Innehållsförteckning för March 2002 från Hot Rod

This one doesn’t seem quite ancient enough to be archival, huh? Yet to me, it represents a time, a look, and a simplicity that’s already lost. It was the heyday of Fastest Street Car racing. HOT ROD had covered the Top Gun Shootout in Atlanta in 1991, then joined with the NMCA and Flowmaster to present our own Fastest Street Car Shootout in Memphis 10 years ago. There was a small turnout, but it was ragingly popular with tans and readers. By the ’93 event, shown here, we required ail the Pro Street cars to make a nonstop 25-mile cruise on the circuit at MIR. It was a weak attempt at proving the streetability of the cars, but man, what a glorious spectacle. At other venues, I remember cruising the…

Seems Jersey bad boy Pat Musi is shipping arms to the Middle East. No, not SCUDs, but something that will easily scud by the border when the lead rain begins to fall. The Sheik of Bahrain (an island in the Persian Gulf known for its oil fields) is quite happily tooling a stealthy 1500 series Chevy truck packed with enough motor to suck all the crude out of that part of the world in about a day and a half. Musi put the touch on a pump-gas 540ci Rat that produces 759 hp at 5,800 rpm and 747 lb-ft of torque at 4,800 rpm with 11-psi boost from the ProCharger forced air system. A monster Kinsler throttle body high atop a Holley single-plane intake manifold feeds the porker. Price for…

Premiere hot rodding artist James Ibusuki has done it again with his latest print “Best of the Doors.” A stunning full-color homage to the heads-up Super Stockers of the late ’60s, the 13×33-inch print features Bill “Grumpy” Jenkins’ ’68 Rat-powered Camaro and the Sox & Martin ’68 Hemi Barracuda moments after a brutal six-grand clutch drop. Lurking in the background are Dyno Don Nicholson’s ’Cammer-powered ’66 Mustang and Dandy Dick Landy’s ’68 Hemi Dart. In addition to being signed and numbered by the artist, each museum-quality lithograph is also autographed by Ronnie Sox and Bill Jenkins. Priced at $90 (plus $6 shipping and handling), supply is strictly limited to 850 numbers. Contact: James Ibusuki, Sylrnar, CA; 818/362-9899—or log onto www.dragracingart.com.…

Where do old race cars go? For most, the path from glory to obscurity is a rapid downward spiral. It begins when they’re pushed outdoors behind the shop to make room for the new race car and ends when they’re either parted out and junked or offered up as “rolling shells” at the swap meet. But for a lucky few, fate is much kinder. What you see here is a true time capsule that was put into storage at the end of the 1970 racing season and, save for the occasional earthquake, hasn’t moved for three decades. The current owner—John LaDouceur of Temple City, California—tells it like this: “Two years ago, the distinctive tailgate of the wagon was spotted inside a cluttered garage by a young kid who was out…

Jim Wangers, along with everybody’s favorite felonious car executive Jon Z. DeLorean, more or less hatched the original GTO way back when. A few years later, in cahoots with the old Royal Pontiac store, Wangers was totally responsible for the Judge. He even copped gold at a few NHRA national events in the early ’60s in Pontiac Stockers, then became one of the hippest car marketers of all time. In ’66, Wangers’ GeeTO Tiger program was pure schtick, a promotional boil aimed at getting enthusiasts involved on the ground level. Selected individuals at certain dragstrip events would be invited to beat the Tiger (actually one of the Royal crew sweating into his socks beneath a ridiculous striped getup) in a heads-up race with two Goats: one with a black panel,…

Many a racer has claimed that if they had a little bit further to run, they would have prevailed. So back in the middle ’50s, when drag racing was still in its infancy, rodders in Reno, Nevada, and Riverside, California, staged half-mile drags. The half-mile drags conducted by the Nevada Timing Association appeared in the December ’57 issue of HOT ROD and were held at Reno, Nevada’s Douglas-Tahoe Airport—said to have been a full mile-and-a-half long and wide enough to accommodate four cars running side-by-side. The only problem with the venue was the 4,700-foot altitude. Nonetheless, a roadster and a sedan managed to top 144 mph—not bad when you consider that the fuelers of that era were just nudging 160. The newly opened Riverside Raceway lay 600 miles south of…

