Indholdsfortegnelse for September 1994 i Hot Rod

SHOEHORN SPECIAL This month we’re doing something a little bit different for Readers’ Rides. Instead of the traditional Comoro, Mustang, ’Cuda, truck and street rod, we have found examples of the more, shall we say, creative ways you readers have come up with to stuff a big motor into a little package. We hope you like ’em. BUG EATS MOUSE! Stuffing a small-block Chevy into a VW Bug isn’t a new idea, but rarely do you see it in such a stock-appearing body shell. Lynn Greenberg dropped a 400-inch engine, a TH700-R4 trans and a Chevy rearend under the bonnet of this ’57 Bug, and other than meatier tires and an obviously better exhaust note, you’d be hard pressed to notice. Underneath is a different story, with a full tube…

My Editor’s Rule of Thumb pertaining to magazine build-up vehicles goes something like this: All project vehicles will take at least three times the amount of time you figure to complete. Well, I’d like to gladly report that the BFGoodrich ’57 Chevy we’ve been following (the car Gray calls “Son Of Green Machine”) is an exception to that rule. It’s going fine—so fine, in fact, that I couldn’t resist giving you this sneak peek of the (nearly) finished product posed with the lovely Shannon Rae. By the time you read this, SOGM will have had its public debut at Americruise in Peoria, Illinois. Well, that’s not quite true. SOGM will debut driving cross-country from Southern California to Americruise, with BFG’s Tom Harley and California Street Rods’ Chuck Lombardo behind the…

The Goodguys 5th annual Rod & Custom happening at Pomona had a little of everything—rods, customs, classic Chevys, racing cars…and a roasting of Boyd Coddington by a number of his pals, including your Ol’ Dad. Thankfully, I led off the roast because the combination of Boyd’s wife Diane and Lil’ John Buttera totally stole the show. Diane started the one-two punch with a billet rolling pin, while Lil’ finished fur face off with a story of how he hit himself in the stomach while drilling holes in a disc-brake rotor. Boyd replied that it didn’t hurt much, but Hot Dogs has been known to fudge the truth.…

The world of Formula 1 racing lost a champion and a hero at the San Marino (Italy) Grand Prix on May 1 when Ayrton Senna’s Williams car left the track in a 180-plus-mph left-hand sweeper and slammed into the fence at almost unabated speed. Ayrton died of massive head injuries. This came a day after fellow Fl driver Roland Ratzenberger was also killed at the same track. Formula 1 isn’t that popular among hot rodders in this country, but in most other parts of the world it’s huge, and Ayrton Senna was its biggest active star. In his native Brazil, he was revered beyond just hero status and was tremendously famous (sometimes infamous) the world over. Think of how U.S. sports fans admire Michael Jordan and Joe Montana and multiply…

It’s Dare to be Different time again. In search of the diverse, rodders have made wagons the hottest property in 1994’s street rod/machine fashion parade. The latest and perhaps greatest example of wagonesque is Troy! Trepanier’s new ’60 Rambler. Of course, Troy is no stranger to taking on the street-machine establishment with an avantgarde approach to boulevard artistry. Where does the inspiratio build such a car come from? It started literally in his own backy The 50 Buick Bumongous” Troy built (HOT ROD magazine’s Rod of the Year in 1992) started from a Buick lying in the weed a neighbor’s yard in Troy’s hometown of Manteno, Illinois. ’ Rumblur, as Troy calls his wagon, evolved out of the same denhold found in a bam just two miles outside of town.…

The other articles in this section should have you plenty excited about limiting your tire spin and dropping your e.t.’s. Here, we’ll show you how easy it is to bolt on a set of Competition Engineering traction bars to do just that on leaf-spring-equipped cars. The company also offers bolt-on traction bars for some coil-spring-equipped cars as well as many other good-quality, chassis-related components. The leaf-spring traction bars stop spring wrapup, limiting or eliminating wheelhop. All slapper-type traction bars convert the rotation of the differential housing into a downward force that helps plant the tires. These traction bars are also very easy to install and don’t solidly attach to the front of the spring or the chassis, so they won’t cause bind or abnormal suspension reaction during normal street driving.…

