Innehållsförteckning för May 2012 från Hot Rod

Seriously. I took a poll of the HOT ROD staffers—including one hard-core NASCAR fan and one casual watcher—and asked them if they knew what model of car Chevy and Ford raced in the Sprint Cup. None knew. But they all named the Toyota. Here we are, the most hard-core car guys you’ll find, and a few of us don’t know who won Daytona. Not to pick on NASCAR alone; all pro racing has lost the plot when it comes to relevance to the cars owned by hot rodders. There’s a lesson here, and it’s not just that the HRM staff is oblivious. It’s that fans are driven by emotional reactions, and you have to win them over on that level instead of just bludgeoning them with marketing. Pioneering brands—like NASCAR,…

(SHOW US YOURS: HOTROD@HOTROD.COM) PETRIFIED WOODY Hot Rods & Hobbies (HotRodsAndHobbies.net) and The Wood N’ Carr (WoodNCarr.net), both in Signal Hill, California, are working together on several wood-intensive custom projects. Our favorite at the moment is the ’40 Willys that owner Chip Israel calls “Petrified.” The car started life as a dowdy four-door wagon, but it’s well on its way to being a top-tier custom, thanks to an extensive list of body modifications. The front fenders were pushed forward 6 inches so they no longer intrude on the front doors, which are now much longer and hinged, suicide style. The rear doors are gone, and the rear fenders were also moved rearward. The Willys came from the factory with a narrower track in the rear, so the guys at Hot…

The scene is the General Motors Technical Center in Warren, Michigan, in 1960, and the wild-looking digger with the orchard-tractor fenders is Mickey Thompson’s Assault I. This was one of three MT cars that used a Dragmaster dragster in land speed racing, the second being the Attempt, with a more complete body with an enclosed cockpit and wheels, and the third, a naked-chassis version with no body. The Attempt ran a Tempest four-banger while the naked car had a two-cylinder. This Assault 1 was a V8 racer, running several times to break FIA records in 1960. In 1961, it had a destroked, 303ci, supercharged Pontiac V8 when MT took all three Dragmaster cars, plus a Catalina passenger car, to March AFB in July 1961 and set eight international acceleration records…

“People often ask me, ‘Did you coat that to protect it?’ Protect it from what?”—Bullet Bob A rusty Model A is the red ’69 Camaro of now. It’s predictable and mainstream almost no matter what you do to it. So what do you do when you want to go retro and get noticed? In this story, we rounded up some guys who took it to the next step with creativity in vehicle selection and execution. Take the weirdo on these pages, for example. Yes, it’s ugly, but keep looking. That’s it, study it. Getting any better? We spent a week with this car during HOT ROD Drag Week™ last year and appreciated it more each day. With a ’38 Dodge roof, a ’39 Pontiac hood for a decklid, a laid-back…

Greg Richardson of Pasco, Washington, built this from a ’36 Plymouth pickup, using a ’36 Studebaker grille, a ’32 Ford bed, and a bunch of custom pieces, like the crazy strong front four-link suspension. No smallblock Chevy here: It’s a ’90-model, 5.9L, inline-six Cummins diesel. The steering box is a power unit out of a Toyota, and it uses Wilwood brakes and airbags all the way around, with everything hidden. Greg took us around the block. We found the interior bare and frankly scary—and we’re not talking about the .30-30 rifle used as a shifter—but the chassis and powertrain make it a joy. It doesn’t hurt that Richard has an iPod hookup and perfectly worn-in racing seats. It’s easy to see how this thing has seen 5,000 miles in the…

It was decades ago, but HOT ROD used to cover NASCAR. You graybeard readers will remember it well: There were annual race features on the Daytona 500 and Riverside, tech articles on the latest trickery from Junior Johnson and Smokey Yunick, and monthly roundy-round columns by Steve Kelley and Joe Whitlock. It was great racing with awesome cars, and HOT ROD was all over it. So what happened? Why doesn’t HOT ROD do NASCAR anymore? We can start here: Somewhere along the line, stock cars lost their stockness. It’s impossible to identify a single point at which NASCAR lost its connection to real production machinery; it was more of a process. Maybe the verisimilitude first started to slip away in 1966, when NASCAR allowed the Ford teams to run Galaxie…

“That car just looks like a boatload of fun … not afraid to take it anywhere and thoroughly abuse it in the process!”—Reader Jesse Talmage We don’t know what it takes to drive from California to Alaska in December behind the wheel of a ’68 Ford Ranchero. If you read the story about our latest road trip (“Alaska Colorado Arizona Death Trip,” Apr. ’12), you saw that we planned to drive this car to an ice race in Big Lake, Alaska, but ended up on a trek from California to snowy Idaho, to freezing Colorado, onto balmy New Mexico, through rainy Arizona, and back home again. The fiasco took us 3,000-plus miles through snowstorms, across a river, and through the naked desert after thrashing for a week to build the…

