Indholdsfortegnelse for July 1993 i Hot Rod

THE GAINESVILLE FLEX Top Fuel racer Jack Ostrander took the ride of his life at the NHRA Gatornationals when the JP-1-powered Rocky Mountain Express snapped the bottom framerail just before the lights in qualifying. Down force created by both the front and rear wings bowed the broken frame directly behind the driver’s cockpit. The combination of speed and aerodynamics lifted the rear of the car, forcing the nose into the asphalt. The upper framerail then sheered away as fuel from a ruptured line caught fire. If all this wasn’t enough, when the top framerail sheared, it pivoted the front section of the car around the rear section, placing Ostrander precariously alongside the rear with the engine to his immediate left. Luckily, the car ground to a stop and Ostrander escaped…

While a large part of the nation was being cursed by Mother Nature lost March, Southern California rodders were treated to her temperate side as she bathed Goodguy’s 4th So-Cal Rod & Custom Spring Nationals at the Pomona Fairgrounds in a basin of warm colors. Unlike many rod runs where a rule banning past-’48 vehicles is in effect, Goodguy’s two-day gathering included anything from ’62 or earlier. The beauty of such a format is that it provides the participants and spectators alike with an ever-expanding statement of what ’90s hot rodding is all about and the direction in which it’s going.…

Everyone said it was just a matter of time before we would see a 7-second street machine. There’s no more pastulating now, because Rod Saboury—lost year’s Fastest Streel Car in America Shootout runner-up—ran a 7.961 at 170.00 at Englishtown, New Jersey, on Sunday, April 4th during a Pro Modified race. Rod made only a couple of changes to his ’59 ’Vette in order to run the numbers. The power came from a very conservative, 100-horsepower, single-stage, under-carb plate nitrous system from the guys at Nitrous Oxide Systems (NAS). (Mike Thermas, from NAS. called it “just a little sneeze of nitrous.”) Plus, Rod pulled more timing out than ordinary just to be safe, then left the starting line from a dead idle—700 rpm—as opposed to leaving against the trans brake. Another…

Have some blank walls in your house or office? Forget those pansy floral paintings. What you need is some hard-fare hot rod artwork to deforate your cubicle. Automotive designer Jim Gerdom has some bitchin’ limited-edition prints that may be the perfect things for bare walls or for covering that hole you’ve put off fixing. For $18 each (plus $4 shipping & handling), you’ll get one of 2500 18x24-inch prints, signed and numbered by the artist. The ones he showed us include this ’69 Bass302 Mustang and the swoopy ’40 Ford, but he has others as well. They can be found at Design Factory, Dept. HR07, P.O. Box 14037, Lenexa, KS 66285-4037.…

Actually, they never left. Mattel has been continuously producing the Hot Wheels toy cars since 1968. What’s “back” is that the kids who were playing with them in the ’60s are toying with them again in the 90s. Remember the Red Baron, Heavy Chevy, or the Alive 55? And what about those orange or black tracks with the little plastic tongues to connect the pieces? Most of us probably have loads of Wheels in our attic, and they’re probably still in those cool redline-tire-shaped cases. Except now they’re worth lots of money (if you didn’t pull the wheels off ’em as a kid). Some early models with redline tires can pull up to 700 bucks if they’re still in the package! The English Matchbox cars are also in there, but…

Assembling a new engine is probably the most intriguing aspect of hot rodding. Whether it’s screwing together a basic street-engine kit or a meticulously crafted 14.0:1 race engine, the work is both fun and rewarding—if you do it right. But what if you’ve never assembled an engine before? You have to start somewhere. Every famous engine builder once faced his first engine. It’s not difficult, but don’t rely on just this magazine article to guide you through the entire pro-cess. Consider this story as motivation to learn more about engine building before you tackle your first powerplant. Play around with a junkyard special, or hang out at a local shop to learn more about how it’s done. As one more point of interest, this engine is intended as the basic…

