Innehållsförteckning för May 2009 från Hot Rod

THE PERFECT GARAGE To a hot rodder, a house is nothing more than sleeping accommodations adjacent to the garage. While significant others, children, and some friends enjoy visiting a nice, clean house, you and I don't really care. With normal people, the kitchen often turns into the most popular room at a party, but hot rodders aren't normal. At any gathering, our car-guy friends quickly assemble in the garage to bench race, tell lies, kick tires, and maybe, if you're lucky, do some wrenching. I've often said (and I'm not alone) the perfect home would be a two-room apartment above a fully stocked, 10-car shop. Give me a bed, a TV, and a bathroom and that's good enough to call home. The garage, on the other hand, well that's where…

GOOD THINGS COMING How can I start the new year better than having a '10 Camaro on the cover of HOT ROD magazine (Feb. '09 issue)? The previous issue with Power Tour(r) coverage was also a keeper. With all the hype and coverage on the Net about the fifth-gen Camaro, it was your cover shot that really stood out, so hats off to David [Freers]and Bill [McGuire] for the photo shoot and print you gave the car. Being a die-hard Camaro collector, I look forward to parking maybe an '11 or '12 SS (or Z28?) next to my '69 clone Z, '76 Bumblebee (current secret project and future Power Tour(r) participant), '92 topless IROC, and mint '96 SS. Your support of our bleak new-car market is a sign of good…

“It sure would be fun to sell all of them and do it all over again.” —Bob Regehr Stories of cars hidden away, the someday restoration, a car's mere presence that gives solace to a mourning mother who lost her child in conflict. We have all heard these stories, in fact, you probably know a few yourself. The best ones I always heard were about my boss, Bob Regehr. The stories all revolved around a vast collection of cars and parts, but no one seemed to know the whole story or had seen all the cars. I'd heard he had hundreds of cars, including every model of '32 Ford Henry ever made. Nothing was ever for sale, only for trade, and only if you were lucky. The most peculiar story…

“I wanted to build a rod that could do well at a track and at shows—in that order.” —Tomas Svenningson It's been said that there is no new way to build a '32 Ford—that everything tasteful, and distasteful, has already been tried. So often, in fact, it's practically an automotive cliché. After 77 years of hot rodders and customizers reinventing the Deuce with every style, trend, and passing fad, it's practically guaranteed that there's a '32 somewhere out there to suit every taste— no matter how questionable. There's good reason for that, though. There's just something about the lines of a '32 Ford coupe that takes to any approach. Drag race, jalopy, traditional, street rod—they all look great on a Deuce; just pick your flavor. There is one style, however,…

CHEAP350 PG.9 HOT ROD buys the parts and builds tire cheapest small-block Chevy you can afford for only $2,013. METAL SHAPING PG.96 We go to school to learn how to bend metal and hammer out body panels. R00TS-BL0WN LS ENGINE PG.102 A6-71 blower and three choices for fuel make for a 750hp Chevy II. TEST AND TUNE PG.116 New wheels from the new Weld, a '55 to '52 pedal assembly, and water-methanol injection. PITSTOP PG.120 Ignition choices and how it works, find car values, and whore to got a ONG conversion. Location: Motiva Performance Engineering, Albuquerque, NM…

FUNNY-LOOKIN' CAR Detroit's involvement in drag racing reached new heights during the '64 season, and it was underdog Dodge that led the rapid transformation of Super Stockers into Factory Experimenta Is. After the S/FX Dodge Chargers (see page 54-62] shocked the Stocker world with blowers and injectors, radical axle relocations were performed by the Ramchargers and Dick Landy, respectively. This rare, Iate-'64 action photo of Landy's test session at San Fernando Raceway illustrates the crude body surgery involved. Soon after, Dandy Dick shared the finished version with our own Eric Rickman and Eric Dahlquist (Feb. '65 HR], who helped Landy unfurl the 12-foot blueprint provided by Ramchargers engineers. Their altered wheelbases earned these Dodges the derisive description “funny-lookin' cars” (later shortened to Funny Cars]. — DAVE WALLACE…

ECONOMIC STIMULUS? With all the talk of change that dominated the political discourse during the presidential campaign, it's disappointing that policymakers are once again dusting off tired and flawed proposals in an attempt to help clean our nation's air. Cash for clunkers accelerates the demise of vehicles through the purchase of older cars that are then typically crushed into blocks of sheetmetal. In some states, these types of programs began by allowing smokestack industries to avoid reducing their own emissions through the purchase of pollution credits generated by destroying these older cars. If implemented, the new policy will have a profoundly negative impact on motor vehicle enthusiasts who rely on the availability of old cars and parts to help sustain their hobby. Using taxpayer dollars to scrap old cars as…

PETTY ENTERPRISES Richard Petty drove his first circle track race 51 years ago in 1958. At the time, HOT ROD was still invested in circle track racing, having covered jalopies since the first issue and editorializing NASCAR races during the years when Ray Brock was tech editor. Brock made stock cars seem like hot rods, and at the time, they were. Over the years, NASCAR coverage in HRM dropped off in proportion to the increasing professionalism of the sport, yet one name remained in the hot rodder's household even as the edit pages waned: Richard Petty. His was the only NASCAR stock car racer to ever stand alone on the cover of HOT ROD. Richard Petty, brother Maurice Petty, and cousin Dale Inman all posed in a barnyard scene with…

