Innholdsfortegnelse for May 2005 i Hot Rod

DETROIT AUTO SHOW Officially it’s the North American International Auto Show, but the two-week-long new-car extravaganza held annually at Detroit’s Cobo Hall is better known as the Detroit Auto Show. It’s the biggest and most important new-car event of the year, drawing manufacturers from around the world to showcase their latest concepts and production vehicles, and attracting hordes of “journalists” whose main goal is to scavenge media kits to fence on eBay (the hardbound version of the Z06 press kit complete with souvenir earplugs was going for about 75 bucks). This yea r’s show featured severa l highly anticipated unveilings, including the ’06 Mustang convertible, Dodge’s Viper SRT-10 coupe, Magnum SRT-8, and controversial new Charger, as well as Cadillac’s hot rod STS-V. But the biggest star of the show, at…

“We tried a month ago to run the first 7 but came up a little short, so in the four weeks between then and now the car was completely rebuilt.” —Gary Penn, Hardcore Motorsports THE FIRST LS1 CAR IN THE 7S A lot of people were gunning for it, but Ronnie Duke of Hardcore Motorsports (www.weracehardcore.com) drew fastest when his ProCharger-blown ’02 Trans Am became the first LS1-powered car to break the 7-second barrier in the quarter-mile. He ran 7.94 at 176.53 mph at Bradenton Motorsports Park (Bradenton, FL) on January 19 and backed it up with a 7.96 the next day. According to Hardcore, that makes it the quickest LS1-powered street-legal car in the world. The Trans Am had run 8.11 in December, so the team basically rebuilt the…

You can tell when the drag racing season is almost over just by looking at one of the cars. The quarters and wheelwells are coated with an inch of spent rubber, bugs hitting it at 200 mph have taken their toll, and between-rounds thrashing has left dents and scratches everywhere. But hey, it’s a race car. Who cares what it looks like? Tim O’Hare cares. Not only does O’Hare leave a lot of money on the table by not papering his ’69 Camaro Pro Street car with ugly contingency stickers, but it’s kind of a running joke among the other PRO Edelbrock series racers just how fanatical Tim and his crew are when it comes to the car’s appearance. “After every round, we take the wheels off it and clean…

POWERTRAIN Engine: Although it displaces 510 ci, the V-10 architecture allows big displacement with a relatively short stroke. The stock crank has been offset-ground to 3.990 inches, and the block is bored to 4.030 inches. Long Oliver 6.20-inch rods swing a set of Ross 8.5:1 pistons, and custom billet main caps hold everything in place. Ported factory cylinder heads with 74cc chambers flow 295 cfm on the intake side and a healthy 240 cfm on the exhaust. Cam specs are classified. Heffner’s Performance custom-built the 1¾-inch headers that drive a pair of 61mm turbos regulated by dual 38mm TiAl wastegates. The hot sides dump into dual 3.5-inch Dynomax pipes. The cold sides feed twin 70mm Accufab throttle-bodies and a stock intake manifold. A Paxton external fuel pump sucks from a…

HOW TO BUY EFI PG.86 It’s been around for a decade, but aftermarket electronic fuel injection is still intimidating. This won’t help the intimidation factor, but we will show what systems are out there and rank them from “even a chimp can do it” to “call the IT guy.” INSIDE THE NEW FAST BOX PG.94 The FAST EFI system has been one of the biggest players on the standalone EFI scene for years, and it just got better. We go deep inside the new box and show why you need one. ALL ABOUT GM’S GEN III ENGINE BLOCKS PG.98 We have done a lot of edit on the new GM Gen III small. block—maybe too much. But damn, it’s a great engine. Here, we present an in-depth look at the…

LATE-MODELSHEET-METAL VALVE COVERS Towers Racing Products 512/818-1813 www.towersracing.com Trick sheet metal valve covers are a great way to dress up your engine, and regardless of what you drive, Towers Racing Products probably has something for it. Pictured here a re its new valve covers for two-valve 4.GL Fords, but they’re also available for late-model LT1s, GM 3800 Series V-6s, BOP motors, GM SB2 small-blocks, old-school Cadillacs, and common big- and small-block Chevys, Fords, and Mopars. Built from high-grade brushed, satin, or engraved aluminum, they can be had with or without holes for oil fill caps, PCV hookups, and breather tubes. Also in the works are va lve covers for the new Chrysler Hemi. PROGRAMMABLE COOLING FANS JSC Engineering 818/878-0578 www.droptail.com If you’ve swapped motors, need to cool down your intercooler,…

