Indholdsfortegnelse for June 1995 i Hot Rod

What started life as one of those, “Hey, why don’t we…” ideas at a brainstorming session has blossomed into a major event! On May 13, the HOT ROD editors leave on the Power Tour, a cross country, high-performance drive from Los Angeles to the HOT ROD Power Festival in Norwalk, Ohio, which is being held May 19-21. As of this writing, the magazine staff, friends and associates will make up a core of about 25 vehicles traveling the entire distance to Ohio. How many more of you, our enthusiastic, hard-core readers, we pick up along the way is anybody’s guess. We’re doing the best we can to lure you into going at least part of the way by throwing a number of parties and cruise nights along the route. One…

SHE STREETER Aah, why can’t all women be like Cindy Evans? The Lake Forest, California, resident has owned this 77 Camara since she was 17, and in the years since she has rebuilt nearly everything on the car. Cindy rebuilt the 327, adding a Holley carb on a Performer intake, an Isky cam, a Weiand aluminum water pump and a set of headers. Various chrome goodies make it shine. Like most of us, Cindy refuses to let anyone else work on her car. We can already anticipate the fan letters. HOT COMET Joe Borer’s ’65 Comet Caliente is a combination of modern mechanicals in a vintage, pre-smog shell. Stock trim, a mild red paint job and cop-style wheels make it look stock, but at the heart of the car beats…

Hot rodding is where you find it. Some enjoy building cars that will never get driven. Others revel in pushing o 3500-pound brick to 7.70s at 170 mph. Others are more sedate, choosing instead a different path—like metal-morphizing o child’s Radio Flyer wagon into o 70-mph rocket sled. This is Don Roscoe’s Santa Rosa, California-based motorized monument to Dare To Be Different hot rodding. He decided to marry a Mac 30 kart engine with a little red wagon and have some fun. The wagon has already appeared at the Oakland Roadster Show (well, it is a roadster), Sacramento Autorama and the Fresno Auto Show, winning first place in the custom wagon class. Don’t ask. Don also claims the wagon will run at least 60 to 70 mph, but his local…

Sot. 5/13 (U.S. 101; 110; 1-15) 8:00 a.m.—Depart Los Angeles, CA (Slop 1A) 12:30 p.m.—Lunch in Las Vegas, NV at the Imperial Palace Auto Museum (Stop 1B) 5:00 p.m.—Overnight in Cedar City, UT (Stop 1C) Sun. 5/14 (1-15; 1-70) 9:00 a.m.—Depart Cedar City, UT (Stop 2A) 1:00 p.m.—Lunch at the Frosty Circle in Green River, UT (Stop 28) 6:00 p.m.—-Overnight in Glenwood Springs, CO (Stop 2C) Mon. 5/15(1-70) 9:00 a.m.—Depart Glenwood Springs, CO (Stop 3A) 1:00 p.m.—Lunch at the McDonald’s Restaurant, Limon, CO, sponsored by Colorado Custom (Slop 38) 5:00 p.m.—Dinner in Goodland, NS, at the Northwest Kansas Area Vocational-Technical School (Stop 3C); overnight in Goodland, KS Tues. 5/16 (1-70) 9:00 a.m.—Depart Goodland, KS (Stop 4A) 12:30 p.m.—Lunch at the Sonic Burger in Salina, KS (Stop 4B) 5 p.m.—Cruise night/party…

Aunibody car, like a Camaro, Nova or Mustang, uses the floorpan as a main structural part of the vehicle. Instead of a full-perimeter frame, these cars have subframes that bolt to the floorpan, but not to each other. When you put some real torque to it. this type of chassis moves and flexes, and that has bad effects on suspension action and traction. Subframe connectors do just that—they connect the front and rear subframes together, effectively turning the car into a fullframed vehicle. Aftermarket subframe connectors come in two types, bolt-in and weld-in. The weld-in type is better if you don’t mind cutting up the car a little, but the bolt-in connectors are easy to install in the driveway, and you don’t have to pay someone to do the welding.…

FINAL CALL TO THE STAGING LANES By now you've figured it out: The race is on, the staging bulbs are lit, the shootout is about to happen. In what is sure to be the largest contest of engine-building skill, car and chassis science, savvy and especially ego seen this year, engine builders Dick Gazan, Jon Kaase and Herb McCandless will butt cylinder heads to see who can build the meanest pump-gas 500-inch engine. The shootout is not just a comparison of dyno sheets; we will get to the real world when the engines are stuffed into relatively equal cars that will fight it out on the 1320-foot proving ground. But that’s next month. This month we'll show you what the Chevy camp has going together. When it came time to…

