Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2005 i Hot Rod

LOVE LETTER Dear Karen, I need to get another car. Well, it’s a truck, sort of—but more like a big station wagon, and you like wagons, right? It’s a ’72 Suburban for sale by a guy at work, and it’s only $1,600. It’s green and white and everything, with this neat original plaid interior. What’s really funky is that it only has three doors, one on the driver side and two on the passenger side. People think that was a rare option, but all the ’67-’72s actually came that way. It’s also got the good barn doors in the back. It only needs a little suspension work, and the trans leaks a bit, but I have a used Turbo 400 and a Gear Vendors Overdrive that would go right in…

SUPER-VETTE After spending a decade in the shadow of the Dodge Viper and more recently the Ford GT, GM finally entered the super sports car market with the 500hp ’06 Corvette Z06. The list of firsts achieved by the newZ06 includes a 7.0LV-8 that’s the biggest and most powerful production small-block ever built by GM (see “Gen Four,” Mar. ’05], the first dry-sump oiling system in a Corvette, along with the first all aluminum frame. Performance estimates for the Z06 are world-class, with 0-60 times under 4 seconds, 0-100 times under 8 seconds, and the quarter-mile in less than 12, according to Corvette Chief Engineer Dave Hill. In addition to a handbuilt 427ci LS7 engine producing 500 hp at 6,200 rpm. the newZ06 features 14-inch cross-drilled front discs with six-piston…

Silver is the new red. Could you possibly be more bored? Street rods went through it a few years ago, and now many of today’s high-end street machines are retreating into European shades of gloom, and we’ve rammed only the tip of a very large platinum iceberg. It’s reflective of what’s being called “the street-rodification of musclecars” and of the trend to more refined multipurpose machines. The better news is that fewer guys than ever are building cars with sacrificial-virgin murals or graphics that bring up your lunch. But aren’t hot rods supposed to rail against couth and mediocrity? We’re ready for a rebound to some color and pop, and at the risk of snapping too far like a bungee cord to the eyeball, here we present the most garish…

“I don’t remember, I blacked out. Thank God I did because if I had been awake I might have been scared.” —Tony Schumacher Eight thousand horsepower idles inches from the back of your head. Eight brutal nitromethane-fueled explosions bang like gunshots with every two revolutions of the crankshaft. When and if you have the guts to hit the throttle, the sensation of acceleration feels like the Jolly Green Giant just whacked you in the back with a telephone pole. You’re accelerating at 5½ g’s (more than the space shuttle), making your body feel like it weighs 900 pounds. If you have the stones to stay in it, you’ll endure that force for less than 5 seconds as you approach a 330-mph terminal velocity (that’s two football fields per second) before…

After initially being smitten with the on-road performance of Magnuson’s supercharger kit on our project GTO and writing the glowing prose such subjective impressions evoked (“In Torque We Trust,” Jan. ’05), the sucker just wouldn’t run at the track. The 416 rear-wheel horsepower that we saw, combined with the 3,800-pound GTO, suggested quarter-mile trap speeds in the 110-115 mph range and solid 12-second e.t.’s. Mysteriously, at 13.90 at 100 mph in 3,200-foot density altitude air, the car came nowhere close. In fact, in bone-stock trim under far worse conditions, the car ran the exact same e.t. and mph. Regardless of whether our derrieres are in need of serious recalibration or someone’s been rubbing novocaine on our toilet seat, the end product was a story with no punch line but lots…

VICTOR JR. INTAKE FOR THE LSI Edelbrock 800/FUN-TEAM (386-8326) www.edelbrock.com In last month’s issue, we ran tests on two carbureted intake manifolds for the Chevy Gen III V-8, one an Edelbrock dual-plane and the others GMPP single-plane. Now there’s a third choice, as Edelbrock has just introduced a Victor Jr. intake for these engines. Edelbrock says its Victor Jr. LSI intake (PN 2908) offers an operating range of 3,500-2,500 rpm and is capable of supporting up to 600 hp. It accepts any square-bore carburetor and comes with an MSD electronic timing module that picks up MAP, crank position, and cam position to drive the stock coil-on-plug ignition system. This module also offers a choice of several built-in timing curves, each tailored for engine displacement, cam profiles, and fuel grades. Each…

