Innehållsförteckning för September 2013 från Hot Rod

My favorite moment of the HOT ROD Homecoming was the autograph session Saturday evening. We had Don Prudhomme, Roland Leong, Tommy Ivo, Ed Pink, Ed Iskenderian, Bruce Meyers, George Barris, Linda Vaughn, Vic Edelbrock, Bob D’Olivio, Gale Banks, Steve Strope, and a dozen more, including a smattering of HOT ROD editors and publishers over the past two decades. The signed posters from that cool evening will be cherished forever. Here’s one of the Top 10 best days in my career: the Saturday of the HOT ROD Homecoming show held last March to celebrate the 65th anniversary of this magazine. We collected 275-plus former feature cars dating back to 1948, and it was a fiasco organizing it—but when I was finally there with my wife and boy, it was among the…

Drag Week™ hasn’t escaped our subconscious since the dates and tracks were announced earlier this year, and as we inch closer to the first day of competition, more and more information leaks out of the cracks beneath locked garage doors of the players. This time we aim our microscope at a newcomer to the Unlimited class. Doug Reh owns a Chevrolet/Buick/Cadillac dealership in Pratt, Kansas, and has been racing NHRA Super Comp and Super Gas off and on since the mid-’80s. Larry Larson convinced him to bring his ’69 Camaro (one of our Jan. ’11 cover cars) to Drag Week™ two years ago and then got his kid to drink the Unlimited Kool-Aid after letting him drive the Fastest Street Car in America—if you’ve been living in England, that’s Larry’s…

Henry Ford is quoted as saying, “If you need a machine and don’t buy it, then you will ultimately find that you have paid for it and don’t have it.” We tend to take that to heart when it comes to tools. It’s also good to be able to recite Ford’s quote when anyone thinks our toolboxes are getting too full. We have entire drawers filled with just pliers, some that only have one job, and some that are only good at one of the three jobs they’re supposed to do. This is just a sample of some of our go-to tools. KNOW YOUR TOOLS The Vise-Grip pliers we all know and love are the brianchild of William Petersen, who received his first patent on his locking pliers in 1921.…

Every ’32 Ford hot rod has something borrowed from this roadster. Captured by HOT ROD founder Robert E. Petersen as it ran through the USC campus for the mag’s Oct. ’48 cover, the Bob McGee roadster is the prototypical Deuce roadster and displays an astonishing list of hot rod innovations, both cosmetically and under the skin. McGee jumped into the roadster build in 1947, immediately upon returning from the Philippines after the war. His approach was to build a roadster as low, level, and light as possible, without channeling the body over the frame. When he couldn’t do the work himself, he used the best: Whitey Clayton of Valley Custom for the aluminum dash, the legendary Jimmy Summers for bodywork, Carson Top for the padded removable top, and California…

1909: Ford Model T production starts. As they become cheaper and junkyards populate with choice parts, and as owners want to go faster, all of the elements are in place for what would become hot rodding. 1911: The Indianapolis Motor Speedway holds its first 500-mile race. This would lead to the first aftermarket speed equipment. Early Teens: Frontenac, Roof, Hal, Rajo, Winfield, and hundreds of other companies start manufacturing consumer speed equipment for the Model T. Exotic overhead-valve conversions reveal the extent to which T-based race cars are being modified in the pursuit of speed. Early Teens: Board and dirt oval tracks spring up across the country, especially on the West Coast, where weather conditions permit outdoor events throughout the year. Early Teens: Model T speedster manufacturers start making conversion…

Where do we start this timeline? With the car most commonly considered the first “muscle car,” the ’64 GTO? Maybe earlier, as some staffers argue, with the 392 Hemi-powered Chryslers in ’57? While we’re in 1957, should we credit the Rambler Rebel for meeting the big-V8-in-a-midsize-car criteria? If we’re going by big-engine-in-a-small-car, perhaps we need to look back earlier still: the ’49 Oldsmobile Rocket 88 with a 303ci eight-cylinder shoved in a small-for-the-time body. We must be strict, though, or we’ll find ourselves arguing that the first muscle car was a Quarter Horse. The muscle-car era for HOT ROD magazine really began around ’63–’64, when Detroit started paying serious attention to NASCAR and NHRA, and specifically building products to appeal to young adults hoping to bring some of that track…

