Indholdsfortegnelse for October 1996 i Hot Rod

STREET RUNNIN’ PONY More than four years of work went into massaging this ’68 Mustang back from “rustang” status, but owner Dave Pitt wouldn’t have it any other way. After replacing a bunch of sheetmetal, Pitt swapped in a .060-inch-over 289 fitted with ported and prepped heads, a Crane cam and rockers, HPC-coated Hooker headers, and a dual-quad Edelbrock intake-and-carb setup. Then he bolted it to a C4 trans and a 9-inch Traction-Lok-equipped rearend for some tire-spinning fun. Pitt lives in Florida, so the Mustang sports Vintage Air A/C for comfortable cruising. ANOTHER RED-HOT ROD Early trucks are red-hot right now, and no wonder—they’re cool. To prove that, check out Dave and Alice Blix’s ’55 F-100. It’s been a trilogy to build, but it’s a quick drive due to its…

“HOT ROD calls that drag racing Fastest Street Car, but we have the true fastest street cars right here.” Tom Roberts, Classic Auto Racing Society (C.A.R.S.) Chief Technical Inspector is right. The drag racers are the quickest, but the racers who go for it on a two-lane highway in the Nevada desert twice a year are certainly the fastest street cars, since the Unlimited class cars hit speeds well in excess of 200 miles per hour! Sound like fun? The race is brutally simple. Get your street car up to Battle Mountain, Nevada, which is on Interstate 80 about two hours east of Reno, Nevada. Choose one of five different speed divisions (encompassing 16 speed classes) where you wish to compete, pass tech inspection, pay the entry fee, and go…

By now you’ve probably noticed that the Pavement Pounder ’57 is missing in action. Actually, we know where it is, it’s just taking a lot longer to complete than any of us expected when we embarked on the noble mission of building a street-worthy ’57 Chevy that will be able to blaze down the quarter-mile in the nines. It’s a real car and we are real people, which means that, just like you with your projects, we’ve met with setbacks that have postponed the completion of the car. Currently, the body is receiving its final prep before Reiter’s Metal Craft lays on the color. The crew there was also understanding enough to mock up the engine and tranny placement to fit the oil pan (which didn’t), the trans shield and…

Ken “Posie” Fenical was made aware of his Posie’s Pick for this month by the car owner’s mother. Eddie Barcello’s mom sent in the photo of his Pro Street big-block ’66 Chevelle. His job at the pool payed the bills for this nasty driver, and the girlfriends that 19-year-old Eddie put aside to work on the car are apparently now clamoring for a ride. With a 427 making an estimated 600 horsepower and 33x21.5 Mickeys out back, it’s no doubt an E-ticket ride. The Barcellos live in suburban San Diego, so the Chevelle isn’t that far from Carlsbad Raceway or Parker Avenue at Pomona. So Eddie, how’s it run? If you’re under 25 years old and want your hot rod to be judged for this feature, send good photos of…

We’ve all heard the saying, “Whatever it takes.” In the case of Dennis Terzich, a loan company branch manager from West Mifflin, Pennsylvania, it took him, his dad, forty thousand big ones, and tons of help from “benny-factors” such as ACCEL, Compucar, Edelbrock, Dakota Digital, Gennie Shifter, Radir, M/T, Moser, Russell, Soff-Seal, Summit, TCI, and others plus the boys from Bob’s Auto Body to do a ground-up rebuild of his ’55 Chevy 210 in just 3½ months. Whew! “It all started,” said Terzich (the younger), “after 1 sold my ’56 on December 15, 1995, and started the ’55 on January 15, 1996. The car was a 1900-mile, original nostalgia drag-race car with a rollbar behind the driver’s seat.” When one considers that both father and son worked all day in…

