Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2006 i Hot Rod

FAREWELL TO THE KING As a reader of rags, you know Matt King. He’s been around our offices for eight years now, most recently serving as HOT ROD’s Detroit Editor. Matt’s been a big part of HOT ROD since the Oct. ’03 issue, though it’s not really where he made his name. Starting at the publishing company as a copy editor and then staff writer for Sport Truck magazine, he also contributed to 4-Wheel & Off-Road. When I was editing Car Craft full time and had a staff opening, then Sport Truck editor Peter MacGillivray foisted King on me, assuring me, “The guy lives for roaming the junkyards.” King became a Car Craft staffer then editor in the magazine’s low-buck heyday, and his legend was secured when he was rather…

I WON THIS DAY I read with interest every month your articles and photos about drag racing in the ’50s and ’60s. I have attached a photo of my DCB Coupe running Buddy Anderson’s Widdle White Wabbit at the NHRA/AHRA National Champion Challenge drag races at Green Valley, Texas, in 1959. It was one of the best B/Altered races we ever ran. Both cars had 265ci Chevy engines. My car had a 4-71 GMC blower and carried C/Altered weight. Buddy’s car was normally aspirated and much lighter. The cars were pretty evenly matched. Buddy and I were the best of friends, but fierce competitors. I won this day and wish I could say I beat him every time, but unfortunately that just wasn’t the case. This was drag racing at…

DRIVING THE JEEP GRAND CHEROKEE SRT-8 Jeeps are great for climbing rocks, crawling along trails, or blasting across sandy beaches, but they’ve never been road burners. Until, that is, the mad scientists at DaimlerChrysler’s Street and Racing Technology (SRT) got ahold of the latest Grand Cherokee and transmogrified it into the Grand Cherokee SRT-8. Not only is this Jeep nowhere near “trail rated,” putting it on dirt would be like asking a DC-10 to taxi through the drive-thru at Wendy’s. The essential element in the GC SRT-8 is the same 6.1L Hemi that’s in the SRT-8 versions of the Magnum, Charger, and 300. While the 6.1 is rated at 425 hp in those other SRT-8s, in the Jeep that’s choked down to 420 hp due to more restrictive intake and…

7.99 IN A STREET-DRIVEN VIPER You may remember Chad Williams’ bright yellow Viper from the feature on it in our May ’05 issue. Back then, the car stunned us by running 8.75 at 168 mph with a stock T56 six-speed and independent rear suspension (IRS). The car’s builder, Jason Heffner, also drove the car in the’05 Pump Gas Drags(tm), and although it didn’t win overall, the car ran a best of 8.62 and won four jackets for Third Place, Fastest Pass, Fastest Pass on Drag Radials, and Most Legit 8-Second Car. It’s much quicker now. With a TH400 replacing the six-speed, Chad brought his killer to the Viper V-10 Nationals at Bradenton Motorsports Park (Bradenton, Florida) and went looking for a 7-second timeslip. The first trip down the track nearly…

Most of us watch the goings-on at a musclecar auction with equal parts wonder (“how much did that car just sell for?”) and disgust (“how much did that car just sell for?”). The wonder, of course, comes from seeing an original musclecar going for more than the typical singlefamily home, and the disgust comes from our inability to afford that car, and the realization that at this rate, we probably never will. But some hot rodders have more means than others and therefore have a far different set of boundaries. Ted Hellard wanted a Hemi ’Cuda and has a thick enough wallet to buy a real one, but being the hot rodder he is, he didn’t want a chalk-mark restoration. He wanted one built the way he wanted it, with…

It’s junk! The call went out just moments after smoke filled the dyno room and while a hunk of the engine block was still spinning on the floor. It was the first engine we’d seriously hurt without meaning to, and just the fifth rods-outta-the-block explosion in Westech Performance Group’s 10 years of testing. And we’re talking wrecked. With holes in both sides of the block and several in the oil pan and major damage to both heads and the cam, about all we walked away with was the carb, intake, valve covers, and 15 rocker arms and springs. The rest is in the dumpster. But why? With hundreds of dyno pulls per year, we knew we’d eventually send an engine to the graveyard, but we hoped we could do it…