Randy and Yvonne Davis from Littletown, Pennsylvania, became friends with Charlie Garrett when they purchased one of his former race cars—a ’33 Willys—in 1978. In 2010, Randy was considering another steel-bodied Willys Gasser project and looked again to Charlie, whose interest in his long-since sold Gasser—a ’39 Studebaker that was featured in the Jan. ’67 issue of HOT ROD—steered Randy to look for the car, dubbed “The Boss.” Randy and Yvonne began searching for The Boss and learned that it had continued to race and had been wrecked. Assuming the car was gone, the couple began buying parts and donor cars to build a replica. They had already bought three Studebaker donors when some of the photos they’d posted on Jalopy Journal.com in November 2010 caught the attention of…

PASSING TIME When this Nova was on the cover in 1982, it was just 12 years old. In today’s time, it’d be like putting an ’01 model on the cover. In 1982, the ’70 Nova seemed old. In 2013, an ’01 seems new. What gives?…

There are names that are synonymous with HOT ROD magazine, and hot rodding in general, and the ’80s and early ’90s established Scott Sullivan as one of ’em. Scott first got attention with his Pro Street ’67 Nova, which was HOT ROD’s ’79 Street Machine of the Year. It became a benchmark for the Pro Street movement that exploded only a few years later. But he truly lit the world, and the magazine, on fire in 1988 when then-editor Jeff Smith few to Scott’s home garage shop in Dayton, Ohio, hopped in the now-famous Cheez Whiz ’55 Chevy Pro Streeter, and the two of them drove it to California, where they ended up at Los Angeles County Raceway and ran in the mid-10s after the 2,000-mile cross-country drive.…

Following the depression of the late ’70s and early ’80s, then the party high of the last half of the ’80s glitz, the ’90s was a time of rehab—a reality check of where we were as hot rodders. The decade saw some notable trends take root, some of which are still popular today. But as with any era in a magazine’s history, the ’90s also had a few “trends” that we wish we never had to experience. Technologically, the ’90s saw the explosion in advanced electronic fuel injection (EFI). The OEs had gone to EFI for emissions and mileage reasons in the ’80s but the computers were still mysterious to hot rodders until computer technology exploded and savvy tuners figured out how to get in and work with them. Gone…

Q: I changed my ’66 Mustang’s six-cylinder–style, four-lug front drum brakes and suspension to five-lug disc brakes off a ’74 Granada. I also bought ’66 styled rims. They are hitting the calipers. Do you know if I buy repro styled rims, will they fit the Granada front end, or if not, what I need to do? A: For the benefit of our readers, the actual models so-called “Granada” brakes came on were the ’74–’77 Maverick/Comet and ’75–’80 Granada/Monarch. This once was a very popular swap for early Mustangs and Falcons, as well as other classic-era Ford muscle cars, but wrecking-yard parts are getting scarce—particularly the front steering knuckles (spindles), for which no parts-store replacement is offered. However, Classic Services Restoration Parts now has complete Granada conversion kits for various early…

Heard there were cookies for First Place.—Jerick Dauenhauer Cookiety, cookiety, cookiety—let’s go racing, boys!—Jim Smith Eat my crumbs!—Jody Walker Driver for the Jim Henson Racing Team—Aguyhoos Adad He’s not the Stig—he’s the Stig’s Muppet cousin!—Eric Kent Year? Make? Model? A: This is a passenger-side front fender of a ’48 Ford F-1 truck. Name That Doohickey A: This is a homebuilt tool used as a valvespring compressor for 426 Hemis. It was built by racer DickLandy and uses the stock rocker-arm shafts as a fulcrum. Next Month: Girls and Great Garages. COMING 08.13.13 HOT ROD TRIVIA Q: 1 What American car was the last to be offered with a front bench seat? 2 What year was the first timed run down the Baja California peninsula, before the Baja 1000? 3 The…