KER-POW, clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk. Most of us recognize this sound. It happens when the parts ahead of the driveshaft completely overpower the parts behind the driveshaft. Broken differential parts are no fun, and what’s worse, can be dangerous. There are quite a few upgrades that can be performed on any make of differential, but when it comes to swapping the entire rearend for a stronger unit, the best strength-per-dollar install can be a 9-inch Ford. Obviously, you can’t just go to the salvage yard and find a 9-inch Ford differential that will bolt into a ’69 Chevelle, so we did some research to find out exactly what it takes to put a 9-inch under a Chevy. What we found is that it can be a bolt-in if you choose…

Getting the quickest dragstrip times possible out of your car requires you to put the maximum power down to the pavement. In dialing in this power application, hot rodders often consider the engine and transmission, but sometimes overlook the differential. With all the differential options, it’s time we all got a better understanding of what the products are, how much they cost, how they work and what their common uses are. To get up to speed, we spoke with National Drivetrain about its popular differentials and with Reider Racing, a full-service rearend company, about the installation and application of these differentials. DEFINING DIFFERENTIALS There are two types of performance differentials: the locker and the limited slip. A locking differential physically couples both axles together except when the car is going…

Have you ever been to Detroit in February? It’s cold, gray and dreary. At least that’s what it’s like outside. On the other side of the doors at downtown Detroit’s COBO Hall, however, it was warm, colorful and cheery, because the weekend of February 17-19 marked the occurrence of the 43rd Annual Dash & Sony Autosound Autorama. We don’t usually cover indoor shows for a few reasons. For one, it’s hard to shoot photos because there are too many ropes around the cars, and film hates flourescent lights. But the biggest reason is that indoor shows have the reputation, sometimes deserved, of being angel-hair extravaganzas. COBO Hall is for the most part an exception to the rule—it’s a good show that’s generally devoid of tasteless metalflake and velour upholstery. It’s…

Hot rodders have never known when to leave well enough alone. If there’s a way to make a car run faster, handle better or look cooler, that’s reason enough to roll it into the garage and get to work. So why should it be any different when it comes to the bikes we ride? In the Harley game, expressing your personal style is everything. If your tastes in Milwaukee iron run toward a bike with custom cues pulled directly from popular rodding trends, then we've run across a new accessory source you should know about. Stylin' Cycle has recently introduced a full line of custom Harley-Davidson accessories that would look right at home on your favorite rod. Stylin' Cycle is a sister company of the sport truck mailorder giant Stylin'…

450 HORSEPOWER IN A BOX American Speed’s latest engine package is this 383d small-block Chevy with throttle-body electronic fuel injection, ported Air Flow Research heads, a Comp Cams cam, TRW pistons on 5.7-inch rods and a four-bolt block. Compression is 9.2:1 so it runs on pump gas, and American Speed claims it makes 450 horsepower and a healthy 495 Ibs-ft of torque. For more information, contact American Speed Enterprises, Dept. HR06, 3006 23rd Ave., Moline, IL 61265, 309/764-3601.…

NEW COLORS FOR THE C.A.R.S. BOYS The last time we saw Rick Dyer and Bruce Kimmen’s wicked Chevys was in action at the NMCA Fastest Street Car chingo in Memphis. Kimmen’s Camaro drove over one of its own rods, denying him another Top Ten jacket, and Dyer took his ’55 into the 7s and all the way to the semifinals before guard-railing the shoebox and bending up all that pretty sheetmetal. Both are back for ’95 with some changes that add up to a whole new look. Dyer wasted no time repairing his 7-second street car, and went the original incarnation one better with a beautiful purple and pearl white paint job, augmented with a matching interior. Motivation still comes from an Eagle Engines 632-incher and a Lenco four-speed, and…

Since 1961, the The National Hot Rod Association’s Winternationals has served as a preview of coming drag-racing attractions. The third annual Winternationals heralded the NHRA’s return to Top Fuel, while Detroit’s latest Super Stockers debuted at the SoCal race. Don Garlits' rear-motor digger revolutionized drag racing after it won Top Fuel in 1971. And if the 35th annual Winterdigs—led by Eddie Hill (Top Fuel), Cruz Pedregon (Funny Car) and Darrell Aiderman (Pro Stock)—is any indication of what’s to come, drag racing 1995 will be a quarter-milestone.…

