Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2010 i Hot Rod

POWER TOUR® RAMBLINGS Man, it seems like yesterday. But looking at a calendar, it was a whole 15 years ago when we drove cross-country on our first HOT ROD Power Tour®. The first year, we had a total of seven Long Haulers™, not including staff-driven project cars (I took two, the Crusher Camaro and my yellow ’67 Fairlane that you might remember from the cover of the May ’94 issue). It was 100 percent the idea and execution of our magazine editorial staff (me, Freiburger, Drew Hardin, Cole Quinnell, Will Handzel, Jeff Smith, and Gray Baskerville in his famous ’32 roadster), and our stops were literally the hotel parking lots we stayed at. There were no vendors, no rigs, no stage show, no giveaways … none of that. Just a…

REALCUTUPS We’ve already been trampled online for our actions seen on page 94 of this issue. We didn’t get that kind of hate the last few times we chopped cars into little bitty pieces in a quest to prove the obvious, but perhaps that’s because we did it before the Internet really was somebody. Of course, HOT ROD’s first hack-weight-to-find-speed story was the ever-famous “Caddy Hack” in the Feb. ’87 issue. However, a less known and equally irresponsible story ran in the Apr. ’97 issue. “Pontihack”—written by then Feature Editor, now Editor Rob Kinnan—detailed the real-life fantasy of whacking a ’70 Pontiac Bonneville four-door from 6,050 pounds to 3,160 pounds, thereby improving the quarter-mile e.t. and speed from 18.21 seconds at 73.17 mph to 15.17 at 87.87. The 455’s fuel…

“EVERY MODIFICATION WAS WEIGHED AGAINST DRIVEABILITY, AND EVERY AESTHETIC CHANGE WAS WEIGHED AGAINST OVERALL BEAUTY.”—BRUCE ELDER If you were to cut Bruce Elder, he’d probably bleed Ford Blue. A vintage car dealer by profession, he has a special thing for Model A Fords. When he laid out the plans for this ’29 Phaeton, he had two goals in mind: expressing his personal vision of what a hot rod should be, while preserving the Model A’s original essence. Working from Bruce’s concept, Larry Rathburn of the Allegheny Speed Shop in Catawba, Virginia, performed the build, starting with a scratch-built chassis with a 106.5-inch wheelbase. Larry also did the three-piece hood and the rest of the subtle yet extensive fab work, while John Reinhardt performed the bodywork and Jeff Bennett sprayed the…

Holley isn’t just Holley anymore. Holley is actually Holley Performance Products, and the company builds other great speed parts besides its legendary carburetors. The new focus is on components designed to ease engine swaps using GM’s LS-series V-8s. Many of the company’s EFI and exhaust system wares landed on this restored ’67 Chevy C10 after company CEO Tom Tomlinson spotted the truck on eBay and decided he had to drive it on the HOT ROD Power Tour®. He had a crystal-clear vision for the perfect rolling Holley billboard to cruise in while showing off Holley parts. It would look cool, with vintage shop lettering on the doors and kidney bean wheels stuffed inside the stock fenders. It would run hard as well, with a potent 480hp LS3 powerplant made over…

“It’s one of those places that you can’t get to from here,” explains Danny Burrow as he throws my luggage into the bed of his Nissan Frontier parked at Memphis International Airport. My flight didn’t arrive from Detroit until after midnight, and it’s pitch black as we speed south down Route 78. “You couldn’t find it even if I told you where it was,” Danny says as the small pickup passes over into northern Mississippi. “And the people who live around here have no idea—no idea—what George keeps there.” Danny guides the Nissan off Route 78 at an exit that spills out to a McDonalds and a Waffle House—like every other exit in the South. Then it’s back under the highway, past a school, to a serpentine thread around some…

MORE THROTTLE FROM A BOTTLE…

Not long ago, diesel trucks were what you used to tow your hot rod, but that might be changing. Recently, we witnessed an ’08 Ford F-250 with the 6.4L Power Stroke diesel put down some truly amazing dyno numbers. The Ford had a completely stock compound-turbo diesel engine with very minimal modifications. The factory air filter was replaced with a higher-flowing S&B Filters unit, and a 310hp tune from Spartan Diesel Performance was uploaded onto the truck’s computer. For the dyno and the dragstrip, an EGR block-off kit was installed, along with a straight pipe that removes the factory diesel particulate filter [called a DPF-delete). With just the intake, exhaust, and tuner, the big Ford gained a tremendous amount of power and torque, jumping from 290 hp and 525 lb-ft…

Welcome to the Hot Rods section of the mag, where all the car features live. Know of a great ride that should be here? Got killer photos of cars in action along with details about them? Tip us off: email HOTROD@hotrod.com or mail to HOT ROD Hot Rods, 831 S. Douglas St., El Segundo, CA 90245. The germ of this story sprouted when, in the pages of this very magazine, Editors Freiburger and Kinnan threw down big time in their coverage of the ’09 SEMA show in Las Vegas. Eyeballing all the over-the-top show rods holding the carpeting in place on the convention floor, they issued a challenge. To paraphrase, it went something like this: OK, you can build them all shiny and pretty Now let’s see if you can…