E-MAIL: HOTROD@PRIMEDIA.COM • MAIL HOT ROD BENCH RACING, 6420 WILSHIRE BLVD., LOS ANGELES, CA 90048 • FAX: 323/282-2223 • MESSAGE BOARD: HOTROD.COM So you’re sittin’ there with the guys, talkin’ about cars and downing a few barley pops, and one of your buddies starts in on a story about how his dad ran a Fueler back in the day, his memory triggered by an old shoebox full of pop’s photos that were just unearthed. Then another buddy walks up with a box of broken parts suffered last weekend at the drags. The carnage is almost as spectacular as his story of how the engine let go in high gear and nearly put him into the wall. Now, we ask you, why not put all that stuff together and send it…

EDELBROCK FAMILY AND COMPANY HONORED AT THE WALLY PARKS NHRA MOTORSPORTS MUSEUM Vic Edelbrock Jr. was speechless—almost! Standing in front of a highly vocal group of more than 350 of his friends, family, employees, and industry associates at the podium in The Wally Parks NHRA Motorsports Museum’s Hall of Champions, a visibly emotional Vic Jr. looked upward and said, “My dad is watching this.” Very fitting because Vic Jr., his father the late Vic Sr., and the entire Edelbrock company legacy were being honored by the Parks Museum with a gala tribute on December 2,2004. The event, which also served as a Museum fundraiser, brought out the heavyweights in the performance industry, including NHRA Founder Wally Parks, racing legend Parnelli Jones, the NHRA’s Peter Clifford and Dick Wells, So-Cal Speed…

Bikini issues are a staple of car magazines for a very good reason: they sell well on the newsstand. The photos are always pretty much the same, with beautiful women in thongs and high heels sprawled gloriously over cars. If you actually took the time to speak with them you’d find their automotive knowledge miniscule. There are, however, women who race cars, work on cars, work with cars, and love cars. Real women who are attractive not because they’ve obsessively pursued the perfect body, but because of the substance of their automotive passion. So this time, HOT ROD has decided to feature the real women of hot rodding. We’re not going to pretend that suddenly women are taking up hot rodding in vast numbers. The readership of this magazine is…

“My goal was to build the motor to come across with an early race aesthetic but with a modem powerplant” Think today’s race car drivers are manly? Hah! They’ve got nothing on the barnstorming daredevils of the early 20th Century. Sure, today’s cars top 200 mph with ease and pull enough g’s to drain your brain through your ear, but innovations in safety and technology have made them pretty safe machines, relatively speaking. But in the ’20s and ’30s, a lot of race car drivers truly had one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel, and the peel was resting on marbles. Do some Internet and library digging and you will find several books and photos on the early days of racing that when viewed through…

PROJECT CARS • ENGINE BUILDUPS • SPEED PARTS TESTING • NEW PRODUCTS • TECH THEORY • HOWTO DO IT FIRST LS2 DYN0 THRASH PG.86 In 1955, Edelbrock was renowned for having executed the most abusive and complete dyno-test of the then-new small-block Chevy. Now, with the fourth generation of the GM small V-8 hitting the streets, it was Katech that took on the first thrash session. Matt King, our man in the Eastern cold, was there to witness the tame 500 hp ’04 GTO REVIVAL PG.94 We continue to ferret out the demons in our ’04 GTO, this, time stacking on a Borla exhaust and just, the mildest spritz of NOS nitrous to provide an intercooling effect that knocked a full second off our e.t. and made it repeatable too.…

In the ’80s we thought it was really stupid. Nitrous atop an 8-71 blower was the norm for every wannabe Pro Street car on the fairgrounds. Like you could ever use that, right? Well, you can. And when applied with the posture of going fast over looking cool, sprayin’ a blower is gooood. Like 1,000 hp wortha good. Without even trying. We got the idea from Jim Henn, a local Toyota Racing Development engine builder whose glaringly beige ’64 Nova was found on our May ’04 cover and again at HOT ROD’s ’04 Pump Gas Drags. The thing runs 9.80s at 138 mph with a 355ci small-block with 8.2:1 compression, a 234-at-0.050 hydraulic-roller cam, Dart Pro 1 230cc heads, and a Weiand 144ci miniblower under an NOS Big Shot plate…

