Innehållsförteckning för January 2016 från Hot Rod

“What is a hot rod?” Or, “What is hot rodding?” Those are two of the most common questions I get asked by people who don’t know anything about our industry. I understand why outsiders don’t know the answer, because in truth, what a hot rod is—is constantly changing. To me, “hot rodding” is a form of constant improvement. While a “hot rod” is the target of that improvement. How something gets “hot rodded” can take virtually any form—from parts to paint, materials to model years, and processes to power. All hot rodders need do is begin with some physical form that captures their curiosity and benefits from improvement. And it helps if in the end the hot rod looks cool enough for people to notice your…

If you haven’t watched DC Shoes: Robbie Maddison’s “Pipe Dreams” on YouTube, take 4 minutes and give it a look. OK, at this point we’re assuming you’ve seen the video, so any spoilers ahead are your own fault. We just watched it again because we can’t get over how awesome it is seeing a motorcycle tear across a beach and head right into the water, skittering across the top like a crazed lizard. Maddison’s customized KTM motorcycle is capable of not only staying atop the water but is fast enough to outrun the infamous Teahupo’o reef break in Tahiti. We were so impressed by the feat that we asked the Australian supercross and stunt rider how he and his team transformed the motorcycle from terrestrial to amphibious duty. Maddison told…

hOwning a custom-car shop sounds like a dream job for many gearheads. Picture being surrounded by cool cars, getting paid to fabricate and wrench, and ultimately be your own boss. Sounds great, right? But there’s a catch. Any time spent building a personal project car is time not spent on a customer’s car, and customers are the ones who pay to keep the shop open. That was the conundrum facing Jordan Quintal, owner of Super Rides by Jordan in Escondido, California. It took him years to convince his buddy to sell him the shell of a 1930 Ford Model A and several more years to complete the extensive fabrication work that add up to a killer, vintage-looking hot rod. The Model A was a backburner kind of project as dozens…

Versus, versus, versus—there are more automotive “This vs. Thats” floating around the Internet than on the docket for Judge Judy. We love a good matchup, but when it comes to buying advice, are there really people out there trying to decide between an SS and an M3? Between a Camaro and Porsche? We don’t think so. If you’re a Chevy guy, you know you want something wearing a Bow Tie, so your big question isn’t Z/28 or 911, it’s which Camaro, and then, buy it or build it? To help you with this difficult decision, we threw our testdriver, Kevin Wesley, into Chevy’s ultimate track package Camaro and a modified version of its low-buck stripper, and asked him how they compared to each other. 2014 CAMARO Z/28 The last time…

Fuel. It’s the one source of energy every engine needs to make power. It doesn’t matter if you want to make 100 or 1,000 hp, it all starts with a consistent fuel supply. Traditionally, that fuel is stored in a tank under the rear of the car and pumped forward to the engine. Yet how well that fuel gets sucked out of the tank and delivered to the pump is one of the most challenging aspects of all fuel-system design. Whether you’ve swapped in a fuel-injected engine that requires a high-pressure fuel supply, are launching hard on the dragstrip, or pulling high-g’s on the track, you know how tricky and expensive it can be to keep your fuel-delivery system supplying consistent fuel pressure. In the past, you had to dump…

As we speed through time and space, we are now coming up on some pretty historic hot rod anniversaries, with few as significant as the Summers Brothers’ Goldenrod Land Speed Record set November 12, 1965. Many know of the Summers Brothers for their beefy racing axles and spools, but 50 years ago, these two hot rodders hit the salt with the intent of beating the standing landspeed record set by Englishman Donald Campbell at just over 400 mph. Bill and Bob Summers’ homebuilt masterpiece was 32 feet long, 48 inches wide, and 42 inches in height, weighing nearly 6,000 pounds but with a miniscule 9 sq-ft of frontal area, and an astonishing drag coefficient of only 0.117, based on Bill’s wooden models tested in Cal Tech’s wind tunnel. Powered by…

Bobby Johnson built this mid-engine 1970 Mach I Mustang after the reaction he got from his previous build, a 1969 Camaro. He thought the complexity and quality of his red Camaro would draw accolades and attaboys. But before all of you Ford lovers pipe up with sarcastic comments, be aware that his Camaro was radical—with late-model Corvette Z06 driveline and suspension. It was essentially a Z06 Corvette hiding under a 1969 Camaro. Says Johnson, “It was way more difficult than this Mustang.” He included all of the features of the then-new Corvette like mega-adjustable heated and cooled seats, all of the original electronics, and a lot more. “It took me four months just to wire the thing,” he says. But the sad part for Johnson, and the reason he took…

