Innehållsförteckning för March 1997 från Hot Rod

As much as we try to avoid change, we must eventually confront it, absorb it, and roll with it until we reach a certain level of comfort and familiarity. Until we can put it down beside us and pet it like a dog. Denial, apathy, and subversion are classic cop-outs, but you know in your heart of hearts that escape is only temporary. There are the kind of changes you can modify and there are kind you can’t. You have to wait, sometimes years, for the saga to unfold. In the power-starved ’80s, when money flowed but horsepower didn’t, the turbocharger made an ordinary four-banger respond like a V-8 in terms of raw acceleration. The fix was quick but the real ramifications of this weren’t obvious until much, much later.…

The IRL Puts A New Face On The Indy 500 There’s a new racing face at the Indianapolis 500. Gone are the obscure rules that made it pretty much a playground for the rich. The new order embraces a spec-racer approach to the greatest spectacle in racing. The Indy Racing League (IRL) recently created rules that include production-based, normally aspirated engines of no more than than four liters and that the initial cost of said engine must not exceed $75,000! When that imperative is combined with the spec chassis the IRL requires, it’s conceivable that an independent racer could field a car, qualify, and perhaps even finish with a one-time effort that would cost less than a season of NHRA Comp Eliminator racing! While the Indy 500 will always be…

Quarter-Mile Quiet The National Hot Rod Association has announced that most Federal-Mogul Sportsman drag racing classes will be required to run mufflers in 1998 (Borla’s XR-1 shown here). Classes affected include Stock, Super Stock, Super Comp, Super Gas, and Super Street. Competition Eliminator, Top Alcohol dragsters, and Top Alcohol Funny Cars will be exempt from this requirement. The NHRA has met with the leading high performance muffler manufacturers to establish performance standards for these mufflers, as well as noise limits for each of these classes. Though this decision has been received by much of the Sportsman clan with the same warmth as a quarantine for bubonic plague, the reasoning could be considered (ahem) sound. According to NHRA wisdom, the sheer number of Sportsman racers represent the most significant contribution to…

As part of a continuing series on the tracks we are running at in 1997, we present the skinny on “the Rock.” Event: Car Craft Magazine Southern Nationals Date of event: April 19-20 What it is: A celebration that will include a show area, eighth-mile drag racing, a manufacturers’ midway, and much more Track: Rockingham Dragway Location: Rockingham, North Carolina Directions: Located along Highway 1 near Rockingham—refer to the map for specifics Typical April weather: Temperatures in mid-70s Altitude: 375 feet above sea level Local entertainment: The dragway is located within two hours of Charlotte, North Carolina, home of many top Winston Cup teams and other points of interest Motel reservations: Days Inn, Holiday Inn, and other fine motels in the surrounding towns of Rockingham, Southern Pines, and Pinehurst, North…

Simple wisdom is usually the best kind. Keeping this in mind, you’ll enjoy what Super Street racer Nick Scavo gleaned years ago working for a wily Top Fueler named John Sinabaldi. Says the excitable Scavo (in his Chicago-style near-yell to make sure you get it), “Sinabaldi once told me there are five things that need to happen for you to win a drag race. One: Go to the racetrack. Two: Get your car to the starting line. Three: Start the race without redlighting. Four: Get to the finish line before the other guy. Five: Pass tech inspection. “You don’t need the lightest car, the fastest car, or the most money to win,” Scavo continues. “He was just saying if you stay home ’cause you think it might rain or you…

Walking up to this curvy speed ster, you’re immediately struck by how something so damn pretty can have such a brutal presence. It is swoopy, and certainly sexy—but subtle this fine apparition is not. From the tip of its Top Alcohol blower to the monster Goodyear race-meats below, this shocking red rocket literally screams extreme performance. Wally Larson’s innovative show cars have captured car buff magazine covers for years, but this aberration stretches the limits of both design and material. How about 2,000 hp at 50-plus pounds of boost from a nitro-burning, 32-valve aluminum V-8 wallowing in a 2,650-pound (dry) carbon-fiber/chrome-moly creation that exhibits less air-resistance than your average moped? Oh yeah, Wally plans to drive it on the street. Hung with more hardware than most Cessnas, Larson’s car borrows…

