Indholdsfortegnelse for December 1996 i Hot Rod

ON THE WAGON After reading about Dare To Be Different, Robert Caturano of Bowling Green, Kentucky, decided to have some fun. He pulled this ’67 Plymouth wagon out of a barn and slipped in a 0.030-over 440 (loaded with a Mopar purple cam, forged pistons, a Holley 750 double-pumper, and an Edelbrock intake). A reworked 727 trans is slipped by a TCI 3500-stall converter, and a 3.55 posi twists the tires to achieve 12.98-second quarter-mile runs on street tires. SUEDE ON Who knows why, but Bob and Sandi Johnson of Phelan, California, sprayed primer on their all-steel Brookville Roadster body! On top of that, they stuffed a fully loaded 355/350 combo into the frame, bolted on Boyds wheels with Pirelli and Mickey Thompson tires, and detailed everything to show quality.…

HOT ROD joins Ken “Posie” Fenical in applauding the efforts of 16 year-old Jared Weaver from Ephrata, Pennsylvania. Jared’s ride is a ’65 Studebaker Daytona, which is definitely not like all the Camaros and the Chevelles circling his school’s parking lot. Jared’s dad bought the car when he was 15, and Jared in turn bought it from his father. A Chevy 327 with a Weiand intake and a Holley carb sit under the hood, backed by a T-10 four-speed and a 3.73-geared Dana rear. Hey Jared, if anyone gives you any crap about driving a Studebaker, tell ‘em Io go blow, ‘cause your car is in HOT ROD! By the way, if you’re under 25 and want to be considered for the monthly Posie’s Pick, send a photo of your…

The last time we stopped by Lee Osborn’s The Other Shop in Jamestown, Indiana, we found a few neat projects under construction and thought you should see them. Mack Elliott’s chopped ’34 Ford three-window was being stuffed with a ’93 Northstar V-8 backed by a 2.8L SI 0 700-R4 trans (Osborn says it bolts up with minimal modifications), a 9-inch rearend, a Greek parallel-torsion bar IFS, and a Ford Ranger master cylinder mounted sideways and actuated by a bellcrank linkage. Bill and Rogene Morgie’s ’39 Chevy was in Elmo’s (Mark Hutchins) paint shop next to Oz’s getting the final prep on its much-massaged body. Over the last six months, Osborn slid the front wheels and wheel openings forward, formed a new grille, side panels, running boards, a lift-off top and…

Car-makers everywhere are constantly creating high-image show stoppers that demonstrate technical and design ability and, quite often these days, to ascertain if the public likes what it sees enough to buy it. That’s how the Dodge Viper and the Plymouth Prowler were born. Chrysler built the concepts, planted them at all the new-car and hot rod shows, and waited for the response. People pulled out their checkbooks and asked about delivery dates and color options faster than you can say, “Hire a third shift for the plant, Mr, Lutz.” To Chrysler CEO Lutz’s credit, he bypassed the bean-counters and scheduled limited-production runs forthwith. That’s why we never take a concept vehicle lightly, especially when it has the Chrysler label on it. Even though the radical Dakota Sidewinder will probably not…

NITROUS: TOO TERRIBLE TO TAME? “Spray” is the way! Drag racers have taken it to the highest power. Pro Streeter Tony Christian’s 638-inch Reher & Morrison big-block Chevy uses a Dart block and Big Chief heads, 15.0:1 compression, and a 0.900-inch-lift roller cam. He feeds the beast with a two-stage NOS fogger system and nearly five pounds of nitrous from two 20-pound bottles on every pass. Because of the volume of nitrous used and the resultant drop in pressure, Christian installs fresh bottles before every run. Christian says his single-four-barrel engine makes 1100 horsepower on full kill without nitrous and more than 1700 ponies on both stages to propel the 3350-pound fiberglass ’57 to record-setting eighth-mile times of 4.801 seconds and a top-speed record of 154.50 mph. His best quarter-mile…

When it comes right down to it, every car that appears in HOT ROD is one of the best. After all, we don’t feature junk in this magazine. Sure, some cars may be “cosmetically challenged,” but if they’re in HOT ROD that means they have some other respectable quality. So when the year ends and the staff selects the Top 10 Hot Rods of the Year, there really aren’t any losers. To refresh your memory or to enlighten those of you new to our year’s-end awards for righteous rods, we select the Top 10 cars based on what turns us on. Most of the time, what turns us on also turns you on. We know that from reader surveys and the phone calls and the letters we get every day.…