Whenever we use the term “low-buck,” we realize we’re speaking in generalities. A “budget” buildup from a professional rod craftsman like Boyd Coddington might pay for 20 (or more) salvage yard sleepers that get an engine rebuild, a suspension drop, tires and wheels, and little else. Yet on the next few pages you'll find what we think are some truly low-buck hot rod mods: fixes, upgrades and hop-ups that can be bought and installed in exchange for only a small fistful of dead presidents. A couple of guys who have put their hard-earned dollars to good use are the Smiths, pictured here. Graphic designer Greg Smith owns the Mustang fastback (and he and his wife, Eileen, share the two other ponycars in the garage). The red El Camino belongs to…

The street racer’s parking lot dance is actually quite a bit more intricate than that, but that’s the gist of it. Make the other guy think he’s got you covered, then bargain for position, starting line advantage, anything you can get. Most of all, never let ’em know what your car can really do, and always beat the other car by no more than a car length, less if you can get away with it. The two cars you see here are the epitome of the perfect street sleeper, with sedate, “can't-be-that-fast” looks in a package that’s dialed in to the nth degree to annihilate anything that lines up next to it. Or 100 feet downtrack, for that matter. These are serious sleepers. Todd Moyer’s ’67 Camaro and Chuck Samuel’s…

We wish we could open this story by telling you that torque converters are simple devices that work like a fluid clutch to get a car moving. But the fact is torque converters are complex devices, and they can have a dramatic effect on your car’s performance To help us explain how, B&M engineers George Wallace and John Riend took us on a guided tour of street and strip torque converters. MULTIPLICATION TABLES A torque converter is essentially a fluid coupling that connects the engine to the transmission. The popular analogy is an electric fan blowing air while facing another fan. The air flows across the blades of the second fan, inducing the second fan to spin, although somewhat more slowly. A similar action also occurs inside a torque converter.…

By the time you need to step up to o 9-inch differential in your GM car, you’re undoubtedly making some power and in fear of breaking the stock differential. Bui the options concerning what parts to use in a 9-inch housing are daunting. We asked Strange Engineering to put some qualifiers on the parts that are available, and the people there offered the following information. The more power the engine produces, the heavier the car and the more abuse the differential sees (trans brakes, clutch, nitrous, and so on), the stronger the rearend parts need to be to provide flawless service. The first item you need to consider is the centersection. A standard Ford centersection will work fine for real street cars and con be strengthened with a Daytona pinion…

Roy Brizio and I agree. Bill Smith is right up there in the “Guy-With-The-Most-Toys-Wins” derby. As last month’s readers will recall, Smith, the owner of Speedway Motors, has amassed a collection of racing engines, pedal cars, speed equipment and lunch boxes guaranteed to blow any rodder’s mind. Well gang, “smilin'” Steve Castelli—the owner/driver of Hot Rod Willys, one of the baddest street rods in the country—is pressuring “Speedy Bill” with his own skull-shattering assemblage of toys, bikes, mopeds, models, soda fountain accessories and service station signage. Castelli is one of those dudes who, in his own words, “has always been into saving his stuff.” As a kid he collected models, Whizzer bikes and Smith-Miller toys. Like all car-crazy kids, he started working in a gas station. He ultimately acquired a…

An internal-combustion engine’s carburetor regulates fluids according to the laws of nature. Viewing air as a fluid helps explain how these fundamentals apply to the air/fuel mixing device known as the carburetor. In addition to the basic fuel and air management systems shown, carburetor operation also involves a series of functions performed by the idle, off-idle (transition) and main circuits. Auxiliary circuits include those for starting, accelerating, emissions control and wide-open-throttle operation. As the engine runs, the fuel level in the float bow! falls. The hinged float lowers as a result, allowing the needle valve to drop slightly away from its seat. Under pressure from the fuel pump, additional fuel is forced into the float bowl until the fuel level once again raises the float and reseats the needle. Under…

