Innehållsförteckning för December 2019 från Hot Rod

Editor-in-Chief @john.mcgann I attended Bonneville Speed Week for the first time this year. After nearly 15 years with the company, that statistic is a little surprising. However, it’s historically been the case that, whether it was with Car Craft, or now HOT ROD, Bonneville was always someone else’s assignment; my presence would have been redundant or unnecessary. This year was the exception. When my time came, I opted to drive the 650 miles to Wendover, Utah, rather than fly from LAX to Salt Lake City and rent a car. Among other things, a long drive like that is a mental vacation from the day-to-day routine at work and a much-preferred alternative to the soul-crushing experience of TSA pat-downs and overcrowded airplanes. I loaded a Tom Clancy audiobook, plugged in my…

In the world of rare automobiles, owning a 1-of-only-100 vehicle is not that uncommon. However, take one of those surviving examples, cut it up, remove some of its styling cues while borrowing others and, for good measure, add some of your own—then you get what The Joker said in the movie The Dark Knight: “Introduce a little anarchy, upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos.” Well, Jordan Quintal II knows something about introducing some level of chaos into the hot rodding world, and he has been at it for more than 50 years. He was part of the team that won the Detroit Autorama’s Don Ridler Memorial Award back in 2001 with the cherry red M-80 1949 Chevy Business Coupe. After striking out on his own that year with…

The 2019 HOT ROD Power Tour® proved that our beloved community is alive and well. Over 5,000 vehicles, spanning 100 years of automotive history, were in attendance as we traveled over the highways and byways through some of the most beautiful small towns in America. With more than 100,000 fans and spectators cheering us on, you could say that each participant obtained rock star status for a full week. From homebuilt hot rods and high-dollar pro-touring cars, to the occasional Model T, everything was present and accounted for. While the classics are still the backbone of the tour, what surprised me the most were the number of late-model vehicles in attendance. There were Camaros and Corvettes, Challengers and Chargers, along with Mustangs and modified pickup trucks, and each had its…

Our Factory Five 1935 Truck, dubbed The Drift Rod, is finally equipped with its drivetrain! You may remember the look of this engine from our engine dyno session (LINK: https://www.hotrod.com/articles/make-1000-hp-ford-coyote-e85/) where we made more than 1,100 hp with a Vortech YSi-B supercharger. To switch things up a bit, The Drift Rod will be equipped with the same engine, but this time with a pair of symmetrical Garrett turbochargers. Our Coyote is equipped with a Race Engine Development/Darton sleeved factory block that was assembled by MPR Engines. The short-block comes with all the fixin’s, including a rebalanced Coyote crank, BoostLine forged rods, and custom JE Pistons. The top end consists of MPR’s CNCed factory cylinder heads, Ferrea oversized valves, JE Pro Seal head gaskets, along with COMP springs, cams, and retainers.…

Engine builds have been our focus recently, and there are several in the works. They are almost exclusively Chevys, but we’ll be diversifying more as time progresses. We’re currently building or following along on the builds of two big-blocks, three small-blocks, one Cadillac, and we are putting the plans together for a small-block Mopar build, too.…

Should you use a bolt or a stud to secure critical parts like the heads or main caps? For critical blind applications like these, no doubt studs develop superior clamping force. When you use bolts, the fastener is “twisted” while it’s tightened, which means the bolt must react with two different forces simultaneously. Studs are properly installed hand-tight in a “relaxed” condition. When the stud nut is tightened, force is applied only on the vertical axis, distributing the loads more evenly. This reduces distortion, develops superior clamping power, and helps ensure the cylinders and main cap bores stay round. Studs also won’t wear out the (usually) softer threads in the block, important for racing engines subject to frequent inspection and teardown. The upper (nut-end) is generally fine threaded, which is…

Network Content Director @douglas.glad There was a time when big-inch small-blocks only orbited in the world of Chevrolet. Sometime in the ’80s, Chevrolet rocket blocks appeared with 420-, then 454-inch capabilities, making the lightweight car and SBC combo on boost or juice hard to beat. If you wanted to see that with a Ford or Mopar, you needed to look at big-blocks. No one complained, because a smashed 429 T-bird or 454 Chevy Suburban was a walk in the junkyard away. The 2000s brought the LS, and big-inch–capable blocks soon followed. Dart promised huge LS engines, and AFR provided matching cylinder heads to get past the 1,000hp mark, a trick the 385-series Ford and RB from Mother could do, but at the expense of larger packaging and older technology. In…

