Innehållsförteckning för March 2015 från Hot Rod

How do you hide a movie production on the streets of Los Angeles from 10 million people? “We just tell everybody we’re filming a Canadian TV show called Unicorn,” said Brian Scotto, “and nobody wants to stick around to see that.” Scotto would know, as creative director of Ken Block’s Gymkhana 7, and former editor-in-chief of 0-60 magazine, he’s been targeting audiences for years. That’s why he came to HOT ROD in 2013 with a rendering of the Mustang on the cover, and why I’m telling you to navigate to HOTROD.com/News/Ofcial-Ken-Block-Gymkhana-7-Video to see it in action. Put simply, the Gymkhana 7 Mustang was created for us—a group that may not have known who Ken Block is or what his Gymkhana videos are. Here’s the Clif’s Notes version: Block is a…

The turbocharged 1.0L engine in a new Ford Fiesta makes 123 hp and the car weighs about 2,600 pounds. The new 1.0L supercharged engine in the 2015 Kawasaki Ninja H2R race bike makes almost 300 hp (296 hp, really, but we’re OK with rounding up) and weighs 476 pounds. That’s why HOT ROD is writing about a motorcycle, and an import, at that—because it’s badass. Badass like the most powerful production superbike ever, trouncing its closest competition by about 100 hp. You want to talk about power-to-weight ratio? The Kawasaki is carrying 1.5 pounds per horse-power. In car terms, a typical Chevelle would need about 2,400 hp to compare. Granted, it’s a $50,000 race-only bike; we liken this to the Hurst Hemi Dart or Cobra Jet Mustang of the two-wheeled…

I worked at a NAPA Auto Parts during college to support my habit of looking for barn finds. The parts counter gave me access to nearly the entire car community, so I’d get a steady stream of leads. One rumor that came up repeatedly was of a 1970 Dodge Charger R/T squirreled away nearby. I was able to determine a vague location, so I drove up and down every road in that area until I found a house that fit the profile. I knocked on the door, and an older gentleman asked how he could help me. I told him I’d heard about a 1970 Charger sitting around, and he invited me into the garage to take a look. To get to the Charger, I first had to make my…

Being hot rodders we all have those “what if” hallucinations of cross-eyed car building going on in our brains. Maybe it’s gas fumes, clutch dust, or the nitro from Saturday night that triggers these nightmarish detours into automotive anarchy. The difference between most of us and Steve Barton, however, is that he has the means to see his brain burps turned into reality—even if they take an Back in the day, Steve had a 1959 El Camino—Chevy’s first foray into car/truck genius—and Chevy’s SSR seemed like the right replacement for that contemporary El Camino he yearned for. So he bought one of the first 2003s he could get his hands on. He liked how it rode and handled, and its cool retractable top, all wrapped in a Chevy warranty,…

Talk about déjà vu. It was the last day of HOT ROD’s 2014 Drag Week™. We were at Tulsa Raceway Park in Oklahoma and it was pouring. Rain was coming down in a malicious torrent, washing bug guts from windows and pooling in rainbow-streaked puddles under slicks and hastily resealed transmissions. It was almost the exact same scenario as Drag Week™ 2012, when the final runs had to be postponed and the Daily Driver bracket race was rained out. Just when it seemed we were doomed to repeat history, the rain stopped and the race was on. The track crew did a great job drying the track while the Drag Week™ staff took on the difficult task of reducing almost 100 remaining Daily Driver cars down to the quickest…

Most vintage magnesium wheels were used as racing wheels, so many of them have been the victim of curb smacks, aggressive tire changing, flying rocks, tools, and exploding parts. Some scrapes in magnesium wheels can be machined down, but machining magnesium presents a whole world of challenges unto itself: magnesium catches fire at 880 degrees Fahrenheit, burns hot, and is virtually impossible to extinguish. So inspect vintage magnesium wheels for damage from decades of racing abuse or storage—keeping in mind repairs will be more difficult than with aluminum or steel wheels. Next Month: First-Gen Hemi…

