Innehållsförteckning för March 2013 från Hot Rod

I’ve barfed out more than 250 editorial columns in my day, and I bet you’ll find only a dozen written about what’s inside the issue. That’s what the table of contents is for. But this edition has a story that cracked my jaded veneer, and then I realized I’d unknowingly compiled stories that share a theme I’m passionate about. So I’m gonna tell you about it, then invite you to be part of it. The silver-bullet story (page 83) is the source of this issue’s bizarre cover. It’s about the Race of Gentlemen, a romp on the beach for vintage hot rods. There’s no good, vehement antonym for hackneyed, my favorite word to describe stuff that’s played out and boring—everything that the Race of Gents ain’t. Retro-pure hot rods are…

Would you ride it? Only the Australians could have thought this up: a 630hp V8 Supercar race engine bolted to the back of an oversized skateboard. It drives, too. Ever seen one of those skateboards with a 2hp weed-wacker engine on it? This isn’t like that. Russell Caddy of Modconcepts in Yatala, Queensland, Australia was contracted by V8 Supercars to build this for the Telstra 500 race. “They’re like the NASCAR of Australia, our premier racing league,” Russell says. “They called and said, ‘Could it be built?’ I said, ‘Anything can be built.’” The intent was to hand it over to skate-legend Tony Hawk, who appeared at the race’s festivities. Insurance and legal reasons kept him from kick-flipping this thing down the track. That didn’t bother Russell, though: “I didn’t…

For this month’s exploit, I met up with two friends in Wisconsin who knew of some muscle cars in a rural barn not far from Madison. Heading through the property, I spotted an old tractor shed and could just make out a late-’60s Dodge truck, and just next to it was a ’59–’60 Dodge truck in teal and white. Deeper inside was what we came to see—a ’69 Dodge Coronet R/T and a ’70 Plymouth Duster. The Coronet R/T was a 440 four-barrel car with an automatic transmission, one of 4,810 built. The R/T is normally overshadowed by its sibling, the less expensive Super Bee that sold in far greater numbers. This R/T was rough, with no engine or transmission, and in need of a trunk pan, taillight panel, and…

In our Jan. ’13 issue we ran a long-lost interview with HOT ROD’s founder, Robert E. Petersen, leading us to these two corrections and one great story. In our intro, we gaffed the location of Pete’s vast collection of firearms. Reader John Carver of Virginia pointed out, “Mr. Petersen’s guns—and yes, the stuffed polar bear as well—are at the NRA National Fire-arms Museum, not the Smithsonian. There is no Smithsonian National Firearms Museum.” Polar bear? Some of the most enduring stories of the old Petersen Publishing surround the 12-foot-tall stuffed polar bear that stood outside Mr. Petersen’s office. Those tales get taller with time, and in our January story we wrote, “The official story is that Bob shot it himself with a handgun. Other authorities claim the rest of the…

“Where he started and where he ended up in three months—there are not many people who can do that.”—Doug Anderson Once you’ve seen this on the dry lakes or the salt flats, it is hard to forget. Maybe it’s the conspicuous styling, or perhaps it’s because a battleship-size ’50s sedan wasn’t meant to go 165 mph. And who in their right mind would select a Buick Straight-8 as their race engine of choice? Jeff Brock, that’s who! He’s a sculptor from Santa Fe, New Mexico, and he knew nothing about Bonneville when he decided to build a land-speed racer. Growing up in the automotive town of Flint, Michigan, Jeff Brock cut his teeth in his dad’s one-man machine shop behind their house. Of the five Brock children, Jeff was the…

Meldon Van Riper Stultz III is a pretty interesting guy. Behind the cool name and the full-frontal fascia of rusty hued whiskers lies the mind of a true innovator. A jack of several trades, Mel and his crew have taken to building cool pre-war hot rods and bikes just off the New Jersey shorefront in the town of Neptune. They started building period-correct rides for Mel and his friends and gradually ventured into fabrication for a select clientele across the globe. A few years back, Mel was sick and tired of going to the typical parking-lot car shows; spectacles of lawn chairs, light conversation, and stagnant rides never impressed him much. So, to demonstrate to the masses that there was more to life than just parking your car, he jumped…

If NASCAR had started its truck series in the late ’60s, the race vehicles might have looked something like Mike Hickman’s ’68 C10 pickup. Mike, a Corvette fan and enthusiastic racer, bought the Chevy truck in 2009 after a wreck took out his previous hauler. With all his track history, Mike couldn’t build just a cruiser, so he joined forces with Hotchkis Sport Suspension and put together a cornercarving race car in the shape of a truck. Here’s how they did it. [03.19.2009] Mike found the orange ’68 in Sacramento, California. It had been cosmetically restored but was cruddy underneath and powered by a heavily cammed 383 stroker. [01.07.2010] Initial testing of the C10 demonstrated the expected road handling characteristics of a stock pickup truck. [07.10.2010] Mike left the truck…

