Innehållsförteckning för June 2022 från Hot Rod

@john.mcgann Three weeks ago, I stopped at Whole Foods for groceries on my way home from work. Upon returning to my car, some dude commented on my C10, saying, “I’m sure that’s not good for the environment, but I do like your truck,” or something similar. He said that to me as he was boarding his behemoth soccer-mom-spec SUV with a smirk on his face. Windows up and A/C on, he was backing out of his parking spot before I could inform him that just maybe keeping a 55-year-old vehicle on the road is actually not a bad thing for the environment. Certainly, no one labored for slave wages in precious metal strip mines for any component in my car. More importantly, everything in my C10 can be recycled. Everything.…

By day, Brendon Vetuskey gets to see toy cars come to life through the design and manufacturing process at his job as a designer for Hot Wheels. When he’s not on the job, Brendon is applying those same principles on objects of a much larger scale, 1 to 1. We met Brendon about five years ago at a local car show in Torrance, California, when he and his wife, Coco, showed up in his newly completed ’67 Firebird. That car made enough of an impression on your author at the time, that it ended up on the cover of the October 2018 issue of Car Craft. Recently, Brendon sent pictures of his latest creation, this ’55 Chevy, so I stopped by to check it out, knowing full well it was…

The pandemic may have shut down some big events but hot rodders all over the country just did what hot rodders do: They invented a new one. Garrett Jedlicki and his buddies up in Minnesota had seen many of their favorite shows and events get cancelled. They were bored and itching to get out of the house, so they hatched an idea for a frozen lake race, and boom! A plan was made. With the help of a chain text message and some Instagram posts, a date was set, and a location secured for a casual race for a Saturday in February 2021. The event was open to cars 1954 and older, and bikes 1965 and older. To their amazement, close to 4,000 people showed up, and although they were…

In a world of “LS swap everything!” people often forget that, for a street car, it’s still hard to beat the simplicity, cost, and smile-inducing performance that can be had from a traditional small-block Chevy. Though entire events are now dedicated to the LS engine, if you hit a car show you’ll find that a vast majority of the engines in hot rods are small-block Chevys. Steve Brule knows these are still super popular engines, so when one rolls through his shop, he makes sure to let us know. Such is the case with Jim Larr’s 383 stroker small-block. Sources Aeromotive; 913.647.7300; aeromotiveinc.com Brodix; 479.394.1075; brodix.com CVF Racing; 651.356.8593; cvfracing.com Comp Cams; 800.999.0853; compcams.com PerTronix; 909.599.5955; pertronixbrands.com Scat Crankshafts; 310.370.5501; scatcrankshafts.com Westech Performance Group; 951.685.4767; westechperformance.com…

What are you looking at? If you are thinking this is a ’51 Ford Custom dragged from a barn, you are wrong. If you are now thinking this is a fake patina car that looks like a ’51 Ford Custom… also wrong. This car is the creation of John Moss, an industrial artist from Huntington Beach, California. He is deep into surf-town culture and outlaw choppers, best known locally for creating high-end spaces and architectural structures with raw and rustic finishes through Brass Junkie, his business located in the industrial side of town. He is also known to show up at the legendary Donut Derelicts in a thrown-together jalopy that steals the show. Great art is created by a convergence of circumstances that motivate the artist. A stock car with…

“There’s nothing else like it in motorsports.” That’s what drag racing journalist Dave Wallace says about Fuel Altereds. The class was eliminated by NHRA nearly 50 years ago, but these wild dragsters are still around, still putting on exciting races, and still drawing dedicated fans. In a 2015 issue of Elapsed Times magazine, Wallace spoke to Dave Hough, patriarch of the family that has helped keep Fuel Altereds alive.—HRM It’s not as if Dave and Linda Hough missed the memo back in 1973 that officially rendered Fuel Altereds obsolete. Mr. and Mrs. Hough were in the room when NHRA Division Director Bernie Partridge dropped the bomb about nitro-burning altereds losing their class and, consequently, their only opportunity for national event exposure. He quickly added that AA/Fuel Altered teams would be…