LS1 HEADS Trick Flow 330/630-1555 www.trickflow.com It’s a good time to be an LSI enthusiast with new head castings from AFR, Dart, and now Trick Flow. They’re fully CNC-ported and feature 215cc intake ports, 64cc combustion chambers, and trick 13.5-degree valve angles that will work with the stock pistons. Flow numbers have yet to be released, but the specs look promising. They’re priced at $2,295 fully assembled. SHOCK CONTROLLER Koni 859/586-4100 www.koni-na.com When paired with its electric shocks, Koni’s programmable shock controller allows analyzing suspension movement with a laptop after a pass. Using that data, racers can alter shock valving continuously throughout a run using the controller for almost limitless adjustability. However, you have to pay to play, and the setup runs about $2,500, so it’s for hard-core drag racers…

Tired engine, draggy drivetrain, crummy chassis, Bondo’d body, parts gone AWOL; If your heavenly ride has turned into a hot rod from hell, Pit Stop is the place for it to be born again. I’ll answer as many of your inquiries in these pages as space permits. You can even send me digital photos of the car, engine, or part you’re having trouble with; if it’s properly exposed, in focus, and at least 300 dpi at 4x5 inches or larger in size, we may publish them in the magazine. When e-mailing, don’t forget to include your real first and last name (not screen name) and hometown or military unit, base, or ship in the message. SERPENTINE BELTDRIVE OVERHEATS I have an ’86 Chevy Monte Carlo with a ZZ4 crate motor.…

’64 LIGHTNING ’64 Ford F-100 George Vanderbossche Simi Valley, CA Ford’s SVT division breathed high-performance life into the F-150 in 1993, creating the now famous Lightning trucks. When George bought a clean, rust-free ’64 F-100 from his brotherinlaw, he decided to build what might have been had SVT existed in the ’60s. The 385hp 351W crate engine rides above the front suspension with brakes from an ’82 Crown Vic. A four-speed automatic and A/C make this pickup as nice to drive as any late model. Like the SVT ad says, “It can tow your hot rod or be your hot rod.” NEXT GENERATION GALAXIE ’68 Ford Galaxie 500 Brian & Dan Taylor Albemarie, NC The only way to ensure that the next generation digs musclecars is to actually put their…

YEAR ONE GOES DRAG RACING Aftermarket companies sponsoring street legal-style drag racing is nothing new. Flowmaster sponsored the first HOT ROD’s Fastest Street Car Shootout in 1992 and continues as title sponsor of the American Drag Racing League Pro Mod series (www.outlawpromods.com). Edelbrock is tight with the National Muscle Car Association (NMCA, www.fasteststreetcar.com), which was owned by Comp Cams for a time. Denso is the title sponsor for the National Mustang Racers Association (NMRA, www.nmraracing.com). But musclecar parts supplier Year One has moved to the other side of the fence from sponsorship to part owner of a series, buying an interest in the Outlaw Racing Street Car Association (ORSCA, www.outlawracing.com). Year One’s sponsorship of ORSCA’s 10.5 tire class led to the permanent partnership. Company President Kevin King explains, “The body…

QUICK QUOTE “You can’t even get a Weedwacker with a carburetor on it any more.” —Warren Johnson on the irrelevance of carburetors in Pro Stock H3 PROVES OFF-ROAD WORTHINESS, SORT OF The H2 has constantly been bashed as an off-road wannabe based on the on-road Suburban. Attempting to avoid a similar fate with its new H3, GM partnered with Robby Gordon to compete in the ultimate off-road event, the Dakar Rally. The plan was good, but the problem is there wasn’t much H3 left when Gordon’s crew finished building it. It’s based on a full tube-frame chassis with an IRS and 24 inches of wheel travel at each corner. Power comes from a rear-mounted 427ci LS1 built by Katech, but output is limited to approximately 300 hp due to a…

