Innehållsförteckning för November 2018 från Hot Rod

In Southern California, houses built in the 1950s are still standing. Heavy rains, tornados, and other natural disasters designed to flatten them don’t happen here (Sharknados don’t count, as they hurl sharks at your house that are largely harmless). Also, because of the cost of real estate, an 850-square-foot bungalow still has value, so no one tears them down. Take a drive through an established neighborhood and you will see small one- and two-car garages detached from the house as a key indicator as to the home’s age. In these small garages lie California “barn finds.” I have purchased two such finds. The first was a 1967 Rambler American two-door sedan from Altadena, California, a neighborhood just south of wealthier—and therefore more developed—La Cañada Flintridge. Grandma had hit the side…

There was something about the exhaust note that just didn’t sound right, like a giant exhaust leak had opened up under boost. Mike Warren’s Mad Max–esque, A/BFCC 1927 Ford Model T had finally made a full-throttle pass at ECTA’s first-ever Arkansas 1-Mile Challenge with the wild-card Blytheville weather allowing a sliver of time between 15- to 20-mph gusts of wind, but it was clear that the car wasn’t gaining speed at the expected rate. This would be the time for most to freak out a little, maybe drop a few colorful words of frustration, but Mike is ever patient with his “Warren Special,” expressing his concern for the engine with simple curiosity. We suppose his stoic calmness comes from his high-pressure day job running industrial boilers. “The boiler I’m running…

I was infatuated with building model cars when I was a kid. None of the Big Three could keep up with the number of cars rolling out of my bedroom door. For years, all chore money was diverted straight to the toy section of Walmart for another Revell plastic model kit. In the mid-1990s, I spotted Factory Five Racing, in its infancy as a company, at a local car show. I picked up a brochure and thumbed through it enough over the years that I wore out the ink in the page’s corners. I had a burning desire to build a 1:1-scale Cobra replica. In 2015, I achieved that dream, and we are about to do it all again in 2018. HOMEGROWN HOT RODDING Nestled in the backcountry of Massachusetts…

Q: I’m in the middle of rebuilding my street 1968 Pontiac Tempest convertible and have a problem that most people would look forward to. Kaufmann Racing has built a stroker 455 for me that dyno’d at 692 hp on pump gas and 932 hp with the nitrous shot. The car currently has a Tremec five-speed with a max rating of only 650 hp. I want to know if there is an H-pattern–style five-speed (with Fifth as the overdrive) that could handle the horsepower for weekend trips to the dragstrip when the car will have sticky slicks on it. With the car’s 3.73:1-geared rearend, the overdrive will be easy on the motor for highway cruising, and gears 1 through 4 will be all I’ll use at the track. I want to…

There has been a lot of discussion lately as to what the definition of hot rodding is, and with good reason: We’re in a time where there are more avenues to get into the car scene than ever before. Prior to my journey leading me to write stories and take photos for a living, I worked as a mechanic and fabricator building custom cars. One day, I realized all we were doing was creating brackets to attach components that were never meant to be there on each vehicle we were building. Swapping in a different engine? Build a bracket. Bolting in a different rear axle? Build a bracket, and so the list goes on. Hot rodding broken down to its most basic level is simply the building of brackets, and…

Have you been to our website lately? If so, you’ve likely noticed a proliferation of so-called barn-find cars. A couple weeks ago (as this is written), we ran two barn-find articles, each car more unlikely, ultra-rare, and utterly impossible to find than the other. They appeared two days apart. It’s as if lightning struck twice, and we all know the odds of that happening. Hold on to your hats, too, because there are more barn-find articles coming down the pipeline. It’s almost comical. Truth-be-told, the barn finds generate lots of Web traffic, so we run them as long as that fact remains true, though I’d like to see fewer. I believe these barn finds appeal to the explorer in all of us: unearthing some automotive treasure like Indiana Jones and…

The release of a new Mustang is cause for enthusiasts to flock to Ford dealerships. Team Mustang has done it again—this time with the all-new Performance Pack Level 2, which is guaranteed to excite the Mustang faithful. Performance Pack Level 2 was born from Ford’s desire to fill its stable with exciting pony packages that meet the rigorous demands of performance, personalization, technology, and, at the same time, hitting important price points. There is a full palate of Mustang models, including the base EcoBoost Fastback, a Premium package with every imaginable comfort and convenience option. There are topless versions, too, and don’t forget the ultra-high-performance Shelby GT350 and GT350R. The long, wide range lets you spec your Mustang for cruising, tracking, weekend shows, the daily commute, or a mix of…

Dakota Digital RTX Vintage Dakota Digital 800.852.3228 DakotaDigital.com/RTX Accurate gauges are a must in any car, especially classics. Oftentimes, having a modern electronic setup is at the sacrifice of original looks, unless you’re running an RTX unit from Dakota Digital. They’ve made an effort to match the font, dials, layout, and details as accurately as possible while hiding all of the late-model technology. Dakota Digital’s app allows the user to fully customize LED color, warnings, GPS, Bluetooth, and more without sacrificing the retro look. Heck, there’s even a rolling odometer thrown in for good measure. Products are currently available for a variety of GM cars, including Camaro/Firebird, Chevelle, Blazer, and pickups to name a few. Price: $1,295 Auto-Detailing Cart MYCHANIC 888.328.6919 Mychanic.com It’s a pain to be crawling around your…