When it comes to hot rods, bench racing - never seems to stray very i far from engines. Power is where hot rodding will always be. When it comes right down to it, the only way to learn how to build engines and make power is to roll up your sleeves and do it. That’s what this story is about. It’s aimed at the first-time hot rodder who wants to take on that challenge of assembling his (or her) first engine. Perhaps the most important tool that any first-time engine builder must have in abundance is time. Inexperienced engine builders tend to be in a hurry. Unfortunately, this is when shortcuts become too tempting. Save yourself the grief and do it right the first time. In this buildup, we’ll outline…

Most hot rods are built to be driven, some are built strictly for show, and even fewer do a little of both. Performance Automotive Warehouse’s (PAW) Project G-Force Monte Carlo fits into the rod-for-all-seasons category. PAW project supervisor Mike Johnson, along with Craig Kossow, has reassembled the Monte into not only a great-looking street machine, but one that more than delivers on its performance promise. When we left our fearless Monte constructors last month, they had just finished painting the underside of the G-car and were in the process of dropping the PAW 426ci small-block into the engine compartment. This included a set of Edelbrock dual-primary shorty headers that tie together downstream to a custom-fabricated Hedman high-flow catalytic converter. Borla became the system of choice for the Monte, but unfortunately…

Remember the 70s, when we did streetkanas, goes ’n’ whoas, street polo, and poker runs? Now our tastes are toward lawn chairs and pro’s picks. Still, Indy, the home of the National Hot Rod Association’s U.S. Nationals, attracts both street rods and all-out, fuel-burning hotties. So if the spectators and participants don’t dig one, there’s plenty of the other. When you have 3000-plus rods to check out in addition to 250-plus racers assaulting your ears, there has to be something for everybody—and we’re going to prove it!…

A neighbor of John Palarino, the owner/builder of this incredible ’40 Willys coupe, may have said it best when describing the character of the guy everyone called Hodge. “The only thing bigger than the booming voice and generous nature of the ’six-four’ Hodge,” she said, “was his heart. When he wasn’t giving food to the neighbors or helping them clear the snow from their Pittsburgh driveways, he was under the hood of his turquoise ’40 Willys coupe.” “Hodge,” his wife Joan went on to say, “was always a car enthusiast. Even while attending college in Oklahoma [where he played football well enough to earn a try out for the Dallas Cowboys], he raced a ’57 Chevy he called ’Wooley Booger Junior.’ But the car he really fell in love with…

They’re called the “Hot Ones,” Chevrolet’s perennial ’55-’57 line of cars—but they’re a lot more than that. Chevrolet’s finest were the first cars from Detroit built to be hot rodded. They were great from the factory but better when they were personalized in the performance and looks departments. Some people would argue that these ’50s firecrackers are the quintessential hot rods, having displaced Hank’s Deuce with both an engine (1955 was the birth of the small-block) and looks to become a fait accompli. But whether or not you agree with that, there is no denying that tri-Chevys have a special place in the hearts of car enthusiasts. Sharing most of their driveline, suspension, interior, and structural components, the ’55-’57 Chevys have a plethora of reproduction, high-performance, and driveline-upgrade components available.…

ENTRY-LEVEL INFO Help! I love the cars in your magazine, and I want one. I’m a mechanical rookie (the most I’ve ever done to my own cars is change the oil; pretty sad, huh?) and need direction as to where to start. I’ve been told to steer clear of kit cars, yet I wouldn’t know where to start with a restoration. Maybe HOT ROD could start a column or series aimed at those of us who aren’t really up to speed with the rest of you out there. Jim Bedard E.Rochester, NH We all have to start somewhere. The best advice is to buy a car that appeals to you and then try simple projects first, mainly aimed at making your car reliable and efficient. Then you can move on…

Some people have way too much time on their hands. Take Mike Ryan of Cheltenham, England. He took a Lamborghini Countach and turned it into a road-going supercar that does James Bond-style double-duty as a boat. Two propellers and a hydrofoil lower from the underfloor when the thing hits water, and while on land the carbon-fiber-bodied wonder operates with a pushrod suspension and more switches and gauges than in a 747. According to the letter he sent us, Mike built it because he “was not impressed with seeing amazing vehicles performing incredible stunts on the big screen, which are almost always mockups with special effects created via computers and special camera techniques.” We’re sure this project has bankrupted him, and that’s the most likely reason it’s for sale. If you’ve…

