Innehållsförteckning för January 2013 från Hot Rod

This issue salutes Edelbrock’s 75th anniversary and HOT ROD’s 65th. In 2012, the Baja 1000 turned 45 and Street Rodder celebrated 40 years; in 2013 it’s the 60th for Car Craft and Rod & Custom and the 20th for 5.0 Mustang. It’s been 25 years since Troy Trepanier’s first car feature in HOT ROD. That’s a lot of milestones. Our industry is mature enough that many brands have reached historic status. Working at HOT ROD, I’ve always felt that the brand is far bigger and more important than we are as staffers. As much as we pour our lives into every aspect of HRM, there were editors before us and there will be editors after us. We’re just the caretakers who try to live up to the groundwork established by…

If you even remotely like Camaros, you might want to sit down. This is—was—an original ’69 Z/28. It was even running. Now it’s hacked, missing its engine, and carries a Watkins Glen–inspired slot-car race track. “Yeah, people told me I might receive death threats,” says David Beattie, builder and owner of Slot Mods (SlotMods.com). “I am an artist and like to be true to form.” An original, good-running first-gen Z/28 would have fetched a pretty penny at auction. David recently sold the table for north of $85,000. David and Slot Mods are based out of Detroit, where he specializes in wild, detailed, custom-built slot-car tracks of all kinds, calling them interactive works of art. David began building slot-car tracks after losing his previous job. Starting in his basement as a…

Here’s a timeline of the first running of epic races that are still living, along with some of the coolest photos our archives had to offer. Even though HOT ROD was founded in 1948, the company’s archives have photos from the birth of the automobile, so we’re constantly surprised at what we can dig up. Store these little bits of trivia in your gray matter, and whip them out to impress, amuse, or settle bets. In several cases, the events in the photos are from different years than the founding of the event.…

This is HOT ROD’s 65th anniversary issue. To celebrate the landmark in 2013, we’re planning the HOT ROD Homecoming, a gathering of all the old HRM feature and cover cars that we can find. We’ve been promoting this in the magazine for a few months, and so far we’ve come up with about 75 former magazine feature cars from several decades. Now we have more details, and we’re ready to really crank this once-in-a-lifetime deal. When and Where: Saturday, March 23, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Sunday, March 24, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Fairplex in Pomona, California. Feature Cars: If you have a car that has been featured in HOT ROD or if it has been on the cover, you are eligible for a free spot…

TV Tommy Ivo explains it all for us. “It was the ’74 Winternationals at Pomona, so that was a brand-new, rear-engine car. And it was an expensive run. I was in the lights when the explosion ate the inside of the engine, and then it rolled over and ate the outside of the car. If I could only make one run again, that would be the run. The trick, of course, is not to get hurt. I got one tiny scratch getting out of the car—I could smell oil burning and knew I had puked oil on the track and was afraid it was on fire and headed toward me, so I wanted out of there. I scratched my knee on the instrument-panel corner. “It was an odd experience…

HIGH-PERFORMANCE PONTIAC: TROOP TRIBUTE In recent years, we’ve seen a trend of automotive tributes to service personnel, ranging from efforts as simple as a single vinyl graphic to full-on, high-dollar custom paintwork. At High Performance Pontiac, we found a troop-tribute ’99 Ram Air Trans Am that advances this trend to next level. Angela Naff, a personal trainer and former Marine Reservist (’02–’08) from Henry, Virginia, wanted to honor soldiers from all branches of the service. She contacted Juan Peralta of Homestead, Florida, who has a substantial resume of magazine cover cars. “I told Juan that I wanted an eagle and flag on the hood and let him design the rest,” Angela explains. Juan put 810 hours into the job, using House Of Kolor products. Take a full tour of the…

With the success of the Old Master, Ed Pink was in top demand by drag racers. He moved his shop from Tony Nancy’s buildings to a bigger place. When Ford went looking for somebody to build its new SOHC engines and do testing on the coast, they approached Pink. Working on Lou Baney’s Brand Motors dragster—with Tom McEwen, Don Prudhomme, and Kelly Brown driving—Pink worked on development of the Cammer engines, winning numerous events and running consistent 6-second e.t.’s. With the popularity of Funny Cars in the early ’70s, Pink shifted his emphasis to building flopper engines. But as teams started developing their own engine programs, Pink was in less demand. He ventured off into Formula 5000 open-wheel racing, working on production-based small-block Chevy engines restricted to 305 ci. Then…

