Innehållsförteckning för May 2014 från Hot Rod

I’ve tried to care about fuel economy—but I can’t. I love the cars I drive and the places I go way too much. Don’t get me wrong, fuel economy can be important. It’s just that it’s only of consequence when I don’t like what I’m driving or where I’m driving to. If you’re reading this, I bet that rule also applies to you. Look around at the cars marketed as ofering great fuel economy. You’re not excited to drive any of those vehicles. Now, if I toss you the keys to the car of your dreams to take on Power Tour® you’ll never even think to ask me, “What kind of fuel economy does this thing get?” Don’t misunderstand, I’m not saying car guys want bad fuel economy—we just look…

Minibikes! You either have one or you need one. The same can be said for go-karts, the forerunners of minibikes, which were born in 1956 when fabricator Art Ingles of Frank Kurtis’ race shop Kurtis Kraft in Glendale, California, built what’s acknowledged to be the first kart—though it wasn’t called that at the time. Soon, muffler-shop owner Duffy Livingstone saw that he could bend tubing to build the little race cars powered by lawnmower engines. Lynn Wineland of Rod & Custom magazine was called in to make an ad, and he named the cars go-karts. Sales of the tiny racers boomed overnight, and Livingstone’s Go-Kart Manufacturing Company opened a stand-alone kart plant in Azusa, California. A zillion other companies jumped in the game, and in 1958, Livingstone opened the first…

The 2014 North American International Auto Show (NAIAS), more commonly called the Detroit Auto Show, was a different showcase this year with less concept cars and more new-car intros, including significant debuts from Chevrolet, Chrysler, and Ford. CORVETTE C7.R AND Z06 Chevrolet’s world-class American supercar—the Z06, debuted next to its TUDOR United SportsCar Championship racer brother the C7.R. Supercharging has finally come to the Z06 option, with 625 hp and 635 lb-ft of torque. Both a sevenspeed manual and the new 8L90 eight-speed automatic—said to be 8 pounds lighter than the Stingray’s six-speed—will be the transmissions available. Flared fenders, larger cooling vents, and wider wheels and tires round out just some of the features unique to the Z06 package. Chevrolet announced a performance data-and video-recorder option for all Corvette trim…

Sometimes Automotive Archaeology isn’t just about the cars, but it’s about where they came from, too. While driving back toward my home in Chicago, I traveled through a small town about 20 miles north of Route 66, where I came upon a nearly abandoned GM dealership on the main drag through town. The place wasn’t open for business, but the owner was in there cleaning it out. I walked in and spoke with the man, explained what I did, and he gave me the 5-cent tour. Walking onto the showroom floor felt like stepping back in Walking onto the showroom time. The place began as a Ford dealership in 1915, but sitting on the store’s original wooden plank foor that day were a pair of Chevrolets: a mid-’60s Chevelle with…

Everything looks better out the window of a shoebox Chevy. Small towns, two-lane country roads, dragstrip finish lines, and yes, even the vertical wonderland of New York City. We took native New Yorkers Frank Romano and Glenn Hunter up on an ofter to drive their ’55 and ’56 Chevys through the busy streets of Manhattan, and we literally brought the city to a standstill. Amazingly, nobody honked. “Tis story should really be about Glenn’s car,” Frank told me, and it’s true. Glenn’s two-tone peppermint Bel Air with its 33/18.5-15 Mickey-Ts shoved in the rear wheelwells and blown big-block stroker, not just sticking through the hood but making a hood altogether superfuous, is a pretty eye-catching package. The fact that it will do a burnout at 60 mph in…

We Prove Old Cars Weren’t Really That Bad—and the Parts We Add Can Increase Power and Efficiency. “Do you mind if we put the signs on the side of the car?” asked Jesus Flores, nodding to the Emissions Analytics magnets in his hands and motioning to the GTX’s door. “We don’t have to, but it’ll save us from answering a lot of questions out on the test route.” Jesus should know, he’s been working with our parent company’s IntelliChoice Real MPG program since last year to certify the factory fuel-economy ratings of production cars. Tese days you can’t buy a new car without being smacked in the face with its EPA fuel-economy ratings, but how accurate are those EPA numbers in the real world? Te IntelliChoice Real MPG…