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’d heard stories about a large private junkyard in Wisconsin filled with old cars and trucks, some dating to the ’30s. So, for this month’s Auto Archaeology adventure, I grabbed a few friends, went to investigate, and was blown away the minute I saw the place. Both sides of the entrance road were lined with vintage metal, from an AMC Marlin to a Dodge Li’l Red Express truck, painted blue. In the main yard, we walked for five hours and only got through half of it. It was sad to see such cool stuff sitting unloved, but if it wasn’t here, it probably would have been crushed. The least of the finds were a ’70s Cadillac ambulance and some ’30s farm trucks. Deep into the yard, we saw Camaros, GTOs,…

This is the most unusual issue of HOT ROD you’ve ever seen, as it only has one story outside of the monthly editorial departments, and we’ve pushed aside several of those to save as many pages as possible for this singular tale. It’s the story of hot rodding itself. It’s far from the complete story, we admit, but is a remarkable living history as told by 144 surviving cars featured in HOT ROD magazine from 1948 through the ’90s. These special cars and about 130 newer ones gathered at the HOT ROD Homecoming in March 2013 at the Fairplex in Pomona, California, to celebrate the 65th anniversary of HRM. It was the world’s largest collection of historic feature vehicles, and many were not the hero cars that have been vaunted…

FOUR-SEAT ROADSTERS In the ’20s and ’30s, many companies made four-seat open cars, though hot rodders are mostly concerned with the Fords. The Model T versions were often known as touring cars, while ’28-and-later cars are often called phaetons. Generically, hot rodders call them tubs. WHAT’S A BANGER? In hot rod parlance, “banger” is short for four-banger, a reference to a four-cylinder engine. Less used these days is “four-barrel,” as that’s easily confused with a four-barrel carburetor.…

This relic from roadsterdom’s racing era shouldn’t exist today. After running Bonneville in ’51 and ’52—and appearing on the cover of HOT ROD in July ’52—this old racer was relegated to a field behind an Indianapolis race shop, where it slowly rusted in peace. That’s where the story should have ended. Monrovia, California’s Fred Carrillo originally built the mid-engine Modified Roadster for Bonneville with his brother-in-law Robert Betz in late 1950. You may recognize the name Carrillo. Carrillo Industries—celebrating its 50th anniversary this year—is known as the connecting-rod company, still one of the largest piston-and-connecting-rod manufacturers in the aftermarket and recognized worldwide for advances in piston and H-beam connecting-rod applications. Like many of today’s largest aftermarket companies, Carrillo was founded in the earliest days of hot rodding. Fred is…

Many people consider the ’32 Ford roadster to be the quintessential hot rod, and HOT ROD has featured many over the last 65 years. Each one is a unique expression of the builder’s ideal. Very few have helped to start new trends—or better, a different way of looking at the ubiquitous hot rod. The reality of building a Deuce roadster is that there has always been a tightly regimented set of styling rules that are not to be crossed if you want an acceptable roadster with appeal. So, within this hyper-tight little package of do’s and don’ts, we present some of the ’32 roadsters that over the decades have nudged the needle to help change roadsterdom. 1938: VIC EDELBROCK ROADSTER Tough probably not the first Deuce roadster to race…

You expect to get a history lesson when reading a 50-year-old HOT ROD magazine, but who knew it would also come with a geography lesson? Two paragraphs into the June ’64 feature on the East African Safari, author Ray Brock mentioned the country Tanganyika. Shortly after Brock’s firsthand account of the 3,188-mile ’64 East African Safari rally was published, Tanganyika became part of what is now the United Republic of Tanzania, which, along with Kenya and Uganda, made up the host nations for the grueling race. The factory-backed ’64 Comet that Brock co-drove with Norm Greatorex—a British Army Warrant Officer stationed in Kenya—was part of six-car team of small-block–powered Comets that entered the 94-car field. In addition to numerous privateers, there were a total of eleven factory-sponsored teams, from…

