Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2006 i Hot Rod

CASH KILLS Value ruins hot rodding. Remember when you cared how fast your car went, how good it sounded, or—imagine this—how well it drove? Remember when guys would ask you how fast it was or what was under the hood? Today, more often then not, I hear this instead: “What’s it worth?” That annoys me not only because it’s rude, but also because it’s value more than anything that stands to tear down the basic glories of hot rodding. Not the price of parts, but the equity in the sheetmetal itself. It’s no secret that musclecar and street-rod prices are through the roof, which puts our favorite cars in the hands of investors and speculators rather than pure car guys. That alone is a move in the wrong direction. But…

ANOTHER SIDE I just received my July '06 copy of HOT ROD magazine and wanted to respond to your editorial on page 20 (Holeshot] for two reasons. First, thank you very much for putting the picture of my ’59 Chevy in the magazine. I enjoyed your article and wanted you to know that I have been a drag racer since the late ’50s, and I have subscribed to HOT ROD since I was 12 years old. Drag racing, fast action, tire smoke, and noise are all great. However, there is another side to the hobby. Creating a full-blown show car is just as costly and time-consuming as a drag car, and the rewards are just as great. When I see the look in spectators’ eyes when they see my car,…

Manufacturer concept cars are notoriously unroadworthy, having over the years gained the nickname “pushmobiles” owing to the fact that many are non-runners and need to be pushed into place on auto-show turntables. Chrysler’s concepts are often exceptions to the rule, as each year the Chrysler Group public relations, engineering, and design teams give selected journalists an opportunity to drive their creations, albeit on closely controlled venues, such as Chrysler’s Chelsea Proving Grounds west of Detroit. But this year they got tags (manufacturer plates) and insurance on the Challenger so a few journalists could drive it on real roads. More often than not, when concept cars are driveable, their functionality is limited, as many of the cool design details are nonfunctional; rarely do the HVAC and radio controls work, and the…

You show up at an abandoned-World War II runway, register your-hot rod, and spend a weekend at-full-throttle in the quest for top-speed among a pack of like-minded gearheads prone to home-engineer-anything and everything in the name of personal accomplishment. And records. Why-wouldn’t you do this every chance you get? We would. It’s the action at the Maxton Monster Mile, the racing venue in North Carolina that’s home to the East Coast Timing Association. The ECTA races five times a year, and this is the second consecutive time HOT ROD has held its casual Top Speed Challenge in support of this grassroots series. The ECTA mostly follows the class structure of the Southern California Timing Association—the sanctioning body for El Mirage and Bonneville dry lakes racing—but ECTA also has classes for…

There’s a special moment on the dyno when you know that junk is makin’ power. It’s a certain shriek, a different rattle of the windows, and—cliched but true—a palpable movement of the earth. It all happened for us with this small-block at Nelson Racing Engines: 1,000 hp on 91-octane, 1,500 hp on race gas, 900-plus lb-ft everywhere we looked. That’s all under 6,000 rpm, and it idles at just 700 rpm under load with 1215 inches of vacuum. This is one of the most powerful engines HOT ROD has ever been a part of. It’s also the tamest in recent memory, which is entirely the point. Both Tom Nelson (Nelson Racing Engines) and Rick Head (Innovative Turbo Systems) have been trying to open our eyes to this kind of satisfaction…

E-MAIL: HOTROD@PRIMEDIA.COM • MAIL: HOT ROD PIT STOP, 6420 WILSHIRE BLVD., LOS ANGELES, CA 90048 • FAX: 323/782-2223 • MESSAGE BOARD: HOTROD.COM Hot rodding’s kind of like a microcosm of the American dream. You start at the bottom, solve problems, overcome obstacles, persevere, and rise to the top—and then offer a helping hand (not a handout) to those below you just starting to climb the ladder. Pit Stop is this magazine’s helping hand. Whether it’s parts interchange, tuning a combination, assembling the right parts, or even theoretical musings, we’ll answer all the tech questions in this column we have space for. When e-mailing, don’t forget to include “Pit Stop” in the subject line, as well as your real first and last name and your hometown or military unit, base, or…

PRO DIESEL I just can’t shake the idea that a diesel musclecar could be cool. If I relied on the surveys we conduct to gauge what readers want, I’d drop the idea right now, but that hasn’t prevented me from going forward with the van project (oh, you just wait!) and it’s doing nothing to get this diesel nonsense out of my head. Steve Temple’s story on Gale Banks’ road-race diesel in this issue (page 130) points out one very good (albeit expensive) way to build a diesel for both big horsepower and earth-moving torque. You know, the powerband everyone wants in a street car. My original idea of sticking a Duramax in a Camaro might not be the best way to go, at least not without radically strengthening the…

