Indholdsfortegnelse for September 1995 i Hot Rod

Followers of Rod Soboury’s ultraquick Corvette can now join a fan club devoted to Rod and his 7-second car. For $45, members receive a T-shirt, an autographed poster and eight issues of Rod’s newsletter, which contains information regarding his racing schedule, changes and updates to the car, and progress reports from each event. (Rod wrote to tell us he recently turned his quickest time to date—7.52 at 181 mph—at Raceway Park in New Jersey.) To join, contact Rod Saboury Racing, Dept. HR09, P.O. Box 700, Manchester, MD 21102.…

Yes, that’s a blown Cammer motor sitting in Rick Kirk’s almost finished ’62 Falcon sedan delivery. And that’s just one of the things that’s bound to grab some attention once this sweet hauler is finished and on the show circuit. Rick’s idea was to take one of the highest-horsepower engines built in the ’60s and beef it up with ’90s technology. So he bored and stroked the 427 SOHC to 503 cubic inches and added a BDS blower and a Lingenfelter EFI system. The estimated 1200 horsepower runs throuah a TCI-prepped C6 to a Currie 9-inch stuffed with Richmond gears. The ’62 sheetmetal surrounds an Alston chassis, although a fiberglass front clip was used for better engine access. The car rolls on a Mickey T/Weld Racing tire-and-wheel combo. We heard…

While we were undertaking our drive from Los Angeles to Ohio, this group of six Canadian women rodders were making a run from Winnipeg to Los Angeles on what they called the “Lipstick Tour.” Our paths crossed in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, after the women had spent several days battling cold, snowy weather and minor mechanical woes. You’d never know it from the happy faces seen here. The Lipstick Tour included (from left) Lee Johnson, Margaret Hartley, Kathy Milne, Barb Balanyk, “Hot Rod” Liz Kitzul (tour leader and HOT ROD contributor) and Avril Konsof. They’re posing with Balanyk’s ’34 Ford pickup, an all-steel rod “with a heater!” exclaimed the still-thawing-out tourers.…

Three of these four men ore responsible for most of the fun cars and parts that come out of Detroit. The fourth is one of our ad salesmen, who’s responsible for making sure the other three are having a good time. From lert is Marty Levine, general manager of the Dodge Division of Chrysler; Ken Glowacki, APG sales supervisor, Detroit office; Jon Moss, builder of big-block Camaros and other cool one-off Chevys; and Angelo Giampetroni, our connection to Ford’s Motorsport/SVO parts supply. All were on hand to experience the final Power Tour cruise night in Detroit, and all brought some very trick machinery. Thank you, guys! (OK, Ken, you can go now.)…

Few people expect tubbed cars on the Interstate, and everybody we passed lost it when they saw the wheelie bars and parachute. What’s even better is that these aren’t poseur pieces; this car needs both of these parts when it hits the track. Cole: “Pete, we’re all driving our hot rods from California to Ohio on this thing called the Power Tour. You haven’t got a hair on your posterior if you don’t drag your Hoopti out here and drive with us.” Pete: “We’re there, dude!” That’s how it came to pass that Pete Walsh from Indianapolis, Indiana, brought his mid-8-second Fastest Street Car Pro Street ’72 Nova to the sunshine state to be a part of the Power Tour. To get his car ready for the trip, Pete changed…

After completing well over 2000 miles, the HOT ROD Power Tour entourage rolled into the Chicago area for one of the largest stops on the Tour. Montgomery Wards Auto Express in Merrillville, Indiana, sponsored the Windy City stop, and even though the weather was overcast and cold, there was an overflowing parking lot of cars that came from Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Michigan and else-where just to check out the cruisin’. Merrillville is just southeast of Chicago, so there were many recognizable faces—the Chicago Outlaws (Randy Lambert, Mike Thompson, Steve Penrod, Duane Waldrop and more) were there, as were some new faces. Many readers brought pictures of project cars they are working on, and others brought their newly finished rides. Jesse Brown drove his freshly finished ’39 Chevy from Indiana to…

