Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2021 i Hot Rod

@john.mcgann Last month, I wrote the autopsy report on the small-block Chevy that lived briefly in the engine compartment of Truck Norris, my 1967 C10. It suffered an untimely demise due to operator error (mine) when something got into the carburetor and took out cylinder Number 8. There is no point in rehashing all that here; you can read last month’s issue or look online for an article titled “How to Destroy an Engine with a $6 Part” for all the gory details. If there is a bright side to all this, it is that a replacement engine is ready to drop back into the pickup, and my C10 will be back on the road soon. I purchased a new 350 from BluePrint Engines and got it running on my…

Back in the before times, our hot rodding hobby was the wild west. Yeah, 40 years ago there was an aftermarket, but it didn’t even remotely resemble what you see today. Four decades ago, there weren’t terms like Pro-Touring, restomod, or even the Internet. There were no tubular control arms, and handling, for the most part, was left to Porsches and ’Vettes. You got your parts from brick-and-mortar speed shops and a few chains like Super Shops. But what we did have was Pro Street. Why? Well, because most of the aftermarket for hot rods was focused on drag racing, and guys worked overtime to meld drag race parts to their street cars. This is the story of one such Pro Street Chevy that was iconic in the ’80s SoCal…

Automotive journalist Chuck Vranas has written hundreds of stories about other people’s hot rods. Today, he’s telling the remarkable story of his own 1933 Ford coupe, a long-lost survivor from the pre-War era, resurrected from a half-century slumber and driven in preserved condition from hot rodding’s earliest years.—HRM If the Devil drove a hot rod, it would have to be as nasty as this 1933 Ford five-window coupe. This is a car with a battle-scarred body that tells its story with an attitude, and with the accent of a snarling, hopped-up flathead V8 breathing through straight pipes. It was fate that brought this car and owner together. As a hot rod photographer, I see plenty of wicked hot rods on a regular basis with some of the best stories being…

Formula 1 and American muscle are two automotive genres that don’t usually meet. F1 cars are high-revving, mid-engine toothpicks on wheels, while muscle cars are big V8 coupes with the aerodynamic qualities of a brick. But hey, who cares when you have torque? Despite their lack of similarities, SpeedKore Performance Group decided that Detroit could learn a thing or two from Monaco. Since 2015, SpeedKore has been sending icons of American muscle to finishing school, outfitting their various modern muscle cars with high-performance powertrains, custom-designed frames and, most notably, famous F1 lightweight technology in the form of carbon fiber. Their most recent creation, a 1970 Dodge Charger dubbed Hellraiser, is built entirely of the stuff. It dropped 600 pounds from its original curb weight while gaining about 600 horsepower by…

Roadkill@davidfreiburger Twenty-plus years ago I went on record, via a Car Craft editorial column, with my belief that station wagons are America’s finest automotive institution. If I believe that, then I must conclude that the Chevy and GMC Suburbans are the greatest of all, because they’re nothing but plus-sized wagons. If they weren’t, GM wouldn’t have made ’em as fake woodsides in the ’70s, right? In a world where the glorious station wagon has been kicked to the curb in favor of the ubiquitous minivans and “crossover” SUVs, the Suburban still stands strong. Should I include today’s GMC Yukon XL? I suppose so. It’s mildly entertaining that they call them “XL” for “extra large.” But you may guess that my heart is with the older models. The Suburban Carryall was…

Just a few months ago, David Freiburger penned a rant about loosening the definition of certain styles of cars, particularly Pro Street. Not one to mince words, David defined Pro Street thusly: “A Pro Street car must be drag racing oriented and have wheel tubs under the back end that allow for oversized, very wide tires to be fit under the stock body. That’s fact. As for my opinion, a Pro Street car is typically also stock bodied and ostensibly street driven. When the style originated in the mid to late ’70s, it was inspired by the NHRA drag racing Pro Stock class of the mid ’70s, hence where the “Pro” in Pro Street came from. Scott Sullivan’s Nova that debuted at the 1979 Car Craft Street Machine Nationals is…