1969 HEMI HEALEY This shot has everything going for it. It’s the ’69 NHRA Nationals at Indy; witness the dapper Buster Couch, NHRA’s omnipresent starter from about 1964 through 1995, and the cool old Indianapolis Raceway Park logo on the bridge. Then there’s that ludicrous Gasser! Check the dangling Cragars, the wrinkling M&Hs, and the obscene hoodscoop covering up 342ci of blown Hemi between the fenders of the Hemi-Healy (note the misspelling—it should be Healey). We’d seen photos of this car in our archives for years, and we’d also known of Bob and Rob Ida of Ida Automotive in New Jersey—builders of Joe Ida’s radical reproduction Tucker street rod. We only put two and two together while talking with Bob at this year’s HOT ROD Top Speed Challenge: He was…

CHEVELLE MEMORIAL This ’72 Chevelle coming together at ProRides (www.goprorides.com) for Pittsburgh Steeler Kendall Simmons is a work in honor of Simmons’ brother-in-law, who recently died. Perhaps impressed by the sentiment, Goodmark was kind enough to donate the sheetmetal for the project, not that there will be many original pieces left on this one. None of the Chevelle’s original chassis will be retained—so an Art Morrison MaxG chassis and plenty of custom-fabricated bracing and structure will take up residence to make the Chevelle sure-footed. A GM big-block of undecided size will provide the power through a 4L80E trans to the Currie 9-inch rear, and everything will roll on a one-off set of 20- and 22-inch Billet Specialties wheels with six-piston Wilwoods to haul it to a stop. The interior will…

“He drives it hard; this car is not babied.”—Scott Bonowski, Hot Rods & Hobbies The Hollywood movie-making machine has given us some of the most idealized and sought-after-cars of all time. Sadly, outside of the “hero” cars, most movie cars are thrown-together rattraps-that rarely hold up to the performance image they portray. Even most of the car stars in our-greatest car-movie story (“Anarchy & Bedlam,” Feb. ’06) are glorified beyond realistic capabilities.-Still, that doesn’t keep guys from all walks of life from lusting after them. Even hilltop dwelling rich guys who can afford the finest steel on the automotive market want these celluloid dream cars. When you picture the types of cars those guys would whisk through the hills and canyons of the legendary Malibu, California, they’re typically high-end, high-dollar…

There are more definitions of what constitutes a street engine than there are grains of sand at the beach. Here at HOT ROD, we think at a minimum, “streetability” means defining how far you can go without compromising reliability and daily driveability. How much can you get away with on the cam, the intake, and (if an automatic trans) the converter? Not that you would drive a car with a badass motor every day, but that you could, in a pinch, if the daily driver broke down. In other words, the engine and the vehicle in which it’s installed should idle reasonably, not overheat in traffic, generate sufficient vacuum to operate power accessories (with the help of a vacuum-assist device, if necessary), and be up for cross-country rod runs or…

“I intend to build some American hot rods with diesel engines, like a Deuce that goes from 0-60 mph in two seconds.”—Gale Banks For most hot rodders, diesel performance usually means giving a truck more pulling power to get over a hill with a car trailer in tow. But a diesel engine on the race track? We’re talking sled pulls, right? No, and we know one guy who can show you otherwise. Gale Banks has the chops from either side of the fuel pump, having made a name for himself with both gas and diesel performance products. His company, Banks Power, has built everything from gasoline-fueled, twin-turbo, small-block Chevys to high-powered all-terrain, diesel 4x4s (which rumbled through the HOT ROD Power Tour(tm) in 2005). So who better than Banks to…

HOTROD.COM • HOT ROD TV • HOT ROD STUFF • HOT ROD EVENTS • HOT ROD FREEBIES OMISSION OOPS Amid the editing frenzy here at HRM in the July issue’s story on building the cars of The Fast & The Furious: Tokyo Drift, we neglected to mention that testing of the Monte Carlo and Mustang was done in conjunction with InsideLine.com. Our friends at Inside Line were of immense help throughout construction of that story, and we owe them a big thanks. We should have acknowledged that in the story and didn’t. Sorry guys. If the July issue’s feature on building the cars only whet your appetite, there’s much more available on InsideLine.com, including video of the cars being tested on the quarter-mile and some truly astonishing footage of Rhys…

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 It’s often late at night, long after the rest of the staff and even the cleaning crew have left for the night that we get to pore over all the letters and e-mails that come into the magazine. It’s in these quiet hours that we best get a feel for what the readers think, what they want, what they are driving and/or working on, and, occasionally, what they’re wearing (don’t ask). These are the letters we reprint every month in Bench Racing, so feel free to join the discussion, since this is your section. We want to see your rides, your projects-in-progress, your once-in-a-lifetime barn finds, and even…