Customizing your hot rod is a great way to differentiate your ride from every other car in the world. While some customizing can dramatically change the way a car looks, such as swapping wheels and tires, it can also be a subtle art. Here are 50 ideas from both ends of the spectrum to help make your car your own. GOOD HEAT Flames can definitely transform a plain Jane ride into a hot machine if done correctly. You can either get hot licks like these or ghost flames, which are less prominent but just as striking. EXHAUSTING To clean up the lines of your car in the rear, you can run the exhaust pipes through reliefs cut in the rear bumper. On this Chevy II, the gas tank has been…

Richard Sanders’ Malibu started in the typical way—a little cleaning and tuning up—but ended with the finished product you see here. For starters, Richard shortened all four coil springs and modified the front spring mount and lower A-arms for a comfy but cool stance. Next, a 350 was built using TRW pistons, an Erson cam and valve-train, a Weiand intake, an ACCEL ignition, Hedman headers and an Edelbrock carburetor. The real beauty under the hood is the way that everything was cleaned, painted or replaced with brushed aluminum. It may still appear a bit cluttered because all the accessories were retained, but at least it’s well detailed. With things buttoned up from a mechanical standpoint, the interior was in need of some updating. Cars from the late 70s and early…

HOT ROD magazine’s success was ensured the day we began practicing what we preached. From day one, or January 1948, to be exact, HOT ROD’s editorial policy was based on showing its readers, in an entertaining manner, how to build hot rods. So HOT ROD hired editors that were involved in building hot rods and who could articulate within its pages the various processes needed to start and complete a successful project. We began to build our own hot rods for two basic reasons: It was a natural by-product of the staffs involvement, and it guaranteed that the magazine’s editorial direction remained focused on the creation and enjoyment of building, driving and racing hot rods. Space limitations won’t allow us to chronicle every HOT ROD project, but it’s our intention…

The first of the Mr. Gasket Street Challenge Series races went off in May in conjunction with the NMCA’s Muscle Challenge season opener at the Atlanta Dragway in Commerce. Georgia. While 30 cars signed up to run in the Challenge, tech disqualifications and breakage during qualifying winnowed the field down to six cars: two late-model Mustangs, two late-model Corvettes and two Camaros—a ’69 and a ’71. Low e.t. in qualifying went to Billy Glidden, who smoked the field with a 9.289-second pass in his 347ci-powered Mustang. (The next quickest car was David Henninger’s 9.813 Camaro.) Glidden, son of Pro Stock champion Bob Glidden, beat Darrell Arnett’s Corvette in the first round to face Alan Moody in the final, who was also driving a Mustang. Neither car was running properly in…

Harleys vibrate. That’s a fact of life, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. Factory rubber engine mounts go a long way toward reducing the vibration, but even on a rubber-mount bike, after a healthy number of miles, the vibes will still make your hands go numb, your feet fall asleep and your butt get sore. V-Thunder, the Harley-Davidson aftermarket parts division of Competition Cams, has developed stabilizers that work with rubber-mounted engines to smooth out the vibrations even further. Designed to work like mini shock absorbers, the Velva Ride stabilizers replace the factory solid link (or links, depending on the model of bike) between the frame and engine and are designed to filter out a multitude of vibrational frequencies. Installation is very straightforward and took us less…

The Alameda County Fairgrounds in Pleasanton, California, rumbled once again to the sound of big-cube engines as the Goodguys put on its first West Coast Muscle Car & Street Machine Nationals this last spring. Some 500 musde machines from the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s sat in the sun during the weekend event, which also included a swap meet, live music and a bikini contest. About 60 of the nicest musclecars (defined by the Goodguys as resto-style ’60s and ’70s cars) and street machines (radically modified, post-’48 rods) were set aside for display inside one of the fairgrounds’ buildings. From that group, awards were given to the top car in each class. Lorry Shangle’s pristine black ’65 Dodge Coronet—sporting aluminum fenders and hood, a Max Wedge Hemi and a can of…