If it ain’t broke, it will be. I heard it happen, a sound—a wrong sound, but it was early and I was almost to the office and I really didn’t want to pull off the freeway for no reason. A lane change clued me in; I had no steering assist, and in the seconds it took me to process that, the temp needle buried itself to the right. Crap. I made it to the shoulder and turned off the car. It had been so long since I’d had a nonrace-related breakdown that I couldn’t even remember the proper procedures—something I used to know by heart with my old, more breakdown-prone car. It didn’t take more than a second under the hood to see the damage: one fan belt wrapped completely…

Multipurpose cars are the rage these days; handling, top speed, braking, and on-road comfort are the hot bogies. It’s hardly a new thought. In the early days, hot rodders had no choice but to use their sole car as daily transportation while also running it for top speed at the dry lakes and, later, using it at the drags. Today it would be virtually impossible to build a single car that would get you to work, score land-speed records, and win significant drag races. Few people even try. History shows us how it was done, and one coupe drenched in street/lakes/strip lore immediately comes to mind: Fran Hernandez’s ’32 Ford three-window coupe. Much has been written about this participant of the first sanctioned drag race in Goleta, California, in 1949.…

Want to share your car with the whole world? Send photos and info to HOTROD@HotRod.com. Tim Collett // Oak Harbor, Washington Tim and his dad built this wild ’10 Camaro with 636 hp at the wheels. They built it to honor those who serve in the U.S. armed forces. Tim has served in the Navy. Mike Manner // Willis, Texas A/Fuel racers MGM Motorsports in Willis, Texas, built this ’76 Rolls Royce Silver Shadow race car, but has not yet run it. It has a blown, 522ci, all-aluminum Chevy. Norm Verhage // Flint, Michigan This ’69 Barracuda has a 383 and a four-speed. It started as a rusty Michigan car that was saved with body bits from an Arizona car. Brad and Patti Merriman // Arcadia Township, Michigan This ’64…

“That thing needs a straitjacket, not seatbelts!”—Reader Ken Simmons Can we be honest? First impressions of Ed Umland’s outrageously reworked, midengined, twin-turbo ’37 Ford coupe were, “looks killer, won’t run, if it does run it will be a handful at best, will never be finished.” It looked like Ed went a few miles past the sanity exit on the supercar highway. But there’s a reason: He wanted a street-cruising car, but also needed to run 200 mph in the standing mile. That’s why he was shooting for at least 1,000 hp out of his LS engine, and why he ended up using a GT-40 transaxle instead of a weaker Porsche unit, as originally intended. More honesty: We’ve heard the “I’m really gonna drive it” hallucination too many times from car…

Hot rods are supposed to be fast, loud, and scary. Josh Flammer’s ’32 Ford five-window? Check, check, and check. The car is downright brutal, and the reality of it flying down a backroad with open headers, slicks, and magnesium skinnies might send an unprepared soul into shock. Luckily, the man behind the wheel is not unprepared, nor is he afraid to push his hot rod to the limit every time he slides into the seat. Josh is a genuine hot rodder—a man with the desire to build awesome stuff and put it to work. That includes blistering the quarter-mile with a 10.68 e.t. at 127 mph. The story of the rod itself isn’t too unique: After purchasing the body, Josh and a bunch of buddies had a garage party and…

We’re all here because of someone else—in more ways than one. When it comes to hot rods, we all got here through a primordial goo of genes and upbringing, but also from outside influences and foundations established by those who came before us. It’s a rich complex of individuals that supports and satisfies our go-fast interests—like a family. In 2012, we lost some family members. HOT ROD features them here to honor their place in hot rodding, and to display how varied and vast that automotive enthusiast family is. We mourn their passing but celebrate their contributions. “BIG WILLIE” ROBINSON The hulking, 6-foot, 6-inch “Big Willie” Robinson served in Vietnam as a Green Beret with the U.S. Army, coming home in 1966, in the wake of the infamous Watts riots…

Contact METROM PERFORMANCE; Lake Zurich, Il; 847.847.7233; Metrom-Performance.com…

This is one of the biggest restoration projects we’ve ever been involved with, and we mean that literally. This is the engine out of a ’68 Dodge D700 ramp truck race hauler—Dick Landy’s race hauler, to be exact—and it’s in rough shape. Whoever last drove this truck wanted badly to get home, and they didn’t care how many pistons it took to get there. As it turns out, it took eight pistons, one rod, one crank, and the block—at least, that’s what we found broken when we unbuttoned the 413 bigblock after purchasing the behemoth. We have no way of knowing exactly what happened, or when, but clearly the engine was run hot enough and long enough to melt the pistons, bend several rods, break a rod cap, and eat…