“If I had one thing to do over in my life, I’d go back and spend the summer of1985with my dad building that car.”—Bud Brutsman Like most of you reading this, Bud Brutsman was a 15-year-old kid who wanted nothing more than a hot rod of his own to cruise for girls. He would devour HOT ROD and all the other car magazines he could get his hands on. Then, on Christmas morning in 1985, thinking that he’d already opened all his presents, his dad called him over to the window and pointed in the direction of their barn. Bud instantly recognized the taillights of a ’69 Mustang and lit out the door, sprinting through the Wyoming snow in his pajamas and bare feet. As he got closer, the realization…

Bobby Alloway walked away from the last real job he ever had in 1991. An allpurpose manager at a Ford dealership in Knoxville, Tennessee, Alloway had not missed a day of work in his 16 years on the payroll. But alter an absentee owner bought the dealership, it seemed like the bottom line was all that mattered anymore. So one morning when push came to shove, Alloway pushed his chair back from his desk, walked out of his office, and never looked back. This one brash decision led Alloway to convert his passion for building hot rods from a successful pastime into a full-time occupation, and the world ol hot rodding has never been the same. From his hot rod shop on a craggy Tennessee hillside near the Great Smoky…

Increased performance always comes with a price. In the case of hot rods built primarily for acceleration and without the aid of a modern overdrive transmission, the price is the compromise of excessive highway engine rpm and the poor mileage and engine wear that comes with it. Many people swap in a late-model overdrive transmission, but even more are content with their setup of a good old-school three-speed auto or four-speed stick. A Gear Vendors (GV) overdrive is the mechanical amends for excessive highway RPM and short dragstrip gearing. It is designed to bolt directly to the back of most popular automatic and manual transmissions, and it will also handle as much power as you can throw at it. The price is a tad stiff compared to a late model…

We had quite a few baseline dyno pulls on this test engine before it fragged, so we thought we’d at least tell you the combo and the power. Our victim was a stock late-model Explorer short-block with Ford Racing GT-40X aluminum heads, 9.1:1 compression, and a Comp Cams Nitrous HP hydraulic-roller cam with 224/236 degrees of duration at 0.050-inch tappet lift, 0.555/0.570 lift with 1.6:1 pedestal-mount rockers, and a lobe displacement angle of 114 degrees [which probably resulted in the comparatively flat torque curve). We ran Comp PN 98? springs with 160 pounds on the seat and 380 open. The intake was an Edelbrock Victor Jr. topped with a 650 Speed Demon carb, and though the Zex nitrous plate was in place, the system was never used. Ignition came from…

The war of headers versus spark-plug tools is over, and the headers lost. There isn’t a gearhead alive who hasn’t had trouble getting a tool onto a spark-plug thanks to the tight confines of big-tube exhaust headers, but the bag of tricks available from Header Sockets makes it easy. Available in different sizes and configurations, these tools are scalloped on the side so they can slip onto plugs from nearly any angle, and then the plug can be loosened with a 5/8-inch end wrench. We’ve tried them, they work—and that’s not always the case with trick-of-the-week tools. Even on a small Chevy with angle-plug heads and straight-plug headers, the Header Socket has always saved our bacon. SOURCE HEADER SOCKETS; Murrieta, CA; 951/677-4992; www.headersockets.com…

1965 BLOWN STOCKCAR HOT ROD recently published a special issue titled Mopar: Rare Vintage Photos ’62- ’72; it will be on the newsstand until March 7,so you may still have a chance to get a copy. In that magazine, we printed these photos by Petersen Publishing’s Bob D’Olivo depicting a supercharged NASCAR stocker, and since we couldn’t find any information about it other than a mention in a Hurst ad in 1966, we asked readers for help. And we got it. Reader Dave Stine was the first to point us to a May ’67 Pocket Books publication called The Dodge Book of Performance Cars that included a story on the ’65 Coronet shown here, using information likely gleaned from a Chrysler press release of the time. It describes how Lee…