LS engines have become one of the most popular engines on planet Earth and for good reason. The combination of performance, packaging, weight, and cross-variant parts interchangeability has made it the go-to mill for swaps and overall performance upgrades. But this story isn’t about LS engines. It’s about the car they were launched in—the C5 Corvette. Yep, back in 1997 the C5 hit the streets, powered by the revolutionary LS1; we would say it reignited the modern muscle car age. Fast forward to 2021, and C5 Corvettes (1997–2004) are one of the best bang-for-the-buck high-performance cars out there in the used car market. Even though they are around 20 years old, the suspension technology isn’t far off of later C6 and even C7 Corvettes. I guess you can say that…

Hot rodding has always been about coming up with your own way to transform your ride into your vision of the perfect hot rod. Mike Selvaggio is building a 1966 Malibu wagon in his California garage and decided he wanted to give the classic dash a modern vibe. The aftermarket didn’t offer anything to fit his vision, so he borrowed a welder and started getting creative. Sources Dakota Digital; 605.332.6513; dakotadigital.com Miller Electric; 920.734.9821; millerwelds.com performanceonline.com…

Held together with hopes, dreams, and a whole lot of backyard engineering, this DIY 1970 Road Runner Superbird collected its Long Hauler plaque at the 2021 HOT ROD Power Tour Presented by HP Tuners and Driven by Continental Tire! Though it may look stitched together, this hot rod was built to be driven and proved it could be by traversing more than 1,000 miles over the course of a week, sometimes in pouring rain. This ride screams “fun,” and we loved it from the moment we spied it on Day 1 of Power Tour. What’s the story on this faux Superbird? Well, it was built by Shawn Jones, with the support of his wife, Sara, at Schweaty’s Speed Shop, their shop in Cleveland, Tennessee. “After meeting up with the guys…

The Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona officially kicked off the 2022 season of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, and this year’s race saw some incredible bumper-to-bumper racing right up to the finish. It was also the beginning of a season of changes, with new driver lineups for many classes and a new class category for the GT cars. At the end of last season, IMSA officially closed the GT Le Mans class, which was historically made up of factory-backed teams with full-time pro drivers. Dwindling car counts over the years led to the cancellation of the class, which left the Corvette Racing team at a crossroads. The team announced late last year that the C8.R would drop down to the GT Daytona (GTD) class, which has very similar specs to…

The Panther platform is Ford’s internal-speak for their full-sized cars—the Crown Victoria, Mercury Grand Marquis (and Marauder), and Lincoln Town Car—manufactured from 1979 through 2011. They were the last domestic, full-frame, rear-wheel-drive cars manufactured. Because they were so tough and reliable, many of these cars saw hard duty as police cars, taxis, and limousines. After their service life, many were auctioned off, and that’s where enthusiasts like us can grab them up and give them a new life as a cheap, fun project vehicle. In addition, crafty car guys realized a while ago that based on these cars’ wheelbase and track width, they make for good frame swaps into other cars and pickups. For example, HOT ROD Garage’s Project Crown Hick is a 1966 F-100 on a Crown Victoria frame.…

Any test session at Westech Performance Group is an enlightening experience. Depending on how things go, it can either be a joyous or a humbling situation. Either way, there’s always something to learn. Such was the case when we brought our ’67 C10, Truck Norris, to Westech for a turn on their Superflow chassis dyno. We didn’t have a particular agenda, other than to verify the carb settings and ignition timing and see what kind of power our BluePrint Engines 350 small-block was sending to the ground. Cutting to the chase, our tune-up was good, only needing a minor adjustment, and we saw max power figures of 325 hp at 5,700 rpm and 321 ft-lb of torque at 4,300 rpm. Those numbers are fine by us, considering the engine itself…