The latest rod from Rick “Speed” Lefever, one of the artisans at Pete Chapouris’ PC3 shop in Pomona, California, has not four but three wheels. This tricycle started as a chalk drawing on the workshop floor and was transformed into a real deal with steel tubing and aluminum hand-beaten over wooden formers. Lefever made everything but the rear wheels, the seat, and the handgrips. Check out the see-through front wheel, the purple anodized pedals, the nerf bars, and the hand-carved insignia. John Carambia painted the trike metallic silver and candy purple, Dennis Ricklefs striped it, and Julian Alvarez rubbed it. Eventually, young Simon Zimmerman will get to do the wheelin’ on this piece of art, but for now he has to be content to stare at it in the Petersen…

After winning four NHRA Winston Funny Car championships, Kenny Bernstein has been frustrated by his inability to mirror that record in Top Fuel. Oh sure, the fact that he broke the 300-mph barrier in 1992 was certainly gratifying, but the driver of the Bud King dragster is after victories, not records. Earlier this season he set the official NHRA e.t. standard of 4.663 seconds while winning his second event of the year at the Slick 50 Nationals, proving once again that the combination of Bernstein’s driving skills and Dale Armstrong’s tuning ability are indeed formidable. King Kenny was at it once again at the Pontiac Excitement Nationals presented by Summit Racing in Columbus, Ohio, where he notched the sport’s all-time quickest e.t. during qualifying with an amazing blast of 4.608…

After working for six years to build it, young Kris Kahabka is driving the car of his dreams, this retina-burning big-block ’69 RS Camaro. Kris found the car in a California desert while on vacation with his family. He and his father George bought it and decided to work on the car together. Since Kris had helped build his dad’s ’29 Model A, George looked forward to working with his son on this project. They started by rebuilding the suspension, adding subframe connectors, and installing 14- and 15-inch Weld Draglites in the front and the rear, respectively. Kris drove the car for a while like this, then Team Kahabka got serious. The body on the car looked relatively straight but needed new paint, so it was stripped. Like many hot…

When we last left our intrepid Street Heat Chevelle, Jim Fry at DynoTech had just finished flogging the 540ci Rat to 830 horsepower. With that major portion of the equation complete, it was time to attend to the details of reassembling the Chevelle into a rolling street car. The challenge for any hot rod builder is always the details. When you start from a stripped car, the little stuff can be incredibly time-consuming. As you recall, Street Heat began life as a ’71. But since the ’70 SS dual-headlight package looks so much better, the Lunati gang decided to make the switch. This required a new front sheetmetal clip, including a new radiator-core support. The front sheetmetal was located and augmented with a very nice, bolt-on fiberglass SS hood from…

While many people these days think they have no fear and live life on the edge, very few of us actually do—and for good reason: The edge can be a precarious place to play. If you want to see someone on the edge, check out Mark Stielow and his One Lap Attack ’67 Camaro we featured in the August issue (“Goin’ For It”). Stielow, the manager of Summit Racing Equipment’s engineering department, had the basic car completed for the feature, but it wasn’t up to speed, so we agreed to ride with him for a few days during the One Lap of America seven-day event to get a real feel for it. A FEW MONTHS BACK… It’s a cold and rainy day as I wait for Stielow to pick me…

