Innehållsförteckning för December 2021 från Hot Rod

I think it’s important we all pause to appreciate the moment captured in these pictures I snapped with my phone on the HOT ROD Power Tour. Here are two friends who are a generation apart in age but have developed a deep and enduring bond over their shared interest in cars. This moment would not have happened were it not for the keen eyes of MotorTrend photographer Renz Dimaandal, who was riding with me for the duration of Power Tour. He spotted this gravel pile on the side of the road in sleepy Raymond, Illinois, and casually mentioned, “That’s a great place for a photo shoot.” I glanced over as the scene flashed through my peripheral vision and recognized its potential. “Want me to turn around?” I asked. I did…

You might think that, after being involved with NASCAR, building and driving a street car wouldn’t seem exciting. But for Tony Gomez, his automotive enthusiasm extends to just about everything—whether it’s circle track racing or city street cruising. The hobby is a family tradition, and he’s been involved for more than 40 years. This 1959 Chevy Impala, packed with the original 348 and modified with NASCAR-inspired details, is one of several Chevys in his current fleet, but its interesting history sets it apart. The “Race on Sunday, sell on Monday” heritage associated with NASCAR competition in the ’50s and ’60s is part of what set Tony on the hunt for a ’59 Impala in the first place. This one, however, had never made a lap of an oval track. He…

Drag racing is all about traction, and when it comes to tires made for drag racing, that comes down to heat. Cold tires don’t have their maximum grip, and heat will make them sticky and your elapsed times lower. Of course, the trick is to heat up your tires without launching your car out of the burnout box. An easy way to help make this happen is by installing an affordable launch control (also called a roll control) system. A kit like this can also help hold your car in place if you’re running a manual trans car that wants to roll through the beams as you’re working the three pedals with your two feet. Pressing the launch control momentary switch button sends power to the solenoid valve. When the…

There’s an extraordinary 1932 Ford three-window coupe being built at Hollywood Hot Rods that’s been getting a lot of attention online and is going to get even more when it debuts next year. They’re calling it the Gauntt Coupe because it’s owned by Pat Gauntt from Texas. Designer Eric Black and builder Troy Ladd (and the crew at Hollywood Hot Rods) envisioned the coupe as a traditional hot rod but loaded with styling cues borrowed from classic coachbuilt European sports cars like Delahayes and Bugattis, as well as from vintage American race cars. The first concept illustration—created before there were even plans to build the car—appeared in Rod & Custom magazine a dozen years ago. By 2015, the concept was a real project. Street Rodder magazine published an article on…

When maintaining your old project car or with the purchase of a new project, as is the case with this 1986 Ford Mustang GT, there are several things you can expect to do at some point in time. Those generally fall in the categories of basic maintenance or simple bolt-on upgrades. A clutch swap is one that fits into both categories. The clutch in this Fox-body needed to be replaced, so we called our friends at Ram Clutches for a clutch from its HDX line (PN 88794HD) and a 28-pound, 50-ounce/inch balance billet steel flywheel (PN 1525) to match. Our GT still has the factory 10-spline, 1 1/16-inch input shaft, and we didn’t need anything super heavy-duty, so the HDX clutch and flywheel perfectly fit our needs. Ram’s HDX clutch…

Most hot rodders would consider themselves lucky to stumble upon one barn find in their lifetime, but residents who live in the Southern California town of Desert Hot Springs—located roughly halfway between Los Angeles and Phoenix—don’t find anything unusual about this particular 1931 Dodge DL coupe sitting out in the open when they pull into Mike’s Motorsports for the odd auto repair job. Owner Mike Carey operates his small shop part-time repairing off-road vehicles and doing light work fixing the locals’ cars, and like many folks who live out here in the California desert he has no problem storing his vehicles out in the open. The hot, dry desert atmosphere acts like a preservation chamber for Mike’s pride and joy—a 1931 Dodge DL coupe he picked up in a horse…

Some people buy project cars and dive right in, full-bore, with the build while others sort of simmer a bit before getting started. Well, we would have to say Andy Caraballo, of Delray Beach, Florida, falls into the second category. For two whole years, he kept driving past a certain 1970 Nova that had a for sale sign in it. We call that patience. Eventually, he worked up the steam to make a move on the classic Nova. “The Nova was pretty stock and needed a complete restoration. I remember driving to buy it with my son Dominic, who was 17 at the time. We talked about building the car together and how it would be so cool when it was done,” Andy recalled. Well, a deal was cut and…