It can be easy to stick to what you know when it comes to owning and building cars. You find that platform you like, and that’s all you want. Sure, it may be the ultimate machine and/or hold a special place in your heart, but that practice makes it easy to reject new automotive experiences. I recently purchased a 1986 Porsche 944 Turbo, the story of which is entertaining, but I’ll save that for another time. I’d driven a friend’s car, got hooked, and set out to find my own. As is often the case with a good deal on Craigslist, the one I bought has its share of problems. To be fair, I’ve never been more motivated as I am with this car to learn about how it works.…

Two of the most significant streaks in motorsports history are also among the most overlooked whenever pioneering women are discussed. In the five months following NHRA’s refusal of her entry into Indianapolis’s first Nationals, veteran SoCal driver Carol Cox’s letter-writing and phone-calling campaign raised such a ruckus with politicians, sponsors, and local competitors that Wally Parks reluctantly relented, allowing female participation in the February 1962 Winternationals. That event’s first and only female driver made the most of the breakthrough by winning S/Stock Automatic with a street-driven 1961 Pontiac Catalina in 13.06 seconds at 107.65 mph. Afterward, she struggled to hoist a Winternationals trophy for HRM’s Tex Smith and a nearly all-male audience who had loudly cheered the local lady through eliminations. In September, Cox avenged 1961’s Indy indignity by humbling…

After the 2018 HOT ROD Power Tour®, I took a few days to travel through the Southeast, and I came across this Hudson pickup truck. The owner bought it many years ago, and as things usually go when life gets busy, he parked the truck at his gas-station antique store. Thankfully, the Hudson pickup was under the gas-station roof, sparing it from the worst weather. It doesn’t look like it needs much to get back on the road. CONTACT RYAN! Want Ryan to visit your stash? Drop him a line on the cool stuff you know about, and he might go on an expedition with you! His email is TheAutoArchaeologist@yahoo.com.…

Talk to enough car enthusiasts, and there’s one common theme that always presents itself: The car they’ve built holds some sort of strong emotional attachment, for one reason or another. Sometimes it’s their first car they’ve managed to hold onto for decades and eventually restore. Sometimes it’s a model owned by an older gearhead neighbor that’s wormed its way into the memory banks. Sometimes, as in the case of Sriyantha Weerasuria (SW for short), the car is a representation of the glory days of high school, when times were simpler and responsibilities were few. “In high school, all my buddies had Chevelles and Camaros. I had a ’76 455 four-speed and a ’79 6.6-liter four-speed—I had three Trans Ams at one time in high school,” he tells us. SW, who…

By now, every LS owner should be familiar with at least one of the Big Bang LS engines. To refresh your memory, we kicked off the Big Bang testing at HOT ROD in 2011, when we took a stock LR4 4.8L short-block (that we originally thought was a 5.3L) and treated it to surfacing and a light ball hone, and increased the ring gap on the original stock rings. Then we added ported heads, a cam upgrade, and a new intake manifold. After pumping boost through the combination with a pair of turbos, we eventually produced more than 1,200 hp, and the thing was still alive! We repeated this procedure with a larger 5.3L for Truckin magazine, then again with a 6.0L for Super Chevy. The 5.3L topped the 1,300hp…

THE RESCUE SO FAR When the big-block Chevy in Eric Schmiege’s 1965 Bel Air swallowed a nut, it cracked a cylinder wall and damaged a piston. Further analysis by former HOT ROD editor Jeff Smith revealed an out-of-square block with excessive cylinder-wall taper and excessive main and rod bearing clearances. Last month, Jim Grubbs Motorsports sleeved the cracked cylinder, bored the engine 0.070-inch over, and remachined the block to square it up. Smith then reassembled the block, installing new SRP forged pistons and premium rings. He also replaced the Bel Air’s old hydraulic flat-tappet cam with an Isky hydraulic-roller profile that better matches the Bel Air’s drivetrain gearing and Schmiege’s driving style. However, piston deck height, valvetrain, oil system, and driveability issues still remained to be dealt with. THE FIX:…

Forums have provided a wealth of information I never could’ve found on the street, but it’s time to take a step back and look at the state of things and see what needs to be done to preserve the decades of knowledge we’ve built across this World Wide Web. Build threads, tech info, and more were nearly destroyed recently when Photobucket (a host that proliferated with easy forum embeds) made a recently reversed decision to turn off its free hosting of hundreds of thousands of images, and I see this as a problem for the greater automotive community as these sites age. The impermanence of the internet is a real thing—it could all be deleted tomorrow, and Photobucket proved the point. How do these forum communities find long-term sustenance? Recently,…

I’ve never done the “here’s my dad” story before, but he’s the one who got me into cars and entertainment, and his story is pretty interesting. Jim Freiburger was adopted into a family in Bartlesville, Oklahoma (the home of Phillips 66), where his father ran the town’s insurance company. My dad got a theater degree at Tulsa U (during which time he interviewed Elvis for local radio and later was shot at after covering civil rights rallies in Alabama) and a business degree at Stanford before moving to Los Angeles to work at NBC on shows with the likes of Steve Allen and Tennessee Ernie Ford. Next, he moved to an ad agency (where GiGi Carlton also worked; she later became Robert E. Petersen’s personal assistant and still manages the…