Innholdsfortegnelse for January 2014 i Hot Rod

Sixty-six years ago, a car guy named Robert E. Petersen set the choke and cranked over the starter on an idea for a magazine that became an automotive icon. You’re holding his legacy in your hands right now. HOT ROD is the epicenter for enthusiasts like you and me, and thanks to Mr. Petersen’s vision this eternal brand formed the foundation of our common passion. HOT ROD has made many of us who we are today—and it’s paved the way for this reader to become your magazine’s new editor-in-chief. My name is David Kennedy, and I am a product of HOT ROD. Much of my life’s work has been forged from its teachings. I think about cars and engines all the time. I’m a built-not-bought guy, I own more vehicles…

It won’t replace the car any time soon, but if we had to choose the next evolution of hybrid transportation, we’d want it to be this carbon-fiber hovercraft. Definitely cooler than a Prius, this sports-car-inspired machine was built as prototype for a limited-production run of hybrid hovercrafts. Builders Michael Mercier and Chris Jones (Mercier-Jones.com) believe it to be the future—and we got to drive it. Built on a tight budget, Michael says he’s proud the team kept the cost less than $50,000. Except for the body, which is carbon fiber, the hovercraft was constructed primarily from plywood and thin-sheet aluminum. The main power source is a 38hp Kohler engine that drives a single rear-mounted fan and two DC generators that charge a bank of lithium-ion batteries to power two front…

Fifty years ago, President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed In Dallas, Texas, while riding in a ’61 Lincoln Continental limousine, code-named X-100. This infamous car is the center stage for one of American history’s biggest conspiracy theories, and images of the car were burned into our collective memories by the film Abraham Zapruder shot on that fateful November 22 day. Though the car was the literally torn apart by the Warren Commission investigation in 1964, the vehicle was not destroyed nor sealed up and hidden away in some evidence archive—on the contrary, it was actually rebuilt by Hess & Eisenhardt Company in Rossmoyne, Ohio. The car was upfitted with a new armored roof structure, updated with ’64 sheetmetal, and put back in service for use by Presidents Johnson,…

An avid HOT ROD reader from Indiana wrote to say he had a few interesting Camaros in a barn, so I drove to see the treasures in hibernation. I went through a handful of thunderstorms across the plains, but the payoff came quickly when I was shown a factory four-speed ’67 Camaro SS350 convertible. The owner had purchased the car in the early ’90s, and it only needed new quarters, so he had them installed and began some bodywork. But he got distracted and abandoned the project as it sits now, stripped, with no drivetrain or front clip. The second Camaro was boxed in by a balcony built over and around it for more storage in tight confines. This one was a ’68 RS/SS350 that had been passed up by…

The uniqueness of this ’34 coupe goes beyond what you see, and there’s a lot of unique to see. It was built as few cars can be—with the builder’s single vision and unlimited funds. The ideal project conditions to be sure, which result in a spectacular build. When Galpin Ford’s Dave Shuten decided to groove with his ’34 Ford five-window coupe, he picked a ’60s-show-car-on-steroids theme as his guiding aesthetic. It’s about an explosion of color and chrome, thin white sidewalls and white diamond pleats. It’s lace paint and metalfake. Less may be more, but in the ’60s show-car vernacular more was never enough. “In the ’60s with show cars, it was all about the chrome,” Shuten says. Shuten’s show car began as a Midwest drag-race refugee with…

HOTROD.COM/Mike-Finnegan Next Month: Weld In New Floors Contacts B1 RACING; Santa Ana, California; 949.294.1394; B1Racing.net EDElBROCK llC; Torrance, California; 310.781.2222; Edelbrock.com…

When people hear I like the opposite is true. One must be terrible at math to start a project, or at least only good at project-car math. In project-car math, actual dollars fall prey to theoretical horsepower nightmare and the aftermarket’s salvation. Project-car math is when you decide that a Sixth gear is worth $600 over just five, even though you barely even get out of Third on most of your drives. It’s when carbon-fiber beckons even though you’re going to paint it and you don’t race. Project-car math is responsible for the decision to go with the coated big-tube headers, the 68-way adjustable shocks, and anything chromed in the engine bay. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not dissing any of those things—well, maybe the chromey bits, but the rest…