High-buck cars don’t get much higher than the Mercedes-Benz C280 sedan, the 1995 International Touring Car (ITC) Championship series winner and 1996 runner-up. Mercedes-Benz has put together a fleet of six such blitzwagens, some of the most beautifully made, technologically advanced racers ever built, and only now has Mercedes allowed HRM a close-up look at the technology that drives these lightweight marvels. ITC-series technical rules state that cars must retain the stock body profile from stem to stern, must use a stock steel roof, and must be powered by a production-based engine of no more than six cylinders, displacing no more than 2.5 liters (151 ci). The engine must use the original material and V-angle of the parent block, as well as the original main bearing and bore center spacings,…

Pro Street has progressed from its fairgrounds poseur personality of the mid-1980s to the kick-ass 7-second race cars that have covered the pages of every performance automotive magazine on the planet. The original intent of Pro Street was to look the part of the full-race Pro Stock cars, but today’s Pro Streeters come damn close to duplicating a Pro Stock’s performance. The rules and therefore the paths to 7-second performance are different between NHRA Pro Stock and Pro Street, but the cars are nearly identical under the skin. What looks like a ’57 Chevy or a ’69 Camaro on the outside is, in most cases, a classic body shell draped over a full-tube, Pro Stock-style chassis. The main differences between Pro Stock and Pro Street are weight and engine limitation.…

Those who think the National Hot Rod Association’s 5th Annual California Hot Rod Reunion is just another nostalgia drag race are wrong. “The Reunion,” says Greg Sharp, event coordinator and NHRA historical dude, “is about honoring the past.” So the “reet-union” is simply a series of happenings under one big, quarter-mile tent. The annual site is the famed Famoso asphalt at Bakersfield, California, the same Smokersville stuff Art Chrisman and Don Garlits raced on 37 years ago. It’s where young and not-so-young drag fans can jibe with old racers and older race cars. It’s a tentful of memorabilia and a place for long parades and longer food lines. It’s where the country’s most famous restored and recreated racers make exhibition runs. It’s a place where rods run, where the new/old…

Mr. Belvedere Imagine being outstanding at what you do and having to keep topping yourself with every project thereafter. If you were Troy Trepanier, that’s exactly what you’d be doing. Amazingly, Troy seems to have no trouble in the one-up department. His latest street-stomper is this rare ’54 Plymouth Belvedere that he’s transforming into a wild roadster. Mopar to the bone, Troy’s latest money pit is equipped with a custom frame and a complete Viper GTS drivetrain and suspension. He hung the Viper front suspension and added 18x9-inch Boyds wheels. The rear suspension was narrowed 10 inches to accept the 20x10 Boyds and Michelin rubber. Troy whittled the thing with new rocker panels that he moved up 3 inches on the body. He then molded ’96 Mercedes-Benz headlights into the…

Just about everybody has heard of the infamous ’57 Chevrolet “Black Widow” racing sedans, but who has ever seen one? Called “Black & Whites” when they were built by Chevrolet’s clandestine racing shop—Southern Engineering Development Corporation (SEDCO) in East Point, Georgia—these factory-prepared and factory-sponsored circle trackers were apparently raced into extinction. Legions of the Chevy faithful believed that none survived, and so the eulogy was read. Finally, one of the originals has been restored as it was drag raced in the early ’60s. Bill Clement and Bob Crowder “de-barned” the old race car with the checkered past, then restored it using original parts and pieces recovered in the find. How did this ’57 rise like a phoenix from the desert—and where’s the proof of authenticity? Clement likes the old adage,…

Thirty years ago, horsepower was the last thing motorheads worried about. When the Camaro and Firebird appeared on the scene, dealerships such as Nickey and Yenko sold versions of these cars equipped with L-72 big-block engines. Since these troublemakers were already rated at 425 hp, tuning was held to a minimum in lieu of lurid, signifying exterior graphics. Although these rogue dealerships—Motion Performance being the most prolific—would certainly install any aftermarket bits the owner deemed necessary, most of these COPO F-bodies left the showroom just as they came off the transporter. Today you can order a “tuned” Camaro or Firebird from any Chevy or Pontiac dealership. Unlike the big-block cars of yesterday, these examples are RPO vehicles that have been tickled with a higher horsepower engine, improved suspension, bigger tires…