We are masochists, the lot of us. We’d have to be to subject ourselves to the rigors of what is perhaps the last great open road event in the United States. In the beginning, you’re excited, ecstatic even, for what’s to come. But by mid-week, your confused bodily functions have you feeling differently. The first thing to flee is your sanity. In fact, that left the building as soon as you signed the registration sheet. You see, sane people wouldn’t sign up for an event that purposely leaves you sleep deprived with a stomach full of gas station food and a devil-may-care attitude toward hygiene. Yet every year, hundreds of people flock to South Bend, Indiana, in early May to take part in an event that signifies what driving in…

If Bill Gise had a dollar for every time he said, “No, it’s real,” when asked if his Cobra is a replica, Jeff Bezos would be the second-richest person in the world. The authenticity question is understandable given that Shelby American manufactured a grand total of 998 Cobras between 1962 and 1967, while various companies have produced countless replicas in the years since the originals first set the automotive world on fire. The Cobra story began in September 1961 when racer, designer, and entre-preneur Carroll Shelby wrote a letter to AC Cars asking if they were willing to make an AC Ace for him that would accept an American V8 engine. The small British manufacturer was floundering following the announcement that Bristol, which supplied six-cylinder engines for the Ace, was…

hYou are probably thinking, “Why can’t I use a 727 or OD behind my Hemi instead of a TH400?” You can, but it’s much harder to source goodies like transbrakes, state-of-the-art shifters, and a wide selection of hardened internals and torque converters. We know, we’ve been drag racing with A-727s and A-904s since the late ’80s, and everything we’ve heard about both their excellence and weakness is true. As Hemi technology has evolved, so have the parts to support them. Knowing that new cars from Dodge are making 840 hp from the factory, and racers making a lot more, ATI developed a TH400 in an SFI-approved case that bolts directly to the Gen III (2003-present) Hemi. No adapter bellhousings are required. Our unofficial nickname for it is the Hemi SuperFlite.…

Bolts, nuts, and washers: They’re what keep your engine, drivetrain, chassis–heck, the entire car–together. Fasteners are the linchpin for a successful build, but how much attention do you really pay to them? Sure, we want our nuts and bolts to look pretty and not rust, but they’re much more than just another pretty face! Failure of a single critical engine or chassis fastener can cost you tens of thousands of bucks due to a destroyed engine, or even an entire car. Yet with proper selection and installation practices you can virtually eliminate fastener failure. Over the next few months, we’re going to take a granular look at today’s fastener technology with the help of Chris Raschke and the Automotive Racing Products (ARP) crew. Unless you’ve been living in a cave…

Head Gaskets SCE Gaskets // 800.427.5380scegaskets.com If you have nitrous, high static compression, or forced induction, check out the hybrid design of the SCE Vulcan Cut-Ring head gaskets. They use a combo of head gasket sealing properties. One is composite, for a pliable, perforated, metal-core gasket body, equaling solid sealing of coolant and oil, without additional sealants. The other is stainless steel, in the form of cut-rings that “bite” into the cylinder head under clamp load to form a barrier against combustion pressure leaks. You won’t have to machine the engine block or heads, and no O-ring will be required. Price: Starts around $150.00 Mopar Centrifugal Supercharger Kit TorqStorm Superchargers 616.226.9476 // torqstorm.com TorqStorm has expanded its Plus range, now offering a supercharger kit for 1967-1993 small-block Mopars: 318ci, 340ci,…

A bunch of automotive aftermarket companies gathered in the basement of Dodger Stadium in January 1967. Sounds like the roots of a bad, niche joke, but it represents the birth of what would become the aftermarket’s largest gathering, the SEMA Show (acronym then, Speed Equipment Manufacturing Association; now, Specialty Equipment Market Association). Having a trade show at all was the brainchild of Petersen Publishing Company’s founder, the late Robert E. Petersen, publisher of HOT ROD and its sibling magazines. But a baseball stadium for a high-performance car parts show? The only place available. Mr. Petersen’s executive assistant, GiGi Carleton, and Alex Xydias, then publisher of Hot Rod Industry News, were working with Mr. Petersen to organize the event and were unsuccessful at booking the Hollywood Palladium (more of a dance…

