Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2005 i Hot Rod

BARN-BOUND CHEVY This is my ’51 Chevy DeLuxe Fleetline. It is not a rare car but the sentimental value is huge. My grandma gave me this car before she passed away a few years ago and it was originally her father’s car (my great grandfather!). I am now the fourth generation to own this car, and a lot of good stories come with it—like when my aunts were little girls on their way to a birthday party and hit a big bump that sent the cake flying. What makes it cool to me is that my Grandpa used it to pull wagons around on the farm until 1973 when he bought his first pickup truck. Because it was her father’s car, my Grandma insisted they not take it to the…

SVT UGHTNING GETS CANNED After teasing us with a blown 5.4L, 500-plus-horsepower concept [above and right), Ford SVT has dropped the axe on the next-generation Lightning. Apparently someone at Dearborn doesn’t mind that the Dodge SRT-10 sits on the throne where the Lightning used to be. The PR spin is that the Lightning hasn’t been killed, just postponed, as there is a possibility it will return in 2008 or later. Additionally, rumor has it that the death of the Lightning puts the future of the Mustang Cobra in jeopardy, as the two vehicles were to share engine components, and the Mustang alone may not pay off the expense of putting unique parts into production. So, sadly, the SVT vehicle count for 2005 is zero. —STEPHEN KIM “It’s a business decision”—SVT’s…

MOTDRSPORT OF THE MONTH AMERICAN LE MANS SERIES RACING IN THREE WORDS: Who needs France? THE GIST: Back in 1998, business-sawy entrepreneur Dr. Don Panoz held a miniature version of the 24 Hours of Le Mans at Road Atlanta appropriately dubbed the Petit Le Mans. From the overwhelming success of that event and the more than 40,000 spectators it drew, Panoz founded the American Le Mans Series the following year to promote multi-class sports-car racing with rules and classes modeled after the famed French event. Today, the series features entries from both factory and privateer racing teams and attracts some of the top road racers in the world. Most of the 10 races are run throughout the United States and Canada in a sprint-style format spanning 2 hours and 45…

One need look no further than Ford’s ’05 GT to see the state of the Mustang union. Its sculptured flanks reflect its heritage, while under-skin engineering has fortified the car with the latest technologies you can buy for twenty-five large. Borrowing from five decades of excellence (save for a few years of misery in the ’70s), the Ford faithful have the luxury of pirating the best from their past to create a promising new future. Perhaps Jim Major knew this all along. Or, maybe his vision of the perfect Mustang yielded exactly the same marriage that the Ford marketing department predicted, albeit at 10 times the price. Whatever the case may be, the final product is a stunning example of subtle refinement of the timeless ’64-’66 Mustang coupe body smashed…

What kid didn’t want a little red racing car when he was growing up? I sure did, and it’s only taken me 37 years to get the fullsize version. Beginning here and continuing for the next few months, I’ll tell the story of my race car buildup—an ’84 Mustang GT built to run in the National Auto Sports Association’s Camaro-Mustang Challenge series—and use it to test some products that should be of interest even if you’re not a road-race guy. As this is written, the car is 99 percent finished, and it’s been on the track several times, but it’s yet to actually be christened as a race car. I sure have learned a lot in the 13 months leading up to this point, including the fact that it took…

Old Corvettes were stout under die hood—who can forget the awesome Tri-power big-blocks, 12.5:1 L88s, or 454 torque-monsters? In their day, the old Vettes were a force to be reckoned with on the road course, but the drags were a different story; the Vette was literally a pain in the rear. Excessive camber changes meant that big power and even minimal traction led to vicious wheelhop, soon followed by six broken U-joints and pieces of halfshafts littering the starting line. If the halfshafts somehow survived, the pint-size 8.2-inch ring gear was more apt to lunch than launch. And even if you could make all those parts live, the Vette IRS was still persona non grata at the drags for 10.99-and-quicker cars because there was nothing to contain the drive axles…

Bigger, stronger, faster, better: We have the technology, more than ever before, to build kick-butt cars. But a bunch of choices comes with confusion on which combination of parts is right. That’s where we come in. If you have a hot rodding problem, a parts combo conundrum, or even a theory question, I’ll try to answer it in Pit Stop. You can also send quality digital photos of the car, engine, or part you’re having trouble with (300 dpi at 4x4 inches or larger), and we may publish them. When e-mailing, don’t forget to include “Pit Stop” in the subject line, as well as your real full name, hometown, or military unit, base, or ship in the message. — MARLAN DAVIS STATIC-TIME DISTRIBUTOR lam 1? and have been getting parts…

THE HALF GAINER Chuck Moore of Danville, California, began drag racing just four years ago but has already run as quick as 6.92 and as fast as 199 mph in his ’48 Anglia with a 433ci Bad Brad Hemi. Perhaps his most memorable seat time came at the recent NHRA California Hot Rod Reunion at Famosa Raceway in Bakersfield, California, when the English Ford got loose and went for the wrong side of the road. Chuck’s overcorrection sent the AA/Gasser onto one or two wheels fora hundred feet before he gathered it back up.…