The heroes get all the press, don’t they? The stylers, the profilers, and the Pro Street pretenders get all the color pages in the magazines and the Taco Bell commercials, but they don’t get you to work or school every day. To balance the ledger, we feel that it’s time to strike an arc for the everyday street machiner. The one on a budget. That’s the plan behind Project Great White. A low-bud-get-but-stylish street machine anyone could build. No blowers, no billet…in fact, no trick stuff at all! What we have here is a cool champagne cruiser on a cola budget. In the classic hot-rodder tradition, over the course of the next three months, we’ll resurrect an ugly-duckling derelict ’66 Chevelle into a classic street machine that will never go…

What makes Steve and Barb Messina’s ’65 Rambler American so cool? Is it the 230 holes drilled throughout the body and chassis? That was four months-worth of work! What about the 120 feet of 15/8-inch tubing? That’s what was needed for a cage-and-tub job to hang the 4.88-geared Ford 9-inch, Chassis Engineering four-link, and 32x14 slicks. Or per-haps it’s the 12.5:1 LS7 Rat motor that makes it so cool. Actually, it’s the combination of all these things that pushes this Rumbier to 10.50s at 128 mph. That’ll frost the competition! But the clincher is that the car is regularly driven on the street. To keep it comfy, the owner-tabbed floorboards are made of steel, while the seats are from a ’69 Camaro. The stock front suspension was retained, but Steve…

Bracket racing is often referred to as the backbone of hot rodding. It’s a sport that anyone can participate in with any type of car. It owes its popularity to the fact that you don’t need a trick car to participate, and any-one can win. If you show up with a vehicle and the minimum required safety equipment, then you’re ready to race. You don’t even need a quick car; most tracks will allow you to run cars that past as slow as 25-second elapsed times (e.t.) in the slowest bracket class. Consistency and choosing a proper dial-in are the only essentials to winning a bracket race. The first concern is to pass the technical inspection—more commonly called tech. Every track varies in its required safety equipment, but the following…

Racers tear around the track, vying for glory at up to 100 mph, wheel-to-wheel, dancing the dirt-track slide, and nerfing at will. That could be you! There’s a rapidly growing oval-track class of mini-jalopies powered by superbike engines that’s ideal for first-time throttle-jockeys who want track time without the irritation of bankruptcy. They’re called Dwarf Cars. The premise is affordable racing, and the result is a nationwide rage. The heart of the action seems to be Arizona, where the ’93 season opener featured 30 Dwarfs at Phoenix’s Manzanita Speedway—and they expect 50-car fields later in the year. Dwarfs are designed for mile to smile dirt ovals, but the flexibility of a motorcycle engine and trans, adjustable suspension, and drop-out rearend makes them prime for multi purpase use. Bruce Dorn of…

We’ve been following the buildup of a pair of street rods at California Street Rods. The pair—one a ’48 Chevy and the other a ’48 Ford—-is being put together under the auspices of BFGoodrich T/A Tires to help celebrate HOT ROD magazine’s 45th anniversary, since our first issue also went on sale in 1948. Ford, Chevrolet, and a number of aftermarket suppliers of street-rod parts have also been involved, and when the two are completed they will be given away to some lucky sweepstakes winner! (For details on the contest, see the coupon at the end of this story.) The Chevy represents what is essentially a makeover project, while the Ford is a ground-up rescue. The first installment of Project Porky-Eights detailed the total disassembly of the Ford and the…

What do you get when you mix a ford V8 and a sporty fareign-designed roadster? If you said “Cobra,” you’re about 28 years too late. This little rollerskate is the Panoz Roadster (Panoz Auto Development Company, Depl. HR07, P.O. Box 379, Braselton, GA 3051 7, 404/867-4796). The Panoz is a limited production, built-to-order component for (they hate the word “kit”) that uses a Mustang EFI 5.0-liter/T-5 drivetrain in a Frank Costin-designed stainless-steel three-cell space-frame chassis with a urethane-bushed unequal-length A-arm front suspension. The rearend is a Ford Crown Victoria 8.8-inch Traction-Lok unit with disc brakes and a quad-shocked four-link. Company owner Danny Panoz wanted a competent handler that didn’t beat you up to drive, so the car is stiff but still comfortable. The swoopy body panels are all pressure-formed aluminum,…