As with most great ideas, the brainstorm to build this cool but realistic car occurred during a bench racing session. Unlike most bench’ racing ideas, though, four months later this dream was a super-detailed and driveable highboy. Everyone involved (SplitFire, which sponsored the buildup; Thom Taylor, who drew the car’s initial look; Lobeck’s Hot Rods, which built the car; all the companies that helped out by frantically tossing parts at us to meet our Power Tour ’96 deadline; and others) went above and beyond the call of duty to make this roadster one of the trickest bolt-together cars ever. So what makes this car so trick? Thom Taylor dug deep to create a ’33 highboy full of subtleties after receiving some direction from SplitFire’s Ed Zinke, Barry Lobeck, and HOT…

Motorcycles are hot, especially hot rod motorcycles, so it should come as no surprise that the motorcycle division of Boyds Wheels has a new line of hot rod motorcycle parts for Harleys to complement its assortment of billet bike wheels. The new components include a billet swing arm, transmission top and side covers (trap door and side cover), cam cover, rocker covers, triple trees, lower fork legs (the stock inner tubes and hardware go inside), and carburetor air horns, with more on the way. Every part is polished or chromed and made in America, so the quality and fit should be excellent. Take a look at the parts in the photos to get an idea of what to look for in the world of custom bikes. SOURCE These companies are…

RACING October 2-6—Winston Sportsman 100, All-Pro “Bumper to Bumper” 300, Duron Paint & Wallcoverings 100, UAW-GM Quality 500, Concord, North Carolina, 704/455-3203. October 3-5—NASCAR Super Truck Saturday, Sonoma, California, 800/870-RACE. October 10-13—NHRA Chief Auto Parts Nationals, Dallas, Texas, 818/914-4761. October 24-27—NHRA Winston Select finals, Pomona, California, 818/914-4761. October 25-27—Goodguys Southeastern R&C Nationals, Concord, North Corolino, 704/455-3203. ROD RUNS AND OTHER FUN STUFF October 4-5—9th Annual Run to Ruidoso, Ruidoso, New Mexico, 915/598-0621. October 4-6—Flowmaster fastest Street Car Shootout Series 1996, Memphis, Tennessee, 901/365-3779. October 5-6—Eastern National Speed Trials, Burlington, North Carolina, 704/684-3009. October 5-6—Heart of Texas Street Machines 4th Annual Fall Fling, Waco, Texas, 817/857-9015. October 5—7th Annual Pontiac Uprising Drag Racer & Cor Show, Arkansas City, Kansas, 316/322-8818. October 6—16th Annual Mel Alexander Swap Meet/Car Display, Omaha, Nebraska, 402/393-7281.…

Remember how agonizing it was waiting for that 16th birthday to come so you could get your license? Well, just imagine what that future racing superstar in your nursery is thinking. “Darn, I have to wait till I’m five to start racing!” No more. Now you can get your kids away from the TV and behind the wheel of a race car at the tender age of two. But don’t worry, the Kindycar spec racer won’t hurt them. SCCA racer Oscar Koveleski birthed the idea and says the plastic-bodied electric Kindycars are “the world’s slowest race cars,” topping out at only five miles per hour. But they have shifters (two gears!) and an imitation “race car sound” to make junior feel as if he or she were entering Turn One…

While some people think that it’s greener pastures that lure you away from a good thing, it was actually the two tire ruts through mud and over rocks in the middle of the pasture that persuaded me to leave the great staff at HOT ROD. During the last six years I have worked with the finest automotive journalists in the business (who are also darn fine people) and hundreds of great individuals in the automotive industry. But I’m not venturing far from my hot rod friends. In fact, now I’m just concentrating on hot rods that can spin all four tires as editor of a new Petersen off-road magazine titled 4X4 Power. And you’ll still see my name in HOT ROD from time to time—in particular, finishing the Pavement Pounder…

Not only do our special wristbands entitle the wearer to food, drinks, and fun on Power Tour, but we were shown a use we hadn’t even thought of—distributor hold-downs! Jon Merritt was driving to meet us in Kansas City from his home in El Paso, Texas, when the distributor hold-down wouldn’t. After a minute of roadside head-scratching, Jon and his dad realized that the handy-dandy wristband would work to keep the distributor from rotating. That’s roadside engineering at its finest!…