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.…

“The first time I did it, I was a mess. You just don’t get in a jet car and think you’re going to light the afterburner and go down the track. There I was, sitting in front of a 5,000hp engine, and my stomach wasn’t ready for it. I thought, now, thumb, now, and struck the afterburner quickly, then as soon as I did, my hand just pulled back and I shut it off. I got scared. I was afraid my eyes would roll back into my head.” Elaine Larsen is a jet racer and the co-founder of both Larsen Motorsports (ElaineLarsen.com) and the National Jet Racing Association. She’s been a drag racer for 20 years, dabbling in Super Gas and Super Comp, making the switch to jet car a…

Elana Scherr The Black Widow is a Chevy-based, gas-burning model engine built by Ken Hurst and Dwight Giles of the Bay Area Engine Modelers (BAEM) club in northern California. Like its fullsize brethren, a scale-model engine is the result of designs and redesigns as each new builder adds his touch to the process. The Black Widow started as a series of patterns by machinist John Vlalvianos, who was dissatisfied with other model V8 casting kits in circulation. John made some initial castings but passed away before completing a full engine. Fellow BAEM club members Ken and Dwight rescued the patterns and added a supercharger. Ken and Dwight offer casting sets of the Black Widow, but don’t think that means you can just buy one, insert Tab A into Tab B,…

PERFORMANCE AS TESTED Rear-Wheel Horsepower: 1,171 at 6,600 rpm Rear-Wheel Torque: 1,000 at 5,700 Time on HOT ROD Autocross: 1:10.1 Quarter-Mile: 10.55 seconds at 152 mph 60–0 Braking: 128.6 feet HRM Staff Average Rankings on a Scale of 1 to 10, 10 Being Best: Competence in its Intended Purpose: Here we judge the car only against the reason it was built; Ed’s coupe is meant to be a street and top-end car, so those are the only elements we’re ranking. While we could not test top speed, the 152-mph trap speed in the quarter and the 1,171 rwhp tell us this thing is not fooling around, and we’re really impressed—but we still suspect that the 230-mph bogie isn’t going to be easy. Ranking: 8.25 Performance vs. Potential: Here’s where we…

Lately I’ve been driving my wife’s ’69 El Camino while studying a FAST wideband O2 meter. The 383 doesn’t run quite right and the meter has been telling me part of the reason why: it idles at an 11.0:1 air/fuel ratio and has a slight bog because it goes dead lean at 16.0:1 just off idle. Meanwhile, I spent a few days in a ’13 Mustang Boss 302 that idles at a lean 14.0:1 but leaps like a rocket at a touch of the gas pedal. It decelerates in gear at 20.0:1—which is the limit of the O2 sensors’ range, so it could be even leaner. How do I know all this? The Boss told me. It’s got that newfangled display that reveals coolant temp at the cylinder heads, inlet…

Get Bigger to Stop Quicker Speedway Motors //800.979.0122 SpeedwayMotors.com The expression “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” does not apply to brakes. If you have a ’64–’72 GM A-body, a ’68–’74 Nova, or a first-gen Camaro or Firebird and need to stop and look better at the same time, then give Speedway Motors a call. Speedway now offers 13-inch disc conversions that include 2-inch-dropped spindles so you can stop better and look sharp with a lowered stance. They are a true bolt-in and require no extra parts to install, but you will need a 17-inch-or-larger wheel to clear the calipers. Price: $699.99 Simplify Your LS Swap MSD Performance //915.857.5200 MSDperformance.com The Wiredless Atomic EFI system for LS Engines is said to ship mid-January 2013. The “Wiredless” part means no…

Next month’s LS Swap. —Dennis Hill Quarter-mile time 4.23 seconds or 4.23 minutes? —Jay Harralson I said a 342 hemi, not the 423 cart. —Benefits Keith Love Where are the side pipes? —Pete Marchi New Fiat Fugoozl, Italian fullsize car! —John Moldoch Year? Make? Model? A: This istheclose-upofaquarter-panelona’60DodgeDartPioneer. HOT ROD (ISSN 0018-6031), March 2013; Vol. 66, No. 03. Copyright 2013 by Source Interlink Magazines, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Published monthly by Source Interlink Media, LLC, 261 Madison Ave., 6th Floor, New York, NY 10016. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY, and at additional mailing offices. Subscription rates for 1 year (12 issues): U.S., APO, FPO and U.S. Possessions $20.00. Canada $32.00. All other countries $44.00 (for surface mail postage). Payment in advance, U.S. funds only. *Trademark registered. POSTMASTER: Please…