Engine dynamics fascinate and frustrate me to the point that I really enjoy powerplants more than the cars themselves. In putting together this months story on stroking, it struck me more than ever how complex and intertwined every aspect of engine design really is. Start with a cubic-inch goal, and you get to decide on a combo of stroke (which affects the torque/rpm curve) and bore (which can affect airflow through the valves), all of which helps determine the cam profile, which is also affected by the cylinder-head port design, a choice that may vary depending on the intake manifold runner length. Or maybe it’s vice versa. And this is gross over simplification. I’ve gotten to the point where I can picture all this monkey-motion in my head, but I…

What does it take to make your dream become reality? How much must you sacrifice or endure to make it happen? Brad Long began his experience in Penfield, Pennsylvania, a nowhere town about 30 miles west of State College. In 1986, he was 20 and bored. He’d had enough of the small town inertia, and he headed west with a grand in his pocket and hopes that he could somehow break into the automotive industry. Working at HOT ROD magazine was his dream. HR: Where did you land when you went west, young man? BL: I wound up in San Jose. I didn’t know anyone there, so I couldn’t mooch floor space, much less a roof over me. I was literally homeless, so I lived in my car for three…

Last month we gave you a sneak peek at the revolutionary new NOSzle direct-port nitrous system from NOS. This month we bring you the first-ever published NOSzle installation. While NOS has kits under development for other popular EFI cars, it chose to introduce the NOSzle design concept to owners of ever-popular ’96-’99 Mustang GTs (with the returnstyle fuel system) as well as ’99½-’02 GTs (with the returnless fuel system). Part number 08100NOS covers both designs and incorporates numerous ingenious (and patent-protected) innovations that will simplify the installation process of nitrous on any port-injected engine while delivering massive power. On the Superior Automotive Dynojet chassis dyno, our unassisted 4.6L (with five-speed manual transmission) delivered 234.0 horsepower and 284.8 lb-ft of torque at the rear tires. But with the NOSzle system set…

Although I drove my friend Frances’ ’64 348hp car when it was new, put the wood to another’s triple-black Drag Pack ’67 before I got into the car mag business, and flogged innumerable ’69 and ’70 models afterward, I never swapped feet in a ’66. I hired on at Super Stock & Drag Illustrated in the fall of 1968, just in time for the new “Coke bottle” Goats to mosey within range. That was so long ago I can’t remember a thing about any of them save for the orange Ram Air V that Royal’s Milt Schornack, Dave Warren, and Brian Ballish tested at Miami Dragway that winter. I didn’t drive that car, either, but I remember that it sounded different from any other open-exhaust Pontiac I’d ever heard. One…

Even though Jack Roush might not have attended every detail of his latest Mustang iterations, you can be quite sure that all the bugs in them were eaten before these cars were offered to the public. He poured about $7 million of R&D into the current crop, testing the prototypes in Mexico City, Death Valley, Colorado, and other torture venues before he signed off on them. Cactus Jack doesn’t like to repeat himself, so he gets it right the first time regardless of how much time it might consume. He stakes his reputation on that. Obviously, Roush competes with several Mustang tuners. His version is the only one we’ve gotten our hands on so far, so we won’t be able to compare it outright with something from the halls of…

The Low-Buck Lowdown I just read the Jan, ’02 issue and was elated to see the article on Jo Jackson’s $7,500, 11-second Nova, I’ve been disinterested lately with your features on pro-built machines that cost more than most guys earn in a year. Granted, the big-dollar customs give us inspiration, but cover them in the same percentage with which they are represented in the hot rodding community. Scott JonesPueblo, CO That article on Jo Jackson was worth an entire year’s subscription. Guys like Jo started all the big-name hot rod companies; his type of ingenuity is what has kept me fascinated with hot rodding for 50 years. More of this, please. Richard B. JonesLamesa, TX The $7,500 small-block Nova was an example of the type of real-world reporting that will…

