Indholdsfortegnelse for September 1999 i Hot Rod

In our experience, precious few showroom-new vehicles are capable of inducing the grin. We’re not talkin’ about your average chocolate-ice-cream-eatin’ grin. No, this grin involves doing something that nature didn’t intend and theocity council doesn’t approve of. Although there is plenty of fast machinery on our little blue blob of a planet, Ford’s new-for-1999 SVT F-150 plasters the grin to your face with a 4-inch brush. How can America’s most popular vehicle (836,000 Ford light trucks sold last year) do that? Roll these juicy tender loins around in your brain: A standard-cab Flareside F-150 is home to the sound-and-light show that is a 5.4L SOHC V-8, specially outfitted with a mongo Eaton Gen-IV supercharger pumping out 8 pounds of boost. It delivers 360 hp and 440 lb-ft of torque; 350…

Old School Rod Rock Hellbound Hot Rods Del-Fi Records OK, the Beach Boys and Jan 5 Dean sang about cars, but that wasp music, not hotrod music. Hot rod music was rock ’n’roll—a meshing of dark, evocative instrumental rock like ’50s guitar idols Link Wray and Duane Eddy with the then-contemporary and totally gnarly sounds of Dick Dale’s surf guitar. Add some loud racing noise-screaming engines, screeching brakes- and you have it, hot rod music, exactly how Del-Fi Records owner Bob Keane envisioned it back in the pre-Moptop early ’60s. o Hellhound Hot Rods is a great intro to some of Fel-Fi’s hottest rod bands. The Deuce Coupes own the first half-dozen tracks here, including the oddly melancholy “Satan’s Chariot” and the truly alcoholofueled “Tijuana Gasser.” And check out the…

Two words describe HOT ROD Magazine TV this month…Power Tour! Tune in for coverage of the cars, people, and craziness that made the 1999 HOT ROD Power Tour West a milestone event. From San Bernardino, California, to Nashville, we captured it all. You’ll also see and hear Mark Moore’s long-haul big-block ‘69 Camaro shot on the Power Tour and take a tour of Holley’s digs in Bowling Green, Kentucky. We’re not sure what kind of trouble McGonegal, Baskerville, and Magnante will be in, so you’ll just have to tune in and see. Cruise past Speedvision.com for show times and dates. If you don’t get Speedvision, ring your cable company’s phone line off the hook until you do. If that doesn’t work, stake out in front of their office with your…

Traditionally, between sky-high prices, limited availability, anti a lot of no?-mainstream subject matter, in America, at least, it’s been tough to get anyone to care about ½-scale models. With their new Class of 70 set, Ertl hopes to change all that. Star of the bunch here, without a doubt, is the Olds 442 ragtop, painted a delicious gold. The Nova runs a close second, il only because so few models of this vintage have been done. The Torino, though a little troubled around its rear quarters, is still a welcome model of a car not often seen. All feature rubber white-letter tires, painted exhaust and engine blocks, chrome-plated window surrounds, delicate tampo badging and stripes, and fine interior detailing. Available at the local toy emporium for $2? a set; their…

It’s not sexy-never has been-yet it’s something we must deal with periodically. We’re referring to fuel economy and the need to improve it. Unfortunately, it’s a safe bet that whenever you hear a hot rodder talking about squeezing a few more miles from a gallon of gasoline, something has gnne awry with the natinn’s fuel supply. A recent trend in the pricing nf fnssil fuels in Southern California has, in the span of a couple of weeks, made us painfully aware of our lack of awareness. The cost of refueling had dipped to a level that needed little or no budgetary compromise on the part of the average citizen, many of whom decided that fullsize, four-wheel drive trucks are required to drive to work in sunny LA. Now, as fuel…

Like us, you were probably intrigued by the vehicles included in this overview, but no doubt you’ve also noted that not a single one is fed by a carburetor. Before you prepare your hate mail, know that we too are still fans of mechanical fuel mixers, but our search kept turning up vehicles with EFI. Certainly there must be some among us who have met our goals with a good ol’ four-battel, and we’re waiting tn hear from you. Just remember: If your car can’t nudge the 12s without the aid of nitrous, you don’t qualify. In the meantime, we’ll be tinkering with Q-jets and Overdrives to see what we can find.…

Handling and control is a question of balance, and a way-less-than-optimal 59/41 weight distribution in Project Montelgo wasn’t making our dreams of pulling 1.0g on the skidpad any easier to reach. Every pound of weight off the nose of the car is another step closer to attaining our goals. Besides, the corroded 30-year-old battery tray looked desperately out of place on our recently resprayed semigloss-black engine compartment. The planets were aligned to install a Summit battery box in Project Montelgo. For drag racing, moving the energy cell to the trunk puts more weight over the rear wheels for better traction on launch. Though we installed it as a handling aid, relocating that 60-odd pounds of dead weight (15 for the box, 45 for the battery) will no doubt help the…