When Brad Forester started looking for a car, he had a very narrowly defined set of criteria the car needed to meet. Chief among them, the car had to be a Mopar, and it had to be an A-Body. That was his mission, but as he points out, “I looked at a lot of Darts and Dusters, and every one of them looked like it needed a ton of work. I wasn’t looking for a project car.” His initial desire was to find a nice, solid car that was unmolested and still in factory condition. However, after two years of unsuccessful searching, he had to expand his horizons and consider a restomod or Pro Touring car as a viable alternative. In November 2013, he got a lead from a friend…

Recently, we visited Hot Rods & Hobbies in Signal Hill, California, while they were building a custom firewall for a 1937 Ford sedan. The Ford crate engine that was ready to be installed was not going to fit within the tight confines of the factory engine compartment. The solution was a scratch-built firewall. Sheetmetal fabrication can seem like magic, but it’s really a combination of manual skill and mental problem solving. This firewall project was a series of slow steps, measuring, fabricating, remeasuring, fitting, and refitting. Are you ready to take on the challenge of fabricating a firewall for your car? The piece being built here might be more elaborate than you need, but the procedure will be similar. By watching, you can pick up a few tricks to improve…

In December 1958, Ray Brock, HOT ROD’s technical editor, was in Chevy’s all-new 1959 El Camino for a comparison test with the Ford Ranchero. His enthusiasm for the car/truck hybrid (essentially a Brookwood two-door station wagon with an abbreviated roof and a bed floor over the wagon’s floorpan) obviously got the better of him on this mountain road, as you can barely see daylight between the pavement and the El Camino’s rocker panels. As former editor Drew Hardin pointed out, “Maybe he thought he was at Pikes Peak.” We probably would have done the same in this bomb. While El Caminos could be equipped with any passenger car engine down to the 135-hp Stovebolt Six, Brock’s tester had the hottest engine available: a 348-inch W-series with 11:1 compression, a performance…

The trophy they gave to Don Gira’s 1956 Chevy at the 2020 Grand National Roadster Show said it right on the front: Radical Hardtop/Sedan ’55‐’59. For Don, radical wasn’t always the plan—it’s just where things went with his middle year Tri-Five Chevy. Don is more than a car guy. “I’m addicted to adrenaline,” he told us, and he has always been into any machine that moves under the power of an engine. In addition to his long lifetime list of street cars, he’s raced all kinds of drag cars at all the historic Southern California tracks. His passion goes beyond four wheels and solid ground. He’s raced dirt bikes and drag boats and flown planes. Don spotted the raw material for this project, half covered and parked alongside a house,…

Our classics are great, but let’s be honest, their suspension systems were designed over half a century ago, and since then technology has come a long way. Today’s handling has spoiled us, and we really notice how deficient the factory handling is when we compare it to our modern daily drivers. This is where bolt-on suspension parts come into play, in this case an independent rear suspension (IRS) system. The reason that nearly all modern cars use an IRS is that it’s simply better when compared to a live axle in regard to handling and road manners. In terms of ride comfort and overall driving, it’s superior in dealing with turns and uneven road surfaces. A live axle (sometimes referred to as a solid rear axle or SRA) means that…

Our project 1967 C10, Truck Norris, is getting closer to turning wheels under its own power, and when that time comes, it will be riding on an all-new suspension system from TCI Engineering. More than just a coilover conversion, TCI’s C10 suspension includes tubular A-arms, new spindles, a rack and pinion steering conversion, and a rear three-link design that includes a torque arm and Panhard bar in addition to the long trailing arms that this generation of Chevy pickups is known for. Sources Miller Electric; 920.734.9821; millerwelds.com SEM Products; 866.327.7829; semproducts.com Rust-Oleum; rustoleum.com COMING NEXT MONTH: C10 Engine Trials and Tribulations…