CACKLEFESTS In 1992, longtime NHRA V.P. Steve Gibbs decided to host the NHRA Hot Rod Reunion at California’s Famoso Raceway, and the nostalgia event became an annual gig that goes live every October. It’s also spun into a National Hot Rod Reunion in Kentucky and, for the first time in 2013, a September New England Hot Rod Reunion. In 1999, Gibbs had the idea to fire up a bunch of the old Top Fuel cars that were too out-of-date safety-wise to go down the track. NHRA Museum Curator Greg Sharp mentioned that it would be a real cacklefest, and the name stuck. It’s been going on at the SoCal Reunion since 2000 and has spread to many other nostalgia races nationwide. Old guys everywhere are digging up old cars and…

We’ve always found it ironic that the July ’78 cover, featuring Phil Cool’s ’32 Ford roadster carried the main blurb, “Kit Cars, Street Rods & Mean Machines.” The irony was in the fact that the Deuce was the anti-kit-car and the anti-street-rod. Maybe it was a mean machine. The car revealed the new face of overpowered hot rodding with its daring, blown big-block Chevy and those incredible Goodyear drag meats. Amidst gas woes, trailer queens with empty blower cases, and complicated show builds, Phil Cool’s ’32 was unapologetically simple and hardly a wallfower in traffic-cone-orange paint. The car won the America’s Most Beautiful Roadster award for 1978. Today, it’s owned by Shirley Meland, who’s maintained its original glory. INSPIRATION The Phil Cool roadster was the inspiration for a ’32…

Rick Dobbertin’s name might as well be welded onto every Pro Street car that came after 1982, when his ’65 Chevy II was HOT ROD’s Street Machine of the Year. The car also took top awards at the Car Craft Street Machine Nationals in both ’82 and ’83. Anyone who was older than 13 and into cars in the ’80s remembers this car. It was everywhere. We see it as a crossover in the hobby: The graphics are similar to what would have been on a show-car street machine in the late ’70s, but the tubs and blower through the hood are pure Pro Street. The car’s notoriety was earned with absurd levels of detail and its ludicrous big-block with twin turbos mated to the supercharger, plus a dash…

Far less famous than Cheez Whiz is Scott’s ’57 that followed. He first saw this car when he was nine years old and, over the course of a decade, became friends with the owner, who had owned it since 1964. Scott helped build it through constant iterations, eventually painting it black, removing the straight axle, and installing the American Racing wheels. The owner got tired of it, and Scott bought it, but soon sold it to a guy in Tennessee, who sold it to a guy in California, and it flipped through several other owners before ending up with Scott’s buddy Jim Parsons (who still has it). Scott says, “All we’ve done to it is maintenance stuff, and he drives it all over the place. He loves it and will…

01] ANVIL AUTO AnvilAuto.com; 888.723.8882; Price: $975; PN 010500 Anvil Auto makes this Extractor hood style for new Camaros, as well as ’69-’70 Mustangs. The company is known for making custom and customizable parts for American muscle, and it makes many items in carbon fiber, from stock-replacement body panels to spoilers and instrument clusters. 02] HARWOOD eHarwood.com; 903.566.6001; Price: $695; PN 12401-CF This carbon-fiber hood is the lightest of featured here because it’s a lift-of style with no bracing underneath—even so, it feels sturdy and durable. The Harwood lift-of hoods require trimming on stock applications and must use hood pins. 03] SEIBON SeibonCarbon.com; 877.4.SEIBON (473.4266); Price: $1,040; PN HD1011CHCAM-TT II The most radically different of the hoods featured, Seibon’s TT-style hood has a consistent weave pattern for a perfectly smooth…