Though we can choose from a dizzying array of preassembled crate engines of every description, we’ll go out on a limb and suggest that if you haven’t had the pleasure of building an engine of your own at least once, you’re missing out. There is nothing like the thrill of turning the key and having the product of your blood, sweat, tears… and cash roar to life for the first time. So the adage “Where you end up has a lot to do with where you begin” is the key to selecting a worthy core. Selecting a Core The best core motors are found in cars that run. Even if the motor is tired, you’ll be able to drive it to ascertain internal noise and watch the exhaust for steam…

A tight squeeze? Not really. Sliding a fuel-injected ZZ 502/502 between the fenderwells of Project ’66, our El Camino, will finally put the power to this low-down Power Tour Long Haul cruiser! Follow along as Steve Strope drops a GM Performance Parts crate motor into an A-body—a popular choice these days, to be sure! Come, read the travails of this trick truck and remember—you can win it! Just sign up at any HOT ROD Power Festival or on Power Tour East, where it will be presented to the lucky winner. And to think, it could be you! Sources B&M Dept. HR09, 9142 Independence Ave., Chatsworth, CA 91311, 818/882-6422 Edelbrock Dept. HR09, 2700 California St., Torrance, CA 90503, 800/FUN-TEAM Flex-A-Lite Dept. HR09, P.O. Box 580, Milton, WA 98354, 253/922-2700 GM Performance…

Of Rats and Elephants I was disappointed in the results of your 700hp pump-gas Rat (“Some Assembly Required,” June ’99). Having built and been around a lot of big-bore and/or stroked Rat motors, I thought it would crank out 850 hp after reading about all the parts and money spent on it, not to knock the reliability, durability, mild cam specs, and compression ratio—not to mention the awesome VE numbers. I’m not saying the motor didn’t perform—it makes awesome torque—but if I paid $16 grand to make 700 hp, I would be bent! Glenn BlantonEdmond, OK One of the main goals of that story was to build a reliable street engine. Of course, you could make 700 hp for less money, but not on pump gas, and its reliability would…

In late 1996, automotive trade journal Ward’s Auto World commissioned the late Larry Shinoda to express his ideas on how the classic ’55 Chevy Bel Air could be redesigned for the 1990s. A poster of this artwork (originally used to help raise funds for Shinoda’s kidney transplant) will now go toward establishing a college scholarship in Shinoda’s name for students of transportation design, through the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles. Through the establishment of the scholarship, the museum plans to commemorate Shinoda’s lifetime of design excellence, as well as perpetuate his inspiration for creativity. Shinoda is best remembered for his work on the ’63 Corvette Sting Ray and the ’69 Mustang Boss 302. For more information on the Larry Shinoda Fund and copies of this poster, contact Steve…

Typhoons, Route 66 are Feted Acouple more shows to kick off your autumn in grand style: The 10th annual Route 66 Rendezvous will be held on the streets of San Bernardino, California, on September 16-19. Rendezvous is regularly rated one of the best cruises in the country and is jam-packed with cool cars. The city cordons off about 30 downtown blocks, and registration is strictly limited to 2,448 cars—the number of miles that make up the Chicago-to-Santa-Monica route. To register, call 909/889-3980. Or, if you’re more a fan of turbocharged, intercooled V-6 trucks, then your calendar should already be marked to visit the Syclone/Typhoon Nationals (or the SyTy Nats, in shorthand) in Kansas City, Missouri, on September 4-6. A cruise, quarter-mile runs, clinics, and a barbecue are planned; last year’s…

When the June ’99 Car Craft hit our desks, we had this nagging sense of déjà vu. Could it be we’ve seen this cover before? Are the other guys running out of ideas? Ripping us off is the most desperate form of flattery. Let’s have a look: Front of a ’60s GM A-body with the hood off Back of car cleverly obscured so you can’t tell what it really is (our January cover doll is an El Camino, despite the grille; CC’s Buick is a wagon) Big honkin’ engine in your face Car, backdrop, and logo combined make an all-American red, white, and blue color scheme Junkyard cover blurb Silhouetted image of car Touche, gentlemen.…

Harley-Powered Roadster Out Now We all know about the exploits of Michigan Madman E.J. Potter, the dude who strapped a small-block Chevy to his ’cycle and put on a show at the drags. What you see before you is exactly the reverse: a Harley motor in a ’32 highboy replica, as executed by Jaxports. The Streetster is 10 feet long, weighs 1,200 pounds, seats two, and is completely street legal. Using the stock Harley-Davidson Sportster motor, the Streetster has a top speed of 90-plus mph and can get 40 mpg at a steady 65mph cruise. It’s available with or without an engine and in various stages of completion, from bare frames to a ready-to-paint roller. Contact: Jaxports, Dept. HR09, 3001 N. Logan, Lansing, MI 48906, 517/886-9031.…

