. Not old as in rare and collectible— arid as in cheap. Old as in cars that need fixing up. My first one was a ’48 Chevy that I drove daily for almost 10 years. I carried a lot of spare parts and tools in the trunk. I did a lot of roadside repairs. I still have it. The newest one I ever owned was a ’62. The newest one I have now is my ’56 Ford F-100 pickup, but my daily driver is a jadegreen ’52 Chevy two-door sedan with a ’54 235 six, three-speed stick, and white ruck ’n’ roll upholstery. That might be news in itself, but what makes this story even more interesting is that…

One path to increased power is a cylinder head that supplies higher static compression and greater airflow. But the problem with this strategy is the high cost of doing business. Alloy aftermarket castings begin at $1,100 complete, while cast-iron iterations are $800 ready to bolt on. By and Large, these hi-po street heads represent a better buy than ever before, but they are still expensive. What if you could equip your Ford or Chevy small-block Streeter for about half the cost of aftermarket cast-iron hotties? Ford Ford produced good small-block heads for a few years (1963-66) before altering them to meet emissions requirements. Most of these changes occurred in the exhaust ports, thus performance suffered. Knowing that, there are still reasonably priced castings that can improve the performance of your…

Steve Saleen, of Mustang tuner-up fame, has unveiled his latest stab at perFordmance; a Contour SVT that debuted at SEMA last November. The stock 2.5L V-6 churns out 195 hp, but with the addition of a 1 Opsi Vortech supercharger, new cams, and a tweaked throttle body, the Irvine, California-based specialty manufacturer is claiming at least 260 hp and 225 Ib-ft of torque. The 8.5x19-inch wheels roll with Michelin Pilot 245/35ZR rubber to work with the lowered suspension, stiffer shocks, fatter sway bars, and a strut tower brace. Also notable are the six-piston calipers and 14-inch front brakes; the rears make do with four-piston calipers and 13-inch discs. The aggressive body package includes front and rear fasciae, rocker panels, a rear wing, fender flares, a new composite hood, and a…

Hot Wheels collectors: Get ready! Our 5th anniversary Power Tour West will have another first: an exclusive Hot Wheels car! Lane’s Automotive is building a real, live blown big-block ’70 Mustang Pro Street and is painting it blue and white with the Hot Wheels logo and a ’70s-style graphics treatment. (Relax, it’s early ’70s.) This car will be duplicated using the Hot Wheels ’70 Mustang casting introduced just last year. It’s also got big ’n’ little Real Riders for that Pro Street stance. Just 10,000 are scheduled to be produced; 5,000 will be sold through the magazine, and 5,000 will be given away at children’s hospitals along the tour! There may be slight differences between the giveaway pieces and the ones sold through the magazine—there may be an extra tampo…

Chrome is history, sad to say. About the only vehicles still sporting plated bumpers in showrooms these days are trucks. The shiny stuff didn’t disappear overnight, though; its extinction occurred through an evolutionary process. Pontiac started experimenting with “soft” bumpers in the late ’60s, introducing them on the 1968 GTO under the name Endura. Chevy offered a similar option for the ’69 Camaro, and Chrysler debuted its Elastomeric variation on the ’70 ’Cuda. This new generation of bumpers presented a somewhat slicker appearance, as the molded material blended with the bodywork in a more fluid fashion than steel. These soft bumpers were painted to match the body, giving the appearance of no bumper at all. Since they could spring back to their original form after a minor impact, some advertising…

We’ve all got to believe in something. I know adults who insist that the world is flat, and I know those who believe in the Easter Bunny. And then there’s Len Bertrand. Bertrand believes that the Ford AOD transmission is going to replace the Turbo 400 as the performance transmission in the 21st century. Stop laughing. We know Ford’s autobox is a weak suck. By leaving Second gear off the shift pattern (some cynics speculate for cost reasons), the AOD has been doomed to languish on the performance sidelines. Second gear is accessible when you shift an AOD manually, but only after you jam the lever into Drive and then, hideously, back into First. All that 1-D-1 box banging wreaks havoc on the bands and clutches, causing bigger messes than…

When Northwestern College instructor Bill Sergent snapped the throttle, the high-torque 502 seemed as if it would rip its moorings from the dyno cart. But this would not be the first time something sounded great but didn’t perform. In Part One (“Lean, Mean, and Clean,” Feb. ’98) of this buildup, the big-block suffered from fuel reversion into the plenum, lifters that failed to pump up, and, to rub salt in the gouge, a broken piston and a scored cylinder wall. Since the engine tuning was done while in the presence of fuel reversion, all the values were deemed invalid. For Part Two, the fuel map in the ACCEL ECU was reformatted using a program that calculates a base fuel table according to the data it receives. Hence, the linear oxygen…

So Terry McGean, our staff’s avowed Pontiac man, and I were milling about the HOT ROD Power Fest car show in Memphis last September, sweltering as the sun conspired to boil all the salt out of our sweat. We stumbled upon these two Fieros sitting there, engine covers up. One looked largely innocent. The other looked ready to kill. We passed by, then did a double take. Was this a mirage? Could we be seeing things? Was the sweat dripping in our eyes causing us to see undearly? No. Both of the little plastic terrors, amazingly, sport Cadillac Northstar engines crammed into their space-frame engine bays. We investigated further. One, owned by John Norman of North Manchester, Indiana, is purple and highly stylized, full of the custom, personalize? touch; the…