THE DEUCE In the month since we got back from our great pavement-pounding Power Tour, I’ve had a chance to reflect on the performance of my old Deuce. It has been a part of my life since the middle ’50s and a totally dependable daily driver from 1966 to 1980. Originally built by Paul Horning and Ernie Murashige, it was prepared for the Power Tour by the likes of Art and Mike Chrisman and Steve Davis. Still, it’s a ouggy-sprung wma-in-me-iace oo-year-old open car that was never designed to skate the Interstate at 65-plus mph for hours at a time. Yet nothing broke, nothing boiled, nothing failed, nothing fell off. All I did was add gas and oil, dodge the potholes, put on rain gear and curse my superiors for…

In 1955 Chevrolet introduced a new body style that would become legendary in hot rod history. Within that ground-breaking sheetmetal was a new engine whose following would become unbelievably huge. In fact, the engine aftermarket industry is centered around and driven by the small-block Chevrolet V8. To celebrate the 40th anniversary of this engine, GM Motorsports’ Mark McPhail decided to build a ’55 Chevrolet with a host of modern parts. In place of the stock 265 that would have come in a ’55, however, McPhail started with a sequential-port fuel-injected 265 L99 like the one in current Caprices. McPhail is a corporate GM guy, but he’s also a hot rodder, so he decided to test the high-performance waters with the new 265 before having Scott Leon of the Arizona Proving…

God is in the details, so the saying goes, and customizing is all about details. Customizing is generally thought of as top chopping, channeling or other professional-required sheetmetal massaging, but it also includes little stuff that just about anyone can do. The best custom tricks are those that are brutally easy to do but have never been thought of before, or have been done in a slightly different way. You know, when you look at something and say “That’s cool, why didn’t I think of doing that?” The following are some custom tips and ideas that we’ve spotted or come up with, and hopefully they’ll inspire more of the same, or at least new twists on the idea. LATE-MODEL MIRRORS A smoothy-style musclecar or street rod with original mirrors just…

Blueprinting is one of the engine buzzwords that everyone uses but few really understand. When blueprinting an engine, you establish the clearances and specifications you want in the engine and then put an enormous amount of effort into obtaining these specs. Blueprinting goes beyond merely measuring and recording the clearances. It’s a time-consuming and labor-intensive process, which is why professionally blueprinted engines are so expensive. This story will look into the process of blueprinting. While many magazine stories state that an engine was blueprinted, few show you how it’s done. Unfortunately, all the steps involved are too numerous to mention here (even the few books that have been written on the subject can’t cover all the details), so we’ll limit this discussion to a few points on the short-block. We…

One of. hot rodding’s little, pleasures is being a part of the prerace preparation at El Mirage dry lake in Southern California. For nearly 50 years, hot rodders have stood in the long early-morning shadows warming the engines that power their streamliners, lakesters, roadsters, coupes and sedans. It’s a ritual that is as ancient as the Southern California Timing Association (SCTA), the world’s oldest amateur racing body, and the lakebed on which members of the SCTÀ have raced since the end of WWIL True, the rodders are going a lot faster than they did in 1946, and their cars are far more sophisticated and expensive than the recycled roadsters that dominated those late-’40s lake meets. But there remains one common string that ties then and now together: the fact that…

Since the early 70s, when the late Jim Ewing founded the Super Bell Axle conglomerate, the members of that company have adhered to one guiding principle: Run what you make. Ewing made cross-county trip after cross-country trip testing his spindles, disc-brake kits, axles, spring perches, and so on before they were offered for sale. Now 25 years later, Jim Fairweather, the head honcho at Bell Tech, continues the tradition with his full-fendered Deuceolet, a facsimile ’32 Chevy/Ford based on an Experi-Metal ’32 Chevy roadster body that is suspended on Super Bell Axle’s full line of buggy-sprung components. “Everybody knows that Super Bell Axle makes great suspensions that fit under Fords,” said Jim. “Well, the company wanted to show that it could put its Super Bell assemblies under a Chebby too.”…