Methanol has come back in a big way, with many race cars making the switch and even some street vehicles running the stuff. This begs the question: What is it about methanol that gives it an edge over gasoline? A popular discussion among fuel enthusiasts is how energy-dense a particular fuel is. While that’s important when discussing engine efficiency or brake specific fuel consumption (BSFC), a much more important question when discussing power output is the fuel’s maximum-power air/fuel ratio. For instance, in a gasoline engine, an air-to-fuel ratio of roughly 12.5:1 (12.5 parts air to 1 part fuel) is about right for maximum engine power. In the case of methanol, an air-to-fuel ratio of 4:1(4 parts air to 1 part fuel) is considered slightly on the rich side, but…

THE COMBO Scott Mays purchased his 1970 Mustang Mach 1 with a 351 Cleveland (351C) engine through Craigslist. “It’s a true Mach 1,” Mays says proudly. “The previous owner had the engine rebuilt but could not recall most of the specs. He told me the original block was bored 0.030 over. I didn’t know the cam specs, but from the way the car ran, it felt pretty huge. Externally, the engine has an Edelbrock Performer intake fed by an Edelbrock 750-cfm carb. A Mallory distributor lights the spark. Exhaust is through FPA headers, dual 2.5-inch pipes, and Flowmasters. The owner claims the compression ratio is around 10:1, and the car runs fine on 93-octane gas.” When the engine was rebuilt, its original iron 2V heads were replaced with Airflow…

Ed Iskenderian is credited with having invented or at least popularized the logoed T-shirt way back in 1949. In the subsequent 66 years, the car-guy shirt has become a significant point of study in gearhead anthropology, and you may not even realize it, but you’re a student. This dawned on me because these days I’ve been allowed out in the general public more often than I have in years, a departure from my natural habitat of like-dressed car guys. I realized that, when among a crowd of the washed masses, a car T-shirt easily identifies a member of our breed—a zebra among horses. Within our own herd, the nature of a guy’s shirt inadvertently positions him in the gearhead caste system. Car-Show Shirt: In SoCal, a typical show shirt has…

Nearly 50 years before HOT ROD rolled into Tulsa, Oklahoma, for the 2014 Drag Week, Denver’s Alan Bockla (rear) and Fraser, Michigan’s Logghe, Stefey, and Rupp’s “The Prussian” both burned the midnight oil replacing pistons and performing valve jobs on their junkyard heads at the swank Trade Winds Motel parking lot in Tulsa. For the Prussian crew, it would be worth the effort. Starting at this 1965 NHRA World Finals event (and through 1973), the winner of the Finals was crowned season champ. Tough Bockla would get bumped, the Prussian crew’s midnight thrash resulted in downing Danny Ongais with a 7.82-second run at 200 mph for the NHRA World Champion Top Fuel crown for 1965. An impressive e.t. for the time, but not quick enough to run with Drag Week’s…

Audi announced it has developed an ecofriendly, synthetic diesel fuel derived from what its calling e-diesel Blue Crude. Audi says the only resources needed to create the e-diesel are air, water, and electricity. Te process starts by extracting carbon dioxide from ambient air using direct aircapturing technology. Another process takes water and separates it into hydrogen and oxygen by using an electrolysis unit. From here, the hydrogen and the carbon dioxide go through a high-pressure and high-temperature reactive process that results in the Blue Crude, a liquid full of hydrocarbon compounds. Audi partnered with Climeworks (Climeworks.com) and Sunfire (Sunfre.de/en/) for the project, and produces the e-diesel at a recently opened plant in Dresden, Germany. The automaker says the plant is producing 42 gallons of Blue Crude daily and that 80…

Cris Gonzalez, owner and operator of JCG Restoration & Customs (JCGRestorationandCustoms.com) in Oxnard, California, has built some of the baddest Pro Touring cars around, including the Blu Balz Camaro, an over-the-top muscle car that left Italian supercars in its wake. Cris’ latest project, a 1970 Dodge Challenger, moves down the color spectrum from blue to purple, but it might have Mopar lovers seeing red. Fabrication, suspension, and mechanics—Cris is good at everything, except Mopar engines. Under the hood of the Challenger is a Mast Motorsports LS3. “I get a lot of disappointment at the track when they find out it has an LS engine, but then they’re amazed at how fast it is,” Cris said. People tend to forgive a lot for the sake of more horsepower. The LS…