Letters this month have been coming in batches. Plenty of guys took the time to respond to our request for input on “Overkill” in Nov. ’04 about the eight-turbo ’57 Chevy. For others the show-car quandary of “The Conundrum” in Dec. ’04 touched a nerve. And since readers are always good at keeping us on our toes, many pointed out a correction to the Where It All Began column in the December issue. We were also buried in kudos for November’s “If We Made the Rules,” but check out next month when we put those all together. Finally, it always impresses us how a story like November’s “20 Speed Parts That Changed the World” can bring big names out of the woodwork. HOT ROD has more readers than we’ve had…

MAYBE I’M JUST BEING OPTIMISTIC I am 19 years old and have a question for Ford, Chevy, and DaimlerChrysler. Where are the affordable cars with V-8s (as at least an option] for my generation? Dodge just came out with the Magnum, but it starts at $26,000 for a V-6! You can’t get the RT version for under $30,000. Ford, on the other hand, did something right with the new Mustang. I love the look of it, but from what I can gather, the V-8 version is going to cost somewhere in the $26,000 range—better than the Flemi Magnum RT, but still out of reach for my generation. Chevy and Pontiac don’t even have a rear-drive performance V-8 car in the $23,000 to $30,000 range. Why don’t Ford and Dodge offer…

JEFF SMITH NAMED MPMC MEDIA PERSON OF THE YEAR Former HOT ROD Editor Jeff Smith was honored by the SEMA Motor-sports Parts Manufacturers Council (MPMC) with its Media Person of the Year award at the 2004 SEMA Show. The MPMC press release said, “Throughout his long career, Smith has been a strong supporter of the motorsports industry and has been instrumental in promoting new products to thousands of enthusiasts.” Smith has been a staple at Petersen-cum-Primedia since 1979, when he started as a junior staffer on Car Craft. He soon moved up to editor of that magazine, then got the HOT ROD editor’s job in 1987. Smith then moved on to revitalize Chevy High Performance before jumping back to Car Craft two years ago. He’s the guy who gave both…

Who are we to say what’s hot and what’s not? Well, we’d like to think the HOT ROD staff has its finger on the pulse of hot rodding and the automotive world in general, but taste and passion are such personal things that no tour or five people can accurately say what is “hot” and have everyone agree. That’s impossible. What we do have at our disposal, however, is access to the movers and shakers (as well as the posers and wannabes) in the automotive industry, and that gives us the unique ability to ferret out what is happening and what looks to be on the not-so-distant horizon. We also spent an inordinate amount of time at the 2004 SEMA Show, where trends of all types are on blatant display,…

The ’60s Gasser embodies the classic American formula for drag racing success—stuff way too much V-8 into a light body, stand on the gas, and try to keep the thing reasonably straight for at least 1,320 feet. During the ’60s Gasser Wars, blowers were added to the formula, and the legend of the Gasser was chiseled into the chronicles of drag racing history. Thanks to the East Coast Gassers, that legend lives on. Sporting no power whatsoever in stock form, the Willys, Fiats, Anglias, and Kaisers were a study in contradiction as they clicked off 9-second passes in the quarter. As popularity of the class grew, speed pioneers such as Ed Iskenderian and Jack Engle became embroiled in published accounts of drag racing battles, with reports trumpeting the latest triumph…

No matter how crippling your fear of EFI, you’d be a chump to deny the merits of GM’s all-aluminum Gen III V-8s. These things make crazy power without even trying, and now that there are two new carbureted intakes available for them, you owe it to your dignity as a horsepower freak to step into the modern era even if it takes a throwback induction setup to get you there. At least that’s how we felt, so we rounded up Edel-brock’s new dual-plane intake and ignition combo and GM Performance Parts’ fresh single-plane manifold and fed them to a GMPP LS6 crate engine. Meanwhile, we had a camshaft trick up our sleeves that proved that knuckle-dragging hot rodding still applies to sophisticated modern V-8s. THE SETUP One great thing about…

There’s a new EFI system on the scene that combines the dead-solid reliability of the Ford Mustang 5.0 electronic engine controller (EEC), a lightly modified carburetor intake manifold, and a twist of LSI to deliver excellent driveability, extreme horsepower potential and improved fuel economy. And it hides in plain sight under the carburetor-type air cleaner of your choice. It’s called the MASS-Flo EFI system by Quality Roadsters. As the manufacturer’s name suggests, the MASS-Flo system was designed for use on fiberglass Cobra replicas whose owners want the hassle-free reliability of 5.0 Mustang power but don’t want the buzz-killing looks of the Mustang’s EFI intake plenum when the front-hinged bonnet is raised. QR founder, Chris Richards, figured out what it would take to stuff all the benefits of the Ford-based EFI…