Veteran readers will remember the name Chauvin Emmons. His series of track-style, T-bodied street roadsters have been a visible part of HRM’s editorial content since the mid-’60s. But the owner of C.R.E. Enterprises, a machine shop of some note in the Phoenix environs, had a haul-ass streak as well. Back in the 70s, Chauvin built and drove the world’s fastest roadster—a 260-plus-mph ’27 T powered by one of Les Leggitt’s grenade motors. But by the mid-’80s the “will” had gone dry, so Chauvin returned to his roots. He scratch-built some Streeters, first a ’23 track roadster (HRM, June ’86), closely followed by the subject of another HRM feature—a high-tech ’32 Vicky. But a lingering case of salt fever eventually caused the eclectic Emmons to initiate yet another project, one that…

It was one of those chamber of commerce days: Sunny and needlesharp clear. People in tank tops and short-shorts cutting their own Christmas trees. In other words—roadster weather; glorious, done-that-and-doin’-it-again roadster weather! And here I was in my ’32 roadster on the way to “Little” John Lombardo’s house to rod-test another like-bodied, like-styled roadster. It was deja Deuce. What better way to begin our new series of rod tests than by remembering why hot rods—perhaps the shortened version of “hot roadsters”—became a Southern California phenomenon well before the ’40s? From a historical perspective, credit these factors for the birth of hot road-stering. First was the area’s fledgling professional racing industry. Racers were (and are) always broke, so the Harry Millers, Ed and Bud Winfields, and George Rileys would sell technology…

Kugel’s New Rod: An Aurora-Powered Rocket 98 August 21, 1997, marks Oldsmobile’s 100th anniversary. As one of the world’s oldest automotive marques, Olds has a distinguished hot rodding history as well. The celebrations will no doubt be intense in the Lansing, Michigan, headquarters, but on the Left Coast, Jerry Kugel of Kugel Kompo-nents in La Habra, California, is authoring a tribute of his own with this lowboy hottie. One of its attributes is the excellent 250hp Aurora DOHC 4.0L V-8, which was donated by Oldsmobile. Rather than adopting a front-engine, rear-drive configuration, Kugel mounted the engine and transaxle amidships in a tubular steel chassis of his own design. The rear suspension employs unequal-length stainless steel upper and lower control arms and cantilevered shocks. Up front, Kugel fabricated a similar cantilevered…

E.T. Bracket Racing At West Palm The staff of Chevy High Performance wanted us to let you know that they’ll be at Moroso Motorsports Park in West Palm Beach. Florida, the weekend of March 15-16, for their All Chevy Show. That means two days of E.T. Bracket racing (including DOT classes), an eight-car Pro Mod shootout. Jet Funny Car and dragster exhibitions. a wheelstander, a Jet truck (18-wheeler that spits flames and roasts wienies—pretty cool!), a major swap meet, a BFGoodrich-sponsored car and truck show, the Manufacturers and Restoration Marketplace, games, contests, and other such mayhem. The show commences two weeks after the HOT ROD Power Festival inundates south Florida, so you’ll get a double dose of Petersen Publishing hospitality.…

A New Twist On Going Fast Rod Saboury has completed his latest Fastest Street Car effort, an ultra-trick ’53 Corvette with a Jon Little chassis and a Frank Morawski fiberglass body. The motor is a massive Charlie Garrett single-Dominator 796ci Rat supported by a Fred Brown Powerglide and a 4.10:1 axle ratio. Rod has yet to make a pass but feels that the 2,500-pound missile is capable of 7.30s on the motor alone. At present, Rod isn’t planning to run nitrous, but maybe we can shame him into it. You’ll remember that his ’57 Corvette was the first “street” car in the 7s via a 150hp kit on the 770-inch lightweight that turned a 7.96 at 170 mph at Englishtown, New Jersey, in 1994. According to Rod, there’s never been…