Remember our discussion a few months ago about “theme,” and why every car-building project should have the automotive equivalent of a reoccurring melody? Theme is what the Dennis Holloway’s ’63 Nova convertible is all about, and it is based on the Swinging ’60s tempo of swap and hop. The idea was to find a lightweight body and swap in a modern V-8, then hop down to the local burger lane and smoke off the unsuspecting kiddies. Recalling that ’60s sleeper theme is what caused Holloway to root his wife’s old high school car out of storage and give it the bad-A “Bill Thomas” two-step. In the ’60s Bill Thomas and his Anaheim-based Chevrolet dealership had specialized in selling high-performance parts and assemblies to the public and developed a number of…

HOT ROD MAGAZINE POWER Festival ’96 HOT was the word of the day at the HOT ROD Power Fest. Our traveling power show made its second stop on the tour this year at Atlanta Dragway in Commerce, Georgia, and we finally managed to get in an entire weekend where the rain didn’t wash out the hot cars, hot drag times, and hot weather. The HOT ROD Power Fest, presented by BFGoodrich and sponsored by Chevrolet, is part of an incredible array of outdoor car shows and competition occurring throughout the summer with sister magazines Car Craft, Chevy High Performance, and 4-Wheel & Off-Road. Be there next year, when its guaranteed to be even hotter. Just bring your shades, because the future’s so bright you’ll need ‘em. EIGHTH QUICK The Power…

The SplitFire Performance V roadster was bolted together the last time we saw it but needed a substantial amount of fine-tuning. The final assembly, paint, polishing of chromed components, coating of nonchromed pieces, and interior took more than a month. SplitFire will display this car at shows across the country as a study in detail. BUILDING A SLICK INTERIOR SOURCES BFGoodrich See your local BFG dealer Boyds Wheels Dept. HR128380 Cerritos Ave.Stanton. CA 90080714/952-6123 Currie Dept. HR121480 N. Tustin Ave.714/528-6957 CustomChrome Dept. HR12963 Mechanics St.Grafton. OH 44044216/926-3116 C.W. Moss Dept. HR122294 N. Batavia St., Unit DOrange, CA92866 714/974-1940 Driveline Shop Inc. Dept. HR121842 E. CommercialSpringfield, MO 65803800/798-1967 Ford Motorsports SVO Dept. HR1217000 Southfield Rd.Allen Park. MI 48101b313/895-5108 Totol Performance Dept. HR1244050 N. Groesbeck Hwy.Clinton Township, MI 48036810/468-3673 Gibbons Bodies Dept.…

SOUND & POWER The sound of power with the appearance to match is now available from Random Technologies for ’93-’95 Camaros and Firebirds equipped with LT1 engines. Random’s Super High Flow after-cat exhaust systems are manufactured from mandrel-bent stainless steel tubing and include a straight-through PowerMax stainless steel muffler with dual 3-inch outlets. The tailpipe tips are designed to add visual appeal to stock Camaros and Firebirds and those equipped with aftermarket ground-effects panels. Information: Random Technologies, Dept. HR12, 1313 Temple Johnson Rd., Loganville, GA 30249, 770/978-0264. VIBE DAMPER Fluidampr’s 6¼-inch vibration damper for 396, 427, and all other internally balanced big-block Chevy engines provides uncompromised control of crankshaft vibrations in a lighter damper. Designed specifically for Pro Stock-style engines, this damper weighs only six pounds and features timing marks…

BEHIND THE WHEEL OF THE PROWLER For the duration of the Power Tour, we could only watch as the Plymouth Prowler sped past us. Sure, some of us got to ride in the car, but when we asked if we could drive it, the Plymouth people gave us blank stares, followed by bellowing, knee-slapping fits of laughter. Well, recently we got our chance to slip behind the wheel, turn the key, and put the hammer down on Plymouth’s new image vehicle, a factory-built, fully warrantied street rod (street rod depending, of course, on who you ask). Is it fast? How does it handle? Does the topless ride give you a hairdo scarier than Yahoo Serious? Not really. Good. Depends. The 3.5-liter, 24-valve, SOHC V-6 has to pull only 2800 pounds…