GET BUSHED POLY PERFORMANCE If your musclecar is a little weak in the suspension area, what it probably needs is a new set of control arm bushings. Performance Suspension Components offers a line of graphite-impregnated polyurethane bushings that not only offers superior control with less deflection compared to stock rubber bushings but also lasts many times longer than rubber. If this sounds like the hot ticket for your machine, contact Performance Suspension Components, Dept. HR09, P.O. Box 14708, Phoenix, AZ 85063, 602/272-4085. SPIN TO WIN TURBO CARTRIDGES Turbo City knows turbochargers. That’s why it now offers Garret-style T3 cartridges that make servicing your turbo much easier. For less than the price of a rebuilt turbo you can buy a cartridge with all-new parts assembled to factory specs. The cartridges are…

’AT-A-BOY I’m writing this letter to comment on 10.5-inch slicks, stock suspensions, steel bodies and 3000-plus pounds being combined to produce low-9-to high-8-second e.t.’s—Wow! Cool! Heh, heh, heh. As an occasional bracket racer and long-time HOT ROD enthusiast with a passion for quick-accelerating vehicles, especially street vehicles that don’t look as if they would run that quick, I would like to extend a long-distance “’at-a-boy” and a pat on the back to Todd Moyer (or should that be God Moyer?), Chuck Samuel, and the men and women on their crews who have achieved these absolutely incredible automotive feats (“Super Sleepers,” June ’95). Just picture yourself bench racing as little as five years ago and raising the idea of what these people have achieved. Imagine the reaction you would have seen—just…

“Hey look, the Roaring Roadsters!” B’ville said when we showed him this new print. And he was right on the money. Titled “Roaring Roadsters,” this print by Joe Henning illustrates a hard-fought battle between Roy Prosser (56). Wavne lipton (25), Iroy Kuttman (20) and Yam Oka (5) at the Huntington Beach, California, track in 1947. The 12x18-inch full-color print, as well as many other prints, books, shirts and videos, is available from Dick Wallen’s Racing Classics, Dept. HR09, P.O. Box 2261, Escondido, CA 92033, 800/992-8433 or 619/749-4406.…

There’s a story in our Power Tour special section else-where in this issue about the staff-driven cars that went cross-country. But there were other magazine-related cars on the Tour as well, all from the pages of HOT ROD. CHEAP THRILLS Former staffer David Freiburger built one of the most popular HOT ROD projects ever—a 12-second ’68 Dart on a $2000 budget. Those who didn’t believe the hack-and-thrash car would even make it down the strip would be shocked to learn that David drove the Dart to Ohio. Granted it spent some time on the trailer, but ironically, “the only thing I paid money to fix was the thing that broke [the tranny],” said David. It wasn’t terminal failure, but it forced him to drive the final three hours of the…

Before the Power Tour come the Party at the Pete—the Petersen Automotive Museum that is—and, man, were we sent off in style! Starting at 5 p.m. Friday mgm, me museum s upper parking lot was nost to not just the cars going on the Tour but also some of the finest street machines, rods, customs and Harleys in Southern California. Entrance was free, and the first-class museum was also open free of charge to anyone who wanted to check it out. There wasn’t an official count of cars, but a rough guesstimate put it at more than 200 hot rods on display (the Edelbrock family brought five cars!). Well over 500 people made the party, including such well-known hot rodders as Billy Gibbons, Bruce Meyer, Boyd Coddington and, of course,…

GOODLAND AND K.C. SHOW US THEIR BEST Without question, the warmest reception the Power Tour received was in Goodland, Kansas. Even though Tom Purvis, an instructor of automotive mechanics at Northwest Kansas Area Vocational Technical School, had invited us to stop in his town on our way East, we were not ready for the Kansas hospitality that greeted us. First we were honored with a police escort through town (“I’ve never been given a police escort into town before,” we heard over the CB radio), followed by an enthusiastic greeting once we arrived at the school. After shaking off the road grime, we were treated to a steak cookout sponsored by the school and the local Chamber of Commerce. It was a flavorful break from what was becoming the Power…