Have you ever considered how hot oil gets inside your engine, transmission, differential, or power steering? In normal operation, engine oil temperature needs to be at least 212 degrees F to get rid of destructive moisture and combustion contaminants. Both contaminate the oil if they don’t burn off with enough oil temperature. If engine oil temperature doesn’t get hot enough, moisture in the oil will mix with sulfur, which is one combustion byproduct, and generate acids that can ultimately damage moving parts. By the same token, excessive engine oil temperatures do another kind of damage. Conventional engine oils can tolerate temperatures of up to 250 degrees F. After that, they begin to cook and ultimately break down at 275 degrees F. Synthetic engine oils are far more tolerant of temperature…

There has been a flurry of activity here at the warehome, as I have been pushing to get Truck Norris, our project 1967 C10, back on the road. In between that work and my normal HOT ROD duties, Project Jake, the 1993 GMC C1500, needed new front brakes and a complete tune-up in anticipation of the state-mandated, biannual emissions test. As always, it’s good to be busy! Sources BluePrint Engines; 308.236.1010; blueprintengines.com Concept One Pulley Systems; 877.337.0688; c1pulleys.com Earl’s Performance Plumbing; 866.464.6553; holley.com Holley; 866.464.6553; holley.com Lokar Performance Products; 877.469.7440; lokar.com Total Cost Involved Engineering; 800.984.6259; totalcostinvolved.com…

For those of us who grew up in the ’60s and ’70s, Don Cook was an established heavy hitter in the SoCal drag racing scene. Born in 1937 and raised in Long Beach, California, Don called Lions Drag Strip his home track. A born knuckle buster, Don was already hooked on all things mechanical and by the age of nine had already overhauled his first Model T Ford engine. I was lucky to be on the same Little League team as his two boys, Donnie and Phillip, and I vividly remember times at practice where we’d hear him crank up his latest fire-breathing monster a block away. Our coach would usually just throw his hands up in the air and say “go on … get!” and we’d all hop on…

Steve Brule, from Westech Performance and the Engine Masters video series sent us pictures and information about a cool Ford 302 he recently ran on his dyno. This is a rather stock-looking Boss 302, but there is extra performance hidden inside. Back in the day, Boss 302s were made by combining Ford 302 small-blocks with the new, high-flowing cylinder heads designed for Ford’s 351 Cleveland. This combination was designed for competition in the 1969 SCCA Trans-Am racing season. Boss 302 short-blocks were highly modified compared to the run-of-the-mill 302 engines, but externally they looked the same as their lower-rpm cousins. When engine builder Ken Maisano was tasked with building a Boss 302 Ford engine, one of the biggest requests from the customer was that it had to look as stock…

I love burnouts. Long, smoky ones are my favorite, but a fire burnout is special. One, because I don’t get to do them very often and two, because the first hit of the throttle shoots both raw fuel and fire up and over the wing and it rains down on the body and rolls off. As a driver, doing a fire burnout is somewhat surreal and being in an open car where the fire is more visible is even more out there. The preparation is pretty much the same as it is for a standard burnout, except that the driver has to wait for the crew to get everything in order to make it happen without incident. This brings a little apprehension on my part as I wait for all…

One cool traditional hot rod detail that looks great if it’s done right is some well-placed World War II aircraft nose art. Hot rod roadsters built in the style of the late ’40s and early ’50s are more popular now than they have been in any period since those original years. We’ve seen the influence of World War II aircraft styles on many early roadsters. Historically, it makes sense since many of the guys who flew bombers and fighters during the war were the same guys who had been building rods just a few years earlier, or who would pick up mechanical skills and a taste for performance during the war and then apply that to cars when they returned stateside. Although hot rods of the late ’40s weren’t built…

Remember the ’87 Suburban I glowed about in a previous column? It blew up. After buying the thing in Colorado and using it for a great road trip with my kid, the 109,000-mile, super-minty Sub became my daily driver—until it went into nauseating rod knock on the Grapevine grade here in SoCal. I got out, nearly stepped on a rattlesnake who wasn’t happy about it, then waited three hours for a tow truck. I had plenty of time to think and realized that I owned 20 vehicles and not a single one is capable of driving to Famoso Dragstrip and back—or at least not in a tolerable way. The next day, I bought a 2017 Challenger R/T. This is uncharacteristic for me. I’ve only purchased three showroom-fresh vehicles ever: a…