Well, that’s a Hawt Rawd.” That’s what people say as they point to Johnny Freund’s cartoonish ’33 three-window as he cruises his home state of Tennessee. And that’s probably what they’d say anywhere, since the Bob Alloway-built purple coupe has got the look and a very crisp, 502ci Chevy big-block just roiling to boil the 17-inch BFGs to the rims. There are a lot of cars that look bad-boy, but it’s tough to build a car that is bad-boy. Freund’s ’33 is bad-boy. Besides the wild paint and wheels, the big-block is what really makes this car a standout. The 502 is stuffed with 10.5:1 TRW slugs pumping the air/fuel mixture through polished Edelbrock cylinder heads. The intake and carburetors are also from Edelbrock, as is the gear drive. An…

STREET ROD SWAY BARS TAKE AWAY THE SWAY In the words of the WEEDETR Street Rod Components press release, “Rock and roll is great to listen to but is no fun when describing the handling characteristics of your street rod.” To help the matter of curves, WEEDETR makes these rear sway bars to fit many early cars, including ’35-'48 Fords. The company also has universal bars for other cars. For more information, contact WEEDETR Street Rod Components, Dept. HR06, 1355 Vista Way, Red Bluff, CA 96080, 916/527-2040. 9-INCH REAREND ASSEMBLIES CURRIE’S COMPLETE REARS There’s no reason to waste time scrounging through boneyards for greasy, possibly bent 9-inch rearends for your street heater when you can get a complete, ready-to-bolt-in rear from Currie Enterprises to fit whatever you have. Currie also…

LOCKED OUT Some of the more serious engines you rend about in HOT ROD have locked-out advance mechanisms in the distributor. What this means is that the advance mechanism has been disabled so that the engine has the same ignition timing at every rpm including idle. Dick Gazan Racing Products (Dept. HR06, 908 N. Cataract Ave., San Dimas, CA 91773, 909/592-3235) explains that with race engines, this can make tuning much simpler and can actually smooth an engine out that has an improper timing curve in it. It can also make an engine very difficult to start and is usually not the hot setup on a real street car. Since plenty of MSD distributors are used in racing applications, MSD makes locking the advance mechanism easy. The weights and springs…

The fourth generation of the Camaro/Firebird hos become the dorling of the F-car tuner group. Among the more prestigious tuners are Reeves Callaway, John Hennessey, John Lingenfelter and Doug Rippie, who all offer massaged F-cars that are exceptionally quick. We took o short stint in the Callaway SuperNatural Comoro for a couple of days that instantly spoiled us for this combination of power and style. You might remember Callaway as the man behind those torque-twisting, twin-turbocharged Corvettes a few years ago. Reeves hos since forsaken the temperamental turbos for naturally-aspirated power—and a few more cubic inches. The Callaway C8 SuperNatural Camaro utilizes o steel 3.750-inch stroker crank to pump the original 350 LT1 to 383 inches while employing ported aluminum LT1 heads and the original factory intake. Power jumps from…

As the readers may or may not know, Don “the Snake” Prudhomme, after a quarter-mile career that began in the early ’60s, has retired from driving chores and turned over the butterflies to Larry Dixon, Jr., the son of another famous drag racer. To commemorate the Snake’s incredible career, artist James Ibusuki has created “The First Strike,” a 14x30-inch, museum-quality, Snake-signed lithograph of Prudhomme smoking off the Sour Sister when he was driving the famed Greer'Black*Prudhomme dragster at San Gabriel in 1963. What’s more, the cars in the background are equally as legendary as the Snake’s First Strike. For more information, contact James Ibusuki, Dept. HR06, 13053 Beaver St Sylmar CA 91342-1905, 818/362-9899.…

One of the best ways to improve handling on virtually any car is to increase the size of the sway bar. Most passenger cars come with weak sway bars the size of a No. 2 Ticonderoga. The sway bar (or antiroll bar) connects the opposite suspension control arms with what is really just a torsion bar. As the suspension rolls in a turn, the control arm tries to twist the sway bar. A larger bar tends to resist this motion, controlling the amount of body lean in a corner. Our test subject for this $100 bolt-on is a painfully stock ’65 Mustang. To help this pony car get through the corners a little flatter, we contacted Performance Suspension Components for a bolt-on Hellwig front antisway bar. The price is actually…

SOURCE Weiand Automotive Industries Dept. HR06 P.O. Box 65301 Los Angeles, CA 90065 213/225-4138…