ROGER MORRISON'S '57 GASSER Often when race cars are tucked away, the speed equipment that made them great grows legs and disappears. That's not the case with this '57 Chevy 210 post sedan found and donated by Roger Morrison to the Wally Parks NHRA Motorsports Museum. Built by Woodrow Wilson Smith and raced in Wichita and Arkansas City, Kansas, by Don Johnson from 1967 to 1971, the '64 vintage 327 is fitted with an Offenhauser cross-ram dual-quad manifold and Mallory ignition, which were in place when Roger found the Tri-Five in Wellington, Kansas, in 2005. Inside, the original Hurst shifter, Sun 10,000-rpm Super Tach, Grant steering wheel, and plastic-sheeted original seats remain intact—so do the scars of battle, including the dents in the hood from a fan scattered during competition.…

“I didn't fish, camp, hunt, or do anything else other than race. Even if it was drizzling outside, I was out at the street races.”—Mike Murillo In the world of big egos and big pay-checks that is professional sports, adding an appendix to your legacy is a hairy endeavor. You could pull a Michael Jordan or a Lance Armstrong and pad an already impressive resume, or you might smack the canvas hard like Sugar Ray. Turn your vacillations into an ESPN soap opera a la Brett Favre, and your adoring fan base could turn against you. Unretire every season like Roger Clemens, and your next “I'm back” speech will be as surprising as Clay Aiken's coming-out-of-the-closet announcement. Formidable risks notwithstanding, Mustang drag racing legend Mike Murillo has returned to competition…

Your tired Chevy small-block's in dire need of a refresh or replacement—but in today's economy, coming up with the dough to remain in the hot rod game can be tough. Recognizing the economic squeeze and belt-tightening that make up today's reality, we at HOT ROD rolled up our collective sleeves to deliver an affordable Chevy 350 that makes nearly 400 hp for about $2,600. We shelled out the cash only in areas important for making power—cylinder heads, intake, exhaust, carburetor, camshaft, and valvetrain—holding back everywhere else with econo, stock replacement-style parts while trusting the small Chevy's legendary foolproof rotating assembly and oil system would pull through and carry the day. As assembled by HOT ROD associate Ed Taylor at McMillan's Speed and Fabrication, our Cheap 350 won't win any beauty…

INSIDE THE OES A LEAN, GREEN SCENE The '09 version of the North American International Auto Show in Detroit was the greenest yet—and probably the leanest in years, too. With the industry facing global meltdown, automakers have been closing plants and slashing production not just in North America but around the world. Things are tough all over, make no mistake. For Cobo Hall, most manufacturers scaled back their efforts while Porsche and Nissan backed out altogether. The usual three-ring marketing circus that is the Detroit auto show was nowhere in sight, as the automakers did their best to project fiscal restraint and environmental responsibility. At General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler, hybrids and EREVs [extended range electric vehicles) dominated the show floor. GM continues to push ahead with the Chevy Volt,…

A broken axle, a rusty rollbar, and a shortsighted thief played key roles in a barn find like no other: the discovery of the sole survivor of three Supercharged Factory Experimental (S/FX) Dodges that launched the Funny Car craze. In 1980, a young hot rodder named Tom Jones heard about a broken, abused '64 Dodge 330 sedan resting 30 miles from his Madison, Wisconsin, home. He also heard vague rumors from local gearheads about the car's distant past as some sort of factory race car, after which it ran e.t. brackets in the Midwest and Canada. From pictures he'd seen of the Dodge Chargers in old magazines, Jones wondered whether this heap's rusted-chrome rollbar could possibly be one that Dragmaster Co. installed. For eight years, his fantasy of finding one…

On-set photographic. Courtesy of NBC Universal Shop photography: Rick Collins, courtesy of the Fast &Furious picture car department In the movie business, everything starts with the script. Once that's in my hands, I can begin to determine what cars the movie will need, how many, where to find them, and what modifications will be necessary to make them perform as needed. And, of course, I can calculate how much it's all going to cost. After reading the script for FF4 (titled, simply, Fast & Furious), it was obvious this would be the grand slam, monster mother of all car movies. It would need more cars and more specialty cars built than any of its predecessors. It was clear that we would need even more than the 200 vehicles assembled for…

“Don’t be afraid; it is just metal—you cannot hurt it.” —Lazze Jansson We've secretly always wanted to be one of those guys who can walk into his shop, spend a few hours with fresh steel, and walk away with a custom panel that actually fits. But there's just no way artistically declined stumblebums like us could ever create on the level of professional builders, right? Master shaper and former machinist Lazze Jansson insisted it just isn't so and that he could prove it if we'd be willing to spend three days at his metal-shaping school. Jansson developed his own English wheel, electric bead roller, and shrinker/ stretchers that are superior to many on the market and put together beginner and advanced classes to teach customers, fabricators, and average Joes his…