How many times have you remarked that a certain car would make a bitchin’ hot rod, only to have your friends look at you as if you just stepped off a flying saucer? Nonautomotive types are closed-minded enough, but even dyed-in-the-wool hot rodders suffer from Camaro-induced tunnel vision. When Rick Cox was deciding what his next project car would be, he stumbled across a photo of a ’61 Olds 88 and immediately saw the car’s potential. Three months of searching for the right starting point produced a rusty but mostly complete Dynamic 88. And yes, everyone thought he was out of his mind when he drug it home. Little did they realize that the car would roll away with the Best in Show trophy at the HOT ROD Power Festival…

The recipe for buying a professionally built engine that can make a dependable 500 horsepower and 500 lbs-ft of torque for $4000 is simple: Start with a big-cubic-inch engine that has many O.E.M. and aftermarket parts available for it, such as the big-block Chevy, then carefully choose what machine work will be necessary to keep costs down yet make power. To prove this point, we followed along as Fast Times Motor Works in Morton Grove, Illinois, put together a powerful 468ci big-block Chevy for $4000. You might be familiar with Fast Times if you follow the Fastest Street Car Super Street class. Many of the Fast Times-powered cars run up front in this class on a weekly basis. From their racing experience, the folks at Fast Times have learned how…

Most driving schools appear to have the same goal: improving your vehicle control, and therefore your speed or lap time, for whatever type of racing the school specializes in. When Rupert Bragg-Smith planned his driving school, he wanted to do much more—which is evident even in the school’s name. The skills you’ll learn and practice in the Bragg-Smith Advanced Driving School are as helpful in making the drive home from work safer as they are in helping you successfully pass your competitors on the racetrack. The Bragg-Smith Advanced Driving School in Las Vegas, Nevada, is sponsored by Mid-America Designs and uses ’95 LT1 Corvettes as its classrooms. Each car is equipped with a radio, which allows Rupert and the other instructors to be in contact with drivers individually or as…

A long with the Tiefty amount of chrome and billet, the triking candy organic green paint leaves quite an impression when throwing a glance over Johnny plant’s ’94 softail. Johnny wanted a Spftail that was different and smooth, so he started with a Sumax frame. To it he added a slightly tuned-up ’87 Evo mill with shaved heads, a Screaming Eagle cam and an S&S air cleaner and carburetion. The transmission and the clutch are stock ’94 parts. To continue with the smooth appearance, Johnny installed a Sumax oil tank, Ness rear fender and a Bobby Fox seat. He also had a custom dash made to give the stock sneedo on the stock fuel tank a smoother-than-slock look. Even the Ness bars ooze smoothness with steel grips and slick control…

HECHO EN MEXICO Q I came across an article in HOT ROD that states that cylinder blocks made in Mexico are not desirable for any performance applications. The article said the blocks are made of low-grade cast iron and that they are prone to cracking in both the head and block-deck areas. I recently purchased one of these engines and would appreciate your opinion, as nobody in Australia can help me. Sieve Stosic Carnegie, Victoria Australia A These blocks are typically not used for any performance applications because of the lower-quality materials they are made from. The blocks are easy to identify by the words “Hecho en Mexico” cast into the driver’s-side bell-housing mounting flange just above the casting number (arrow). These words are also stamped into the number-one main…

Working on a Holley four-barrel is fairly easy. These carburetors have a simple modular design, making repairs easy even for the beginner. Often the hardest part is finding the right parts when it’s time for a re-tune. Rebuild kits supply gaskets and other consumable parts, but not the jets, accelerator pump cams, squirters or other tuning components. You can obtain these parts separately through Holley, but ordering all that stuff is a pain. Barry Grant Fuel Systems specializes in high-performance Holley carburetors and understands the frustration of searching for those crucial parts. The company has created a series of Performance Pack and Tuning Kit packages that include all the important pieces you need to either upgrade your Holley or put that final tweak to the tune-up. There are far more…

