Innehållsförteckning för June 2016 från Hot Rod

Freiburger once said the best way to do this job was to think like a 13-year-old—but know stuff. I saw that as a challenge to seek the new and the drastic while avoiding the rut of comfort and stability—the way only teenagers can. The catch was I had to figure out how things worked along the way, so I could bring the audience with me. I had to avoid maturity while still gaining wisdom, and be able to share both with you. In the 16 years I’ve been doing this job, I’ve found that curiosity is what drives hot rodding, while encroaching maturity tends to cap it. Like all things in life, finding the stoichiometric balance between those two is the key. Curiosity and naiveté drive…

It’s not meant to fool anyone, it’s really just a tribute. — Steve Keefer, East Bay Muscle Cars, commenting on the LS3’s Nailhead treatment When one of East Bay Muscle Cars local customers asked them to update his luxury cruiser to be more modern, they got a tremendous head start. The owner loved the looks of the car, it was just the handling and performance that was making it less than a joy to drive. We’ve got to agree, the 1965 Buick Riviera is regarded as one of the most beautiful designs of the 1960s, so there really wasn’t a whole lot of exterior customization required to make it look gorgeous. Even the car’s original interior looked pretty good and required minimal modifications to make it comfortable. To start, East…

It’s 1850 and you are driving a team of oxen, pulling an overloaded Conestoga wagon heading west across the featureless plains on the Oregon Trail. As you clear a rise, you come across a man lying facedown in the dirt with a dozen arrows sticking out of his lifeless body. That, friends, is the definition of a pioneer. Now dump that Conestoga wagon and replace it with a 1969 Camaro and a pair of modern-day pioneers: Dale Vaznaian and Karl Staggemeier. Their quest still involves dodging technological arrows, but these are the kind fired by the nuances of perfecting the art of running a high-performance, internal-combustion engine on compressed air. They call their company Compressed Air Supercharging (CAS), and the name says it all. HOT ROD first covered this story…

The history of hot rod wheels is an evolving tale of size, fashion, weight reduction, brake fitment, durability, and price tag. In the beginning, steel wheels covered with big chrome dishes were all we had. Then lightweight magnesium castings became the rage on race cars—where low mass was key—and their aircraft looks epitomized coolness. The advent of (relatively) lower-cost cast and forged-aluminum wheels during the last 50 years meant that wheel fitment and fashion could be as important as function, even if wheel weight crept up to coincide with new looks. Now carbon-fiber wheels are poised to be the next chapter in hot rod wheels, and if so, the Carbon Revolution CR9s on the 2015 and 2016 Ford Mustang Shelby GT350R are the genesis. THE PROMISE OF CARBON The perfect…

This is one of those believe-it-or-not stories from the deranged days of Detroit design. William Newberg had just become Chrysler’s president in mid-1960. Detroit was a very incestuous place, and so it goes that Newberg overheard Chevrolet president Ed Cole discussing the “smaller Chevy” it was introducing for 1962 at a party at the Grosse Point Yacht Club, or some such place. Production of 1962 Chrysler products was merely a year away when Newberg marched into Chrysler and demanded there be a crash program to reduce the size of the already designed Dodge and Plymouth fullsize cars. Aroundthe-clock double shifts at Chrysler Styling to redesign the Dodge and Plymouths to fit a lengthened Valiant/Lancer compact platform commenced. Of course, the Valiant wheelbase was 3 inches shorter than the planned fullsize…

“Smokey” Yunick always thought big. With access to Chevy’s brandnew 1967 Camaro—and liking its wind-cheating body and the availability of both small-block and big-block power—Yunick thought it the perfect vessel to conceivably smash hundreds of Federation Internationale de l’ Automobile (FIA) time-trial records and also have some fun at the expense of Ford’s Trans-Am efforts. Looking over the U.S. Auto Club (USAC) speed records, he saw more than 300 production records he could break in both the 305–488ci displacement “B” production class and the 183–305ci “C” production class. Yunick loved to absorb rulebooks and specifications, then outthink or otherwise beat the sanctioning body and competition between the pages. He built a stock-bore, 445hp small-block and 540hp big-block that contained “optional heavy-duty parts” that were production components available from Chevy, which…

For the Sept. 2012 issue of HOT ROD, I visited a one-owner barn find in Wisconsin: a 1969 Dodge Charger Daytona. During the last three years, I’ve continued to speak with the original owner and stop in to see him and his family when I’ve been in the area. I would try to call ahead, but one time I dropped in during a birthday party when the family was all dressed as pirates, and they still took time away from the festivities to discuss the Daytona. I called this year, but the phone was disconnected. I was worried because I wanted to head over as soon as possible, but couldn’t because of my schedule. By the time I got there, a few months had passed. When I pulled up, the…

In 1953, Dave Tarkanyi returned to Detroit after his service in the Korean War. Itching to get in on the burgeoning hot rod scene in the Motor City, he and his older brother, Al, pooled their money and bought a chopped and channeled 1932 Ford three-window. Soon after, the brothers, along with their hot rodding friends, founded the Downriver Modified car club in the Detroit area, one of the 13 original NHRA clubs. The Downriver Modified club banded together with other local hot rod clubs and formed the Michigan Hot Rod Association (MHRA), the group behind the Detroit Autorama. The MHRA was the first racing association to host, with help of law enforcement, the first legal drag racing in the Detroit area. There’s actually video of this event, taken in…