E-MAIL: HOTROD@PRIMEDIA.COM • MAIL: HOT ROD BENCH RACING, 6420 WILSHIRE BLVD., LOS ANGELES, CA 90048 • FAX: 323/782-2223 • MESSAGE BOARD: HOTROD.COM Editing this section of the magazine every month gives us the opportunity to get up close and personal with the readers and find out what they like and don’t like, and it looks as if we hit on a little of both in the last few months. “The Year Ahead” (Feb. ’05) talked about the latest trends, for lack of a better term, in the world of hot rodding. That kind of story always generates some vociferous feedback, and that’s what we got. The positive feedback on the Throttlers of Salt Lake City (March ’05) was also expected, but the subject was fringe enough that we thought we’d…

THE RETURN OF RACING HEAD SERVICE Comp Cams is bringing back the Racing Head Service (RHS) name, popular from the ’70s through the ’90s, with the purchase of cylinder-head business Pro TopLine. RHS and New Zealand resident Michael Morais joined forces to purchase Pro TopLine and will leave the casting facility in Auckland, New Zealand. “Due to the fact that Michael Morais has extensive casting experience, and because of the many resources available in that country, the joint venture has decided to leave the casting facility in Auckland,” says Ron Coleman of RHS. Pro TopLine had a reputation for excellent performance cylinder heads, but the company went out of business in 2004. Thankfully, the new arrangement will bring those heads back to life, this time under the RHS banner. Check…

The Porsche and Ferrari wankers never knew what they were getting themselves into. The second running of the Silver State Classic was expected to be much like the first—a group of high rollers bringing together their European exotics and assorted oddball sports cars (with a handful of Corvettes, Panteras, and other domestics thrown in) to let it all hang out on a closed section of highway in the remote desert of Ely, Nevada. Ely is so far out in the middle of nowhere that we were shocked they had electricity, let alone an actual high school with a football field. But there we were, standing on the field surrounded by beautiful people and their beautiful automobiles, being careful not to bump into anyone lest we cause them to dribble their…

POWERTRAIN Engine: Though it’s called a 481X, the Alan Johnson (A.J.) blown alcohol big-block actually displaces 526 ci (go figure) and is state-of-the-art Pro Mod technology. A.J. whittled the cylinder heads out of solid chunks of billet aluminum, and they’re pressurized by a Kobleco high-helix 14-21 supercharger overdriven 29 percent. The fuel system is all A.J., and the rotating assembly uses a Sonny Bryant crank, GRP aluminum rods, and Arias pistons. It runs on alcohol. Power: Somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,400 hp. Transmission: It’s a three-speed Lenco with a Neal Chance torque converter in place of the clutch you’d normally find in front of a Lenco. Rearend: Tim McAmis fabricated the rearend housing to hold Strange 9.5-inch internals. Gears are 4.56:1 on a spool, and the 40-spline Strange axles…

Let’s just get this out of the way up front. For the average street machine, EFI isn’t about making more horsepower. It’s not about simplicity or saving money either. The good ol’ carburetor has had that covered for more than a century. Even those of us who’ve picked our knuckles up off the ground would agree. To top it all off, the ugliness of errant wires and sensors requires innovative solutions on the OE level—like slapping on engine covers. So why go EFI? Despite its higher initial cost of entry and reputation for fussiness, once EFI is set up properly, no Dominator or Q-jet can come close to the driveability, reliability, lack of maintenance, and consistent performance EFI delivers. EFI also offers reduced emissions and improved gas mileage (for those…

E-MAIL: HOTROD@PRIMEDIA.COM • MAIL: HOT ROD PIT STOP, 6420 WILSHIRE BLVD., LOS ANGELES, CA 90048 • FAX: 323/782-2223 • MESSAGE BOARD: HOTROD Pit Stop is the virtual garage where I answer hot rodders’ car-related tech questions. Whether it’s driveability woes, engine-combo evaluation, parts swapping and interchange advice, help in locating a hard-to-find part, or off-the-wall theoretical inquiries, it’ll be covered in these pages. So send in your questions and I’ll try to answer as many of them as can fit in this space. When e-mailing, don’t forget to include “Pit Stop” in the subject line, as well as your real full name and hometown or military unit, base, or ship in the message. I’d also like to see quality digital photos of the cars or problems that you’re working on,…