THE JAPANESE RIVIERA Taisuke Ito’s English may not be that great, but there’s no doubt he knows how to make a righteous hot rod. He bought this 71 Buick Riviera in Hawaii, shipped it to Japan with a load of American parts catalogs in the trunk, and then gave it the high-tech treatment. His photos show that the black Buford’s sheet-metal is straighter than an arrow, cleaned up with shaved handles, emblems and markers. A worked 455 powers the car, and the wheels are 17-inch Boyds Ninjas with Goodyear rubber. Ito imported all the parts and informed us that everything costs three to five times more in Japan than in the United States. Sit down—for the Boyds/Goodyear combo alone he paid more than $9000! MOPAR MADNESS Vic Ellinger earned the…

Van Halen bassist Michael Anthony has commissioned Hot Rods by Boyd to build this sleek ’34 Ford roadster for his growing car collection. The rod should be finished in time to make its debut at the SEMA show in Las Vegas this fall. Chip Foose, who penned the car’s design, said Anthony was looking for a somewhat “traditional” take on a fenderless ’34 roadster, although he wanted to include a lift-off top for the car as well. So the craftsmen at Boyd’s made their mark on a repro steel body and fabricated an aluminum lid. Will the front wheels be nushed out as far as they are in the drawina? “Well, I cheated the front end a bit,” Foose admitted. “You can do that in a drawing. But I’m planning…

While only Pete Walsh braved the entire Power Tour in a Pro Street car, Rocky Robertson deserves an Honorable Mention for the miles he put on his big-tire Kaiser. Rocky joined us in Kansas City at the Performance Corner-sponsored cruise night, and he stayed with us the rest of the way to Ohio. That means he was with us during the worst of the weather and over some pretty nasty, pothole-filled interstate. But he made it without a hitch, which goes to show these cars don’t have to be built just for trailers or dragstrips.…

The Power Tour marked the debut of our Automotive Performance Group tractor trailer, otherwise known as the HOT ROD Rig. We picked up the newly painted and outfitted Kenworth in Springfield, Illinois, and it traveled with us until it had to move on to the Power Festival in Norwalk. It’s an impressive-looking beast on the highway, drawing attention with its bold flamed paint job and magazine-title lettering, once it rolls into an event, it opens up to reveal special magazine racks and any of a number of magazine-related display vehicles, including Robert Petersen’s own Harley. California Street Rods operates the semi, which will make appearances at all of our special events this year, plus selected other shows. Watch for it!…

Kevin Kemen, a 24-year-old from Dubuque, Iowa, believes in the hands-on approach. With friends and family, he built this ’81 Malibu over the past four years. Kevin shaved and smoothed the body and added an ’84 Mustang rear spoiler and a fiberglass front bumper and hood, then covered the car with its unusual black-and-white paint scheme. Even the American Racing directional wheels tie into the car’s graphic look. Under the hood lies a Holley-fed 406 that’s equipped with an MSD ignition, Hooker headers and a 3-inch exhaust system. Power goes to a 3.73 posi rearend sourced from a Monte Carlo SS. If you’re a hot rodder under 25 and you’ve got a cool car for Ken “Posie” Fenical to check out, send clear photos (without people in them, please) and…

Everyone who joined the Power Tour deserves a standing ovation, no matter how far or what the participants drove. But there were a few die-hards who made it all the way from Southern California (or Las Vegas, close enough) to Ohio, and they have the shirts and the jackets to prove it. Also, notice where they’re from—they did some serious driving just to get to the kick-off point. Thanks folks, we couldn’t have done it without ya! ’94 MUSTANG COBRA, DEAN AND DEBBIE HILDRETH, ANCHORAGE, ALASKA Without a doubt, the long-distance award goes to Dean and Debbie Hildreth, who put 4000 miles on their Mustang Cobra just getting to the Tour. They hooked up with us in Vegas. The drive from their home in Anchorage, Alaska, took nearly a week;…