“It’s not a rat rod. It’s just a hot rod.”—Brad Roorda Were talking about the biggest craze to hit the gearhead world since Pro Street in the ’80s. It’s had traction for at least 15 years. No one wants to admit it, no one wants to talk about it, and virtually no one can define it. That is, at least no one within the walls of publishing giants or speed-parts empires. “Ignore it and it’ll go away” has failed. But the guys on the streets? They get it. Implicitly. They may hate it, but they get it. More likely, they’ll claim they’ve been into it since way before it went mainstream. The it is rat rodding. And, yeah, no one can really pinpoint what that means; four of our contributing…

Besides continuing his Bonneville adventure, George has at least 10 high-end hot rods under construction at shops around the country. “What I try and do when I build a car is not put anything that somebody can look at and say, ’I don’t really like that,’” he explains. So the one thing all these cars will have in common is that they’ll be tastefully done and feature hundreds of subtle tweaks that elevate them beyond mere cars. Here are a few of George’s upcoming projects. Virtually all of them are due to be completed in the next year or so. ’34 FORD TRUCK • THE HOT ROD GARAGE • DENTON, MARYLAND “I met George at the NSRA swap meet,” explains Ray Bartlett of The Hot Rod Garage. “I had taken…

For many years camshaft technology was limited not by any lack of knowledge on the part of lobe profilers but by valvespring technology that just wasn’t up to stabilizing aggressive lobe designs. But within the last 10 years, spring material and design improvements have evolved that—in conjunction with ever-lighter valvetrains—enable the potential of modern cam lobe profiles and high flowing cylinder heads to be fully realized. Today, we have more spring choices than ever, but that also means it’s easier to go down the wrong path or to very quickly get confused on all the intricacies of installing and setting up valvesprings. To answer the most basic but often misunderstood questions about valvesprings, HOT ROD consulted with a variety of experts, including Billy Godbold (Comp Cams), Joe Sherman (Joe Sherman…

“This has bad idea written all over it.”—Mike Finnegan This idea is so wrong, it’s just right. Pat Ganahl and the crew from HOT ROD laid the foundation for this story way back in 1987 when they turned a behemoth Cadillac Coupe De Ville into Swiss cheese to find out how much quicker it would run at the dragstrip. The story was called “Caddy Hack,” it was published in the Feb. ’87 issue of HRM, and we still get mail about it. Then we ripped off that idea in the Apr. ’97 issue by doing the exact same thing with a big Pontiac, calling it PontiHack. The mayhem and destruction that ensued during both stories obviously struck a chord with our readers, so Freiburger and Kinnan cooked up a similar…

TURBO CAMS How does cam design for a turbocharged engine differ from a cam intended for a normally aspirated engine or a conventional beltdriven supercharger application? How does turbo mounting proximity to the engine influence cam selection? I’ve heard that you can just go ahead and run a near-stock cam with a turbo system and everything should work fine. Phil RosenBrooklyn, NY In normally aspirated (NA) configurations, cam designers use the overlap region to allow the exhaust-pulse, reflected-wave signal to draw in the intake charge. This starts flow even before the piston motion down the bore provides the pressure drop and draw to move the inlet charge. But on any forced-induction application, boost pressure helps drive the inlet charge into the chamber as soon as the intake valve opens. To…

CAN THEY OUTLAW HOT RODDING? Your current editor was just entering college when the Oct. ’84 issue hit his mailbox (with the cover image seen below), and it nearly made him decide to sign up as a political science major. Pat Ganahl’s story (“Can They Outlaw Hot Rodding?”) told of the coming doom and gloom of the government’s stance on pollution and emissions as it related to our beloved cars and spoke of the nightmarish smog checks and inspections that have now become a way of life. We adapted, of course, but this same situation is coming back with a vengeance, and this time the greed and political grandstanding are on a much higher level. Don’t miss next month’s issue when we visit this subject again and tell you how…

MOPAR LAUNCHES A CHALLENGER Chrysler Group and its Mopar brand have teamed up to offer a limited-edition ’11 Challenger. The special features include a black-chrome grille surround, a functional ’70 T/A-style hood with muscle car-era hoodpins, and forged, gloss-black, 20-inch wheels. Katzkin leather seats, a custom leather-wrapped steering wheel with color-keyed stitching, a Mopar shift handle, and a serialized dash plaque dress up the interior, while Mopar logos and graphics are tastefully slathered inside and out. The 5.7L Hemi V-8 engine gets a cold-air intake and a unique engine cover, and the car gets front and rear strut braces. Each collector package includes a custom car cover, a build certificate, a limited-edition sketch signed by Chrysler Group Design Chief Mark Trostle, and a book documenting the build. Manufacturer’s suggested retail…