SELECTIONS FROM THE HOT ROD MAGAZINE ARCHIVES 1973 THE WONDER WAGON This issue’s story on Tony Schumacher reminded us of one of our favorite drag cars, his dad Don’s Wonder Wagon, HOT ROD’s Nov. ’73 cover car (shown here in color at the ’73 NHRA U.S. Nationals). The John Buttera-built Funny Car was innovative, with the first roof escape hatch and other details. When the paint scheme was revived for Schumacher’s Johnny Gray-driven Dodge Stratus last year, the ’73 car was referred to as “the original Wonder Wagon.” But the original Wonder Wagons were actually two Buttera-built Vega panel wagons (inset) revealed in the Feb. ’72 HOT ROD and run at the ’72 NHRA Supernationals, and the drivers were Kelly Brown and Glenn Way. According to drag historian Dave Wallace,…

SMOOTH GOAT The latest bit of iron under the knife at Steve’s Auto Restorations (Portland, OR] is this ’64 GTO being built as a custom Pro Touring-style ride but with the classic soul of the early GTO. The body lines are stock, but pretty much everything else has been redesigned, including tucked and contoured bumpers, fabricated lower air dam and valence, and Hummer H-2 front running lights with hideaway headlights ala the ’67-’68 Camaro RS. A custom hoodscoop, recessed ’69 Grand Prix door handles, one-piece taillights (in ’65 Buick Skylark chrome housings], and about a million other small details make this probably the cleanest early GTO we’ve ever seen, while a full-on suspension and American Salt Flat Special l7-inch wheels combine with a Ram Jet 502 and Tremec six-speed to…

Who: Thom Taylor Contact: hotrodthom@cox.net Price: Thom charges by the hour, so the more you know about what you want, the cheaper it will be. About our Trans Am, he says, “This one was pretty quick because I didn’t talk to anybody or do any initial sketches. I didn’t design the wheels; I picked them out of the Budnik catalog. I like to keep it within $ 1,000 to $ 1,200; $700 or $750 for the rendering, and maybe $250 to $500 worth of sketches that I’ll e-mail the customer to try out with a few things.” Every month, nearly every hands-on car magazine, this one included, runs at least. one illustration from a professional designer showing a new project either under construction or under consideration. Pro builders hire these…

“We bought the car with the intention of trying a few runs at Bonneville. Now our goal is to see how many records we can get at one event.” —Eric Lenore Since messing with ’ cars is one of the quickest ways to go I broke, and peddling drugs is one of the quickest ways to go “unbroke,” naturally, humans have combined both endeavors with varying degrees of success throughout history. The formula didn’t quite work out for the father of the original GTO, and some Super Street feature car owners execute the plan with a bit more prosperity—at least for the time being. Then there’s Bob Griffith, a man whose cost-is-no-object reality is every car guy’s fantasy, a reality that means never having to look over his shoulder for…

In most parts of the country, when you flip the calendar page over to October, the “car” season is officially done. Race tracks close, cruise spots roll up their sidewalks, and all the nice cars go into hibernation. Conveniently, I moved from L.A. to Detroit three weeks into October. That meant my Camaro Mustang Challenge project was about to come to a screeching halt, at least in terms of time behind the wheel. But there’s another big difference between gearhead life in California and the Midwest: The offseason gives you plenty of time to get to the work you never had time for during the good weather. And I have plenty to do. Topping the list is building a new engine. After half a dozen track events, the original 5.0L…

HOTROD.COM • HOT ROD TV • HOT ROD STUFF • HOT ROD EVENTS • HOT ROD FREEBIES HERE WE GROW AGAIN HOT ROD and the hobby we represent are stronger than ever. According to the latest results from MRI, the industry standard for magazine auditing, HOT ROD’S total of 7.3 million readers is up from the 7.2 million reported last year. That’s behind only Car and Driver’s 9.7 million, and ahead of well-known powerhouses such as Motor Trend at 6.7 million, Road & Track at 5.5 million, and Automobile at 3.4 million. Thanks a bunch for sticking with us and we look forward to continuing to serve you. FORCE LOVES US We’ll take full credit for it. Only days after the Dec. ’04 HOT ROD with John Force’s Funny Caron…