It’s not easy to bring home the fury and excitement of drag racing once the eliminations are over. But we’ve seen some posters recently that go a long way toward capturing the spirit of quartermile warfare. Artist David Peters has a series of prints commemorating some of drag racing’s top drivers. His latest painting depicts 1 993 NHRA Funny Car Champion John Force driving his Castrol Oldsmobile. Other prints in the series feature Kenny Bernstein (as the first driver Io crack 300 mph), five-time NHRA Top Fuel Champ Joe Amato and the Mac Attack—independent racer Cory McClenathan. These limited-edition prints are signed by both the artist and the driver and are available through Design Tech Graphics, Dept. HR09, 7443 Indiana Ave., Riverside, CA 92504,909/688-3086. The life and career achievements of…

One week after making drag-racing history, Kurt Johnson’s record-setting Pro Stock Oldsmobile was destroyed in a finish-line crash during the grand opening of Don Beverley’s Virginia Motorsports Park. Johnson became the first driver to crack the 6-second barrier with an NHRA-legal Pro Stock during qualifying for the NHRA Mopar Parts Nationals at Englishtown, New Jersey. During Friday evening’s qualifying session, Johnson shocked the fans with a 6.988-second effort, earning a gold-plated Dominator carburetor and a $25,000 bonus from Holley in the process. His closest competitor was Mopar Parts driver Scott Geoffrion, who ran a 7.053. On Saturday, Johnson dominated the Budweiser Pro Stock Challenge, stopping Mark Osborne in the final round with a 7.030, which was more than good enough to back up his earlier mark for an official record.…

Here’s a story that hits two topics near and dear to our hearts. The National Muscle Car Association (NMCA) recently bought this 302-powered ’69 Mustang coupe from an auction. But not just any auction—one of the auctions held by Chevron to sell some of the more collectible cars turned in to its clunker crush program. The NMCA plans to “restore and restify” the car along its Top Stock guidelines. The car will ultimately be raffled off at the NMCA’s 1995 World Finals in Memphis. A “clunker” saved from the scrap heap and on its way to a brighter future. That’s what we call a happy ending.…

It doesn’t matter how much power your engine cranks out or how much money was spent on that trick transmission or even how long your grocery list of expensive differential parts is. That’s right, it’s all worthless unless you can put it to the ground, and that means a well-thought-out suspension. Whether you’re trying to hook up the power your potent big-block is producing or you’re interested in cutting some time and tire noise off the comers, we’ve put together the articles you’ll need to turn that impressive list of drivetrain parts into an actual performing car. Notice, we haven’t said expensive. Sure you can spend a lot of money on the suspension, but in addition to presenting the tech you’ll need to make your car hook, we’ll also show…

Last month we kicked off Project Super ’Stang, an ’89 Mustang LX that we’re rebuilding into a high-performance daily driver. Once the car is complete, it will be given away to a HOT ROD reader in a special promotion with Super Shops. The series’ first installment detailed the buildup of the car’s engine. This month we’re turning our attention to improving its major suspension components. (And next month we’ll make chassis mods to further upgrade the car’s handling potential.) Because we want the Mustang to be a daily driver and not a purpose-built straightline or autocross car, our suspension goal was to come up with a combination of components that improves the car’s handling capabilities without totally sacrificing ride quality. A certain amount of ride firmness was acceptable—and desirable—but we…

On the other end of the scale from flash cars are simple cars. Baskerville uses the term “sneaky” to describe such a car, and that’s an even better term. You’re attracted to these cars at first by their super-straight bodywork and excellent detail. But then the car’s real beauty starts to sneak up on you. The more you look, the more subtle custom details you see. Simple cars are the strong, silent types of hot rodding. They’re not loud, but boy, can they get the job done. Paul Reiter’s ’66 Chevelle is a simple car. There are no wheeltubs here, no scoops or blowers. But the car just looks right, doesn’t it? The rich Porsche Guards Red lacquer accents the car’s stock lines, which were perfected at Paul’s shop, Reiter’s…

