Innehållsförteckning för August 2017 från Hot Rod

I am guilty of project-car neglect. There’s no tear-inducing Sarah McLachlan commercial to that effect, but it, too, is a situation in need of remedy. Too many times, I’ve brought home a stray vehicle, a model I’ve always wanted to build—but a cheap and wretched example of the breed. The price was right; the condition was wrong. It’s a cycle as vicious as it is round, but one I’ve finally broken. Let’s be clear: I’m not saying I have never finished a car—I have, several—but more often than not, I bring home a project with a trunk full of odds stacked against me. The advanced rust, missing trim, and drivetrain maladies all handicap the project from the start. I buy it more on emotion than reason, ignoring all…

DO YOU HOT ROD EVERYTHING? If you’ve hopped up anything that’s not a car, let’s see it! Hot leaf blower? Bitchin’ gas grill? Customized kitchen cabinets? Anything goes. Email pics and details: HOTROD@HotRod.com. When your fabricator says, “Just trust me, I’ve got the perfect project for you—but you can’t see it until I’m done,” it’s usually something unique and off-the-wall. Bohata Design Inc., out of Long Island, New York, is about as off-the-wall as it gets. If you need a 75-pound, fully functioning tattoo machine (with a giant needle and solenoid), AJ Bohata’s your man. If you own a waste-management company, he’ll build you a one-off, radio-controlled, BBQ-grill-carrying trash truck for tailgate parties. And if you’ve got a little bit of a knight’s spirit in you, he’ll build you this:…

Visiting a friend’s junkyard in Detroit, we found an unexpected jewel: a 1970 Chevrolet Nova, which seemed out of place among all the new vehicles. It must’ve been someone’s hot rod with all the vintage speed stickers on the windows. An “SS” was on the grille, but there was no way to tell if it was legit. The cowl tag, however, denoted it as an original V8 Nova in its original color. The engine was partially torn apart, but it was orange so it could’ve been original—only the numbers on the block would confirm it or not. The interior was pretty nice, with the bench seat and automatic shift on the column—and a tach clamped on it! Too bad cars can’t talk.…

We love cartoons, especially if they’re about cars and racing— you know, the cool stuff we dug as children and eventually as fully matured gearheads. With the June 16 release of Disney’s Cars 3 movie, we were interested to learn more about the folks behind the wildly successful movie franchise that’s indoctrinating young enthusiasts into our beloved hobby. The original Cars movie was released more than 10 years ago and was a smash hit with kids and grown-ups. The authenticity and attention to detail that went into creating the automotive characters are phenomenal. Even hardcore enthusiasts who may have reluctantly been pulled into the movie theater by their five-year-olds quickly realized the animators got it right. While there are a lot of folks behind the scenes who make the Cars…

What is early hot rodding but a tale of grassroots motorsport? Building answers to problems that no one saw before is the modus operandi of hot rodding, with several firsts bookmarked in the pages of history. The first slapper bars, the first tunnel ram, the first slick, the first bumpbox, the first nitro Hemi. As things went faster, hot rodders found new ways to build new things out of new materials, and we’ve done that for about a century in landspeed racing. Drifting isn’t a century old yet. In the U.S., the sport is barely old enough to drink. The current professionals are all yesterday’s rookies, and someday they’ll be the first of the old-timers; for now, pro-level drifting is the absolute bleeding edge of the sport. These racers are…

There are a few things we can count on each year at the SEMA Show: monorail cars with attendees packed like sardines, being exhausted by the second day, and a car debut from the Roadster Shop that will have people talking all week. It was SEMA 2016 in Las Vegas where the Roadster Shop debuted the 1969 Camaro they call “Inferno”—a project three years in the making. John Wilcus approached the Roadster Shop to build his Camaro into a show-stopping machine with custom bodywork, supercar power, and the road-holding capability of a modern sports car. The ultimate goal for the Roadster Shop was to distill the essence of the 1969 Camaro and remove the trappings of mass production. It’s the same sort of philosophy applied to street rods and customs,…

Bradley Iger Chrysler really hit its stride during the height of the musclecar era. When “win on Sunday, sell on Monday” was a viable marketing tactic, homologation specials were an important element in any performance brand’s automotive roster. Hot on the heels of the wild-looking 1969 Charger Daytona—put into limited production for the specific purpose of making the Charger more aerodynamic (and thus more competitive) on the high-speed NASCAR circuits—the 1970 model year would see the introduction of the Dodge Challenger and a special model of its own with the limited-production T/A. Like the Charger Daytona, the Challenger T/A was conceived to satisfy the homologation rules of the production-based racing class that Dodge wanted to enter it in—in this case, the Sports Car Club of America’s Trans American Sedan Championship…

In seven years, enthusiasts have taken the Coyote—Ford’s modular engine platform— to numerous road-racing championships, into the 6s in the quarter-mile, and piloted drifters to podium finishes. In earlier segments, we covered the block prep needed to reliably make more than 1,000 hp in a Ford Coyote engine. Now it’s ready to be assembled. We turned to longtime Mustang engine builder Tim Eichhorn of MPR Racing Engines in Boynton Beach, Florida, who has a successful history of building big-power Coyote engines. MACHINING Tim balanced the brand-new Ford Performance Boss 302 crank for the rotating assembly. There are currently no affordable aftermarket cranks for the Coyote because the factory 4340 forged steel stocker is plenty strong. The old crank might be fine, but there’s peace of mind in a zero-mile unit.…