Imagine winning the championship in your racing division and then being confined to a wheelchair the same year. That’s what happened to Evan Evans in 1989 when he took the SFARE Class-6 desert-racing honors and was later paralyzed from the chest down in a motorcycle accident. Most guys would have thrown in the towel, but Evan decided to hit the Mickey Thompson stadium-racing circuit. His girlfriend, Kim, was a little nervous about Evan’s racing until he was hit by a car while he was out wheeling for exercise. Now Kim wants to keep him racing, jumping, and trading sheetmetal jabs in the stadium where it’s safe. Evan began by designing and installing his own hand controls on the steering wheel of a Jeep Cherokee Grand National Sport Truck. Then he…

Each month, Ken “Pasie” Fenical selects a nifty machine that’s been built by a rodder who is under the age of 25 for inclusion in Roddin At Random. Pasie makes his picks from submissions by our readers, and the choice for July is Kurds Jacob’s ’67 Mustang. Kurds is 24, and he started the buildup on his Ford during his senior year in high school. It now boasts a fresh 390 with a four-speed tranny. To dress up his tranny, Kurds will recieve a $50 gift certificate from B&M for being honared as pick of the month. Kurds claims that its tight suspension and low stance make it a real road handler with for-real pony power. At the end of the year Pasie will mull over all of the previous…

HMMWV, High-Mobility Multi-purpose Wheeled Vehicle, Hummer, or Humvee. Call them what you will, but the awesome 4x4$ that serve our armed forces are now available to civilians as a two-passenger pickup, a four-passenger hardtop, a four-passenger soft top, or a four-passenger wagon. The fresh news is that AM General now offers them in colors: black, white, red, dark green, and low-glass sand. For you vigilante types, the military polyurethane chemical-agent-resistant coating in olive drab is also available. Hummers follow a long line of legendary military mud-chuckers, including Willys flat fenders and Dodge Power Wagons, and we can guarantee that they fill their predecessors’ combat boots quite well. We recently motared the gentle beasts through the Red Rock 4-Wheelers’ Easter Jeep Safari in Moab, Utah, and can attest to their off…

When it comes to hot rodding, nobody knows it all. The breadth of the sport takes in everything from early-’20s T-buckets to late-model street machines. ’ It includes coupes and four-door sedans as well as pickups and station wagons. Power-plants range from turbocharged and intercooled six-cylinders to blown big-blocks breathing nitrous and mass quantities of fuel. No wonder, then, that car builders and designers are constantly bombarded with questions about what to buy and how to modify it. Little wonder, too, that we decided to seek expert advice on three of the most-talked-about topics among our readers, providing us all with a chance to learn from the legends. In “Buying Your First Car,” Editor Steve Campbell consulted with five of the leading experts in the field about what car to…

You just counted out months-worth of pay-checks in return for your i first car. You pilot the baby home and take inventory of your new toy. Hopefully you’ve made a prudent purchase and don’t have a ton of repairs to make before you can start enjoying your new ride, or at least you know what you’re in for. Now what? Everyone will suggest a slightly different approach to fixing up a car. Some like to dial-in the drivetrain first, with aesthetics falling low on the priority list. Others wouldn’t be caught dead in a thrashed-looking beater with more primer and rust showing than paint. There is no right or wrong way to go about modifying your car, but the first consideration should be to make sure your newly acquired car…

Some hot rodders travel great distances to locate the cars of their dreams. Deeter Godwin bopped across the street to find his. His neighbor drove this ’69 Camaro every day until Deeter made her an offer that began his three-year rebuilding process. That was when he was 20. Today, the Camaro shines as brightly as a product of Deeter’s El Paso, Texas, sign company. Starting with a ground-up rebuild plan, and a lot of help from his father and brother, Deeter built his own subframe connectors and custom shock mounts. They help fit the Weld Racing Super Lite wheels and Goodyear 275/60R15 rear tires, which are pushed by a B&M-shifted Turbo 350 trans. While most Camaros of this stature rely on a simple small-block. Deeter decided a Rat was more…