Traveling through Pennsylvania, it seemed that the backroads were full of old cars. In one stash, sitting behind a friend’s shop, was a group of old Mopars waiting for future projects or to become parts for others. A 1969 Dodge Superbee was almost completely enveloped by the tall weeds, where you could barely make it out at all. There were two mid-’70s Road Runners around the yard. We spotted one Ford: it was a Galaxie, and though it wasn’t rare or special, it had an original Holman & Moody Competition Plus sticker on the driver-side wing window. A tiny little sticker likely saved this car from becoming razor blades. Who knows what will happen to it now, but at least it isn’t getting crushed.…

If there is anything that we’ve learned in the past 100 years or so, it’s that cars play a large role in creating a priceless bond between a father and son, a couple of brothers or a group of friends. It could be something as simple as a clapped-out Mustang or something as wild as a Bonneville car, but the shared interest among family members is what keeps this car lifestyle going for generations. One of the most solid representations of this philosophy is Ray Portman and his 1957 Chevrolet Del Ray drag car. Sure, it’s one of many in a resurgence of drag car survivors, but it offered an excellent benefit to the Portman family, and it certainly has a story worth telling. Portman is a longtime resident of…

The higher a brake pad’s coefficient of friction (expressed by the Greek letter µ, pronounced “mu”), the more aggressive the pad and the greater its stopping potential (the same amount of pedal force provides more stopping power). In theory µ ranges from 0 (full lubricity, no friction at all), to 1.0 (solid, no molecules moving). Thirty years ago, street brake pads were lucky to see the high 0.20s. Today, even OEM pads are well into the 0.30s, top-tier performance street pads in the 0.40 to 0.45 range, and some race cars in the high 0.60s or even more. The friction performance of pads intended for typical street temperatures are classified under SAE Standard J866, expressed as a two-letter code where the first letter designates the normal low temperature (200-400 degrees…

“In the land of the blind hole, the pared down fastener is king.—Marlan Davis (apologies to Erasmus) Besides using the best materials and high-tech manufacturing processes, the fastener itself must be properly configured to work in the intended application. In a blind (not retained by a nut) application, if a bolt’s starting thread is even with the top of a threaded hole and there’s any relative movement between the clamped parts, the bolt eventually fails at the thread root (A). This can be avoided for moderate-duty tension applications by starting the bolt thread within the top member (B), typical of common commercial bolt practice (one reason why generic fastener threads are so long). Highly stressed tension applications call for paring down the fastener shank to the thread’s minimum (or “root”)…

Q: I have a 2005 Corvette six-speed with an LS2. Can I change it to an LS1 easily? Can you tell me how? A: Certainly possible, but it’s a step backward. Like General Grant, I always want to move forward, never retreat. The first “Generation III” (Gen III) small-block, the 1997–2005 LS1, displaces 345.7 ci (3.898-inch bore x 3.622-inch stroke). Depending on the chassis and model year, stock output ranged anywhere from 305 to 350 hp. As installed in the 2005 Corvette, the 400hp, 364.1ci (4.00-inch bore x 3.62-inch stroke) LS2 marks the initial transition to the revised and improved “Generation IV” (Gen IV) small-block. Compression ratio was also higher on the LS2: 10.9:1 versus the LS1’s 10.25:1. You’d be giving up about 18 ci, at least 50 (if not…

Roadkill @davidfreiburge I have a conflicted relationship with patina. In fact, I’m annoying myself by writing this editorial column on a hackneyed subject while simultaneously feeling the pride of having a hand in the ratty-car trend to begin with. I’m not talking about so-called “rat rods,” I’m discussing the now-aged fad of building cars with all-original paint and wear-and-tear, putting all focus into the mechanical part of the program. What’s the difference between a rust-bucket piece of junk and the quality burnish of use that makes a patina car cool? Well, that’s the nuance that vanishes when an underground passion becomes a global trend. If I have to explain it, it’s already too late. Remember my “Cheap Thrills Dart” in HOT ROD? That was 25 years ago. Ever see the…