Tom Wright of San Diego builds gas-burning, street-legal bumper cars—eight of them so far, with the final one currently in process. His collection features a mixture of different styles from a woody wagon to an army vehicle. The mechanical part of these creations is constantly evolving. His first two bumper cars had Harley-Davidson 1200cc Sportster engines. Tom says they ran hot, as the H-D engines are air-cooled, and despite being rubber-mounted they still vibrated too much to be fun. He’s also tried a Honda 125cc engine, but it didn’t have enough power. The Kawasaki 500cc and 750cc engines from older motorcycles turned out to work the best and were the easiest to find wrecked at local auctions. Currently, two of his cars have Yamahas, two run 500cc Kawasaki two-cylinders, and…

JAPANESE HOT RODDERS Danny Sakai was one of many Japanese-Americans who were active in the Los Angeles hot rodding community before WWII. Yam Okamura, also known as Yam Oka, was another. Many SoCal rodders saw their Japanese friends sent to internment camps after Pearl Harbor, though some returned to SoCal and raced again after the war.…

Racing at the California dry lakes dates to the early ’30s and first became organized in late 1937 with the formation of the SCTA; around the same time, the lakes races stopped being wheel-to-wheel and started being clocked for time only. By 1949, accounting for dry years during WWII, there had been roughly 14 years of active drylakes racing—and nearly every race car was a roadster or open-top modified or streamliner. Tough the small Muroc Timing Association and Western Timing Association were liberal enough to allow virtually anything to race before the war, it took 1949’s founding of the Russetta Timing Association to create a place for coupes and sedans to run in their own classes. The SCTA had certain disdain for closed cars, but when the group finally…

WHO IS AK MILLER? Akton Moeller from Denmark moved to the U.S. as a small child and became an American hot rodding superstar. He was involved with HOT ROD almost incessantly in the early years and was one of the first officers of the NHRA, a president of SCTA, and one of the men who helped bring hot-rod racing to Bonneville. There was a time when he raced a different car at Bonneville every year. He raced La Carrera Panamericana in Mexico and the Mille Miglia in Italy, was involved with the first jet car at Bonneville, entered the Bonneville 200 MPH Club in 1991, won his class at Pikes Peak eight times, won class at the first Baja 1000, and lots more. He worked for Ford PR and was…

“This is the most enjoyable thing I’ve ever done with Dad’s roadster,” says Tim Schnell at the HOT ROD Homecoming. He was all smiles all weekend, and who wouldn’t be if they were in his position? Tim not only acquired his father’s performance engine business in Portland, Oregon, after his pop’s retirement, but also his ’34 roadster. It was originally a customer car before Tim’s dad purchased it in 1965. “Dad had a bunch of ’32s and ’36s, but this is the one hot rod he held onto,” says Tim. Dad Dave Schnell started Schnell Auto Supply in 1946, building performance engines and selling parts to the greater Pacific Northwest. In the late ’60s, Portlandia resident Jerry Rogers bought the full-fendered ’34 off of a used car lot. It…

IVO’S T “TV” Tommy Ivo is a former child actor who became a huge drag racing hero, taking young Don Prudhomme under his wing for what’s considered the first-ever pro drag racing tour in 1960. In between being a TV star and a drag legend, he was a guy with a Model T roadster—one inspired by Norm Grabowski’s car on the Oct. ’55 HOT ROD cover. Norm’s car is considered the first T-bucket, but Ivo’s is the second and nicer prototype. It inspired many to follow.…