The closure of the Pomona Street Legal Drag Racing program last year left many Southern Californians without a place to race. But things quickly turned around with the late 2001 opening of the eighth-mile Irwindale Dragstrip. It’s the continuation of a legacy: The city of Irwindale, best known to most Angelenos for its massive rock quarries, has played host to no fewer than four dragstrips. They are: • San Gabriel Valley Dragstrip (1956-1958): There were actually two separate tracks at this location now occupied by a SoCal Edison electrical substation. Both used the same name under different owners and operators. The first was opened specifically to address growing concerns over hot rodding accidents on city streets. Expansion of the flood control channel put it out of business. • San Gabriel…

This time it’s a quest for torque. Luckily, we got horsepower as a bonus. By the time we were done hangin’ a few speed parts off of a brand-new GM Performance Parts HT383 crate engine, it made 500 Ib-ft at 4,200 rpm and 460 hp at 5,400 rpm. That’s gruntin’ for a daily driveable 383. The HT383 has been available for a couple years now, but we’ve yet to see even one in a car, and we kinda wonder why. It’s probably because GMPP markets it as a “high-torque truck engine” with 325 hp at 4,500 rpm and 415 lb-ft of torque at 3,500. Most speed freaks will shun the truck connotation and guffaw at those power numbers, opting instead for GM’s aluminum-headed Fast Burn 350 that makes 385/385 for…

This month were out for torque, and nothing serves it up like huge cubes and a big arm. Stroking delivers both. Common Chevy 383 and Ford 347 combos have brought strokers to the masses, but there can be more creativity to stroking than just buying a kit and bolting it together. Increase your crankshaft stroke and you’re gonna hafta deal with things like piston compression height, at which point you might as well consider longer rods, and while you’re at it, why not go all-out with a tail-deck block? With this story, we’ll share the whys and hows of all these aspects of your rotating assembly so you can understand the guts of your new big-inch crate engine, or so you can build your own custom short-block at home. With…

The ratchet-drive handle is part of every toolbox, especially the popular medium-duty ⅜-inch version. We asked eight major manufacturers/sup-pliers to send us their basic, entry-level ⅜ drive, then we put them through a series of subjective and objective tests to help you decide which is best suited to your needs. While much of the data gathered requires no explanation, we included some tests that will be of interest to all you grease-caked mechanics out there in reader-land who treat your tools like, well, tools. And it isn’t always pretty. • The Weight category is important because there are lots of nasty jobs where the wrench ends up stuck into a small area, balanced precariously on your oily fingertips. A heavy wrench can be a penalty here. • The Freewheeling evaluation…

If you haven’t done the math, the engine you’re building or driving probably has less compression than you think. You can’t trust a catalog that lists a piston as a “10.5:1” unit. With what chamber size? What gasket? What deck clearance? This story will tell you what all that means and how to best alter it to suit your needs. In the examples below, assume that we are working with a typical mid-’70s smallblock Chevy with the following stock specs: Bore: 4.00 inches Stroke: 3.48 inches Piston deck clearance: 0.025 inch Piston dish volume: 20cc Head-gasket specs: 0.041-inch thickness, 4.190-inch bore Head-chamber volume: 76cc Compression ratio: 7.49:1 Compression Ratio Defined The CR is total cylinder volume with the piston at BDC divided by cylinder volume with the piston at TDC.…

One of the saddest changes in drag racing has been the disappearance of the two-motor digger. These slick-masticating monsters could fry ’em the entire quarter-mile, so a balloon foot driver was essential. The invention of the twin-mill racer dates at least as far back as the Kenz & Leslie 32 phone booth with flatties fore and aft. The double-engined hauler was part of the action at the very first running of the Bonneville Speed Trials in 1949. It was blessed excess, but not as blessed as the side-by-side V-8 diggers of a decade later. Shown here are Howard Johansen’s Twin Bear (driven by Jack Chrisman) and Dode Martin with his Jim-Nelson-aimed Dragmaster Two-Thing. The two shared a number of similarities: side-by-side, blown smallblocks with their flywheel rings meshed for coupling,…