“Is it an Airstream?” “Does it float?” Randy Grubb’s handbuilt DecoLiner draws all sorts of questions from gawkers, and there’s usually a gaggle of them. The polished-aluminum teardrop fuselage seems to attract a crowd and elicit smiles no matter where it’s parked or driven. We had to see what it was all about. You may know Randy by the Blastolene moniker (see Blastolene.com), the source of the famed Tank Car now owned by Jay Leno; it’s a huge roadster powered by a 30.0L V12 Patton tank engine. I met Randy at SEMA 2010, where his previous build, the Piss’d Off Pete, was on display. The chopped, bare-aluminum Peterbilt was equipped with a two-stroke 12-71 GM diesel that had an exhaust note that made Randy the Pied Piper of…

Unbelievable: 31 years after the fact, HOT ROD Deluxe Editor Dave Wallace unearthed an interview with Bob and Margie Petersen that’s never before been seen. Journo Fred Gregory explains, “I wrote the Petersen story on assignment from People in 1982. Unfortunately, the movie E.T. came out, and it was such a hit that they blew the story out for more E.T. stuff, and it never got back on the schedule. “I did the interview, taped, with Pete and Margie at lunch at [the Hollywood restaurant] Scandia, which they owned at the time. She left after a couple of hours and Pete and I stayed there drinking very expensive wine till after dinner. He was very charming and said he’d answer any question I had except one: He didn’t…

Wrapping a new car in old-style sheetmetal or fiberglass is nothing new, yet we’ve rarely seen one of those conversions that didn’t look—let’s be polite here—awkward. Until now. John Heermann, aka Johnny Sparks, took his ’11 Mustang and molded it into the Reversion Mustang using replacement sheetmetal for ’68 and ’69 Mustangs and a lot of fabricating talent. Johnny took his personal ’Stang to another level in only nine months. Here’s the timeline of how it was done. WANT A ’69-LOOKING NEW MUSTANG? If you want a brand-new ’Stang in old skin, try Retrobuilt (Retrobuilt.com), which creates late-models that appear as either ’69 GT500s or Mach 1s. Sort of. BACK TO THE FUTURE? The old-car styling in a new car trend may have run its course. First, there was the…

Some problems show themselves at high speeds and others are more noticeable during street driving. My daily driver ’70 Challenger, automotive diva extraordinaire, decided to showcase its latest quirk right as I pulled into a car show by first revving up as I put it in Park and then dieseling like a long-haul semi truck when I shut it off. Nothing says, “I’ve arrived” like a 440 that sounds like a bag of microwave popcorn. My first thought was that the ignition timing was up too high or the car was overheating. The adjustable MSD in-car timing controller occasionally gets bumped up a notch, and it was a warm day—but a glance at the knob and at the temperature gauge ruled those out as immediate causes. Diagnosing a mild automotive…

Mickey Thompson was the quintessential hot rodder. His affiliation with Pontiac in the late ’50s and early ’60s led him to embrace its entire line of offerings, including the half-an-eight, 195ci four-cylinder—which really was half of a 389 Pontiac V8. He soon developed an intake to accept a GMC 4-71 blower, added a 1-inch stroker crank, stuffed it in a dragster chassis, and went racing—hitting low 180-mph speeds in the quarter. That was Hemi territory in those days. He was even playing around with hemi-head conversions for both the V8 and fours. Rich Ralsin of Covina, California, was always intrigued by Mickey’s oddball four and wanted one for his ’31-on-’32-rails highboy. Finding a Tempest engine was fairly easy, but the “Thompson” (before M/T) intake manifold took years. Eventually scoring the…

Caption Contest During Drag Week™ 2012, we made an impromptu stop at Cedar Creek Dragway in Kempt, Texas. It’s where we snapped this photo of the lonely No. 1 helmet. Wow, Finnegan’s really lost weight. You guys should get him a smaller helmet.— Dustin Lane I’ll be back for this when the others catch up.— Michael Riley Safety first—that corner of the fence always gets hit.— Jeffrey Madden It blew up again? Forget it, I’ll see ya next week.— Rick Homeier You don’t have to be dumb as a post to be a racer, but it helps.— Phill Kustom Year? Make? Model? A: This is a ’78 Ford Mustang King Cobra hood decal. This was the first year of the “King” Cobra, which was a limited-run performance edition. HOT ROD…

How many ponycars have Dodge, Chevy, and Ford sold since the Mustang’s introduction in 1964½? Seems like an easy question, but our attempts to answer it led us into a labyrinth of non-corresponding figures and resulted in a crash course on sales reporting and automotive industry history. We went straight to GM, Ford, and Chrysler for our numbers and decided to go with the sales numbers—the number of cars invoiced to dealers—rather than the more commonly used production numbers, which reflect the total number of cars made during a model year (for example, ’12 Camaros are made between late 2011 and early 2012). Production numbers are more consistently reported and archived, which is why you’ll see them in collectors’ guides and online, but we thought the sales numbers were more…