Here’s a rare opportunity to see the transformation of a long-running, iconic Gasser. Virtually every year “Ohio” George Montgomery ran his 1933 Willys Gasser from its humble beginnings in 1959 to the last race it ran in 1967—before George switched to his new Mustang—is accounted for. Most race cars got replaced, or worse, met their end in on-track or trailer mishaps. George built a finely crafted machine, which only needed safety and certain mechanical updates to stay competitive. With a pending sponsorship from Ford, he switched to its 1967 Mustang body, which, ironically, initiated the beginning of the end of the Gasser classes. With the proliferation of Mustang Funny Cars and on the threshold of Ford’s Cobra Jet Mustangs in 1968, yet another class with Mustang-bodied cars diluted the Gassers’…

Q: I have a V8 engine–balanced racing assembly that was purchased many years ago—crankshaft, connecting rods, 11:1 pistons, rings, and bearings are the basic components. Fast-forward to today, and I would finally like to build an engine using these parts. It would be a street engine, and I feel the compression ratio is too high for today’s pump gas. Also, I’m planning on using aftermarket cylinder heads that have a much smaller combustion chamber than the heads the pistons were originally ordered for. Can I use a different set of pistons and not upset the balance of the assembly? I would say the highest rpm seen would be 5,500 to 6,000, and that would be stretching it. I have questioned several engine builders, and all of them have varying opinions.…

One of the things we’ve always liked about this alternative shot from the Invader feature from HRM’s July 1967 issue is that in spite of this being a twin-Pontiac engine, twin-Hydro transmission, twin-Jaguar rear, custom-bodied show car, it was built to be driven. And in that context, it’s so exotic and a striking shortcut to top-down sublimity as anything plying the highways of our hot rod hearts. Yeah, it’s kooky from our 2017 perspective, yet 50 years after its creation, it offers up a challenge to stretch your imagination and definition of what a hot rod is and can be. Bob Reisner’s aluminum roadster is also one of those unicorns winning the America’s Most Beautiful Roadster title twice, in the days before the rules mandated you make major changes to…

hLike the current crop of ponycars and sports cars coming from Detroit, Pro Touring cars are in the midst of an arms race. The battle to put the most power down has seen the proliferation of forced-induction V8s and tires as wide as original 1960s wheels were tall. That goes for both the factory’s efforts and the vintage iron that’s built to keep up with them. The latest barrage of horsepower and handling from Timeless Kustoms in Camarillo, California, is evidenced in the Vicious Mustang, a 1965 fastback bulging with muscle and stuck to the tarmac with the very same rubber as the track-slaying Viper ACR. The Mustang came to be in early 2016 when owner Chris Marechal wanted a unique track car that could keep up with some of…

Factory Five’s Third-Generation Type 65 Coupe The editors at HOT ROD have a bit of a history with Factory Five, the Massachusetts- based, kit-car manufacturer known for its replicas of Shelby Cobras, Shelby Daytona coupes, and a few creations that are totally its own. We’ve driven several of the company’s models on the street and on the track and featured them on the cover. We even pitted them against late-model exotics. What we haven’t done thus far is give a look to the future of the company, and that’s what this third-generation Type 65 Coupe represents. Named Type 65 after the development project that would come to be known as the Shelby Daytona, the Factory Five version is modified a bit from the Pete Brock design that was shaped with…

General Motors has several names for its limited-slip differential (LSD). Commonly referred to as Positraction, the same clutchbased LSD is also known as Controlled Traction, Saf-T-Grip, and Positive Traction— they’re a stack of clutch discs that pack together to provide grip. In the standard pack, there are nine clutches per side, five locking discs with tabs on the outer side that lock into the case, and four discs that are splined to lock onto the side gears. Input torque acts on the meshing teeth of the spider gears, forcing them apart and pressuring the clutch packs. This provides a positive coupling of the axles. Because the unit uses clutches, eventually they wear out, essentially becoming an open-type differential. Most of the factory clutch-type LSD units are based on the Eaton…

Edelbrock // 310.781.2222 // Edelbrock.com Edelbrock’s popular E-Force supercharger kits have expanded to late-model Mustangs with the company’s new 4.6 and 5.0 kits, providing 466 to 785-plus horsepower, depending on application. A liquid-to-air intercooler is used, which keeps packaging compact and clean. Price: TBD Control Crankcase Ventilation With M/E Wagner M/E Wagner // 570.899.4533 MEwagner.com Crankcase pressure can cause a lot of unexpected problems, from oil consumption to a loss of power. With M/E Wagner’s DF-17 adjustable, dual-flow PCV valve, you can tune the correct amount of PCV volume for your application. Made in the USA from 6061-T6 aluminum. Price $129 NOS Nitrous Kits for Four-Bolt 90mm and 105mm Throttle-Bodies NOS // 866.464.6553 //Holley.com NOS is offering a new wet plate for LS applications with 90mm or 105mm throttle-bodies. Capable…