Think of Greg Csernai as a sort of reformer, a street machine correctional officer. You see, this now beautiful ’67 Mustang was once a hardened street racer with a stripped interior, a big-block, a Toploader, 4.11s, and a front frame crunched 4 inches to the left. The wild life had finally caught up with this Blue Oval brawler, and it was up to Greg to turn it back into an upstanding member of street machining society. Sentencing was set at four years confinement while Greg collected the pieces necessary for the Ford’s reform. Afterward, it was paroled for two years in his shop, Great Lakes Customs in Clinton Township, Michigan, where it was to assume its new identity as a ’67 Shelby GT 350 replica. After necessary straightening, the frame…

Hot rodding is really all about efficiency. That efficiency may be more power, better acceleration, or just a car that’s more fun to drive. But whatever your goal, if your street machine is more efficient it just runs better. And it’s often the little things that can make a big difference. Take the clutch, for example. Most stock clutches work well, but there are hot rodders out there who think they could be better. Bill Hays of Centerforce is one of those hot rodders, and he’s been improving clutches for over 30 years. For the last few years, he’s concentrated on the diaphragm-style clutch for street and many race car applications because he feels it’s the best. And his latest piece is a real winner. But first, let’s compare a…

How many times have you wished that you could know for a fact what benefits you’d gain by making a specific parts change to your car before actually opening your wallet? That’s the approach we took to this gear ratio comparison article, and since we really tried what you'll read here, we feel comfortable saying that you can expect results similar to what we found. THE GROUNDWORK Our goal here was to show what e.t. changes you could expect by changing the rear gear ratio. A gear swap can be the most dramatic (and cost effective) improvement you can make to a car, but only if the proper gear ratio is selected. We went to the track to show you exactly what gains, or losses, we found by swapping gears…

One of the biggest and oldest mail-order speed shops in America—Speedway Motors, in Lincoln, Nebraska—is also a big producer of original fiberglass bodies. Speedway was one of the first to offer a fiberglass T-bucket roadster body and frame as a kit, followed by a Track T kit and a ’32 lowboy roadster. All the cars were reengineered to make them work better while keeping costs to a minimum, and they have sold well through the years. Now Speedway has designed and built a phantom ’34 Ford club cab pickup that looks great and can be driven anywhere. Why a club cab? the folks at Speedway felt that the Ford’s standard-cab dimensions were too snug to truly enjoy. The extra room created by the extended cab makes this truck a lot…

Unlike other forms of hot rodding, where hoodscoops, thundering engines, Pro Street stances and huge tires are all part of the act, street rodders tend to understate their cars. Take David Stitzer’s silky smooth ’40 coupe, for instance. Even though builder Don Pilkenton (of Don’s Hot Rods in Germantown, Ohio) and his crew spent 7800 man-hours performing 13 pages of double-spaced modifications (including 172 body changes) on Stitzer’s 55-year-old Ford, they still retained its O.E.M. integrity. “My clients,” says Pilkenton, “like to stay on the conservative side, yet want a unique car.” In fact they did such a good job on Dave’s subtle sender that it won the prestigious Ridler Award at the Detroit Autorama a couple of years ago. Stitzer’s story—his first car was his mother’s worry, a ’40…

The best part about writing a car or bike feature is reading the tech sheet (which is the form we have owners fill out to tell us about their hot rods). Sometimes well get straightfoiward answers to all the questions we ask on the sheet—those aren’t much fun. But occasionally we'll get a comedian, someone who makes us laugh with his whole life story, or someone who keeps the answers brief but humorous and semi-sarcastic. When describing his ’94 Softail. Tony Romero, Jr., of Thousand Oaks, California, took the latter approach. His answers go a long way in describing his bike’s details and attitude. When we asked if the ’80 Shovelhead 80-incher had a blower or turbo, the answer was “Wish!” When we wanted to know about the ignition, he…

LIGHT THE WAY Q I'm working on a ’39 Ford standard sedan. While I like the look of the stock headlight bulb and lens, I would prefer the ease and availability of sealed beams. In several of your features of ’37 to ’39 Fords, it looks like a sealed beam headlight has been installed behind the stock lens. How is this done? Once installed, how are the headlights aimed? David OlsonCambridge, Minnesota A As with many other aspects of upgrading a street rod, there is no easy bolt-on to accomplish this. Dick Spadaro Early Ford Reproductions (Dept. HR06, 124 Maple Ave., P.O. Box 617, Altamont, NY 12009, 518/861-5367) told us that there was a sealed beam conversion available for these cars about 40 years ago and that they appear occasionally…