Steve Lauderdale // Elgin, Illinois This ’72 Challenger is PPG Rallye Yellow. The Rallye series replaced the R/T for 1972. Steve has owned this Mopar for more than 15 years. Steve Hinckley // Salt Lake City, Utah This ’69 Polara has its original 440 and a four-speed. It even has its original A/C system. We spotted Steve on the ’12 Power Tour®, where his only mishap was a leaky gauge. Ron Carroll // Flower Mound, Texas Ron’s Daytona is a clone made from a ’70 Dodge Charger SE. It has an aftermarket nose, a real rear wing and the special aero rear window is an original too. Joe Benassi // Albany, New York This ’76 Trans Am has a 455 and a four-speed trans. It has been in Joe’s family…

The SEMA Action Network (SAN) is an online network for gearheads that’s used by SEMA to communicate with car guys on the local level to get the word out about pending legislation that affects our hobby. When you know what’s going on, you can participate in letter-writing campaigns and by voting. SAN has been very successful in impacting laws regarding emissions, registration, equipment, and more. To celebrate SAN’s 16th anniversary, SEMA held an essay contest to have members describe why SAN is important, and the prize was having your essay printed in HOT ROD. The winner was Joseph J. Glosek, and here’s what he wrote. “In today’s busy world, most of us have little free time with work and family, so we tend to use this limited resource doing things…

We’ve seen those faded old HOT ROD covers and photos of the fabled So-Cal streamliner in hot rod history books so often that, 65 years later, the Bonneville race car lacks a certain amount of impact—until you see it for real. The car that in 1950 became the first hot rod to run faster than 200 mph. The icon that appeared on three different covers of HOT ROD. To see and touch it more than 60 years after it was destroyed and sold for scrap would be impossible were it not for an obsession with spotlighting the efforts of early hot rod pioneers—and a singular aim to go back in time to see how the cars looked—carried out by Burton, Michigan’s Dan Webb. Dan agonized over those covers…

Don is 73 years young and as he puts it, “I’ve been chipping away at metal for 54 years now.” He’s built everything from Gassers to front- and rear-engine dragsters and Funny Cars. But one thing that makes him different from the Woodys and Kent Fullers and Roy Fjastads is his drafting and mechanical engineering background, and his insistence on drafting every part and chassis he does—and that’s not a knock on the others, it’s just a different approach. Long had worked for the defense industry as a draftsman and mechanical engineer. When the periodic downturns or defense cuts resulted in layoffs, he’d work in his shop doing parts and chassis on the side. “I always had to make my own stuff because I couldn’t afford to buy it, and…

Although he spent much of his professional life as a glass artist, Randy’s got a long history of building cars. When he was 12 years old, Randy bought a neighbor’s Honda motorcycle, assembled it, and traded it back to his neighbor for a Ford flathead. His father gave him a Model A frame and helped him buy a ’31 roadster body. He had it running when he was 14 and soon bought a ’40 Ford pickup that he drove throughout high school.…

All records at Bonneville are based on flying-mile times, or the average speed across an entire mile. The faster cars have two run-up miles before entering three timed miles, and the slower ones get one run-up mile followed by two timed miles. To qualify for a record, a car must run a flying mile with a speed of at least 0.001 mph faster than the existing record. When that happens—during what Bonneville lingo calls a “down run”—the car goes to an impound area where the body is checked for class requirements. The next morning, all the qualified cars parade to the starting line for an attempt to back up the record—these are called “return runs.” During the return runs, the only recorded time that counts for a record is the…

Next Month: Use Dimple Dies at Home Contact EASTWOOD; 800.343.9353; Eastwood.com PLASTIC WELDING METHODS The Eastwood kit’s Speed Tip uses a heated tip that allows you to push the welding rod through it so it comes out soft and hot on the other end. Other methods include hot-gas welding, which uses hot air to heat the plastic and welding rods and is normally used on PVC piping; hotplate welding, which works with a jig that presses two heated pieces together and is used for geometrically complicated pieces; and extrusion welding, a heavy-duty version of the Speed Tip.…