This hot rod hasn’t had a traditional life. It wasn’t a straightforward we-found-it-behind-a-barn build, but rather one that improved with each owner, getting better as it went. The project began more than 60 years ago when two brothers traded their hard labor for the car. Current owner Tim Petersen was just a kid back then when he first saw it, but he never forgot it. After years of dreaming about the car, Tim set out to track it down in the late ’70s. He found it near his childhood stomping grounds and was able to buy it with the little money he could set aside while supporting a household. Using wrecked Corvette parts and junkyard suspension pieces, he was able to build a beautiful hot rod—without going broke. Now after…

So you want to build a car in two weeks? Been there, done that. It’s not a bad idea, and we do it all the time for our Roadkill show on YouTube.com/MotorTrend. Placing a hard and fast deadline on a project-car build forces you to focus and ignore outside distractions. For many of us, it’s just the thing we need to get off the couch and finish our hot rods. Here are a few tips to make that ridiculous timetable pay off. MAKE IT LEGAL Your goal should be to drive whatever you’re building, and unless you want that experience to be brief, you are going to need valid vehicle registration and insurance. Since many projects languish for years before seeing the road and change hands frequently throughout the build…

A regular part of my driving routine is the exit and brush off, because everything I own seems to be in need of new seat covers. It’s made me quite the expert on seat padding. Turn around and I can tell all about your project car from a look at your back. See this? This fluff-ball of wooly cotton stuck to your right hip? You drive a ’60s car, maybe a bench seat, and the vinyl is splitting. Oh, and you, you with what appears to be bright yellow dandruff all across your shoulders. I’m guessing sport buckets in your car, early ’70s maybe? You’ve got those seats stuffed with brittle foam that dissolves at a touch, seeps through the seams, and covers the interior with a light dust, like…

Quick Test: HOT ROD’s Trailer Winch ComeUp //503.783.6142 //Shop.ComeupUSA.com The HOT ROD staff is tired of pushing project cars on trailers, so we called ComeUp to help us out. We installed the DV-9 12-volt winch on our shop trailer. It’s fast, powerful, and was easy to hook up to our trailer’s onboard battery. In order to stay cool under heavy usage, ComeUp uses a patented Cone Brake Structure, which is a fancy way of saying the brake is designed outside of the drum, reducing internal heat. The DV-9 with its 4.6hp motor is rated to pull 9,000 pounds. It hasn’t shown any signs of strain with even our heaviest cars. The winch comes with everything you need, including an industrial-strength waterproof control and large T-handle for unlocking the winch in…

Ferdinand Porsche created the first hybrid, the Lohner-Porsche Mixte Hybrid, in 1901, so the car before you is not the first to combine two propulsion systems. Rather, it’s an early forbearer of hybrid technology and quite possibly the first hybrid race car. Essentially, it’s a stock ’65 Z15 Chevelle combined with a Turbonique Drag Axle rocket engine bolted to its rearend, running on that happy, hybrid alternative fuel called normal propyl nitrate. Turbonique called the fuel Thermoline—a monopropellant, meaning it will burn without the presence of atmospheric oxygen. We’re sure its byproduct was to the atmosphere like amyl nitrite is to a heart patient. Mechanical thrust is what yanked the “Sizzler” down the quarter-mile, with rocket thrust spinning a turbine attached to planetary gears, in turn attached to the axleshafts.…

Zak Hall // Blountville, Tennessee Zak, 18, drives this aluminum-headed, 350-powered ’64 chevy II gasser as often as he can. he works on it with his dad and friends. Robert Wickles // North East, Pennsylvania this ’69 Firebird belongs to 18-year-old robert, who bought it when he was 15. It’s got a mild 350 chevy backed by a four-speed Muncie. Mike Cochran // Glencoe, Alabama When mike bought this ’79 Pontiac Firebird, he wanted a higher-compression Pontiac engine, so he robbed a 400 out of a ’68 Gto with 360hp heads. David Fields // Cecilia, Kentucky David’s ’55 chevrolet gasser has a blown Lt-1 backed by a four-speed and 12-bolt rear axle. the car had a full frame-of restoration. Riley McLellan // Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada Riley said people laugh at…