Everyone knows that the Indy 500 is the oldest motor race in the United States, but how many of you know that the Pikes Peak Hill Climb is the second oldest? Last summer marked the 74th year of the Run To The Clouds at the well-known mountain near Colorado Springs, Colorado. Starting at 9,390 feet above sea level and ending at a wheezing 14,100 feet, this race is a true test of engine tuning, traction, and driver nerve. A dirt road and 2000-foot drop-offs make The Peak an event for gutsy racers only. This year Rod Millen was the fastest up the hill, driving a fullboogie Toyota Celica race car. He covered the 12.42-mile, 156-turn course in 10:13.64, eight seconds ahead of the next competitor. If you’ve never been to…

Bow-Tie true believers will remember HOT ROD’s February ’96 cover story on Chevy’s experimental rear-wheel-drive V-8 Monte Carlo. The car was barely finished at the time, so we promised to return in a few months with some test data on the car to prove that the Monte was more than just a pretty face. Chevy engineer Jon Moss and a team of technicians from Troy Design Technologies, headed by Jeff Beitzel, delivered on that promise. They brought the car out to Phoenix International Raceway to let us have our way with the Moss Green Monte. To test the Monte SS, we set up an impromptu dragstrip just outside of Phoenix’s one-mile oval using our new Stalker radar gun to get a quarter-mile e.t. and speed. On street tires, the Monte…

With record-setting times and giant strides in the high-performance arts, you’ll never hear people say, “Same car, different day.” Racers and rodders are never content with the status quo. That’s why in 1996 we saw street-car drag racers try to leap tall buildings in a single bound, Dale Earnhardt drive with excruciating pain in his effort to win an unprecedented eighth Winston Cup championship, and the nitrous gurus map out plans to squeeze more horsepower from their steeds without flushing the crankshaft. In the merit category, you’ll see the best wild rides of the season and a best push-the-envelope effort by a hot rodder. But not everything here involves superhuman feats or mere reckless abandon. For a softer side, we’ve delved into our best bikini bag of tricks. Frankly, this…

YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE BIG TO BE POWERFUL Pure power is what we live for. Yeah, chassis tuning gets you there and big brakes help you keep the sheetmetal straight, but the bottom line is still about raw power, not finesse. This time we embrace the power-per-cubic-inch credo. Godzilla big-blocks are all the rage, but when you divide power by inches, they don’t stack up to a potent small-block. Here are the best of the bantam-weights. John Lingenfelter says he’s more impressed by a strong, normally aspirated engine than big numbers caused by blowers or nitrous. As an example, his way-too-light 427ci all-aluminum Mouse motor is based on a GM Performance Parts aluminum 4.125-inch-bore Bow-Tie block, a 4-inch stroke, and a set of hungry SB2 heads. With a mechanical-roller…

TRACKS ON FIRE Every season has its good races and its great races, but 1996 was blessed with some inspired, nose-to-nose speed contests that had fans and racers alike on the edge of their seats. These are some of our favorites. CHRISTIAN VS. JORDAN, HOT ROD STREET CAR DRAG RACING SERIES Tony Christian and Landon Jordan met each other several times over the course of the 1996 HOT ROD Street Car Drag Racing Series, and each time it was a good race. The final round at the Power Fest in Norwalk, Ohio, in May was the closest. Both cars ran identical 4.964 e.t.’s. The win came down to reaction time. Seasoned veteran Christian, aka street car racing’s “Intimidator,” simply beat young Jordan on the Tree, and the crowd went insane!…

The most popular street carburetor in the hot rod world is probably the 600-cfm Holley vacuum secondary carburetor, otherwise known as the 0-1850. They are popular for their wide range of application and low price. Mail-order speed shops sell a new 1850 for about $160, but used ones go for $25 to $50 at swap meets, and literally millions of them are out there. According to Sean Murphy of Jones Performance Fuel Systems, driveability problems arise when hot rodders bolt this carburetor to the wrong engine. Murphy says, “I’ve seen 1850s bolted to anything from 350hp 289s to monster-cammed 454 Chevelles. Neither of these is a good idea.” Because the 1850 is designed with a somewhat lean idle circuit, driveability problems occur when it is used on an engine with…