FUNNY CARS Funny Cars were born when drag racers began to radically alter the wheelbases of their stock-bodied cars in 1964, moving the axles forward to improve weight transfer, then radically gutting the bodies for weight savings. Technology quickly progressed to the point that the cars used short, front-engine dragster-like, tubular chassis under fiberglass “flopper” bodies; the first in that configuration was in 1966, the brainstorm of longtime hot rodder Fran Hernandez (who was on the cover of the Apr. ’49 HRM) when he was working for Lincoln-Mercury. One of the five fiberglass-bodied Comets he had built was Don Nicholson’s Eliminator 1, the first flopper on the cover of HRM (Apr. ’66, below). GRAY BASKERVILLE At around this point in the mag’s history, you’ll start to see Gray Baskerville’s name…

It’s weird how the wheels of hot rodding can turn in ways that change lives and create new trends. As HOT ROD looks back at 65 years of the hobby, it’s clear there are some cars that have altered its landscape. The Boyd Coddington–built Vern Luce coupe is one of them. I say that with the most humble of assertions, as I was the person who designed it. By saying I designed it, I don’t mean the ’33 Ford; I’m old, but not that old. What I did was design the changes made to the ’33 Ford three-window coupe to achieve the transformation resulting in the Luce coupe. But it took a host of very talented individuals to go from paper to pavement. When it comes to ’33–’34…

Guy Ruchonnet’s ’34 coupe is not perfect. He’d be the first to admit that. “It wasn’t a very good street rod, it wasn’t a very good race car. It was built to be a multipurpose car, meaning it doesn’t do anything well,” he tells us, going on to explain that he built it as a kid and didn’t really know anything, and it’s certainly not up to the quality of the work he does now as a metal shaper, painter, and composites fabricator for such Northern California auto-notables as Roy Brizio and Champion Speed Shop. That may be true, but it misses the point. The Tang-toned three window was never as fast as its blown 392 Hemi would imply, but that never stopped Guy from taking it to the…

Unlike other named trends, like rat rods and Pro Touring, it’s very easy to define a Pro Street car: It’s one with the rear wheeltubs drastically enlarged to accommodate enormously wide tires. It gets more difficult from there. Is it a street-machine-style Pro Streeter? A fairgrounds car? Or maybe something between a real street/strip car 1972: NHRA PRO STOCK When Grumpy Jenkins created his first tube-chassis NHRA Pro Stock Vega in 1972, he also invented Pro Street. It was the first time that huge tires were completely tucked under a production-car body. The interest in the look had been nurtured by the flopper Funny Cars for at least six years, but Grumpy’s use of a completely fabricated tubular frame freed the restrictions of OE-style under pinnings and made…

General Motors, and specifically Chevrolet, has been an integral part of hot rodding, dating back to Corvette engineer Zora Arkus-Duntov’s historic memo in 1953, informing Chevrolet management of the importance of developing speed parts for the pending ’55 launch of the small-block V8. Zora was sharp enough to see the engine’s potential popularity among racers and hot rodders alike. The bean counters listened to him and thus began Chevy’s long involvement in hot rodding; it was the first step in the small-block Chevy’s dominance in racing and hot rodding. We love Fords and Mopars, too, so save the e-stamp. But, you know it’s true: Chevy’s got the volume. HOT ROD has worked closely with nearly all of the domestic OE manufacturers over the years, but in 1995, when the…

Juice Clutch Kits McLeod Racing // 714.630.2764 // McleodRacing.com Toss that old mechanical clutch linkage in the trash—or sell it on eBay—and change to McLeod’s trick hydraulic conversion kit on your early Mustang ’64-’70, Camaro ’67-’69, or Tri-Five Chevy. A hydraulic clutch linkage setup provides more room for tight engine/trans fitments and also eases the pedal effort on stiff clutches. It also has a self-adjusting throwout bearing, which is not included in the kit but available from McLeod, so you can forget about frequent clutch adjustments. Price: $345.13 ($390 for ’55–’57 Chevys) Stock-Look, Wide-View Mirrors Morris Classic Concepts, LLC 864.987.0032 MorrisClassicConcepts.com Typical muscle car–era door mirrors sometimes don’t have enough adjustment for a safe lane change, especially on the passenger side, but Morris Classic Concepts has the fix with its…