Innehållsförteckning för October 2019 från Hot Rod

Editor-in-Chief @john.mcgann I met an industry old-timer who was visiting my neighbor at the warehome last month. The neighbor brought him over for an introduction, and the guy was shocked to see me slide out from under my car. “I thought all you guys wore shiny pants!” he exclaimed, meaning that he thought people in my position were all desk jockeys. The statement was hilarious, and it reminded me of one of my favorite movie quotes from Jaws when the crusty sailor Quint, played by Robert Shaw, is sizing up Richard Dreyfuss’ character, Hooper, the marine biologist who’s seafaring résumé included a stint as a crew member on an America’s Cup sailing ship. Quint grabs Hooper by the hands, stares him down and says, “You’ve got city hands, Mr. Hooper.…

The sport of drag racing has seen it all, from the wild times of the 1960s as the sport found its way in front of a national audience to today’s booming popularity across the world. In its 60-plus-year history, there have been dynamic drivers along with charismatic and flamboyant people coming and going as they pursue glory with incredible hot rods. The latest racing class that carries on the tradition is Radial vs. The World, and its biggest audience comes from the three events hosted by Duck X Productions: Lights Out, Sweet 16, and No Mercy, all of which are eighth-mile, drag-radial races held at South Georgia Motorsports Park. HOT ROD has covered these events by showcasing the mix of personalities and rowdy race cars that make the class a…

Last year, we picked apart Dale Snoke’s altered-wheelbase 1964 Mercury Comet Caliente, a street-driven B/FX, to install Holley’s latest Terminator Stealth EFI. With its gold Moroso valve covers and through-fender headers, Dale’s Comet was a perfect foundation for this retro-façade that takes the best of Holley’s race-proven ECUs and tucks a throttle-body injection system under the wraps of a double-pumper (dripping in a venerable Dichromate-like gold finish, of course). What we left out in Part 1 was a computer-controlled distributor, Holley’s dual-sync unit for small-block Fords. While we first wanted to show you just how capable the basic Terminator kit is, an ECU-controlled distributor really completes the package from a performance and driveability perspective. Not only does it allow you to accurately map a custom timing curve via the handheld…

Dynamic forces exerted on the valvespring are expressed by the equation: Force = Mass × Acceleration The closer a coil is to the retainer, the farther it has to travel for each lift event, which increases its effective mass. Greater effective mass imposes more force on the assembly, which then requires upping the spring rate to maintain control of that coil, assuming the required acceleration imposed by the cam grind and rocker arm remains the same. But a stiffer spring adds mass, which at high rpm is counterproductive in its own right. Constantly decreasing the spring diameter from the bottom to the top—as is the case with a conical spring—reduces the spring’s active mass where it’s most important. With much lighter upper coil mass, a conical requires less force than…

Network Content Director @douglas.glad I have three kinds of vehicles. The daily-driver Silverado, the beach-toy 1975 Bronco, and the 9.08-second 1971 Dodge Demon. The Silverado needs oil changes and, someday, spark plugs. The Bronco has a Ford Racing Z460 engine that has ported RHS heads, a sizeable roller cam, and makes 604 hp. It has a few quirks—like a hunger for neutral safety switches and, for a while, cam gears—but is a semi-reliable vehicle for donut and beach runs on the weekends. The Demon has a twin-turbo 6.4L Hemi that makes 1,050 hp. All three need routine maintenance. If and when the Silverado needs a tune-up, it will be about gapping and threading-in some reasonably priced spark plugs and pushing a reset button. Maybe I will clean the air filter…

Way back in the Paleolithic Period, before Ben Franklin invented electricity and Al Gore put it to good use by inventing the internet, people scoured their local newspaper’s classified section in search of cool cars. One such practitioner of this ancient art was New Yorker Brian Commisso, and in 1986, an ad for a certain 1968 Mustang caused his heart to flutter with abandon. “The car for sale was a 1968 Shelby,” he explains, “so I immediately grabbed my buddy and went to see it.” Brian, who was erudite beyond his years—courtesy of HOT ROD and other similarly infallible sources of automotive knowledge—needed all of 2 seconds to recognize the very rusty Shelby on offer was genuinely very rusty, but not genuinely a Shelby. “I wasn’t interested in the clone,”…

Q: What is going to get a car out of the hole and down the quarter-mile faster: more horsepower or more gear? My situation is as follows: 1966 Ford Galaxie 500, curb weight about 4,000 pounds, currently with a 390 sporting a Holley 600 vacuum-secondary carb on a Cobra Jet intake, short-tube headers, and a dual exhaust with Flowmaster mufflers. The cam is unknown, but pretty mild, as the car will idle at 800 rpm with 17 inches of vacuum. The compression [ratio] is unknown; the heads appear to be stock 390 heads; the C6 trans seems to have a shift kit with an apparently stock converter that seems to stall around 2,000 rpm; and the Ford 9-inch rearend has a 3.00:1 gear with an open diff. I feel I…