We were researching Baja racing for the NORRA story on page 54 and noticed Don Prudhomme’s name on an entrants’ list from the 1968 running of the Mexican 1000 (what the Baja 1000 was called in the early days). Since we’re HOT ROD, we can do insane things like call up “The Snake” and ask him, “Hey, did you ever race Baja?” “Oh yeah,” he said. “Long time ago, with Tony Nancy, because Steve McQueen couldn’t. I still have my stuff, my uniform, the stuff I wore.” Wait, what? Back up a second, how did two drag racers end up off-roading bedecked in Steve McQueen’s Solar Plastics film company logo? We found photos from the race in the HOT ROD Archives, printed them up, and tossed them on a table…

1962 F-100 Even most car people don’t realize that Ford built unibody 1961–1963 F-100s pickups. The trucks, which feature a full chassis like a typical light-duty truck, aren’t traditional unibodies the way we refer to unibody cars—it’s just that they don’t have a removable bed, making the cab and bed one long piece. Their unique construction is enough of a novelty on their own to make people scratch their heads and wonder whether or not it’s a custom modification. Weaver Customs took one of these F-100s to such extremes of customization to remove all doubt. Randy Weaver and his wife, Sydney, call the truck Django—they just liked the way the name sounded—and it was supposed to serve as a shop truck for Weaver Customs in West Jordan, Utah, just…

Stamping out sheetmetal or aluminum bodies is an art. It’s industrialized manufacturing, but it’s art, too. General Motors was leading the way in the 1960s with ever more complex forming of sheetmetal, with deep draws and larger, sculpted panels, to the extent that at times it delayed launches of cars—like the 1970. Camaro. The rear quarter-panels were so complex they would crack. Manufacturing of the second-generation Camaros was halted for months—why do you think they didn’t come out until midyear? But this is about the 1965 fullsize Chevrolet. The designers had come up with a peaked front fender that seamlessly turned under and back down to the front bumper. They wanted it stamped without the requisite die-cast caps that were normally needed up to that time to finish off a…

It started with the 2015 Dodge Hellcat Charger. What would it be like to know you had the quickest four-door in America? Wouldn’t you just want to throw all your friends in the back and hit every dragstrip you could find? Sure, we’d had the Hellcat on tracks before, but that was magazine stuff—rented tracks, prepped and expecting us. Would the car be as much fun in the real world if we just showed up at a local test ’n’ tune, paid our $20, and waited in line like everyone else? Would anyone care about a plain Dodge sedan? Would it even be driveable on unprepped street-car surfaces? What about on the road? Would 707 hp be usable or just a gas-sucking, mosquito-whining, supercharged monster unsuitable to a daily driver?…

Getting Mustang enthusiasts to agree on what the perfect ponycar buildup is would be impossible. There are just so many great ideas, so many great examples, and so many different purposes to build that you’d have a hard time nailing down “the one.” But even with more than 50 years of hot rod ’Stangs in the wild, there are still a few cars that stand out. The guys at Total Cost Involved Engineering (TCI) in Ontario, California, have assembled a 1967 Mustang fastback with the intent to do just that. Ed Moss, owner of TCI, purchased his fastback in Bend, Oregon, with the objective of building it into a quick street car, but he admits to having set up the car for some pretty aggressive autocrossing and road racing. After…

Making an ARP Fastener, Cont’d…

Q: I have a 1979 Pontiac Trans Am 400 Pontiac V8 that I’m trying to install in a 1966 GTO, originally equipped with a Pontiac 389. The motor mounts are completely different. Is there any ready-made solution for getting this to work? A: As spelled out by the Pontiac restoration experts at Ames Performance, Pontiac V8 engine-mount configurations have evolved over that engine’s long production run: • 1959–1969: Blocks produced during these years have only two engine-mount holes on each side of the block. In this era, the engine mounts containing the rubber insulation (aka “the rubbers”) attached to the block and mated to steel brackets (aka “the towers”) bolted to the front crossmember. Ames Performance offers an engine mount adapter kit (PN N244CA) for installing the two-bolt blocks into…