Malcolm Dunk has owned his ’65 El Camino for years. It’s overheated for years. And he’s torn his hair out trying to fix it for years. The present combo sports a mild, 9.5:1-compression, 0.030-over, 350 small-block with an RV cam, an Edelbrock 600-cfm Performer carb on a Performer intake, a Performance Distributor large-cap DUI spark-sorter, and small-tube headers. A swapped-in 700-R4 automatic overdrive transfers the torque back to a 3.73:1-geared 10-bolt rearend. Up front, V-belts spin a Sanden air conditioning (A/C) compressor, a generic “long-nose” iron water pump, and a power-steering pump. Like many old cars, the pulleys and brackets are a smorgasbord of wrecking yard and custom after-market brackets of unknown origin. Still, Dunk’s four-core desert cooler radiator, beltdriven flex-fan, coolant-recovery tank, external auto trans cooler, and…

I'm not a people person; I'm a car person. I'm characteristically unmoved by warm and fuzzy stories of hot rods being built for fundraisers, tributes, or charity cases, if the car itself isn't a stand-out or doesn't have a race victory attached. As a magazine guy, I've always been in the position of selling the car to the masses, not the love story. Yet last week, I witnessed something that softened me to the human-interest side of things. It started with a deal Mike Finnegan put together for our Roadkill show. Facebook-friend Jim Norman told Finnegan about a guy who'd purchased a '50-ish Mercury custom, sight unseen, and sent it to Gambino Kustoms in San Jose, California. When Alex Gambino saw the sight, it was fairly ghastly. Te top had…

The wild and wooly Top Eliminator and Junior Stock classes of the early ’60s made for some of the drag racing’s craziest competition. Creative rule bending, questionable “factory” car/engine combos, and oddball vehicles used for these not-so-stock, entry-level, stock-car classes only added to the controversy. The racers tended to be the slide-ruler and pocket-protector bunch that preferred using loopholes and rules vagaries to gain an edge as opposed to nitro and slipper clutches. Winner and runner-up disqualifications for cheating were common. Te Top Eliminator and Junior Stock classes were formed when Super/Stock, AA/Stock, and A/Stock Automatic were grouped into the new class of Top Stock Eliminator. Everything from B/Stock down was put into the Junior Stock category. Each letter class was determined by a certain power-to-weight ratio. Grumpy Jenkins and…

Get past the fact that Jim DeLozier might seem somewhat nuts to you when you hear about his project vehicle. That’s par for the course when someone’s planning for doomsday. But will he be the one having the last laugh—and be the last man standing—thanks to his Survivor Truck? Jim took possession of a medium-duty ’80 Chevy C70—an environmental drill rig in pretty heinous shape—and intended for it to be a daily driver but soon realized that “to sustain a life for an extended period of time, I had to go with a bigger vehicle.” Turning the C70 into the 13-ton Survivor Truck became that bigger vehicle. Jim works for an engineering company, designs gun parts and medical devices, is a certified weapons manufacturer and firearms instructor, and also an…

Since 2005, HOT ROD’ Drag Week™ event has established the Fastest Street Car in America. Most Americans feel the event’s drive-race-drive challenge proves who has the fastest street car in the world, although the rest of the world would have to travel to the United States to prove otherwise. Meanwhile, across the pond, U.K. resident Andy Frost has not-so-quietly been putting up numbers in his Pro Mod Vauxhall at Santa Pod Raceway that eclipse the e.t.’s laid down by Drag Week™ heroes like Larry Larson, Jeff Lutz, Joe Barry, and Drag Week™ ’13 winner Tom Bailey. Bailey was the first guy to run a 6-second pass at every track during Drag Week™ ’13 and went as quick as 6.70 in the quarter-mile. Frost has run 6.40s in a car he’s…

“I wasn’t planning on building a custom, I wanted an original Corvette, but I couldn’t afford it. I got this and kept messing with it.” “This” is a ’65 Corvette that David Cohen has owned for 41 years, and we’d just spent the day blowing grapes of the vines of Napa Valley in it, all the while admiring the refection of California’s wine country in the Vette’s polished BDS blower. When we first saw David’s car at the HOT ROD Homecoming, we figured it was a dilapidated barn find—some neglected, old custom dragged out from under a tarp and stuck on a trailer to make it to our event before going back in a garage for another 20 years. Ten he turned the key, fired it on the…