IT’S FROM FRANCE This month’s cover car came from Creations Auto Body in Rio Dell, California, where this oddball is also going together. Yup, that’s a ’66 Citroen (it’s French), which is getting a one-off Art Morrison G-Max chassis and an LS1 small-block. Why a Citroen? “The customer likes European cars,” says Creations’ Kevin Bradley. “Porsches and things like that. He had this Citroen and wanted to make it a Can-Am-style car that’s really fast, but also one that he could take his family out in.” The four-seat four-door car was a perfectly stock daily driver (“I drove it into the shop,” says Bradley) and will remain mostly stock on the outside but is fully custom everywhere else, including the fabricated sheetmetal dash. The car should be done about mid-March.—ROB…

The hoopla surrounding Nevada Highway 375 has to do with its close proximity to Area 51. Running adjacent to the top-secret military I base, the 375 attracts conspiracy theorists from around the world, I many who think that the strange machines frequently lighting up the nighttime sky are actually alien spacecraft. As such, the 98-mile strip of asphalt was officially named Extraterrestrial Highway in 1996, but what’s lost in all this hype is that the 375 is one of the I finest pieces of straightaway in the country. The desert path boasts I five stretches of perfectly straight roadway each roughly 10 miles in I length. In fact, so straight and unobstructed is the highway that it literally vanishes into the horizon, and the abrasive surface keeps! tires bonded cohesively…

Holden, GM’s subsidiary in the Land Down Under, has produced the first concept car that would be a legitimate contender for Best in Show at any of the big car shows. That’s right, this is not a Chip Foose car, Boyd Coddington had nothing to do with it, and So-Cal Speed Shop knows nothing about it. It was designed and built entirely in-house at GM Holden’s Australian design studio and engineering department. Called the Efijy (as in “burned in effigy”), the car is an homage to the classic Holden FJ built between 1953 and 1956. Not familiar with the FJ? It’s Australia’s icon car the way a ’55 Chevy is here. As Holden Chief Designer Richard Ferlazzo says, “In Australia, nearly everyone had one, rode in one, or was conceived…

Location: Alan Mest Early Automobile Restoration and Repair, Gardena, CA 29 NEW SPEED PARTS PG.82 You’ve seen “hot new parts” buyers’ guides before, typically immediately following the SEMA and PRI shows. We wanted to do it better and provide real, useful information, so we sent Malan on a quest. Here’s the trick stuff he unearthed. GEAR VENDORS OVERDRIVE PG.100 A Gear Vendors overdrive unit is the hot ticket for highway cruising, and with the company’s new electronic thingy, it’s now more useful than ever. It also turns your three-speed automatic into a close-ratio six-speed. ENGINE CARNAGE CSI PG.104 HOT ROD destroys an engine on the dyno worse than we’ve ever done before just to show you how to investigate what went wrong, and therefore who to blame. THE BIG BLOW…

Here’s an oil filter that we’re happy to pay $200 for. It’s the Pure Power Lifetime Filter System from a company known for performance lubricants. It’s a convenient spin-on-style filter that’s available for most engine applications, but it features a removable, cleanable stainless-steel filter element captured in a billet-aluminum housing that’s burst proof to 1,000 psi and leakproof with Viton seals. Remote filter setups are also available. The immediate benefit is that you can take it apart, clean it, and reuse it so you never have to buy a filter again. However, we also see it as a valuable engine diagnosis tool, as it’s easier than cutting apart a conventional filter to see if there’s any bearing material or other badness circulating in the engine. Also, according to Pure Power,…

POWER TOUR DOES THE EAST COAST IN ’06! Continuing the tradition of having the Power Tour(tm) begin where the previous year’s Tour ended, this year’s 12 th Annual HOT ROD Power Tour(tm) will kick off in Kissimmee, Florida, on June 3. That’s where the ’05 Tour ended, after moving south from all the way up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. This year we’ll go the other way, traversing the Eastern Seaboard as we head north and have stops in Georgia, South Carolina, Virginia, and Pennsylvania before stopping for the finale at the legendary Old Bridge Township Raceway Park in Englishtown, New Jersey. E-town is a world-class dragstrip, so in addition to the huge show that is the Power Tour(tm), expect to see many of the participants wringing their cars out on the…