Carroll Shelby did it. Callaway, Lingenfelter, Saleen, and a host of others still do it today. Heck, Gale Banks does it with diesel tow rigs. What is it? They all build hot rods out of showroom-fresh production vehicles, making them perform, handle, and look better than their developers could’ve ever imagined. Boutique builders typically use massproduced vehicles as the canvas for their creations. This car is different. When designer Henrik Fisker (he’s credited with penning the Aston Martin DB9, Aston Martin V8 Vantage, and BMW Z8) conceived an environmental gift to the road gods—the Fisker Karma—he designed a swoopy four-door from scratch that looked like it’s going 150 mph while standing still. Then he matched its looks with a supercharged, blistering V8. No, wait—he didn’t do that. What he did…

For some, bragging rights might be made up of horsepower numbers or elapsed times, but for Milburn Varner, it consists of gloriously unrestored Mopars and lots of parts to go with them. While his age prevents him from doing all the fun stuff he did in the ’60s and ’70s, he still loves his old cars and still has most of them. Milburn started drag racing in 1961 with a ’53 Pontiac, but most of his racing days were spent behind the wheel of a Mopar. He has hundreds of great stories about his drag-racing days, but he’s also aware of the harsh reality that caused him to stop racing in 1974. Running in the Super Stock ranks, Milburn and brother-in-law David Rehring raced at least twice a…

The world needs another LS-powered early Camaro! It really doesn’t, but it seems no one in the performance industry got that memo, cuz guys are building the ubiquitous combo in soaring numbers, and manufacturers are releasing new swap parts like popcorn. Holley is chief among ’em and has a complete line of LS-engine swap parts including engine mounts, trans crossmembers, oil pans, accessory drives, headers, exhaust systems, intake manifolds, fuel components, and EFI conversions. To prove how easily the late-model engine can be retroftted into an old car with Holley parts, the company made a foolhardy gamble, sponsoring a challenge for us guys from the Roadkill show: we’d have to install an LS engine and EFI from scratch in three days in front of a live-video-feed audience, and…

This ’67 Chevy Impala HOT ROD cover car began life as a white, sixcylinder, bench-seat cruiser from the Northwest. David Freiburger snagged it off eBay, drove it, and then did a custom vinyl wrap, long before that was considered a viable paint alternative. White with classic flames, the vinyl received mixed reviews from readers when it ran in our Sept. ’10 issue. Freiburger also replaced the tired small-block with a Smeding Performance 383ci Extreme small-block and 700-R4 transmission. After the vinyl spent a couple years on the car, the Impala was professionally painted in a color we thought would be cool. We were wrong. Our solution was to gather the staff for a backyard paintjob to show readers how you can trick your friends into helping you paint your car…

LOBE SEPARATION ANGLE VS. CRANK STROKE Generating peak power and torque at about the same rpm point after increasing crank stroke requires moving the cam’s intake-closing point later and the exhaust-opening point earlier. This calls for both slightly more duration plus a wider lobe-separation angle (LSA). Looking at LSA, the adjacent graph, generated using data supplied by Comp Cam’s Billy Godbold, shows, for example, that maintaining the same rpm peak points as a 3.50-inch stroke engine running a cam with a 110-degree LSA requires about a 114.5-degree LSA if the stroke was increased to 4.50 inches. The reasons for this are complex but include compensating for the long-stroke’s lever-arm affects on engine torque as well as the increased cylinder head port velocity generated by a stroke increase. Contact COMP CAMS;…

THE COMBO Ryan Nowicki bought his ’67 Ford Mustang fastback eight years ago. In place of the car’s original 289, the previous owner had swapped in a ’69 351 Windsor, mildly warmed over with Edelbrock Performer components—a hydraulic flattappet cam, an RPM intake, and a 600-cfm carb. An MSD standalone distributor and ignition coil lights the spark; Hedman headers dumping into 2½-inch dual pipes with an H-crossover and Flowmaster 40-series mufflers handle exhaust duties. As purchased, the car still had the original Ford four-speed Top Loader trans and bellhousing. Out back was an 8-inch Ford rearend with a limited-slip diff and 3.55:1 gears. THE PROBLEM “Ever since I bought it,” Nowicki relates, “The car has had an intermittent vibration turning right from speeds as low as 5 mph…