We are living in the golden age of tire technology. Today, you can outfit your car in street-legal rubber that would make Dan Gurney jealous, and upgraded suspension and braking components mean that classic-car owners can take advantage of all that black magic. Even better, SCCA, NASA, Optima, and Goodguys have autocross and road course events all over the country, so you can test out your new tires in full-on competition. As is always the problem when we have an excess of great choices, the glut of street-legal performance tires can make choosing new rollers somewhat intimidating. Is there really any difference between the top brands? To find out, we headed to Tire Rack in South Bend, Indiana, where pro driver and tire-tech Woody Rogers helped us test…

HOT ROD has a long history of documenting boats going fast on liquid racetracks, so we weren’t surprised to find this dual-blower, twin-turbo engine between the stringers of a 21-foot Schiada River Cruiser. As the son of a military man, Alexi Sahagian learned a lot about compound-supercharged engines from his dad who worked with Detroit Diesels during World War II. That knowledge was passed on to Alexi, who made a clay model of this quad-blown beast when he was just a kid. Decades later, Alexi’s shop, Boostpower USA Marine, brought his billet-aluminum vision to life by engineering and machining many of the parts used to assemble this 2,400hp engine. Boostpower’s clientele routinely requests reliable, supercharged engines to push large offshore-style powerboats across Big Blue at speeds that would…

It may seem weird in today’s austere era, but General Motor’s Buick, Chevrolet, Oldsmobile, and Pontiac divisions once all produced unique 350 engine designs. Virtually no parts interchange (except Buick/Olds/Pontiac bell-housings). Even more confusing, by the mid ’70s GM was swapping 350s among divisions. Here’s some basic visual ID cues for tellin’ ’em apart. “LH” (left-hand) and “RH” (right-hand) are as if sitting in the passenger compartment, facing forward. Buick: Front-mount distributor with LH offset, tilted 30 degrees into timing cover; 6-bolt valve-covers; aluminum timing chain cover with oil pump; LH fuel pump mount; RH starter mount. Chevy: Rear-mount distributor goes through the intake manifold, four-bolt valve covers (perimeter bolts through ’85, center bolts ’86-and-up), RH fuel-pump mount, RH starter mount Olds: Rear-mount distributor goes into block (slightly offset to…

Q: In an earlier Pit Stop, Ryan Walker asked where he could get a serpentine beltdrive system for a Pontiac 400 (“‘Real’ Pontiac V8 Serpentine Drive,” Aug. ’13). I’m working on two Olds projects: One is a ’37 Coupe with a ’70 Olds 350 and the other a COE hauler truck with a ’70 Olds 455. Olds engines look real close to a Pontiac, and I think some of the brackets mentioned in the earlier column might interchange with some mods. I’m not afraid to modify, as most of my parts are scratch-built anyway. What is the A/C (air conditioning) bracket in the photo off of, and where can I get one? What else might interchange? A: The Olds and Pontiac V8 engines are completely different designs. Some of the…

SEND YOUR PHOTOS To be included in Scene by Readers, send low-rez photos and some information about them to HOTROD@HotRod.com. If we elect to use your photo, we will email back with instructions on how to send us a high-rez photo for publication.…

Want to share your car with the whole world? Send photos and info to HOTROD@HOTROD.COM. Robert Hayden //Pittsfield, Maryland Bob said after he read hot rod he decided to paint flames on his ’71 mGB in hopes that would make it faster. Clyde & Sherry Davis //Benton, Arkansas this ’56 nomad is painted in Victory red and has a custom interior and a blown 350. Before clyde began driving it, he did a frame-of restoration. David & Trisha Akehurst //Rosedale, B.C., Canada a chevy 350ci small-block powers this ’66 chevy. It stops quickly, thanks to four-wheel-disc brakes, and does great burnouts. Ron Green //Centennial, Colorado Ron built this ’33 Ford two years ago. It’s an original steel-body car powered by a 550hp turn Key Engine Supply LS3. Benny Olson //Calera,…