A few corrections and additions to our “Prehistoric Bangers” story in the Oct. ’12 issue, all about early Ford flathead four-cylinders. We said the water necks went from four studs to three, starting with the ’33–’34 engines. We were wrong, but there is a caveat. The three-stud necks started with the Model B engines in ’32, not ’33. This is a common mistake and raises the issue of the A, B, and C designation found on banger heads of various years. Bear with us as we creep up on the explanation. All Model A (’28–’31) Ford part numbers start with the suffix “A.” For ’32, part numbers start with a “B” for four-cylinder cars and “18” for V8s. When the ’33 models came out, V8 models received a “40” prefix…

THE COMBO Unlike so many young left coasters, San Diego State University mechanical engineering student Tim Perry’s daily driver isn’t some Honda weenie but real American muscle: a ’70 Mustang with a 351 Cleveland 2V (351C-2V) engine backed by a late-model AOD automatic transmission and a nonlocking, 3.00:1-geared Ford 9-inch rearend. Mildly warmed over, the rebuilt engine sports a stock cam and heads but is upgraded with a 600-cfm Edelbrock Performer carb on an Edelbrock Performer Air-Gap intake, Hooker long-tube headers, and (currently) a large-cap Summit Racing HEI distributor. The Summit unit is basically a GM-style HEI topside with a Ford-compatible bottom half and shaft. THE PROBLEM Perry says things started to go south after the original “Brand X” distributor “blew out on me.” As he tells it,…

Q: I recently purchased my first classic car. It’s a ’65 Impala hardtop. The car is set up for the strip with the following parts: 0.040-inch-over 396 big-block LS6 heads Forged domed pistons Comp Cams 305H Magnum hydraulic flat-tappet cam Roller rockers Heavy-duty pushrods and valvesprings 850-cfm Holley carburetor Edelbrock Performer intake manifold MSD competition ignition system Pro headers with 3-inch exhaust and competition mufflers TH400 automatic trans with 3,200-rpm-stall and shift-improvement kit 12-bolt rearend with 4.11:1 gears Fuel cell with external electric fuel pump The car is extremely loud and high-revving at speed. I want to make the car a cruiser. I plan on changing the mufflers, but what else can I change without upsetting the applecart of the current powertrain setup? A: Matt, from the sound of…

SEND YOUR PHOTOS To be included in Scene by Readers, send low-rez photos and some information about them to HOTROD@HotRod.com. If we elect to use your photo, we will email back with instructions on how to send us a high-rez photo for publication.…

I’m working on a huge find that you’ll read about in the next issue, but this time it’s just a quick little discovery. There was a story circulating in my club about a local guy who had an original ’69 Camaro Z/28 tucked in his garage for more than a decade, but all anyone knew was the guy was known as “Monk.” I looked around for a year and never found the guy. Then, at a club party, the topic turned to my barn-find expeditions. One guy spoke up, mentioning that he had a ’69 Z/28 that had been sitting for a decade or two. It was the elusive Monk! He purchased the car in the late ’70s with the non-original motor but the original transmission. He discovered the hard…

Over the course of its 65-year history, HOT ROD has had its name on a handful of great race cars, one very cool Bonneville trophy, and a whole lot of swag. After a few weeks of combing eBay, a trip to the archives, and a shakedown of past and present HOT ROD staffers, we offer this assortment of HOT ROD memorabilia from the recent and not-so-recent past.…

To quote Don Long upon acceptance of his Lifetime Achievement Award at the California Hot Rod Reunion in 2010, “We old timers are very fortunate—we were there before cost, craftsmanship, and art were forsaken. We were there when innovation ruled—and so we will be there when the finest chapter of drag racing history is written.” It was the golden age of drag racing. During that time, there was a lot to write about—and HOT ROD was the one doing it. One of its best-remembered articles was a two-part buildup of a professional dragster according to the theories and insights of one Don Long. Long had just started building dragsters and wanted to test some of his theories with an innovative car—but he knew he needed the other necessary ingredients:…

Think your sport is spendy and dangerous? Try this on for size: Cameron Steele is about to drop $20,000 in fuel to go racing—not for the season, but for a single event that lasts less than two days. His pre-race prep includes pre-running an 1,100-mile course through the mostly untamed Mexican desert a week before the green flag drops to find the ruts, holes, and cliffs that will try to swallow his $500,000, 6,000-pound Trophy Truck. Further complicating things are locals who aren’t always excited about having 120dB exhaust pipes and 40-inch tires roosting their front yards. They like to dig holes in the spots racers didn’t mark on their GPS maps, just to keep everyone on their toes. The total cost for bringing Cameron’s entire Desert Assassins…