Dream cars are sometimes hard to build. The owner and builder of this ’32 highboy, Norwood “Erastus” Wooding of Roanoke, Virginia, has wanted a Deuce roadster since he was 15 years old. When he started to build his dream back in early 1992, he thought he wanted a billet car. But as the car came together, he realized that what he wanted was a car that combined the looks of the old hot rods with a few tasteful billet pieces. His car ended up looking and running better than he ever dreamed. Using a Just-A-Hobby frame, a Downs body, a 454ci LS6 Chevy crate engine, well over 100 hours of bodywork and a lot of thought and quality fab work, Norwood and his pals built this car in 14 months.…

To be a Ford lover is to be somewhat of a masochist. Paying $100 for the same basic part that goes for $50 in Chevy trim can really burn a guy, especially when the power production is equivalent. Add that to the notorious design changes and parts noninterchangeability consistent with Ford engines, and it’s enough to keep all but the truly dedicated away from Henry’s Dearborn-bred products. While building a righteous big-or small-block Ford certainly isn’t as easy or inexpensive as some other brands, it can be done, and thankfully there are plenty of good parts out there to make it happen. That goes double when it comes to cylinder heads. Over the last year or so, some very good Ford heads have surfaced from both Dearborn and the aftermarket,…

It’s hard to keep a secret, especially when a project can go in a direction that may or may not be on the cutting edge. I can assure the readers that Son Of Green Machine is a home run. We can’t show you just why—that will happen in a couple of months—but as you begin this third installment of SO GM, I’m sure you will see that BFGoodrich’s ’57 Chevy Project is every bit as nice as our Flashback ’57 was 10 years ago. This month, we’ll start with the chassis (sans those wicked wheels and BFGs that will be added in a future installment) and end with a first lick at setting SOGM’s body on fire. SOURCES California Street Rods Dept. HR09 17112 Palmdale Huntington Beach, CA 92647 714/847-4404…

Nostalgia is in. Especially when you can have nostalgia with contemporary comfort, which is what Harley-Davidson’s Fat Boy is all about. One look at the bike tells you there’s something old about it, but at the same time, the Evolution engine and a few other adornments tell you it’s brand new. The combination makes for a winning bike in the showrooms and a real hit out on the streets. NOSTALGIA The key to this bike is its retrospective approach. The classic lines start with a Softail chassis that’s built to have a hardtail (no rear suspension) look. For comfort, however, there are dual shocks mounted under the frame to provide just over 4 inches of travel. In front, large Hydra Glide-style front forks handle the bumps and, when combined with…

LEVELHEADED We’ve all had the used-Holley experience where, no matter what we try, the carb has a massive internal vacuum or fuel leak that causes horrible fuel metering. Quite frequently, this problem is caused by warped metering plates or, as Brad Urban at The Carburetor Shop (Dept. HR09, 1457 Philadelphia, Unit 24, Ontario, CA 91761, 909/947-7744) has found, the body itself. Time to throw the carb away, right? Wrong. The Carburetor Shop can deck the metering-plate surface of the carb body to correct all but the worst cases of body warpage. Urban has devised a method of doing this without causing other problems in the carbure tor and can save an otherwise useless carb. There is a limit to what can be fixed, but most bodies are repairable. A quick…

According to Testers, “A rainbow of the richest pearlescent and solid hot rod colors from the palette of the legendary hot rod builder Boyd Coddington,” was recently put on the market for sale to rodders who build models. These colors, available in 20 different hues, can be obtained in paintbrush, airbrush and spray-can applications. Testers’ enamels—known for their high-gloss and userfriendly properties—can be obtained at most hobby shops.…