Just after high school, Mark Enwia bought this all-original ’67 Chevy II Super Sport without a motor or trans and started to build it into a serious street contender. After eight years of refinement, the Chevy II is capable of 8.72-second/157-mph quarter-mile times and 1.26-second 60-foot times—and that’s with a small-block. Talk about a street sleeper! The car has been reserved mostly for Super Street duty on the dragstrip, but the street scene still calls occasionally. While he has refined it to this level, Enwia continues to tune it between projects at Fast Times Motorworks in Morton Grove, Illinois, where he works as a machinist. He recently weighed the car and found it tipped the scales at 3420 pounds! While this might not seem that heavy, Super Street rules allow…

The hot rodding world was spun sideways with the introduction of the ’55 Chevy and its small-block engine—so much so that they completely overshadowed other cool cars introduced at the same time. So let’s take a look at another great car from that year, the ’55-’56 Ford. Following on the heels of a rather staid ’52-’54 lineup, these new Fords were every bit as popular as their GM counterparts. A large number of body styles were available for every taste, including the Crown Victoria “bubbletop” known as the Sunliner, whose front portion of the top was made of green Plexiglass. Horsepower from the Y-block 272 and “Interceptor” 292 V-8s was up in 1955. In 1956 came the Thunderbird 312 with 225 horsepower. Tri-tone exteriors, atomic interiors, gadgets, and more were…

The driveshaft is about as exciting a high-performance component as lug nuts. But as you might guess, there are some important aspects to driveshaft performance that should not be ignored. While most performance street cars will never exceed the performance parameters of a stock driveshaft, the advent of Fastest Street Car racing and top speed events like the Pony Express 100 and Silver State races have made the driveshaft a very important component in the ultimate performance drivetrain. Every driveshaft has a certain speed, or rpm limit, called a driveshaft’s critical speed. At critical speed, the driveshaft will tend to vibrate and eventually destroy itself. Tex Racing supplies transmission and driveshaft components for many Winston Cup and circle track racers and has experience in the nuances of building driveshafts that…

Coming to a television near you, HOT ROD Magazine is on the move—literally. Now you’ll be able to see the pages of HOT ROD come alive with all the action, sound, power, and excitement that makes our sport and hobby so much fun. We can’t give you exact on-air times or network details, but we can tell you HOT ROD TV will appear on a major cable network sometime in early 1997. HOT ROD TV will be a combination of lifestyle events coverage, on-the-road action, drag racing, and outstanding cars. But the show will encompass more than entertainment. The producers also plan in-depth buildups, how-tos, and get-your-hands-dirty technical pieces that will add video action to the pages of HOT ROD. The accompanying photo illustrates the set design that’s currently under…

This was the year that 34-year-old Blaine Johnson, a four-time NHRA Winston champ in the Top Alcohol Dragster category, was to capture his first professional championship in Top Fuel. All the signs were there for the driver of the Travers Tools Distributors dragster, the quickest wheel-driven machine known to man. Ten times prior to the U.S. Nationals, Johnson had been the No. 1 qualifier, often surpassing his peers by a tenth of a second or more. In July at the Western Auto Nationals in Topeka, Blaine and his engine-builder/tuner/brother Alan stunned everyone with the sport’s all-time quickest e.t. of 4.592 seconds, which they backed up for an official record. They won three times on this year’s tour, earning enough points to put Blaine into the lead for the championship and…

The HOT ROD staff would like to take this opportunity to thank all the people who helped make this magazine great in 1996. To everyone who went with us on Power Tour, hung out at Power Fest, helped us do stories, wrote letters, or just read the magazine, we honor you for participating in this pastime we call hot rodding. Without you, we wouldn’t have HOT ROD magazine, and we know it. Thanks!…

We’re often caught wondering where to find all the good hot rod raw material, but we think we now know why good cars are getting scarce. At the 4-Wheel & Off-Road 4xFun Fest, we were made aware of these crimes to the street machine world.…