Meldon Von Riper Stultz III is a young, brash, street-savvy entrepreneur living outside Asbury Park, New Jersey. He incessantly tinkers with vintage bikes and cars, and holds down jobs doing bodywork and repairs in local shops—all the while conjuring up ways to promote his brilliant racing ideas. In 2012, The Race of Gentlemen put Meldon and his Oilers Car Club on the map. The inaugural race (HRM cover story, Mar. 2013) was fueled by social media and word of mouth through the strong hot rod presence based on the Jersey Shore. The Race of Gentlemen was created to be a kick-in-the-chaps to bloated car shows where spectators lounge on lawn chairs and hover over their latest auction finds. It’s a stripped-down, leaner, faster, and louder version of your typical…

Supercharger cases vary from manufacturer to manufacturer. Magnuson uses a ribbed exterior that looks a bit like a waffle, Roush’s Mustang superchargers use a herringbone pattern of ribs, and Edelbrock’s E-force superchargers vary from a streamlined 6-71 look for carbureted V8s to its late-model Corvette applications that look a lot like factory GM superchargers. What they all have in common is they all use Eaton’s TVS rotors and geardrives inside, the same rotors and forged gears you’d find in a 2012–2014 Ford GT500 or a C6 Corvette ZR1. From the outside of the case, these rotors are indistinguishable from Lysholm-style rotors used in Whipple and Kenne-Bell superchargers, but you can often see the cast bearing plate found on every supercharger using Eaton rotors. Different rotor diameters use different bolt patterns,…

My family would make a horrible reality show. Nobody would yell, get arrested, or pick a fight with a baby. So when my brother told me he was getting married—to a lovely girl with an equally peaceful family—I was like, “Oh great. This is going to be a super-boring wedding where not a single person gets drunk and barfs on the cake.” Luckily, the wedding was 400 miles away, and that meant plenty of time for mechanical drama, especially since Tom and I decided that taking his 1969 Dodge Charger R/T up I-5 was a totally legitimate plan and not at all one that would find us pulled over 30 miles from our hotel, filling the radiator with water, one 9-ounce bottle at a time. It took 14. Once the…

Q:In the Oct. 2014 Pit Stop, you explained why horsepower and torque always cross at 5,252 rpm. And in the past you’ve published formulas for the relationship between miles per hour (mph), axle ratio, engine revolutions per minute (rpm), and tire size. But where does the “336” constant in that equation come from? A:Vehicle speed (mph), engine speed (rpm), tire diameter (inches), trans gear ratio, and rear axle gear ratio are all interrelated. If you know four out of five of these values, you can determine what the unknown value is (or what it needs to be to achieve your desired goals). But to do that you have to convert different units of measurement to a common value: revolutions per minute to revolutions per hour, and inches to miles.…

In December 1972, the infamous Lions Drag Strip in Long Beach, California, closed forever with its Last Drag Race festivities. It’s estimated that 25,000 people attended that Saturday night to send the storied track off to drag-race heaven. The final was run well after midnight and won by the Mike Kuhl and Carl Olson Top Fuel team from Orange County. By the time the last pass took place, there was pandemonium throughout the facilities from spectators both partying and pissed—a strange combo, for sure. Olson was kind enough to give HOT ROD readers a glimpse of what it was like running and winning the Last Drag Race at Lions. HOTROD.COM/Thom-Taylor “Lions Drag Strip. I’ll never forget the sounds, sights, and smells of that place. The ‘rare air’ that would flow…

When Tinley Park, Illinois, resident Dave VerSchave sold his 1966 Nova—featured in HOT ROD (Dec. 1994 issue)—he started to search for a car that he built in his head as a kid after watching the movie American Graffti. When he found a $2,500 1955 Chevy sedan in the local paper (that he ended up grabbing for $1,500) his American Grafti gasser build began. The car’s rear wheelwells had been cut sometime in the 1960s, which was perfect for what Dave wanted, and the body was a rust-free and straight splendor, but the foor and firewall had been victim of multiple engine, trans, and rollcage combo clobberings. Dave hand-formed a new foor and trans tunnel, created a frewall for the 6-inch setback the engine would need, and grafed in wheeltubs…