Carroll Shelby is not a subtle man. He calls it like he sees it, and he’s not happy with the current state of imitator Cobras. He’s said more than once that he dislikes all these cars called Cobras, and before he’s done he’d like to create one last great Shelby Cobra. Take him at his word. The car Carroll wants to build is still in the planning stages, but it’s pure predatory Shelby nonetheless. The two-seat sports car will be built of composite plastic with a 500hp, twin-turbocharged and intercooled V8 hefting through a six-speed manual gearbox. The plan calls for a car that weighs only 2200 pounds and is able to scorch subfour-second 0 to 60s and do 0 to 100 mph and; back to 0 in 13.5 seconds.…

Amid blazing klieg lights, a visit from California’s governor and much fanfare, the Petersen Automotive Museum opened in early June in Los Angeles. Joining Robert and Margie Petersen for the official ribbon-cutting ceremony were Governor Pete Wilson, a number of Los Angeles-area supervisors and other government officials, Hollywood celebrities and many faces familiar to automotive enthusiasts, including Carroll Shelby, Andy Granatelli and Parnelli Jones. Guests at the premiere were treated to a charity-benefit silent auction and an advance look at the $40 million museum, which opened to the public three days after the gala. The museum chronicles how the evolving automobile influenced the evolution of Los Angeles itself, and it features vehicles in a number of settings, from lifelike dioramas to themed car displays. Hot rodders will have lots to…

This clean ’71 Torino GT, owned by Bilbie Cox of Gambrills, Maryland, is Posie’s Pick this month. The Torino was bought used by Bilbie’s family in 1972, and it served kid-toting duties for over 10 years. Bilbie’s parents eventually agreed to give him the car on the condition that he fix it up. That he did. After three different paint jobs and two engines, the Porsche Guards Red car now houses a 351 CJ block bored.030 over. Dual Holley 600s feed a Weiand tunnel-ram, which in turn feeds a set of ’70 four-barrel closed chamber heads. When combined with the TRW forged pistons, the heads give the motor a 10.86:1 compression ratio. A C6 trans and TCI converter send power back to a 4.11 Traction-Lok rear. Bilbie, who is 23,…

The Power Fest has arrived. Presented by BFGoodrich Tires and sponsored by Dodge, HOT ROD Magazine’s Power Festival series is the coolest way to see a ton of vehicles up close in their natural environment. Not only do we have our Power Fest series, but our sister books Car Craft and 4-Wheel & Off-Road also have their own events. Since this is the first in what promises to be an exciting series of summertime events, we thought we’d hit the highlights of the three days of horsepower, paint, chrome and fun that fall under the banner of HOT ROD’s Power Fest. Since the Midwest is the premier place for powerful shows, our event coordinators couldn’t have chosen a more spectacular facility than Bill Bader’s Norwalk Raceway Park in rural Norwalk,…

Have you noticed that horsepower and torque have almost become no-brainers? HOT ROD has shown you how to build a 700hp, normally aspirated 502 big-block on pump gas, among other powerful things. With a shot of nitrous or a whiff of blower, mega-power is now mega-easy. But the sole purpose of making all that power is to accelerate your pile of iron up to speed in a ridiculously short amount of time. That assumes, of course, that those poor abused tires can plant all that power to the asphalt. If you have the power, you’re already a resident of Tire Spin City. While more rubber is a quick fix, it also has to fit under the wheelwell. Assuming you’re not quite ready for tubs and ladder bars, there are some…

While it’s tempting (and easy) to throw a majority of your car’s build-up budget at the engine compartment, you shouldn’t underestimate the importance of a well-set-up suspension. No matter what your performance goal—getting maximum traction when the Tree goes green, pulling major g’s through corners or just setting your car’s stance right minus the rock-hard ride—you’ll need to tune the chassis with the proper suspension pieces. The other stories in this special section should have offered some good ideas for your car; now comes the time to shop. While this parts guide is by no means comprehensive, it should start you down the road to your dream ride. BBK COILS BBK Performance now offers lowering springs for the ’94 Mustang. Available in both specific-and progressive-rate versions, the new coils will…