The Donut Man Is On Time! Jim McManama, or Jim “the Donut Man,” as we like to call him (he owns several Dunkin Donuts stores in Connecticut), has played with a deck of fast cars, and he’s definitely enjoying his Pro Street ’67 Nova. Starting with a steel body, McManama had Markow Race Cars (New Britain, Connecticut) construct a tube chassis fitted with a strut front suspension and a four-link rear suspension system. The 632ci, 1,200hp Eagle Racing Engines motor seethes through a Ram clutch, a five-speed Lenco, and a Mark Williams rearend for mid-7-second quarter-mile passes. Eagle built the engine with a Merlin block, Dart Big Chief heads and intake manifold, a Lunati crank, BME rods, Eagle pistons, a Comp Cams valvetrain, a BG fuel system, plenty of spray…

No, there are no Camaros here at all, which might seem strange to most of you. As a matter of fact, all the automotive craft that follows represents something odd, weird, or extremely expensive. It’s the stuff of dreams, the stuff of what-if and one-off. Our usual compilation of affordable, familiar iron has been supplanted by rational execution on one hand, and by totally wigged-out characterizations on the other, both of which satisfy several underlying themes: cubic money, cubic ego, and the undeniable, often manic urge to create and preserve. But mainly this section is about craftsmanship and originality, which is the core, the very stuff of hot rodding. Maybe now you won’t feel so strange. Imagine hot-pedaling Wally Larson’s insane, 2,000hp wingless fighter plane down Main Street and running…

The idle of Ken Caminiti’s ’55 is a raucous, oscillating moan that goes uh-ahh, uh-ahh, uh-ahh, like a wounded animal with its back against the wall. At seven grand, however, the blown 509 screams like a banshee, a pitch so high it’ll raise the hair on your privates. In 1989, Caminiti was a fresh recruit in the Houston Astro Major League Baseball organization. As his career mounted, so did the budget for the ’55 (now valued at a very conservative $175,000). Today, Caminiti is a superstar for the San Diego Padres. He was voted the National League MVP, not for his wild five-five but for his sterling ability with the bat: .328 average, 40 homers, 130 RBIs. A perfect batting average, of course, would be a thousand, coincidentally the target…

The lines on a ’55 Ford Thunderbird are considered by most to be timeless—which is why hacking one up to create a car even more appealing is a gamble. Henry and Sandra Aguirre asked Roy Brizio (San Francisco) to do just that. He flayed their restorable T-Bird to create a smoother, subtler appearance, but only after calling Thom Taylor for his conception of the project. Brizio’s talented crew updated the ancient chassis with a street rod suspension consisting of coilover shocks, a four-link setup in the rear, and an unequal-length A-arm combination up front. To do this successfully, Brizio’s boys added a new section of floor to clear the rear suspension. They fabricated a new front clip to accommodate the Heidt’s Mustang II front suspension and rack-and-pinion steering, then welded…

Everybody ready? This is a pop quiz. What aftermarket component has contributed most to quicker dragstrip times for street cars? Nitrous is a good answer, but a case can certainly be made for sticky tires. All the horsepower in the world won’t help you if you can’t hook it to the tarmac. The key to going quick is gumball rubber capable of directing all that torque to accelerate your car down the track. Slicks have always been the traditional way to go, but frankly they don’t adapt to everyday use and are downright suicidal in the wet. Enter the DOT-legal, sticky-compound street tire—in this case, the new BFGoodrich Drag Radial. It looks like a normal Comp T/A but provides a “hook” worth as much as a half-second over full-tread street…

The average commuter looks upon a rudimentary oil change with the same disdain as cleaning the fridge. But we rodders think of the oil change as an opportunity to lavish attention on one of our favorite things. Traditionally, racers have placed small magnets inside the engine to attract little metallic chips that inevitably find their way into the lubrication stream. Typically, the magnets are located near the oil return holes in the cylinder heads where they are remote yet easily serviced. One of the best places for a chip magnet is the oil pan. SX Performance Products has come up with an idea that allows a one-handed inspection of the chip collector without spilling a drop of fluid. The basis of the unit is a standard ½×20 thread plug, which…