We must confess, Mark Stielow’s bumperless, splayed-valve-smallblock-powered 1967 Camaro was our dream car when we first laid eyes on it in 1996. Even though we might be a little biased, it’s no stretch when we say Mark’s cars have made a huge impact on the hot rodding scene. Twenty years later, Mark is still building first-gen Camaros, refining their performance with the latest in powertrain, brakes, and suspension the OEM and aftermarket have to offer. While many of Mark’s cars have been featured in HOT ROD and our sister publications, we let Mark explain how the cars evolved using his first 1969 Camaro and four of his latest builds to inspire the average car builder’s plans for a Pro Touring or restomod ponycar. If there’s one theme when looking at…

If you were at Famoso Raceway on March 5, 1961, you witnessed history, although you probably didn’t know it. That day a bunch of hayseeds running a comically stumpy Top Fuel dragster rolled off the trailer and made an 8.5-second run at 185.58 mph, fast enough to set the track’s top-speed record. And it was only the start. Rain that morning meant only one timing run prior to eliminations. That paired the ungainly Thrifty Auto dragster from Spokane, Washington, against Don Garlits in the first round of eliminations. Garlits threw a belt, which made the Spokane team de facto winners. But belt or no belt, Garlits probably didn’t have a chance; on that pass, Thrifty set the track’s e.t. record with a blistering 8.28-second run. In fact, the otherwise dependable…

“Lots of fire involved in all of our processes.” — Scott Cobett, American Racing Contact AMERICAN RACING; Cerritos, CA; 800.959.1969; AmericanRacing.com…

Scene by Readers: Featured Artist Brian Scotto Drifting, burnouts, and donuts aren’t just part of Brian Scotto’s photography—they’re his career. Rallying cars in such an unorthodox manner is so much of who he is that he’s also made it his job. Brian is currently the chief brand officer at Hoonigan Industries and the creative director of both Ken Block’s Gymkhana films and BJ Baldwin’s Recoil series. Hoonigan is a motorsports lifestyle brand devoted to producing stories and videos of crazy but fiercely entertaining automotive maneuvers. Brian is a New York native now residing in Los Angeles. His grandfather and father were both photographers, so photography is in his blood. What began as a hobby quickly became a passion, especially as digital SLRs became affordable. Before joining Hoonigan, Brian was an…

The parking lot at the Red List drag races at Famoso Raceway in Bakersfield, California, was full of 10-second wagons, twin-turboed Corvettes, an AMG Mercedes on slicks, and us—attracting plenty of looks in the Roadkill “General Maintenance” Dodge Charger Hellcat. The Red List series is a drag-racing event organized by motorsports enthusiast Jesse Iwuji, and it attracts a diverse group of cars unlike any other drag race we’ve seen. A Ferrari F12 (6.3L V12, rated at 730 hp, MSRP of more than a house at $320,000) sat next to a primered 1960s Nova. Every other pit space housed a Hellcat or a Nissan GT-R. Sprinkled between them were El Caminos, GTOs, Barracudas and Mustangs of every generation. Even amongst the new cars, almost nothing was stock. Factory tires had been…

For the 2015 running of the AMSOIL Engine Masters Challenge, we did things a bit differently than before. Rather than running several days of qualifiers with the top finishers battling it out for prizes, this time we had a wildly different class each day with no qualifying. Winners were crowned every day. It brought a whole lot of variety and shook things up quite a bit. Still, as in prior years, we wanted to end the competition with some of the biggest numbers of the week, so we saved the Big-Block class for last. Like the other classes, Big-Block engines were required to make three qualifying runs within their allotted time, and the average corrected power and torque from 3,000– 7,000 rpm would be used to determine the score. As…

If you’ve severely decked the block or heads, run a different-thickness head gasket, added longer valves, changed the rocker ratio, swapped in different-length lifters, and/or put in a reduced base circle or reground cam, stock-length factory pushrods likely won’t achieve correct valvetrain geometry. The engine won’t get full camshaft lift, plus the possibility of pushrod, rocker-arm, valve-stem, and valveguide wear or damage increases significantly. In a perfect world, a rocker arm would always push against the valve stem’s exact center. But in the real world, the arm travels in an arc as it moves up and down, so you have to allow for this when setting up the valvetrain. To check the geometry, properly lash the valves, then rotate the engine through a complete valve opening-and-closing cycle. (On a hydraulic…

Robert E. Petersen launched HOT ROD in January 1948 and almost immediately found the fail: car manufacturers and other respectable companies refused to advertise in a magazine about punks and jalopies. Yet the hooligans made Pete wealthy enough to start a second magazine for September 1949: Motor Trend, a sponge for the soaking of straight-laced corporate advertising. At the time, the name of the company was not the famed Petersen Publishing, but Trend Publishing, and a social divide among the staffers of its two titles has existed ever since. HOT ROD staff members saw Motor Trenders as clean-hands, jet-setting, wine-and-cheese types. Not wholly unjustified. Motor Trend people have considered the HOT ROD group to be a bunch of non-journalist greaseballs who can only drive in a…