To certain folks, a hot rod isn’t a hot rod unless it’s a Model A, ’32, or ’33 to ’34 Ford roadster. Maybe a coupe or a sedan. Those certain folks spend their evenings writing us letters to explain that there just aren’t enough hot rods in HOT ROD. Next month, look for overload on those cars, in both current and archival photography. Rounding off the old-time hot rodding is a Marlan Davis deep-dive into the world of early Chrysler Hemis. We’ll also show the details of one of Drag Week’s™ most mind-blowing cars, and finish with a low-buck twin-turbo test—on an old Buick! It’s going to be a great issue. Get it. SEE THIS AND MUCH MORE IN THE JUNE ’12 ISSUE OF HOT ROD MAGAZINE On sale April…

You know Ed Roth, the ’60s freakjob beatnik hot rodder who clearly sniffed too much resin while creating fiberglass show cars like The Outlaw, Mysterion, Road Agent, Surfite, and such. He’s seen here, scrawling the wall at a party in the early ’60s. You also know him as the father of Rat Fink and other weirdo monsters that were airbrushed and later silkscreened onto the must-have T-shirts for every teen gearhead of the time. We recently came across archival photos of some of the earliest pieces of garment art, as seen on these jackets shot by Petersen Publishing’s photo department in May 1959 for the Aug. ’59 issue of Car Craft, which also highlighted contemporary weirdo-shirt artists Dean Jeffries (yes, the car customizer of Mantaray fame) and Pete Millar (a…

Seeing is believing. During HOT ROD Power Tour® ’11®, we watched this ’70 Chevelle roast the rollers on a Dynojet mobile chassis dyno before splitting a header collector in half. That was with a soft tune-up. On the next pull, the dyno said the heavy Chevy’s 580ci Rat with an F-3 Procharger was pushing 1,377 hp at the drag radials. The crowd went nuts. It was the highest number put up by any car during that Power Tour®. A few months later at HOT ROD Drag Week™, this thing towed a trailer on the highway while sipping pump gas and then went 8.22 at 167 mph in the quarter at Topeka, Kansas. Two stops later on the five-day, four-track race fest, it pulled a wheelie high enough that Bryant Goldstone…

Want unique? Build it all yourself in a way no one else ever has. Mike Allison did, fabricating this entire trike at home in about four months. He bent his own tubular frame, built his own springer front forks, made handlebars out of old shotguns, and scrounged a bunch of widgets from junkyards and swap meets. The drivetrain uses a stock Ford V8-60 and a ’37 three-speed, and the rearend is an 8-inch from a Maverick. The rear fenders use portions of fenders from two different cars: The inside halves are from a ’36 Oldsmobile, and the outer halves are from a ’39 Chevy, grafted together for the proper shape and fitment. The sheetmetal between the rear fenders is part of the roof of a ’51 Frazier, and that car…

Dudes still build mini-trucks. Seriously. They are still huge in the Midwest and Japan, but around the HRM headquarters, it’s tough to find one. We had to hunt for this ’71 Toyota Hilux. Laid out, it feels like it’s 1998 all over again, except something is different this time. This isn’t a Pepto-pink cartoon with too many 12-inch subs in the bed. Instead, this one’s nabbing some cues from the patina–hot rodded, shop-truck world. What’s more, it’s got traditional hydraulic suspension that doesn’t leak, clean fab work, and much better style than what was prevalent in decades past. The guy with the biggest rims and most hacked-up truck is no longer king. Robin Moody gets it. Instead of billet doodads and a tweed interior, he chose dimple-die holes and a…

EDITOR’S NOTE: If your existing hot rod has a gremlin that just won’t quit, you could be one of the lucky candidates chosen for a hands-on thrash. Drop us a line at Pitstop@HotRod.com, and put “Rescue” in the subject line. We won’t repair factory stockers or build you a whole car, but HOT ROD and industry experts will fix the immediate problem. THE COMBO Someday, Clint Schmucker’s Slant Six–powered ’64 Dodge Dart will have a badass 440-Wedge underhood. In preparation for that momentous occasion, Clint has been upgrading other suspension and brake parts. There are now mini-tubs out back with inboard-relocated Chrysler Super Stock leaf springs supporting a narrowed, 8¾-inch, bigcar rearend with large 10x2.5-inch drums, 15x10-inch Weld wheels with 5-inch backspacing, and P315/60R15 Mickey Thompson ET Street Radials. Up…

DALE ASKS: I’m a little confused about how and when to install oil restrictors on a Ford 351C block. The last time this was referenced (Pit Stop, May ’11), you recommended installing oil restrictors in all five main saddles. Moroso has a Ford Cleveland oil restrictor kit (PN 22050) that comes with five plugs: four small (¼ inch) and one large (5/16 inch). The kit instructions say not to modify the No. 1 main saddle and put the large plug in the No. 5 saddle. Moroso also says “Do not use this kit with hydraulic cams.” Should I buy two kits so I have enough plugs for all the saddles, follow the kit instructions, or not install any plugs at all? I have a hydraulic cam with 0.560-inch lift. Dale…