Dennis Varni—aka Captain Fun—is one of those rare and unique characters you meet once or twice in a lifetime. First, Varni—a resident of Los Gatos, an upscale suburb of San Jose, California—has been a part of the Petersen family since the late ’60s, when his eventual (1992) America’s Most Beautiful Roadster (AMBR) winner graced a number of Rod&Custom covers. Second, the entrepreneurial Varni, who started his career working in a speed shop, has generated enough income to realize most of his fantasies, like going to far-off places and doing far-out things. Third, Varni’s offbeat sense of humor, silver tongue, practical joking, and wheelin’ ’n’ dealin’ are legendary. And last, his feeling for automotive history has resulted in a garage full of “carlectibles,” a round-trippin’ in his AMBR ’29 on Deuce…

The exhaust system on a hot rod does much more than just move the burned gases from the engine to the back of the car. Headers, good pipes, and high-performance mufflers are crucial in the power production of an engine—mismatched parts mean less power and a slower hot ’ rod. This buyer’s guide features the latest, trickest parts from the aftermarket for bringing that old stock exhaust system into the high-performance ’90s. Remember, you have only yourself to blame for bad pipes. TIP OF THE TAIL A good exhaust system should always be finished with nice tips, such as these from B&B Fabrication. Handmade from T-304 stainless steel and polished to perfection, the Tri-Flo tips are available in 3-inch dual-round, 4½-inch single-oval, and 4½-inch dual-oval versions. They’re the perfect complement…

HOT ROD POWER tour Power Tour ’96 was so much fun that we’re going to maintain the sights, stories, and enthusiasm a little longer. This month we’ll take another look at the first half of Power Tour from Los Angeles to Goodland, Kansas. Next month we’ll cover the Power Tour with a cruise through the remaining 2,900 miles of high-octane fun.…

Since its last feature in the December ’95 issue, the Budget Beater has been out accumulating more than 15,000 miles of road duty. In that time, some changes have been made to the car in an effort to make it ride better, more dependable, run quicker, and look better. Those improvements are listed here as an example of the refinement all hot rods go through after they hit the road. As with any hot rod, though, this car isn’t done—an interior and some engine work will occur in the near future. But judging by the attention the Budget Beater gets from the general public and the positive comments of people who have ridden in it, this low-dollar hot rod does everything it was built to do, and with each improvement…

HEAVYWEIGHT CONTENDER Q I read the article on the 813hp, pump-gas, 519ci Ford (“Title Bout,” Apr. ’95). I want to build a similar engine for my ’70 Mustang and have some questions. Can I use a ’77 460 block in place of the SVO block? Can I substitute Lunati’s Maxi Stroker 512ci kit in place of the SVO crank, BME Pistons and Eagle rods? What is the approximate cost of an engine identical to the one Jon Kaase built for this article? Jamie McLainPhillipsburg, New Jersey A A production 460 block can be bored out to 4.440 inches to make more than 500 cubic inches. Jon Kaase Gon Kaase Racing Engines, HR10, 345 Lively Ave., Norcross, GA 30071, 770/840-8882) used a 4.440-inch bore and a 4.200-inch stroke to make 519…

Setting up a Salisbury, or integral-carrier-type, rearend has always been a difficult proposition, but Reider Racing has come up with trick adjustable carrier shims to make assembling these third members a little easier. Hot rodders for years have been reluctant to change gears in the Salisbury, or-non-dropout-style, center section such as the GM 10- and 12-bolts and the Ford 7.5- and 8.8-inch rearends. This is partly due to the shims, which must be forced into place once the ring gear carrier is installed in the housing. The dropout (or removable) carrier rearends like the ’55-’64 GM and Ford 9-inch housings use large spanner nuts to position the ring gear backlash and the carrier. The Salisbury rearend uses solid shims from the factory to do this job, but when different gears…