Kurt Busch races professionally 38 weekends a year stretching from February through November. And that doesn’t count weekends spent testing and all the other commitments required of a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series driver. So what does he do to get away from it all during the rare downtime he has available? He goes drag racing. The genesis of this 8-second ’72 Challenger actually begins with a Viper, a Porsche, and a Jeep Grand Cherokee. “When zMax Dragway opened, they had a NASCAR challenge night in which we could bring anything we wanted and go play,” explains Jesse Walker, Busch’s project manager at Kurt Busch Inc. and the car’s lead builder. “We had a blast, but by the end of the night the Viper and the GT2 Porsche were dead in…

Isn’t it funny how the most interesting, cars are built by some of the most interesting people? Until he retired in 2008, Dennis Weglarz was a GM engineer with a hand in many of the company’s top racing programs, ineluding the Indy Racing League effort and the Chevrolet Midget engine. And until a corporate management edict in the late ’80s put an end to his personal on-track involvement, he was a hard-core racer himself. Back in 1981, Dennis and his partner, the late John Truer, built this Camaro this very Camaro to race in IMSA. ’The car, built strictly on the side with no factory help, was campaigned in Kelly American Challenge events in 1982, 1983, and 1984, when it was parked in favor of a series of newer, Olds-skinned…

The newest thing in drag racing is the oldest thing in drag racing, literally. More than six decades since dry lakes competitors and postwar street racers discovered the illicit pleasures of abandoned military airfields, contemporary hot rodders are invading remote bases that were hastily built in the early ’40s to train World War II pilots, then emptied even quicker once hostilities ceased. Ironically, many of the plush, purpose-built supertracks of the ’60s and ’70s that siphoned support away from these old airstrips have themselves either faded into history or been replaced by multiuse motorplexes. Racers and fans either unwilling or unable to play the national event game are consequently back to the square one of their ancestors, seeking affordable fun close to town. “ No state has more ghost tracks…

NHRA Pro Stock racing is the end-all, be-all class for flexing the might of a bigblock race engine. With no power-adders allowed, this is the class in which a huge budget, massive engineering efforts, and ingenuity rule the roost and the guy with the most power has a very real advantage over the competition. That competition has led to significant advances in induction technology and power production from 500ci engines over the years. Our best guess puts the horsepower output of the top engines in the class near the 1,450hp mark at 10,600 rpm, and some of the cylinder head chamber and port design information that makes it possible has been trickling down to sportsman racers in the last few years. Thankfully, the proliferation of aftermarket cylinder head manufacturers has…

Even on a relatively mild 406ci small-block Chevy with a hydraulic roller cam, a spring incorporating the latest technology can make a big difference. Westech Performance tested a traditional Comp Cams dual spring with damper (PN 954) against one of Comp’s new single beehive springs (PN 26918). The 954 developed 210 pounds on the seat and 523 pounds open, compared with the 26918’s 130/318-pound specs. Both springs were installed with titanium retainers and locks, yet the beehive combination was still 52 grams lighter. If the engine’s steel valves had been replaced with titanium valves instead, the weight savings would have been just 40 grams. Overall peak output was virtually the same: 418.4 lb-ft for the 954 versus 416.9 lb-ft for the 26918, both at 4,800 rpm; and 418.2 hp versus…

COMPLETE CAMARO CHASSIS Art Morrison 253/922-7188 ArtMorrison.com Art Morrison used to be all about drag racing, but in the last few years, the company has become one of the biggest players in the handling arena with its GT-Sport complete chassis kits. The latest is a chassis for the ’67 to ’69 Camaro. It uses C6 Corvette front suspension and a choice of a triangulated four-bar or three-link rear suspension. There are adjustable coilovers and sway bars included. With just a little fabrication, you drop the stock Camaro body over the chassis. Engine mounts fit big and small-block Chevys as well as LS-series, and the rearend is a Ford 9-inch. Price: Starting from $10,495.00 CHRYSLER S X-BOLT FLEXPLATE TCI Automotive 888/776-9824 TCIAuto.com Engineers at TCI have developed a high-performance flexplate for…

GREAT GIVEAWAY Watch HOT ROD TV on Speed in September each Saturday morning at 10 a.m. Eastern, 9 a.m. Central, 8 a.m. Mountain, and 7 a.m. Pacific as we bring you episodes including the buildup of So-Cal Speed Shop’s Green Rod and the Keystone Light Camaro. Also, revisit the antics of the HOT ROD staff at SEMA, check out John Force’s holiday event, and see the artistic efforts of Mike Lavalle and Killer Paint. You can see previews of all the HOT ROD TV episodes at HOTROD.com/tv and get updates on our schedule of episodes on Speed. DRAG WEEK™ COVERAGE Be sure to check in at HOTROD.com during the week of September 13 as we present real-time coverage of the ’10 HOT ROD Drag Week™ presented by Gear Vendors. Get…