Jacob Davis Network Editor @jacobrossdavis Celebrating the 25th HOT ROD Power Tour Back in 1995, the editors of HOT ROD came up with a crazy idea to actually drive their cars from Los Angeles to the very first Power Fest in Norwalk, Ohio. After meeting on the roof of the parking garage at the Petersen Automotive Museum, those editors and a handful of fans made the drive across the country, beginning a tradition that birthed Power Tour® itself. When gearing up for this year’s Tour, we came up with a way to honor their legacy and the 25th anniversary of the event by driving one of our cars all the way from the Petersen to the start of the Tour and running the route alongside the fans. The nearly 2,500-mile…

We’ve covered HOT ROD Power Tour® on this page before, but 2019 is a landmark year for the event: the 25th anniversary! So, this look back is at its origin, which happened during one of the most noteworthy staff meetings in HOT ROD history. In late 1994, Editor Drew Hardin and his editorial staff—which, at the time, consisted of Gray Baskerville, Will Handzel, Rob Kinnan, Cole Quinnell, and Jeff Smith—had been instructed to come up with a way to increase awareness of the brand-new HOT ROD Power Festival series. Several notions were thrown around, then massaged into a single idea: Rather than fly into Norwalk, Ohio, for the Power Festival, why not drive there from our home base in Los Angeles and invite our readers to do the same? To…

During the 2016 HOT ROD Power Tour®, our group made a stop at Wards Auto Body, where owner Charles Janssen opened his shop for our group. He had been on American Pickers years ago for a 1970 Plymouth Superbird barn find he had rescued and was storing in a lean-to. That car was long gone, but he had others scattered about the property. Out in the field were a pair of 1969 Dodge Superbee Post cars that had been parted out through the years, along with many of the other vehicles sitting out there.…

When you first see it, you think, Now that right there is a really nice car. It’s a simple compliment, but one that means so much in the sea of over-customized offerings we’re usually privy to. You then stop for a moment, let your eyes refocus, and in doing so, begin to take in the amount of detail and care that’s gone into Pure Vision Design’s latest creation: a 1971 Pontiac GTO convertible. It was, thankfully, pulled from a field where it was left for dead, and upon doing a bit of research, was found to be one of only 653 drop-top GTOs built for the 1971 model year, as well as being the last year for the convertible GTO—ever. Pure Vision Design is located in Simi Valley, California, and…

Is there a such thing as too much information? In any form of racing, likely not, but data loggers, sensors, displays, and the like can bring a lot of complexity to a vehicle’s setup. Thanks to companies like AEM, gone is the hornet’s nest of wiring strewn across a vehicle—welcome to the 21st century of data acquisition! HOT ROD’s test mule is a 2013 BOSS 302 Mustang equipped with an Edelbrock 2650 supercharger and set up for road racing. Late-model Mustangs come with a host of usable data from the factory, like dual wideband oxygen sensors and coolant temperature sensors. Being able to tap into existing sensors is definitely a plus! The heart of AEM’s data-logging solution is its CD-series of dashes, and they come in two versions: the CD-5…

Full OE-Style Floorpan for the Ford Fairlane and Torino Auto Metal Direct // 877.575.3586 AutoMetalDirect.com A full, OE-style floorpan can be had from Auto Metal Direct for the 1966–1971 Ford Fairlane and 1968–1971 Ford Torino. It’s true to the original, right down to the shape, size, bends, holes, and ribs; it’s also complete coverage, just like the factory piece, with seamless integration with the adjacent panels that have OE dimensions. The Auto Metal Direct floorpan is stamped from OE-gauge steel and is EDP-coated, which helps keep rust and corrosion at bay. This product is correct for all models, except for the station wagon and Ranchero. Price: $499.99 Easily Upgrade From Carb to EFI Holley Performance Products 866.464.6553 // Holley.com Holley has expanded its EFI pump module lineup to now include…

Roadkill @davidfreiburger Rod Hall passed away in June, and I’m unusually torn up about it given that I’ve barely seen him in nearly 25 years. But he was one of my heroes, and I dare say he should be one of yours. If you’ve never heard of Rod Hall, it’s because he was an off-road racer, and desert racing has never had the fanfare of NASCAR, Indy, or even drag racing. But if desert racing matters at all, then it’s Rod Hall who matters most. Rod began racing Jeeps with his very first CJ-5 in 1957 at an event near his home in Hemet, California, that may have been the first organized 4x4 race in the U.S. It wasn’t until 1967 that the National Off-Road Racing Association held the first…