Innehållsförteckning för December 1959 från Hot Rod

I LIKE 'EM HOT - LAND OR SEA Sirs: Keep up the good reporting on hot rod boats! There are plenty of readers who like boats even more than cars, yet who buy Hot Rod Magazine simply for the writeups on how to bop up engines which, of course, apply to boat engines just as much as to car engines. I have been buying Hot Rod since it started although I was primarily interested in racing hydroplanes. I built the boat and engines, but the car I “accumulated.” It is a Kurtis 500 sportscar chassis which I had shipped to Charles Lyon of Denver who put the body on. I did the rest. Lyon built the body for the Kenz Leslie Special and others. The engine of the car is…

…

As a fitting closer to the 1959 honor roll of chartered clubs. HRM has chosen to expand the December coverage to include not one but eight clubs under the banner of the South Florida Timing Association centered in Miami. Roll call of the livewire eight goes as follows: Ramblers Road Club. Road Saints, Cabrolets. Road Runners. Lightning Rods. Speed Shifters. Road Angels, and Customs; all present and accounted for on the first, and third Sundays of each month at the Amelia Earhart airfield drag strip. Miami. Florida, center of the Association's competition activities under the supervision of Regional Director and SFTA founder Ernie Schorb. The Association's motto: “Have bus, will travel, to drag" anywhere” is typical of their attitude of inspired participation; further good fellowship is evidenced by their generous…

“WHAT NOW, COACH?” Dear Don: I have had my '57 Ford (“high performance” engine ) about a year now and have dropped a head off a valve three different times. The first time a cylinder head and piston were ruined. The second time the piston was ruined and only damaged the head. The third time I dropped a valve, the cylinder had to be sleeved. This is really getting to be too much. What can I do to guarantee this won't happen again? Wally Dedrickson Hartford, Connecticut Usually valve failure is caused by valve float. The cam is so designed as to “catch” the valve as it closes rather than let it drop suddenly on its seat. If the engine is revved too high, the valve spring tension is no…

Watch the award-winning “Goodyear Theater” on TV every other Monday evening. This one is the World Series of stock car racing… and when race officials popped a microphone in front of winning driver Jim Reed—after a record breaking run of 111.836 mph for 500 miles — his first words were about Goodyear tires: “The most important thing was the great tires I had! Man, some of the other tires were blistering all over the place, but I think my Good years could have gone another 200 laps … even in that heat!” “That heat” was a track temperature of 132 degrees—announced to the huge Labor Day crowd as an all-time record at Darlington. Combine record speeds and record heat, and you've got the toughest driving tires can face. Reed, a…

THE FIRST RAM INDUCTION ENGINE IN A PRODUCTION CAR! GIVES SUPERCHARGED RESULTS WITHOUT STEALING POWER …AND PUTS OUT GREATER TORQUE THAN 400 CU. IN. MILLS! Here's authority! Chrysler Corporation's top engine men worked with test cars in the Brickyard at Indy… spent months with chattering electronic computers in the labs…and finally turned a “custom competition” dream into a production model! Plymouth SonoRamic uses long, curving intake manifolds to provide the results of a positive displacement supercharger. The air-fuel mixture moves through the manifold tubes until the intake valve closes. This sets up a compression wave which travels back and forth at high frequency, building enormous pressure and ramming home a super charge at the optimum time. Once you hear SonoRamic, you'll have to try it! You'll find it handles marvelously…

Hang onto your hats fellows because this is going to be an exciting year in the automotive industry and in a couple of ways that you would have never suspected. Only about ten years ago the name Ford and performance were synonymous and 90% of America's youth drove Fords. Then an increasing number of the competition started switching over to over-head valve V8 engines and Ford's flathead V8 couldn't keep up with the pace. Ford produced its first overhead valve V8 in 1954 but it wasn't noted for power, and by that time the Cadillac, Oldsmobile and Chrysler ohv's were so far ahead in cubic inches and power that it was a lot simpler to install one of them in a Ford chassis than it was to try to rework…

Torrance, California…

National championship caliber events, whether for frog-jump-I ing zoologists or flag-jumping hot rodders or anything in 11 between, are always overwhelming to the first-time spectator. It's only after you've hit the same annual event a few times in a row that the similarities of the action sort of “blurr back” in your mind, allowing the important differences to come to the fore This year's “Big Go” was such an event. To the uninitiated, the sheer size of the meet, with literally thousands of rodders milling around hundreds of rods, was enough to stun the imagination. But to those who had competed at two or three previous Nationals, there was plenty new and different to see. Psychologists tell us that any process of learning proceeds by “stairsteps”; that is, you'll improve…

The summer of 1959 marked the eleventh straight summer that the nation's hot rodders had the opportunity to travel to Utah's famous dry salt lake desert area to try out their cars on the world's safest race course. Since the first pioneering group of speed enthusiasts made the trek to the Bonneville salt flats in 1949, a lot of improvements have taken place both in engine design and the know-how of the fellows who prepare them for this ultimate in high speed racing. The course itself remains the same from year to year, generally speaking, but the texture and condition of the salt varies according to the weather. The event, held during the week prior to Labor Day the first ten years but shifted a week earlier this year, has…

Sherman Oaks, California…

Garden City, Michigan…

During the past ten years engine conversions have become so popular that it's anybody's guess as to what engine is tucked under the hood of that innocent-looking machine sitting at the next traffic signal. This increasing popularity is due to many things: increased availability of good late model ohv engines at wrecking yards; the steady reduction in prices of older but still much desired cars; the production of many conversion accessories such as adaptors, starter switchovers, dropped drag links, motor mounts, etc. All of these factors are making the engine conversion the path to power. In most cases, new car performance on a used car budget is attained with room for additional improvements, as finances permit, plus the priceless prestige and satisfaction of a job done by one self. Gaining…

THE SPORT OF organized drag racing made another decisive stride forward last month when delegates from all parts of the nation got together to review and revise the official rule book at the National Drag Rules Conference held in Los Angeles. TO MAKE CERTAIN that all areas were fairly represented, and to insure a more comprehensive interpretation for the new rules, the i960 drag rules committee was composed of six voting members, each of whom was the spokesman for all groups in his region. For the Northeast, Bill “Farmer” Dismuke. of Connecticut; Southeast, W.H. David. Jr., of Louisiana; North Central, Darrell Zimmerman, of Nebraska; South Central, Chuck Nelson, of Texas; Northwest, Chuck Blanchard, of Oregon; Southwest, Ed Davis. NHRA Tech. Director, of California. Chairman of the Conference, also holder…