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 step to building any hot rod is choosing, finding, and funding the right car to start with. Once you’ve decided on the vehicle of your dreams, it’s time to begin the actual search and purchase process. Technology and the Internet are your friends here and make the hunt much easier than it ever was with the local paper—especially if you’re willing to travel for your treasure. To help you locate a perfect lowbuck base car, we’ll reveal the seven tactics we use to save time and money on our project-car purchases. SNIPE A CAR THAT’S NOT FOR SALE This technique borders on predatory, but on the bright side you could be bailing someone out of a financial crisis. Look for Internet forum build threads on the type of…

Watching chopped, lowered, and hot rodded cars cruise Bellfower Boulevard in the ’50s, Floyd Doty fell in love with ’32 Fords before he was old enough to drive one. He knew that one day he’d have to own a Deuce. Decades later, finally able to afford the car of his dreams, Floyd began his search. For years, the perfect car eluded him until Rick Henry, Floyd’s second cousin, invited him to check out the ’32 cabriolet he was doing some work on. Floyd was interested, but car owner Gary Gillette wasn’t ready to sell the unfinished cabriolet. However, he did have a road-ready ’32 Sports Coupe he was willing to part with. Floyd and his wife Darlene traveled to San Clemente, Califor nia, to see the coupe. Afer…

Hot rodding is just one big, happy family; as in any family, you take the good with the bad. Over time we lose some members of the family, but what an inheritance! Their knowledge, accomplishments, and physical manifestations remain for all of us to enjoy and utilize. Whether by chance or design, there are many heroes and legends—racers, crafsmen, salesmen, and geniuses who make up a part of what is hot rodding. Without them this would be a very different endeavor and a very different place, so we are fortunate to have been blessed with their individual triumphs, ideas, and personalities. HOT ROD hopes you will enjoy reading about some of the participants who in one way or another make up what is our hot rod DNA. TONY…

Al Rutter was none too popular at his home track of Sonoma Raceway. Every time he made a quarter-mile pass in his big-block ’72 Plymouth Duster, it would wheeze out a big puff of watery smoke at the top end, which meant the track workers would have to drive down and make sure he hadn’t made a mess down there. Aside from making everyone angry, the car seemed to be running fine, clicking off consistent 10.30 e.t.’s. Al is a team player, though—or at least, a man who doesn’t want to be lynched at the dragstrip—so he pulled the heads off to see if there was anything wrong in the 440. Do three cracked cylinder walls count as something wrong? How about two main caps that fell apart when Al…

Q; I want to install fuel injection in place of the Quadrajet carb on my ’87 El Camino. Is there a way to get a conversion like this past the southern California smog-testing stations? A; Not easily, and not with a painless bolt-on. California has strict rules about smog-legal mods that were established decades ago and haven’t really kept pace with modern technology like electronically managed engines and the clean-air benefits those upgrades, if properly installed and tuned, can provide for older cars. Basically, the gross rules in California currently in effect that pertain to emission-control–related changes on a car 1976-or-newer are: 1. Any mods that alter the emission-control system are prohibited (unless the product has an EO, see 7, below). 2. Downgrading the emission-control technology is prohibited. In…

01] CLASSIC INDUSTRIES ClassicIndustries.com; 800.854.1280; $594.99; PN B99120 Made to look like the original ’69-’70 full-size Chevy radio, these new units feature a digital AM/FM tuner along with iPod, MP3, and satellite radio RCA inputs on the back. Operating the radio, you wouldn’t know the insides were up to date unless you heard it in person, since it features the original-style plastic knobs and slider for AM/FM selection. The housing is compact and fits the original dash. It features two built-in microprocessors that monitor the input to produce the cleanest, sharpest sound possible. Included are the necessary fuse holder, fuse, and detachable wiring harness, so you can do most of the install without the radio hanging in the way. 02] CUSTOM AUTOSOUND CasMfg.com; 800.888.8637; $183.99; PN CU809C Custom Autosound offers…