On the surface, Boyd’s Streeters are as simple as Coddington is complex. But the rod thing is only an illusion. Reducing any car to its visual and visceral basics, when every misalignment or ill fit jumps out and hits the onlooker like a Mike Tyson hook, is harder to achieve than finding Boyd dressed in anything other than a Hawaiian shirt. But that Boyd look—a special mix of smoothy styling, superb fit and finish, attention to detail and high-tech components—has become the standard by which today’s street rods are judged. While it is true that current street rodticulation has taken a number of directions, the Coddington influence of fit, finish, detail and good taste has transformed yesterday’s shot rods into today’s collection of show-but-go-quality killers. So with this short introduction…

We see way too many cars that look really trick on the outside and have a nice interior, but lift the hood and moths, spiders and small animals scurry out in every direction. In fact, nearly every one of us on staff owns more than one car that fits this description. And considering what we typically have inside the engine, there is no reason the outside and the engine’s surroundings should be disgraceful. Of course, there are some questions to be answered before breaking out the spray paint, such as what color to paint things. Fresh coats of the original colors are always a safe bet, but drowning an older General Motors engine bay in the same color that the body is painted can really look good. Or perhaps paint…

Burns Waggener is no stranger to bad, black street rods. Check out the February ’93 HOT ROD “Baddest Street Rods Of All Time” for a quickie on Burns’ previous car, a 40 Willys coupe that ran high 9s with a blown small-block. Like the coupe, his latest Willys is bad, black and brutal. The 41 pickup’s Spookspainted body is all steel and sits atop a chromemoly tube chassis built by Randy Snow in San Antonio, Texas. Strange struts keep the nose (barely) off the pavement, and a coil-over four-link rear suspension controls a trick octagonal aluminum rearend housing stuffed with Mark Williams parts. The Goodyear slicks necessary to hook this wicked Willys mount to 15x15 Center Lines, while the fronts are also Goodyears on 15x3.5 spindle-mount Center Lines. Donnie Anderson…

Project Freeway Fats is a ’39 Ford Tudor sedan. In this series of build-up stories, we’re detailing the fabrication, restoration and assembly of the car using some of the top builders in the country as sources. Many of the build-up techniques involved are common to all street rods, and many more are common to all types of hot rod projects, regardless of year, make or model. If Project Freeway Fats is designed (to draw upon those techniques and illustrate how to build a reliable, durable, daily-driven street rod. The emphasis is less on flash than on function, and the greatest stress is being placed on the car’s handling, performance and safety. The firewall on Freeway Fats could have been salvaged the same for ’35-’4O Fords, even though some parts may…

Custom Harley builder Ron Simms, who is the owner of Bay Area Custom Cycles in Hayward, California, combined power and flames in building his latest project. The 80ci Evo engine received headwork by Hannan, a raft of S&S products including pistons, connecting rods, pushrods and a carb, a Sifton cam, a custom air-cleaner housing built by Simms and a Rich Thunder exhaust. An estimated 80 horsepower makes the flames roll. A Barnett clutch gets the power to the polished trans and spins the custom spoker wheels, which are equipped with Metzler rubber and stopped by Performance Machine brakes. A custom Paughco-Simms frame was raked five degrees and equipped with a custom Simms swing arm. The front forks are modified Wide Glide units with triple clamps by Simms. Many of the…

PRODUCT OF THE MONTH WING LEVERS These replacement hand levers for ’93-to-present Harley-Davidson motorcycles or ’82-to-present H-Ds with late-model switch gear are sure to make you a hit on the cruise scene. Although they’re made for great looks, they also work great with a larger finger contact area and a more natural curve to the contact patch of the lever. For more information, contact Cyclesmiths, Inc., Dept. HR09, 8754 Helms Ave., Rancho Cucamonga, CA 91730, 909/987-3890. SEAT SO FINE CLASSIC KITS You get the closest in your car to the interior (unless you like to snuggle with your transmission!), so why not upgrade your ride with an interior kit from Custom Interiors? There are hundreds of kits for ’28-’94 cars that include instructions, hog rings and hog-ring pliers to aid…