In the mid-’80s, when factory performance was gaining some serious steam, it was dealt a blow that seemed to signal the end of the musclecar era—again. The reaper was electronic fuel injection, a.k.a., EFI, and soon horror stories of its untunability spread like urban legend. Fear of the unknown paralyzed many would-be tweakers, even turning some Chevy folk to the Ford camp and the 5.0L Mustang, which had mechanical engine controls and an honest-to-God Holley carb. Then, in 1986, Ford adopted its own version of EFI, and the masses assumed the good tunes were definitely done. But over the next several years, a handful of pioneers figured out that the EFI 5.0s actually had as much (if not more) potential than the carbed cars. The masses followed suit. Soon the…

Picture a straight-line performance machine. A supercharged, juiced small-block capable of 500 hp and built for abuse under that fiberglass hood, throwing a relative lightweight like a Mustang coupe down the quarter-mile in less than lO½ seconds at 128 miles an hour. A 10-point cage keeps the unibody from shredding itself under the strain as it squats down on its haunches and leaps forth in anger, the driver slamming through the gears, the speed tool’s squarecut, chiseled features coldcocking the air ahead of it as it blasts through the traps. Picture a car built for road courses. Low to the ground, fat low-profile meat sticks to tarmac like a frisky beagle to your leg, preventing the ’Stang from flying off in unsafe directions. Shocks and springs and sway bars working…

Your block is back from the machine shop with round bores and square decks. The rest is up to you. The success or failure of your project is going to rest on the care you take during assembly. With this in mind, we’ve compiled a list of areas often over-looked.…

Electra GS Torture Test Do 17s on a Big Car Work? Much has been made of 17-inch wheels and low-profile tires being all the rage in hot rodding. My question: Are they worth anything beyond looks on a car with largely stock suspension? Chris Ankrom and Robert Ross of Mesa, Arizona, helped provide my answer. Their pillowy-soft ’69 Buick Electra 225 has been converted to faux-GS spec, including buckets, a console shifter, GS induction, and badging that they pirated off a junked ’69 Riviera GS. Just two weeks before the kickoff, the Deuce-and-a-quarter was a freshly painted shell; Ross was still attaching the interior panels as Ankrom hightailed it across the desert toward the kickoff. The answer came quite accidentally as we floated down l-4? on our way into Albuquerque,…

Attention Future HRM Staffers: Pursuant to “Impossible Is a State of Mind” (“Starting Line,” June ’99), I would like to suggest engineering as a possible career path, especially to your younger readers. This education will arm students with a technical basis needed to understand high-performance technology and why it works. More power for less money is what we design at work and into our own ’60s-era musclecars. An engineering background can help you prepare for a variety of occupations, from technical writer to design engineer to patent lawyer. I helped design the most powerful air-breathing engine in the world-how does 110,000 pounds of thrust grab you? Edward Fisher, P.E.Cincinnati, OH…

In its ever-expanding quest to bring car enthusiasts the best of automotive performance at all levels, EMAP Petersen, HOT ROD’s parent company, has purchased Frank Hawley’s Drag Racing School. Hawley has graduated more than 5,000 students in its 13 years of operation. According to EMAP Petersen Chairman and CEO James Dunning Jr., “We can now offer drag-racing enthusiasts everything to feed their passion. They can participate at our drag-racing events, read about drag racing in our publications, see it on our TV shows, and, finally, they can experience the thrill of drag racing by training at the Frank Hawley Drag Racing School.”The school is based in Southern California and has facilities on the grounds of the Pomona Fairplex, though plans call for additional schools and an expanded curriculum around the…

Power in Paperback Back Pocket Dyno Drag Race Edition By Mitchell B. Yow IntraTech Consulting Corporation Anyone who has ever attempted to assemble a performance car has had questions about what parts to use, how to create the proper combinations, how much power to expect, and, of course, how fast the thing will go. For the average hot rodder, answering these questions often means relying on the experience of others or chancing expensive wrong guesses in the trial-and-error department. Much of that guesswork can be eliminated by flipping through the pages of Mitchell B. Yow’s Back Pocket Dyno. Yow's compilation of mathematical formulas will assist therodder/racer in converting guesses and. estimates to precise, accurate figures. But if the thought of calculations conjures unpleasant flashbacks to math class and the poor…