Though most hot rodders won’t admit it, the light-duty truck is the ersatz hot rod of the ’90s. You know, V-8 motor up front, rear-wheel drive, a trunk bigger than Arizona, and more emissions-legal speed parts available for it than you can shake a stick at. It’s the family vehicle that hauls you, your kids, and your tools during the week and pulls your boat to the river on the weekends. But after a couple of years, even with religious maintenance, the handling characteristics can become torpid and the ride soft and unsure. Nobody but a couch potato likes to drive a couch, so follow along as we instill the reflexes of a Corvette in our daily driven work truck. Suspension modifications are a multistage affair. To a serious performance…

Here’s one for the “Why didn’t I think of it?” files. Modern Postcard of Carlsbad, California, can print full-color promotional postcards using your photograph for a very reasonable cost of $95 for 500—that’s 19 cents apiece. Send them a color slide or print of your car and a maximum of 50 words of text for the backside, and the company will take it from there, These glossy, heavy-stock cards are a novel way to show off your pride and joy while keeping in touch with friends. If you are selling a car, have the cards depict the image on one side and a list of vital statistics on the other; then hand them out at swap meets and shows. The possibilities are nearly endless. Contact: Modern Postcard, Dept. HR03, 1675…

In this modern age, we have become obsessed with codes. And it’s getting us into trouble. Infinite lines of computer code that are allegedly designed to make our lives easier are conspiring to backfire into a Y2K catastrophe that could bring us to a grinding halt and trigger a worldwide economic recession the likes of which haven’t been seen in our collective lifetimes. Politicians on the nightly news never say exactly what they mean, especially about the unpleasant stuff like war and taxes and porking interns; it’s al! couched in despicable doubletalk—some sort of beltway BS code that you can’t get through without a manual. There is even a faction in our society that claims that codemania stretches clear back to the Bible itself, which, when every 7th or 11th…

Bakersfield to Boston, Pasadena to Peoria, Downey to Detroit, or wherever we went on Power Tour, people asked, “What’s hot?” If you’re looking for real fire-breathing dragons, try wagons—especially those produced after 1955. Pre-’55 woody wagons have always occupied a warm spot—especially in the hearts of the surf set. When surfers got cold, their woodies literally became bonfires. By ’55, veggie bodies couldn’t make Detroit’s cost-conscious cut. So Motown began producing ersatz woodies trimmed with plastic simulations. Still, they had room, a certain èlan, and could be factory equipped with big-block engines and accessories galore… features that weren’t lost on Wheat Ridge, Colorado’s Nelson and Lynne Aregood. “We saw a series of sketches in one of the rod magazines,” recalls Nelson, “and one of them was a chopped 58 Buick…

Multi-Point Edelbrock The powerful and fuel-efficient Edelbrock Performer Multi-Point EFI System is designed for 87-’95 Chevy/GMC 7.4L light-duty pickups retrofitted with a GM Performance Parts 502 truck engine. The system uses the stock computer and throttle body for a simple and effective conversion. Information: Edelbrock, Dept. HR03, 2700 California St., Torrance, CA 90509, 310/781-2222. Filter-licious Holley Two new high-flow fuel filters with removable 60-micron elements are now available from Holley. One filter has single inlet/outlet, while the other has a dual system. The two-piece housings provide 360 degrees of rotation and can accept a variety of port alignments. Each is CNC machined and has a black anodized finish. Information: Holley, Dept. HR03, P.O Box 10360, Bowling Green, KY 42102, 800/H0LLEY-1, www.holley.com. Tough Frontend Performance Suspension technology Frontend Polygraphite Super Kits…

Is it necessary to resize the big end of a connecting rod after the rod bolts have been changed? We’ve heard different opinions on the matter and decided to conduct a test to determine what’s right and what’s not. With a standard small-block Chevy rod in hand, we went to Evans Speed in El Monte, California, where Gene Ohly set us straight.…

Miami Monte Ricardo Martinez of Miami, Florida, snatched this ’79 Monte from the jaws of Junkyard Death. Five years later it sports a 400ci small-block with hot heads, a ported Edelbrock Victor Jr. intake, a Holley 750 double-pumper, Hooker headers, and a 2½-inch exhaust. Inside, a Mallory tach and ’87 Super Sport instrumentation keep him abreast of what’s happening up front. A 2-inch drop, Southside bars, and BFGoodrich meats complete this tight package. Big-Inch Bad Boy Owning one of the few 454-powered first-generation Monte Carlos out there means you get to play a little. Mike Parmentier of Aurora, Illinois, the second owner of this ’70 SS, has improved the basic LS5 with an LS6 intake, 930cfm Carb Shop carburetor, Herbert roller cam, 3-inch exhaust, Hooker headers, and more. Blue, Balls…