SALEEN/PARNELLI JONES LIMITED EDITION Saleen showed its latest Mustang variant in New York in the form of the ’07 Saleen/Parnelli Jones Limited Edition Mustang, which is a very long way of saying Boss 302. Obviously inspired by the ’70 Boss that Parnelli piloted during the ’70 Trans-Am season—right down to the easy-on/easy-off No. 15 decals—this Saleen’s most attractive feature is a 4.9L (er, 302ci) version of the three-valve V-8 used in the Mustang GT making something like 370 hp and 370 lb-ft of torque. The only transmission will be the Tremec five-speed manual, and there will be 3.73:1 gears churning in the pumpkin. To go with the extra thrust, the suspension has been tweaked with a Watt’s link added to the rear suspension along with the expected retuned shocks, springs,…

SAMUEL HUBINETTE’S CHARGER Samuel Hubinette has had plenty of success with his Dodge Viper in Formula D, so why change? Good question, but his new drifting Dodge Charger SRT8 becomes the first use of the Charger platform (as opposed to the completely fake “Chargers” in NASCAR) we know of, at least in professional motorsports. At about 4,100 pounds, the Charger is a tubby machine for competition. So the entire car’s skin was removed in favor of carbon-fiber replicas, the glass was replaced with polycarbonate, and the interior was completely gutted. With most of the prep work done inside Chrysler’s Street and Racing Technology (SRT) group, the car then moved over to NuFormz for final tuning. While the Charger’s basic suspension design carries over from the stock car, for drifting it…

“It actually made more power on 93 than it did on 110 octane. Since PGD, it’s all I’ve been running.”—Steve Hoch When the Corvette-was redesigned-for its third generation in 1968,-it broke new ground in radical styling, leaning heavily on the Mako Shark-concept. The low and long-sports car was visually far removed from the ’63 to ’67-Vettes, and the new design-remained until ’82. Even 24-years after the last one rolled out-of the Bowling Green, Kentucky, production facility, the-C3 Vette still has a distinctive-body style that most either find-timeless or dated. Either way,-there’s no denying the Vette’s-curvaceous lines are still striking, especially the steel-bumper-years (’68-’72) and especially-when they flash by at more than-150 mph. Corvettes aren’t historically-known as the platform of choice-for quarter-mile cars, but Steve-Hoch is single-handedly making people reconsider that-stereotype.…

Most people wouldn’t want to be-reminded of a vehicle that-burst into flames, fried all 10-fingers to the bone, and-prompted a premature retirement at age 27. “Swamp Rat 1 did put me in the hospital,” Don Garlits says about one of drag racing’s earliest supercharger explosions. “The doctors at the Chester [South Carolina] hospital wanted to remove my hands. I wouldn’t stand for it, so they moved me to Tampa General to die. A burn doctor there, who had done more than 5,000 sets of soldiers’ hands, saved me and my hands. But that car also got me national recognition and won a lot of races.” That this particular septuagenarian was able to craft such a masterpiece isn’t hard to believe. After all, Large Father was the last of those dinosaur…

HEAD-FLOW DATA RHS 220cc intake-runner Pro Action heads equipped with 2.02/1.60 valves were flowed at 28 inches of water by Sherman on his SuperFlow bench. In theory, the flow numbers indicate these heads should be able to support nearly 620 hp at 0.700 inch lift. Can you assemble a small-block Chevy, starting from scratch, that makes at least 500 hp and runs on pump gas, on a $5,000 target budget, without sacrificing durability? That’s what we wanted to find out, so we tried. The objective is to prove that aftermarket parts technology availability combined with user-friendly parts pricing has advanced to the point that a streetable 500hp small-block engine is within range of the average hot rodder’s engine building budget. Time constraints due to the typical realities of running a…

EARLY NOVA SUBFRAME KIT Classic Performance Products 800/522-5004 www.classicperform.com If you’re just not ready to go with a full-on subframe replacement on your ’62-’67 Nova, CPP’s mini subframe is a nice compromise. The new kit eliminates the factory strut rods and adds adjustable forward control arm mounts. CPP claims its kit will give added stability, alignability, and steering response and increases ground clearance more than 2 inches. The one-piece crossmember is designed to also strengthen the frontend by tying both framerails together utilizing the factory strut rod-mounting points, which means no cutting or welding is required. MSRP: Kit with new lower ball joints, $349; Deluxe kit with upper control arm bushings, upper ball joints, 1.5-inch lowered coil springs, and shocks, $599 PLASTIC CHROME RESTORATION Just Dashes 818/780-9005 www.justdashes.com No amount…

THE MAGIC FLYING ASTON? When we got this series of photos, we accused photographer Rich Chenet of altering them in Photoshop, but he didn’t. Pedro Lamy’s Aston Martin DBR9 stayed perfectly level as it sailed through the air during this off-track excursion at an American Le Mans race at Mid-Ohio. Bad brakes at the end of the straight sent the car over a wet, grass berm and launched it well over 100 feet through the air into the downhill gravel trap. The damage was mostly cosmetic.—ROB KINNAN…