REGAL RAT Take one Bow-Tie block, add a 4.25-inch stroker crank, stuff in Wise co pistons, a Lunati cam. Dart aluminum heads, Dart II valve covers, and a Dart intake with a Barry Grant-blessed 1050 Holley perched on top, and you have a potent rodent. But wait, there’s more. Radar corp, of Broomall, Pennsylvania, added the MSD ignition, a necessity when you’re squeezing a load of fast gas through NAS nitrous solenoids. KING-SIZE INTERIOR There’s plenty of elbow room in here, even with the required full cage. There’s a purge button along with the real-thing blue button on the steering wheel for the nitrous. Other than the Auto Meter memory tach and gauges, this Streeter looks much like grandma’s grocery cruiser. Just don’t let her near that blue button! The…

If you’ve been reading HOT ROD for any length of time, you know that we occasionally build a haulin’ vehicle, only to have it pried out of our wanting hands and given away to a lucky reader, ft’s a bittersweet experience every time, but we never learn. So when Vic Edelbrock called and proposed that his company and HOT ROD join forces to build a new giveaway vehicle, we jumped at the chance to do it again. Deciding what kind of vehicle to build was just a matter of some market research. Camaros have been done. Shoebox Chevys have been done. Mustangs have been done. Even a few Mopars have found their way onto giveaway ballots. Giving the market a good long look told us that trucks are hot, trucks…

BONAFIDE BONNEVILLE Ken Oberstaedt and his wife bought their ’65 Pontiac Bonneville two years ago, and they say that they’ve had nothing but fun ever since. The semi-customized look with shaved door handles, removed nameplates and letters, blacked-out chrome, and the low-as-it-can-go suspension gets a lot of “oohs and aahs.” Ken installed glass-pack mufflers and Cragar wheels for the finishing touches. The Bonneville has a stock 389 four-barrel and a Turbo Hydramatic transmission. The Oberstaedts take pride in their classic and say they have to laugh when kids ask them if the car “has been stretched like they do to limos.” A REAL McCOY Owner Steve McCoy of Brazoria. Texas, says that it took him 3!f years and plenty of money to build this ’61 Ford. “I’ll be darned if…

If you’re a friend of Gulliver, Dorothy, or Snow White, then we have the ride for you. While visiting The Dwarf Car Company in Phoenix (see “Dwarf Tassing” in this issue), Casey Cain showed us the “street” version of the company’s diminutive oval-track racers. It’s a ’32 micro-roadster powered by a 750cc Suzuki motorcycle engine. Complete with stereo, lights, and detachable hand-operated windshield wiper, the car could feasibly be made street-legal. More realistically, it’s the cutest pit cruiser around. The Dwarf Car company will sell you a complete, unpainted roadster based on a Dwarf Car race frame and sheetmetal less engine, tranny, paint, and interior trim for $4695. Contact The Dwarf Car Company, Dept. HR07, 2418 W. Grant, Phoenix, AZ 85009-5834, 602/495-9341.…

As promised, we went back to the Las Vegas Motorsports Association’s March Automotive Triathlon with our cheese box ’65 Chevelle to challenge the ’Vettes and Porches. We trimmed more than 100 pounds from the shoebox with Fiberglass Trends’ hood and front bumper, and we added an NAS nitrous system controlled through the ACCEL electronic fuel-injection system. Shod with stickey BFGoodrich Comp T/A R1 road-race tires, the Chevelle took us to first place in the drag portion of the contest with 12.25 and 12.38 elapsed times, but a few mistakes on the oval cast us precious seconds. The combination of Global West’s tuning tricks along with the nitrous helped us cut over 2.5 seconds off our best previous road course time, but that wasn’t quite enough to improve over lost year’s…

It has been said that opinions are like bellybuttons: Everybody’s got one. But not everyone’s judgment carries the same weight. Quality experience and proven expertise add credence to any individual’s advice, and when we decided to seek guidance for young hot rodders on how to select a first car, we came up with a stout list of authorities. Each carries a legendary reputation in his field, and combined, they provide an invaluable reservoir of knowledge. Mike Adams built and raced a number of ’57 Chevys, including a variety of drag cars in the late ’60s and early ’70s. He has lived in Florida since high school, and that’s where he opened his first shop—Adams’ Apples—in the early ’70s. The recession of ’75 sent him back to work at a car…