Let’s see: no radiator, no water pump, a tall-deck big-block, and twin 88mm turbos for a grille; come on—there’s no way this car can be driven on the street. But, builder Ed Umland swears owner Rich Feicheer drives this ’34 Ford on a regular basis. Seriously? Seriously. You’re right to be skeptical. We’ve been wrong about Ed and his crazy talk before, like when we featured his twin-turbo ’37 Ford in “Couperageous” (Mar. ’13). Back then, he told us his 1,200hp coupe could run the quarter-mile in the 9s with seamless street sessions. We called B.S. But, he proved us wrong at HOT ROD’s first Flog Test, so perhaps we should look into his latest proclamations further. Despite appearances, Feicheer’s ’34 Ford coupe does have a radiator—it’s tucked into…

Presented by Co-Sponsored by How’s this for perspective? In the final round of the ’67 NHRA Nationals, a very shaggy Don Garlits idled at the starting line in his front-engine Top Fuel dragster. Earlier in the year he had pledged to stop shaving until he made his first 6-second pass, and rumor has it that Wally Parks wasn’t happy that one of the sport’s figureheads was looking like a beatnik. Other Top Fuel drivers had been in the 6s earlier, notably Don Johnson, Don Prudhomme, and nine other drag racers at the Nationals—not all of them named Don. We checked. Garlits had made it all the way to the final round and still his 6-second pass eluded him. For the last race of the event, he lined up against…

Sibling rivalry isn’t all pulled hair and dinnertime sulking. It’s a good thing, too, since that sort of behavior is really unseemly in men over 60. Instead, Roger Jetter and his brother Dan have the good kind of sibling rivalry: the kind that results in several street-driven custom Caddys, all built in Roger’s garage. This is the story of one of those cars, Roger’s ’55 Coupe de Ville. HOTROD.COM/Elana-Scherr GOT PICS? If you’ve built or restored your car and have documented it in pictures every step of the way, we might be able to use your story in HOT ROD. Contact us to find out. Mail: HOT ROD Start To Finish, 831 S. Douglas St., El Segundo, CA 90245. Email: HOTROD@HotRod.com.…

I was talking with Carlos Lago, Jonny Lieberman, and Angus Mackenzie of Motor Trend about the ’13 Porsche Cayman S, which is a mid-engine $101,000 sports car with 325 hp and 272 lb-ft of torque beneath its roof. It weighs a little more than 3,100 pounds, will rip from 0 to 60 in 4.2 seconds and will blitz the quarter in about 12.2 seconds. They were curious what I thought of its price-to-power ratio, and at first, I thought it was ridiculous. More than $100 grand for a car with a measly 2hp advantage over a ’13 Camaro V6? That’s nuts, even if the Camaro can’t touch the Porsche’s acceleration numbers. The Cayman has an optional $7,000 audio system and a few other options that add to its over-the-top price…

Tim Reed, or rather Tim Reed’s ’79 Pinto, is quite famous. Ever since he put the hatchback into the 7s at Drag Week™ in 2012, using a 408ci LS engine, twin Precision turbos, and a 100hp shot of nitrous (which yielded a Second Place finish in the Super Street Power-Adder class), Tim and his ride have been going places. After Drag Week™, Tim qualified the Pinto in the No. 2 slot of a 28-car field at a True Street event with a broken transmission, then managed to runner-up after changing head gaskets because the LS started using a bit of water. An invite to the Houston NMCA event a few weeks later put Tim in the lane next to street car heavy-hitters like Larry Larson and Joe Barry, where the…

Inflate Your Tire, Find the Leak Penray // 800.323.6329 // Penray.com It stinks getting a flat tire. Penray has a solution to make that crummy experience a little more tolerable. The Penray Plus Tire Fix Plus is an emergency tire inflator that will keep you of the side of the road and get you to a garage quickly. What makes this inflator special is the Leak Detective, a special formula that helps highlight the location of the leak with a florescent mark. The Tire Fix Plus is available in 12-, 16-, and 22-ounce cans, with or without hoses. Price: 12-ounce: $6.49; 22-ounce: $7.99 Smash-Car Movies Are Back Universal Studios Entertainment UniversalStudiosEntertainment.com In the last few years we’ve seen a resurgence of good ole’ fashion smash-up car movies, and we love…