REAL RATS SELECTIONS FROM THE HOT ROD MAGAZINE ARCHIVES The March ’05 issue’s retro theme was met with great acclaim, and this month’s story on suede cars will strike the same nerve among folks who consider retro rods to be the only real hot rods. Those are often the same people who object vehemently to the term “rat rod”, and who more often than not claim that their cars are simply era-correct hot rods. And while we’ll put retro rods near the top of our list of styling favorites, we can’t help but wonder if the rats of today are true representations of the past or wild caricatures based on a glorified remembrance of ’50s rods. We’ve got the photo resources to check out our theory, so we reviewed the…

JARVIS’ VETTE Dig back in your HOT ROD archives and you’ll find a feature on Brent Jarvis’ beautiful ’59 Corvette that raced in Pro Street during the glory days of HOT ROD’s World’s Fastest Street Car/NMCA era. Brent sent us these photos of his latest project, a ’66 427 Corvette that is being built in conjunction with Wheel to Wheel in Detroit to be the baddest mid-year Vette on the street. This is an original ’66 427 car that Brent crashed hard on the street, exactly two hours before the terrorists drove their airliners into the World Trade Center. Goals for the car are a 200-mph top speed, 10s in the quarter, and Z06-level handling. And if it’s anything like Brent’s ’59 race car, it’ll be nicer than most show…

POWERTRAIN Engine: It’s all serious Rat, with a Donovan aluminum block, a 4.250-stroke King crank, Carrillo rods and 4.50-inch JE pistons that make 540 cubes. Airflow Research heads, a Pro Systems Dominator on a Dart intake, and custom headers with Borla mufflers make enough power to push the stock body well over 200. Power: It makes 824 hp and 655 lb-ft of torque, both at 7,000 rpm. Transmission: The Jerico four-speed crash box is linked to an RPS Stage IV clutch with a Cyn-R-G segmented flywheel and a carbon-carbon dual-disc setup. Rearend: A full-floating 9-inch Ford rearend takes all the abuse. The axles are 31-spline, gun-drilled pieces, and the gearing changes depending on the venue. They run 3.25:1 gears while testing on a closed track, 2.29s for an event like…

A wise man once uttered, “mph is for sissies,”ridiculing cars with glamorous quarter-mile trap speeds that can’t back them up with glamorous e.t.’s to match. They’re all sizzle and no steak, a disastrous synergy of peaky power curves, poor gearing, neglected suspension setups, and deficient driver skill. Although onlookers may rightfully laugh at Vipers that can only muster 10s with 1,000 hp, Heffner’s Performance has the fix for defective venom glands. An inveterate drag racer, Jason Heffner was into the New England 5.0L scene big time in the ’80s and ’90s, laying down 8-second passes in his Fox-body Mustang. Lessons gathered there taught him that quarter-mile performance is more about a comprehensive approach than the height of a power curve on paper. His focus gradually shifted from Mustangs to Vipers,…

“I think this car is a genuine American Treasure, and the American government agreed.” —Bob Casey, The Henry Ford This author was about seven months old on November 12,1965, the day Americans Bob and Bill Summers took the piston-powered, wheel-driven land speed record from Englishman Donald Campbell’s Bluebird. Bob drove the duo’s Goldenrod to a twoway average of 409.277 mph in the mile (and 409.685 in the kilometer) for an FIA record that still stands. Sure, Al Teague ran faster than that over a decade ago for his FIA and SCTA records (409.986 mph), but that was with a supercharged Hemi. Likewise, the Burklands’ 417.020 we reported in March was also blown. The Summers Brothers did it naturally aspirated, albeit with four Chrysler Hemis. The day after the record, the…

When any kind of new electronic wizardry comes out, the marketplace races to make it better. Fuel Air Spark Technology (FAST) has done just that with its new XFI electronic fuel injection system. XFI incorporates a slew of new features and capabilities, but it’s not so much a reinvention of the way FAST approaches electronic engine management as a huge step forward in the flexibility of its already popular EFI system. Existing users don’t have to relearn what they already know—XFI uses a virtually identical software interface while incorporating a host of improvements and new features that, according to FAST, will have tuners beating a path to its door. One of the biggest hardware changes is the expanded wiring connector with 104 pins compared to the 60 pins of the…

Freezing my butt off in an unheated garage on a zero-degree January morning, I found myself asking why I waited so long to build a new engine for my road racer. From the start of this project more than a year ago, I knew the original high-mileage 302 in my ’84 Mustang GT was a short-timer, but it soldiered along through more than half a dozen open-track events despite frequent overheating, loss of oil pressure, and eventually a blown head gasket. It just wouldn’t quit, and it still turned over freely and fired up even on the day it was yanked from its home of 20 years. Its replacement will live a tough life in a harsh environment from day one as a dedicated racing engine. There will be no…