This year’s Power Fest added a little competition to the field of cool cars. Norwalk is, after all, a dragstrip. So what better way to celebrate a Power Fest than with some bracket racing? We also invited a few of our Fastest Street Car friends to provide some excitement with side-by-side exhibition runs. Danny Scott, our Fastest Street Car champ in 1994, provided more excitement than expected with a dramatic nitrous explosion that sent pieces of seafoam-green hood all over the frack. (Danny was able to rebuild the car in time for a race the following weekend.) Also on hand were Rick Dyer, Bruce Kimmen and ’93 Fastest Street champ Mark Tate to provide some tire-turning excitement. In addition, Bill Kuhlmann’s outrageous super-charged big-block Pro Mod car made a couple…

Very few cars can do everything well. How many hot rods have you seen that can accelerate like a Titan missile, corner like an Indy Car, stop like it’s hit a brick wall, yet has a comfortable and fairly quiet ride, decent gas mileage and magazine-cover-quality looks? That’s a pretty rare ride. The ’69 Camaro of Mark Stielow that we featured in the December ’93 issue did all those things, courtesy of a 406-inch small-block and a six-speed trans, but Alex Djordjevic went one better by stuffing a big-block in front of a six-speed and under the hood of his black ’69. The engine currently in the car is one in a series of engines Alex has built or intends to build for the car. This one’s a 396 bored…

All of us have been guilty with one car or another of living with unnecessary and unsafe slop in the front suspension caused by worn parts. If you’re unlucky, these worn parts become broken parts and can take your car directly to the scene of an accident. We know it’s difficult to spend money on parts that don’t increase power, but we’re talking about safety here, which must be your number-one priority. Besides, when companies like Performance Suspension Technology (PST) are offering deals that can get you the parts you need to rebuild a suspension for about the price of a new Holley carburetor, it seems foolish not to lose the slop in your car’s front suspension. Much of the work involved in rebuilding a front suspension can be done…

By now there’s no mistaking that cars with their front wheels hoisted in the air above the guard rails are Fastest Street Cars. This type of racing has evolved quickly from a true run-whatcha-brung ego challenge in 1992 to today’s purpose-built and seriously quick street car race. In an attempt to bring the fields back to more-believable-looking cars, Jim Ledford put together a set of rules slightly more stringent than those commonly used and hosted the Flowmaster World Cup Fastest Street Car Shoutout at his Mid-Michigan Motorplex located near Stanton, Michigan. The race was also made possible with help from Eagle Racing Engines, Nitrous Oxide Systems, Nitrous Flow Analysis, The Carburetor Shop and Sunoco Race Fuels. Fast Times Motorworks, flowmaster, Heads up Racing and C.A.R.S. also posted money for records…

Street rods are cool. There is no question about that. But cost-wise they are also realm. The cost and complexity or assent bling a rod prevents many peo-J pie from even considering building one of these cars, which is too bad, because street rods pin the smiles-per-mile meter. To prove that a street rod can be built for a reasonable amount of money, we will present a series of articles that will show how a ’31 Model A roadster was put together for $10,000. For that price it won’t be an Oakland Show-winning contender, but it will be driveable and fun, and it can be improved upon over time, even after it’s done. There is more than one way to assemble parts to produce a street rod, so we hope…

Did you ever see the movie Harley-Davidson and the Marlboro Man? That’s OK. Hardly anyone else did either. Mediocre acting and tepid writing aside, the movie did have one bright point: Mickey Rourke’s character was seen throughout the nick straddling this way-cool custom Harley. This story actually started when Rourke told Bartels Studio Rentals’ Gene Thomason that he wanted to build a new bike, but with a point of view more closely in line with his personality. He wanted it brutally fast but “roachy lookin’.” Rourke penciled a sketch on a cocktail napkin and told Thomason to go for it. That bike ended up as a 98-inch fire-breather that looks just like the bike shown here. When the movie came around, Rourke knew the bike would be perfect for it,…