Innehållsförteckning för June 2023 från Hot Rod

Rain poured down as we walked briskly toward the side door of Ford’s Romeo Engine plant. Throughout the 2.2-million-square-foot facility, all was quiet at 6:30 a.m. It was damp and early, but we were on a mission to capture a historic moment. Crossing through the plant that began creating industrial hardware 55 years ago but blossomed into the home of modular engines way back in 1990, we entered a smaller building on the 268-acre campus. Since 1996, this hallowed home of factory horsepower has served as the birthplace of many of the most iconic Ford engines to ever spread the shock towers of a Mustang. Where the main plant could crank out as many as 140 engines in an hour, this room is for factory hot-rodding. It is the Romeo…

Except for changes in engines and techniques, this is the same story that HOT ROD has been publishing for 75 years. This story never gets old because it’s constantly evolving and improving the process of internal combustion. In this version of the never-ending story, our protagonist discovers a cast-off 5.3L iron block truck engine rusting into a dirt-floor barn in a tiny Midwest town. A neighbor offers his tractor to drag the engine out into the light of day. We pulled the engine apart to discover it needed serious attention, yet it was still worthy of the effort. Here, in Part 1, we’ll clean up our act, machine the rusty bits, and begin the rebirth of Project Groundhog. We will finish assembly in Part 2 and follow up with a…

It’s getting a little intense at Troy Ladd’s Hollywood Hot Rods where the pressure is mounting to get the one-day-a-week coupe built. Troy’s the owner of Hollywood Hot Rods and only gets one day off a week to work on his personal project. This is his bad-to-the-blown ’31 Model A coupe built mostly from his junk pile. Obviously, not everybody has a pre-chopped ’31 Model A coupe on a shelf, a Brookville Roadster Lakester frame that didn’t get used, a 392 Chrysler Hemi block in the corner, plus a lot of the parts needed to join these components together. But when you own a shop, things accumulate, so why not put them to good use. Troy’s plan is to build a car he can drive to work and race occasionally.…

There was a time when magazines would never feature a car in bare metal, but I think everybody agrees that seeing almost any good build without its paint gives the observer a behind-the-scenes sneak peek. Unfortunately, catching a car in bare metal is not always easy. Most builds, by the time they get to this stage, are hurrying into paint, and few builders have the luxury of slowing the process. The customer typically wants it as soon as possible, and taking time out for a photo shoot is just not on the agenda. Therefore, we were lucky enough to get the call from Troy Ladd, owner of Hollywood Hot Rods in Burbank, California, who said, “You can shoot the coupe today but tomorrow the wheels will be off it and…

For 30 years, the folks who own Mooneyes—which encompasses two parts houses, one in Santa Fe Springs, California, and the other in Yokohama, Japan—have put together an awesome hot rod event, which was the first such indoor gathering in Japan when it began in 1992. Held in the heart of Yokohama inside a 217,000-square-foot convention center, the event includes some 300 custom vehicles, 500 custom motorcycles, and roughly 250 vendors who, along with more than 20,000 attendees, try to take all of it in over the course of a single 10-hour day! It’s a challenge to be sure, mostly because there is so much to look at. Besides a great representation of American vehicles (most of which were customized in Japan) you get to see how they customize Japanese-market vehicles,…

No experienced engine builder would intentionally bolt a cylinder head to an engine block without installing a gasket between the block and cylinder head. The gasket seals the block deck surface to the cylinder head surface. Smooth-looking metal has microscopic surface roughness and waviness that creates leak paths, especially under high cylinder pressures. The gasket fills the voids and contains those high pressures. That’s why high-horsepower engines O-ring the blocks and heads. Those same microscopic peaks and valleys exist on the cylinder walls, piston rings, and piston-ring grooves. Motor oil acts like a gasket to seal those components together. If you’ve ever leakdown tested an engine—hot or cold—you’ve probably seen a difference in the readings. Part of that is due to the thermal expansion of the parts, but also from…

Email us at hotrod@hotrod.com Is it possible for a picture to be too “pretty” to be used in HOT ROD? Yes, and this picture is the perfect example. Marc Gewertz sent about five of these sunset pictures with his coverage of The Race of Gentlemen, and this is the one I liked the best. You need talent to capture an artistically beautiful picture on the starting line of a drag strip, and Marc has plenty of talent. This picture is the result: stunning lighting with just enough detail revealed in the silhouettes of the car and flag man at the starting line. Why wasn’t it the lead image of the article or on the cover of the magazine? Simple—because it doesn’t convey enough information to stand alone in that setting.…

HOT ROD magazine, and its sister publications Motor Trend, Car Craft, Rod & Custom and Sports Car Graphic, had their fingers on the pulse of automotive performance in the 1960s. Case in point: These photos, gathered from 1963, display the variety of venues and personalities Petersen shooters caught on film during a very busy year. This month we’ll let the pictures do the talking. If you like this kind of approach, let us know. This collection barely scratches the surface of what our guys shot in 1963, let alone all the other years of film housed in the archive.…

The Race of Gentlemen (TROG) was born on the beach in Asbury Park, New Jersey, in 2012. After four successful events racing on the sand on the Jersey Shore, it was only natural that TROG would venture west to California, the birthplace of hot rodding. Their first event in California was the 2016 Race of Gentlemen West, held on the sand in Pismo Beach. Unfortunately, Mother Nature greeted the racers with a rainstorm, and the event was cut short. TROG returned to California in 2019 for its first event on pavement, the Santa Barbara Drags. Though the race was a huge hit, there were logistical problems that came with racing on city streets. Mel Stultz, TROG founder, knew he wanted to have another event in California, but he also knew…

John Force is the owner and driver of the Peak Performance Blue DEF Chevrolet Camaro SS NHRA Funny Car. Force began his drag racing career in 1977, and enthusiasm, perseverance, and love for the sport mark the charismatic leader and CEO of John Force Racing (JFR). The JFR team includes three other NHRA drag racing teams. Robert Hight drives the Automobile Club Southern California Chevrolet Camaro SS NHRA Funny Car. Robert is also the president of JFR. John’s daughter, Brittany Force, is the driver of the Monster Energy Flav-R-Pac NHRA Top Fuel Dragster. The newest addition to the JFR team is Austin Prock, who assumed the driving duties of the Montana Brand RMT NHRA Top Fuel dragster in 2019. A recent visit to the JFR headquarters in Brownsburg, Indiana, gave…