“If the flatbed or tow truck has to come get you, 9 out of 10 times I’d count whatever happened as a crash!”— Ken Block Ken Block, cofounder of the DC Shoe company, rallycross driver, and all-around action-sports junkie, altered the world of YouTube forever when he released Gymkhana Practice in 2008. The 4-minute, 26-second display of driver skill, tire smoke, and speed—shot at the Marine Corps Air Station El Toro in California—featured Block in the driver seat of a 500hp, allwheel-drive Subaru Impreza. Gymkhana Practice was shared around the world faster than Block killed the Subaru’s BFGoodrich tires, and it launched a 007-esque online video franchise that’s now on its seventh film. HOT ROD was tipped of by Block’s Hoonigan Racing team that Gymkhana 7 (released Nov. 17,…

Rossler Transmissions (RosslerTrans.com) has become synonymous with building some of the strongest auto transmissions in the industry. This year’s Drag Week™ saw almost all of the heavy hitters—Tom Bailey, Jeff Lutz, Joe Barry, Doug Cline, and Larry Larson—running Rossler’s TH210 transmissions, which is a close-ratio two- or three-speed automatic transmission based on the GM TH400. Rossler calls them “TH210” or “Turbo Glides” due to their numerically higher First gear and because he builds them with so many of his own proprietary parts. TH400: 61 YEARS OF R&D Rossler saw the need for a close-ratio three-speed automatic to handle immense power without overwhelming traction. His TH210s are fit with a taller First gear, 2.10:1 (versus 2.48:1 in the TH400s). Second gear checks in at 1.40:1 (versus 1.48:1 in the TH400s),…

Metal fabrication can look like magic, and for hot rodders it continues to be a source of interest and fascination. In 1966 Tom Hanna, who created many of the one-off aluminum bodies for Top Fuel dragsters in the 1960s and 1970s, built what is considered one of the most beautiful dragster tails: an enclosed chute pack and rollbar-long tail body for Tom Hoover’s Woody Gilmore–built car. Over the years the dragster was used and abused and somewhere lost that gorgeous tail. When Steve Andersen found the remnants of the car in 2004 and decided to restore/recreate it to its 1960s glory, he convinced Hanna to create a new tail. The dragster was known as the “Fishbowl” dragster from a tale Hanna fabricated when a journalist asked him why there were…

Any designer telling you he or she knows the secret to good design is either a liar or foolishly overconfident. In most cases, successful design is a maelstrom of good and bad ideas, targets, politics, hallucinations, hunches, manufacturing and cost compromises, egos, and body blocks. To me a good design doesn’t need an explanation or a nudge. The best design embodying that idea in the last 50 years or so would have to be the original Ford Mustang. Grandmas, children, plumbers, spinsters, politicians, hot rodders—it didn’t matter; the Mustang had a resonance cutting through consumer niches and broad segments, selling like nothing ever had. In its first full year of production in 1965, it sold 560,000 units, with only three body styles: the hardtop, convertible, and 2+2 fastback. The 1965…

High-Flow 5.0L Filter Airaid //800.498.6951 //Airaid.com Airaid’s new MXP-Series Intake for the 2015 Mustang 5.0L uses a one-piece, roto-molded intake box that draws air from the factory cold-air-duct location. The unique shape promotes airflow all the way around the filter. The 1,300-cfm air filter is available with traditional oiled filter media in red or dry SynthaMax media in red, blue, or black. All Airaid filters are washable and reusable while carrying a lifetime warranty. The 5.0L intake tube measures 4 inches in diameter at the throttle-body to support other engine modifications and is said to have a specially formed venturi to ensure accurate mass airflow (MAF) sensor readings. Airaid says its design means that no tuning is required—just bolt it on and enjoy even more power from your Mustang. Price:…