Some people succeed because they are destined to, others because they are determined to. Vic Edelbrock Sr. and Robert E. Petersen both probably fell somewhere in between. They were not the first to try to sell speed parts or car magazines, but they were men who excelled at it. From our 2013 perspective, their success seems so right, so logical. Though Edelbrock was formed 10 years before HOT ROD and Petersen’s publishing company, the companies shared a mutually beneficial relationship as two of the earliest, most successful, and longest-lasting hot rodding enterprises. On the topic of selling ads to Edelbrock, Petersen once said, “Vic Sr. told me he didn’t want to grow too big because he felt he would lose control and not be able to stay on…

Top speed is the new quarter-mile e.t.—at least for some. With today’s myriad opportunities to race at standing-mile events, performance ideals have back to the roots of hot rodding when top speed was the universal test of horsepower. That quest began on the dry lakes of Southern California, but even in early quarter-mile drag racing, it was all about mph. Then, as now, racing at the Bonneville Salt Flats was the greatest moment in the life of a top-speed racer. In 1949, HOT ROD helped create the Bonneville National Speed Trials for hot rodders. The location was famous worldwide, thanks to the land-speed-racing battles of Brits Sir Malcomb Campbell (the first to 300 mph at Bonneville in 1935), George Eyston, and John Cobb, and American racer (and one-time…

HOT ROD may be celebrating its 65th anniversary, but Ford’s flathead V8, the engine that birthed the entire hot rod hobby (and, in due course, this magazine) first rolled off the production line 80-plus years ago in 1932. To mark both our anniversary and the flathead’s, we decided to do the flathead engine story we’ve never seen: We dyno’d a dozen vintage-type aftermarket intakes at our favorite test facility, Westech Performance in Mira Loma, California. H&H Flatheads’ Mike Herman showed up with a truckload of intake manifolds that are still in production and commonly available, as well as a custom-built H&H flathead stroker engine (see “The Test Engine” sidebar, pg. 104). H&H has the rights to Navarro Racing Equipment’s intakes and heads but also stocks brand-new, high-quality Stromberg…

Your garage can be both the scene of the crime and a poor man’s ER. There are a few items at your disposal that can offer temporary treatment of typical garage wounds until you can get real medical help, but make that help happen fast. We picked the brain of Dr. Mark Morocco, associate clinical professor of emergency medicine at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, about five things you can use. Garden Hose] Paint stripper, fuel, chemicals, and other noxious stuff need to be immediately rinsed off the skin or out of the eyes with cold water. If you scrape or cut yourself, rinse the bacteria out quickly with water and soap, and if there’s bleeding, apply direct pressure. Note regarding the eyes: “If a big…

The nice thing about not growing up during the golden age of hot rodding is that I’m blissfully unaware of most of the unwritten rules of car building. The general guidelines still apply—I know the wrong wheel and tire combination can ruin an otherwise cool hot rod—but I have no prejudices toward year, make, or model, and I’ll blend them all with whatever style makes me want to get out and drive. I’m not in a car club, don’t enter my stuff in car shows, and for the most part, I don’t care if other people get what I’m building. That kind of freedom is very liberating. Take my ’55 Chevy Bel Air project, for instance (see Freiburger’s Starting Line column this month). The quarter-panels were trashed, and radius-cutting the…

First off, the driver wasn’t hurt. That’s what you were thinking about, right? If not, shame on you. Now move on to worrying about how this ’98 F-150 became this fine piece of sculpture. They say that when it starts to rain in a desert canyon, you should head for high ground. This is why: A flash flood was responsible for the destruction of this truck. On July 30, 2012, Gary Vargas and son Ken headed to the hills of Pomona, California, for a hike. The forecast called for clear skies, but a rainstorm moved in too quickly for the men to react. They knew they would not be able to drive back down the mountain but decided to return to the truck to grab their four apple pies and…

Reinvented Tillers 01] MOONEYES MooneyesUSA.com; 800.547.5422; Santa Fe Springs, CA; $80 A staple in the customizing scene is the California Metallic Flake steering wheel from Mooneyes. It is available in red, blue, green, or silver and in a diameter of 13. or 15 inches. You can order three or four spokes with or without drilled holes. 02] GRANT PRODUCTS GrantProducts.com; 800.952.6947; Duarte, CA; $545.19 This is an Art Deco spin on the classic banjo-style wheel from Grant, one of the largest manufacturers of aftermarket steering wheels. It is stainless steel with a polished center. The wheel is 14¾ inches in diameter, and it features black-leather rim. 03] JULIANO’S HOT ROD PARTS Julianos.com; 860.872.1932; Ellington, CT; $800 Juliano’s is one of the biggest names in traditional steering wheels, offering various versions…