New destination, new venue, new friends: This was the Power Festival’s first trip to Shreveport, Louisiana, and if the enthusiasm and sheer numbers are any indication, it will surely not be our last. The Red River Raceway facility—half an hour from Shreveport—is a first-class venue every step of the way, and thousands braved the weekend’s spotty rain to see the hundreds of cars on display at the head of the manufacturers’ midway. SEPTEMBER 17-19 Memphis Motorsports Park Memphis, Tennessee Memphis Motorsports Park is sort of an alma mater for longtime NMCA participants, since this track used to host the Fastest Street Car Shootout every September. Now the NMCA Comp Cams Street Car Drag Racing Series continues to shake things up at the track with some of the greatest street car…

A problem rodders face in some parts of the country is the difficulty in obtaining smog certification for late ’70s/early-’80s vintage iron. As the auto manufacturers scrambled to meet tightening smog regulations, this became the period of compromised drivetrain combinations. The real tragedy is that there are quite a few suitable upgrade candidates from this era, but the addition of an aftermarket carb, intake, and exhaust, much less a larger engine, is typically emissions prohibitive. Gary Nelson of Torrance, California, ran headlong into this very predicament. Being a fan of ’78-’87 El Caminos and a veteran speed freak, Nelson wasn’t likely to be satisfied with the output of the standard V-6 or 305 these El Caminos came with, but to stay on the road, he had to comply with California…

You’re standing there, marveling at the finished product: a freshly rebuilt engine done just the way you wanted. It was a long time picking through the mountain of blocks at the boneyard for a suitable subject, selecting the best parts from magazines and catalogs, having countless conversations with machinists over procedures and pricing, and then the painstaking process of immaculate assembly. Now it’s in the engine bay, and you can’t wait to light it off for the first time. Slow down a minute. All that work and expense can be negated in a few seconds if your new engine hasn’t been lubed properly. It’s easy to be careless. After all, you’ve grown accustomed to a reliable o? dog. Jump in and hit the key, change the oil every so often—no…

Unforgettable VDO This VDO speedometer provides one-button, automatic calibration and features an LCD window on the dial face that yields programming instructions. It also contains a memory chip that retains settings, even when the power is cut. All VDO speedometers are electronic. Information: VDO, 188 Brooke Rd., Winchester, VA 22604. Power Connect Code: 31009 Go with the Flow K&N K&N introduces the Performance Gold Oil Filter, designed for high-performance oil filtration. The filter flows up to 12 gallons per minute, provides a hydrostatic burst strength of 550 psi, and is unaffected by racing gasoline, methanol, and nitromethane fuels. Information: K&N, P.O. Box 1329, Riverside, CA 92502. Power Connect Code: 19009 Instruction Manual Hypertech Hypertech now offers the Power Programmer III for Chrysler, Ford, and GM vehicles. Adjustable features include transmission-shift…

Huffing Across America 1952 Chevrolet When I asked Carl Lindbeck of Green Bay. Wisconsin, if I could bum a ride in his ’52 Chevy, he offered a warning; “The car’s noisy, and I don’t talk much.” Not a problem. As we cruised through the New Mexico desert, the music of the supercharged smallblock bellowing through straight pipes provided the backbeat for Creedence on the CD player. Like many Power Tourers, Lindbeck experienced some’ mechanical difficulties along the way but in true Tour fashion, he managed to overcome them and make it to Nashville with the rest of the gang. The mufflers were excised shortly beyond San Bernardino, California, because the heat from diem was igniting the carpet. Down the road, one of the massive rear tires blew and was replaced…

Backwards, Sideways, and Upside Down ’37 Ford Coupe There are plenty of street rods on Tour, and fat fenders abound, but when I saw the SOHC and the Bow Tie on the back of a ’37 Ford, I was intrigued. At a gas stop, the owner popped the hood, so I stepped up to take a look and got an eyeful of luggage. He said the engine was in the back and opened the trunk, revealing a transversely mounted, mid-engine, single overhead-cam small-block. The name on the cam covers was familiar, “Oh, you’re using Pete Aardema’s stuff.” I commented. “So you’ve heard of me?” was the reply. Aardema and I had spoken numerous times on the phone, but we’d never met. He had me take the wheel for the next…

To Spray, or Not to Spray… Q I have a potentially stupid question: If I build a Chevy 383 using aluminum heads, 11:1 compression, would nitrous oxide help, or would it just be a waste? Kevin VantrinFt. Mitchell, AL A I believe Socrates once said, “Nitrous is never a bad idea.” I’m not sure why you suspect that your application might not benefit from a shot of juice, but it certainly would. Injecting nitrous oxide into the combustion chambers is simply a means of artificially adding more oxygen, which can then be matched with more fuel, resulting in more power. Any internal combustion engine will benefit—from your Briggs& Stratton lawn mower to a Caterpillar diesel. Just make sure you match the nitrous with the appropriate amount of fuel, or you’ll…