Impress your friends! Annoy your competition! Avoid embarrassing moments! Yes, that’s right. Act now and you, too, can understand the beautiful language of hot rodding. Learn easily in the privacy of your own home with our fun-to-read Hot Rod/English dictionary. There will be no difficult testing, no salesmen calling your home, and there are no hidden casts. With this simple lesson on how to speak Hot Rod, you’ll be sounding like a pro in less than an hour. And the pack-age folds easily for convenient storage. All it takes is one simple payment of $2.95 at the newsstand ($3.75 in Canada), and you can take the pages you’re presently scanning home. Act now and you’ll receive the rest of the magazine at no extra cast. That’s right! Exciting bonus pages…

The Goodguy’s 11th All American Get-together doesn’t include fareign-built vehicles, and the sun at this year’s gathering was of the California liquid persuasion. But that’s small stuff, because nothing could shine off the performance parade. The neat thing about an all-American boogie can best be summed up as variety. Nothing generates more photo opportunities and editorial angles than a mess of rods, customs, late-models, trucks, Stockers, and race cars milling around in a massive, motorized cluster con-fab. And the fairgrounds in the pleasing little town of Pleasanton, California—located 30 miles due east of San Francisco—has become a mecca for mechanical merrymaking. The multi-faceted nature of this particular run can be seen immediately when one steps inside the fairgrounds. There is a 1000-stall swap meet, a parking lot full of cars…

If painting a car scares you, then the thought of performing custom body-work must cause horrible night-mores and induce visions of hopelessly hacked-up sheetmetal. Lost month we tried to unravel the mystery surrounding painting by showing everything it took for a first-timer to successfully paint a car. Did it work? Are you reading this during a block-sanding break? Are you ready for more? This month we’ll get a little more involved and show you how to do some custom bodywork to set your car apart from all the others. Think of “How To Paint” as a high school sophomore-level class and this month’s installment as a college-prep course—Bodywork 401. Willingness to learn and a good deal of patience are vital to success in this class, but they’re not the only…

Your engine is only as good as the fasteners that hold it together. In fact, that’s true of every-thing on your car. But how do you know what fastener is correct for a given application? Actually, fastener selection is quite simple and easy to understand. Companies such as American Racing Products (ARP), Dorman Products (makers of HPX fasteners), and Mr. Gasket offer catalogs full of specifically designed fasteners for special applications. Just as you would improve the quality of your clutch or ignition, you must also upgrade your fasteners when you build more power. BASIC DEFINITIONS A large part of choosing the correct fastener is knowing what strengths are important and how they are defined. • Ductility is the amount of flexing a fastener can withstand before breaking. • Yield…

Johnny Freund has been a car maven all his life. He’s owned ’55 and ’57 Chevys, plenty of Corvettes, and many other cars and trucks. But he always wanted what he calls “a real hot rod.” And as the owner of Hunter’s Custom Automotive, a speed-and-custom hot rod shop in Nashville, such a car coincided with his business. Thus the creation of his and wife Linda’s ’33 Ford Vicky—with a fair amount of fabrication by Boyd Coddington’s companies. The motivation comes from a 400ci Chevy engine that works with a Competition Cams camshaft and hydraulic lifters under alu-minum Brodix heads. The valve covers are custom Boyd’s offerings, as are the air cleaners that cover the rack of down-draft Weber carbs over an Inglese intake manifold. The mixture is squeezed by…

CLASSIC RAT Q I’m planning to put a 396 big-block motor and TH350 transmission in place of the factory 265 and Powerglide in my ’56 Chevy wagon. Can I use the stock mounting at the front of the engine and the stock trans mounts for the conversion? Also, will I have to shorten the driveshaft or alter the headers to fit around the steering box? Cory ConawayRedondo Beach, California A The best way to install a big-block in a ’55-’57 Chevy is with a Classic Chevy International kit (Classic Chevy International Club, Dept. HR07, P.O. Box 607188, Orlando, FL 32860-7188, 800/456-1957). The kit was designed so that modifying the firewall and welding are not necessary. Also, by using a short-ailshaft TH400 and TH400 yoke, the stock ’55-’57 driveshaft can be…