MCQUEEN, EKINS & THE BOOT In this issue you’ll find a page about the upcoming sport of competitive rockcrawling and its correlation to early dry-lakes hot rodding. We’ll get letters complaining that off-road rigs are not hot rods, but the rod-ding enthusiasts during the early days of off-road racing saw it differently. HOT ROD sponsored some of the first sanctioned Baja racers, and rodders like Ray Brock and lames Gamer also hit the dirt. Steve McQueen’s love of racing—and the headaches his hobby caused studio insurance people—weren’t limited to Le Mans or airborne stints on the streets of San Francisco. In June 1968, McQueen and his pal Bud Ekins drove George Hurst’s (of shifter fame) Baja Boot in NORRA’s ultra-rugged Stardust 7/11 off-road race. The Boot didn’t finish, notching a…

STEVE’S DOES A DODGE Steve’s Auto Restorations in Portland, Oregon, is in the final stages of body-metal shaping on this ’33 Dodge pickup. The rolled fender edges, hood sides, and running boards have yet to be formed, but the chassis is complete and the body lines are done. Because there were so many alterations to the stock lines, all the body panels were formed from scratch—they didn’t cut up an original truck. The engine is a 700-horse blown and injected 392 Hemi, and the truck will have the requisite big Baers and 20s in the rear. It should be done by this spring.—ROB KINNAN STROPE’S NOVAZ/28 Now that Hammer, the ’70 Road Runner built by Steve Strope’s Pure Vision Design, is finished and done with its SEMA show debut, Strope…

If you to try and pinpoint the birth of the wild Pro Modified class, it would probably be the ’89 IHRA Finals at Atco Raceway in New Jersey, where a new, heads-up “Quick 16” class I was created for the Top Sportsman cars. But some drag racing historians look back to an IHRA national event at South Carolina’s Darlington Dragway in 1986. That’s when Bill Kuhlmann, a then-unknown Outlaw Pro Stock racer from Missouri, turned the drag racing world upside down with a 7.21 -at-204.54-mph pass, the first 200-mph lap in a race car with working doors. That event saw the quickest and fastest Pro Stock, Outlaw Pro Stock, ’lop Sportsman, and street racers from both coasts show up at Darlington with the express intent of breaking the 200-mph barrier…

Walking through Jay Leno’s shop leaves you with one resounding thought: “Man, did I ever enter the wrong line of work.” Million-dollar Bugattis and Duesenbergs fill one shop, while across the alley and through another unassuming door are two more cavernous rooms holding even more high-dollar four-wheeled cargo, about a hundred bikes, and God knows how many toys, collectibles, oil cans, and other automotive memorabilia. You know it’s bad when the cars you don’t even pay attention to are two perfect Hemi cars, a ’70 Challenger and a ’66 Coronet stuck over in the corner. The entertainment industry pays well, indeed. But unlike most other show biz “collectors,” Leno actually drives his stuff, hard and often. And he’s constandy adding to the mix, with both mainstream and off-the-wall vehicles. The…

Location: Throttlers’ Garage HOT ROD BUILDS A BUDGET RACE CAR PG.84 During his last summer as a Southern Californian, Matt King made a decision to go road racing on the cheap. So he developed a plan, found a junkyard ’83 Mustang, and immediately started tearing into it. Right before he left for his new digs in cold, snowy Michigan, Matt actually got some track time in the car and managed to not only not kill himself, but not overly embarrass HOT ROD either. THE GEN III ENGINE TEST YOU DIDN’T EXPECT PG.92 The new Gen III LSI/6 engines are amazing models of power and efficiency. But what happens when you ditch the fancy electronic fuel injection and make it suck through a good old-fashioned carburetor? Power, that’s what. Your mileage…

’73-’77 A-BODY CONTROLARMS Global West 877/470-2975 www.globalwestsuspension.com The suspension gurus at Global West have developed a set of tubular upper and lower control arms for ’73-’77 GM A-bodies. The upper arms are built from l⅝-inch DOM tubing with an integrated crossbrace. The lower arms feature l⅝-inch tubing, sway-bar end-link provisions, and a rotating coil-spring cushion for precise spring indexing. Along with additional caster for improved straight-line stability, the arms also alter the camber curve resulting in a big contact patch throughout the entire suspension travel. CADILLAC CYLINDER HEADS Bulldog Performance 317/786-9780 www.bulldogperformance.net Cadillac 472/500ci V-8s make gobs of torque, but they’re not big on generating rpm and horsepower. Bulldog Performance has a cure with its all-new aluminum cylinder heads. They sport 260cc intake ports, 76cc combustion chambers, 2.19/1.84-inch valves, and…

50 YEARS OF ROD&CUSTOM The stalwarts of the enthusiast magazine industry have always been HOT ROD and Car Craft, but Rod & Custom has lingered in their shadows as the bible for street rod and custom car culture. Although the magazine has been killed and resurrected on several occasions; published as a monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly, and annual; and survived five different owners through the decades, it has managed to retain a loyal core readership and celebrated its 50th Anniversary in 2003. Chronicling the magazine’s colorful history is a new 230-page hardcover book by legendary illustrator Thom Taylor, published by The Rodder’s Journal. In addition to brilliant photography and tons of never-before-printed pictures, the book breaks down the history of the magazine, the editors and staffers pivotal to its success, and…