The Summernats in Canberra, Australia, is gearhead heaven. When most of us are dealing with the chills of winter in January, those dang Aussies are partying it up. Held since 1988, the Summernats is a huge, three-day car fest that includes a car show, vendors, driving demonstrations, a citywide cruise, rock bands, a search for Miss Summernats, a Horsepower Heroes dyno competition, and a trade show. None of that really matters, though, because there’s also the world-famous burnout battle—which can’t really be called just a burnout contest, as it’s donut-cutting, sideways-drifting, light-the-tires-on-fire insanity. It’s truly a burnout championship that lasts a couple of days, starting with more than 200 entrants who get eliminated until the top 25 compete on Sunday. Gary Myers in his blown ’66 Mustang was last year’s…

JR DRAKE HICKORY, NORTH CAROLINA This thing is about as close to a Harley as it can get without actually being one. It’s loud, it uses a Harley V-twin, it has no top, radio, A/C, or heat, and it handles. Built by JR Drake, owner of Kick Ass Rod Shop in Hickory, North Carolina, this little roadster started as a Downs Industries fiberglass body that JR and crew cut 4 inches all the way around. “It’s basically a Sportster on four wheels,” says JR, who used a ’99 1,200cc H-D Sportster engine and trans to power the roadster. He modified a transfer case out of a Legends race car (which uses an import motorcycle engine) to accept the Harley beltdrive. The transfer case runs a driveshaft to a Toyota rearend…

The Buick Grand National and its turbo, 3.8L, V6 brethren left an indelible mark on hot rodding when they debuted in 1984. The EFI version of the turbo V6 (available carbureted since ’78) rescued Buick from a drought in horsepower and image that began when emissions standards and high gas prices killed muscle cars in the early ’70s. But that all ended when Buick made its last rear-drive A-body in 1987. Ten years later, Chevrolet’s LS-series V8s became the hottest engines on the block and are today’s hottest engine swap candidates, but Chad Hartmann from Omaha makes a solid argument for turbo V6 power. His Buick-powered ’63 Nova SS convertible was built in two years, beginning in 2005. It participated in HOT ROD Drag Week ’11™ and delivered impressive fuel…

How about 6,000 miles, 21 states, son riding shotgun, finale at Bonneville for Speed Week, not a drop of oil used, and not one breakdown? Oh! And a best of 41 mpg? The truck is a ’31 Model A and its pilots are Jeff Madden and his 10-year-old son, Kevin. Kevin’s teacher said he would learn more in that week with Jeff than he would in school, so he was able to take time off for an old-fashioned American road trip. The guys huffed it from Charleston, South Carolina, to the Bonneville Salt Flats (in Utah) and back—not on a trailer, but towing one! With less than two days break-in on the truck, they made their way down I-40 to Route 66 in Texas, hitting the Cadillac Ranch. The journey…

When guys see this postwar Willys CJ-2A flatfender Jeep, they often ask, “Why didn’t I think of that?” Honest truth, we did think of it—but rockcrawling and 4x4-building superhero Randy Ellis beat us to it, by a lot, and came up with something more absurd than we could have dreamed of. fie key here is that Randy is a master fabricator, and this Jeep works. Drives everywhere. Does burnouts and donuts. Perfect. fie whole thing is based on a custom 2x3 frame and homebuilt suspension that includes ’77 Chevy C10 spindles and brakes fabbed to a solid-axle front end, and the same truck’s 3.73-geared 12-bolt is out back, also using front end–style Chevy disc brakes. fie same donor truck gave up its 350 mill and auto trans. The most interesting…

Bigger, badder, faster, louder. That’s the goal for the seventh running of HOT ROD Drag Week™, September 9-14, 2012. In this event, we take a 1,200-mile road trip, drag racing five times in five days at four different racetracks. The catch? Every car in competition has to drive our devious route from track to track. It’s a brutal death match of man versus machine, and machine versus the road. If you’ve followed Drag Week™ even a little, you know that Larry Larson’s the man to beat and that his famous ’66 Nova is the only car to have dipped into the 6s during the event. Both he and Jeff Lutz have eclipsed 200 mph in the quarter after making the punishing drive. But there’s a lot of smack talk about…

THE PREMISE One of the great things Ford has done recently is create a modern rendition of the original Boss 302 Mustang. Equally impressive is that Ford offers the magical Boss 302 components to the rest of the Mustang crowd, over the counter. Engine-wise, the most prominent component of the new Boss is the composite intake manifold. So, how well does the standard ’11-current GT 5.0 engine respond to the so-called “runners-in-a-box” intake design? The difference between the standard 5.0L Coyote engine and the Boss 302 is more than just an intake manifold, but few owners are willing to tear into their new motor to upgrade to the Boss 302 cylinder heads and revised cam profiles to complete the transformation. Intake swaps on the Coyote are especially easy, as they…