TEXAS JACK AND HIS SALT SHAKER Beautiful show cars have been driven cross-country. CadZZilla, Dennis Varni’s roadster, and the Boydster are a few of them. Fast cars have been driven the distance as well. There was hardcore machinery on the road to Norwalk for the ’96 Power Tour, but nothing comes close to Jack Chisenhall’s ’53 Studebaker. When HOT ROD publisher Jim Savas told us that Chisenhall would be driving the Stude on the Tour, we all thought, “Cool, but he’ll probably tame it—change the cam and the valvesprings, maybe even swap the motor, take out the Jerico, change the gears—that sort of thing. Chances are it’ll spend more time inside the trailer than on the road.” Man, were we wrong. The slippery, full-custom Stude is fitted with a NASCAR-style…

SUMMER EVENT SIZZLE There’s nothing better than to savor a well-executed bikini in the dead of winter. Part of our Best of 1996 includes a fond retrospective of the Petersen Automotive Performance Group summer events extravaganza. We scanned rolls of film from Car Craft, Chevy High Performance, and Sport Truck event files as well as stuff from the HOT ROD Power Fests to bring you the year’s most bountiful highlights.…

TALLADEGA/CRAVEN CRASH…

After a longer delay than we expected, the ’96 Z28 project is back on track. We introduced the Camaro in the July issue as a parallel to the original HOT ROD Camaro project car initiated in 1966. “The Red Car” was the first Camaro ever seen by aftermarket-parts manufacturers and caused a real ruckus everywhere it went. Our long-term ’96 Camaro “Green Car” has caused a similar reaction, but for a vastly different reason. This is the first year the Camaro is equipped with On Board Diagnostics II, otherwise known as OBD II. This system debuted in the ’96 model year and has changed the ground rules for computer controls and how they apply to hot rodding. Most parts makers don’t have much experience with this configuration yet, so when…

It’s rare to find a schizoid car that can take the big trophy at the snootiest indoor car show and immediately go out to the dragstrip and lay down a super-quick number. Bob Hood’s Nova is one rare bird, indeed. We’re used to seeing special cars that approach this level of detail and quality at a show, but we first noticed Hood’s Nova in the burnout box at the dragstrip. We liked its straight lines, nice paint, and professional detailing, but we really took notice when Hood launched off the line into the eight-second zone. It’s one thing to drive a car this nice; it’s another to drive a car this nice. We should also tell you that Hood is but 24 years old and that he did everything on…

John Lingenfelter has built a killer reputation in the high-performance world. He knows how to tweak a Rat and twist a Mouse’s tail to make both of them really sing. In his quest for one more pound-foot of torque, Lingenfelter has taken full advantage of the micro chip. When hot rodders talk about computers and performance, the conversation usually revolves around fuel injection and engine management. A major advancement in the high-performance world also came about with the creation of computer numerical control (CNC) of machine tools. CNC is nothing new. Many aftermarket high-performance components are created on CNC machines and have been for years. Digitizing intake and exhaust ports and then using CNC control to “port” cylinder heads quickly produces repeatable consistency between each port and between each cylinder…

Rodders have this thing about ratios. For instance, engine freaks are enamored by horsepower-per-cubic-inch; racers by power-to-weight; and streeters by dollars-per-pound. once did a banger-powered track roadster that penciled out to be $0.50 per pound. But that was a long time ago. Today’s realities consist of high expectations, new parts and increased labor costs. However 29-year-old Dave Gadberry, a resident of Long Beach, California, and his primeval ’23 T-bucket are a frugally happy exception. Gadberry’s story is one for the books. Tom Medlock, the owner of Specialty Cars in Artesia, California, and Gadberry’s first employer, said, “One day this kid came skating into my shop dressed in a T-shirt and white tennis shorts, looking for the cars I had built that he had seen in HOTROD. He was so energetic,…

The Quickest Pages In Hot Rod Magazine… Don’t blink. The cars and the stars on these pages are the quickest street players in the nation, and they don’t wait around for anything! They did slow down just long enough to run the HOT ROD Magazine Street Car Drag Racing Series in 1996 and they’ll be flamin’ back in 1997. Check out our insider’s view of “street car” racers and make sure to see these machines up close at one of our events next year. EDITOR’S NOTE: These pages, called Heads Up News in reference to the Pro Tree start that street car racing uses, will appear each month and feature the people, the cars and the lighter side of HOT ROD’s new Street Car Drag Racing Series. Check out the…