Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2006 i Hot Rod

INSPIRATIONS It struck me hard when I realized it had been a long time since a magazine feature car affected me so much. I was flipping through the May '65 issue of HOT ROD, when this photo stopped me cold. It was just an old drag car—Arnie Beswick's '65 GTO—but it had everything that fed the particular kink that was driving me that day. It pushed me to research the few cars of the brief S/FX days when blown-gas and blown-fuel dragster engines were first stuffed into door-slammers before the metamorphosis into flopper Funny Cars was complete. Cars like the Dodge Chargers, Chrisman's Comet, Lew Arrington's glorious Brutus GTO—some were altered-wheelbase and some not, but all were more-is-better rebels in a world of already edgy Factory Experimentals. As outrageous as…

Recently released on DVD, The World's Fastest Indian stars Anthony Hopkins as Burt Munro, the New Zealander who overcame all odds to bring his scrappy, homegrown '20 Indian Scout to the Bonneville Salt Flats and set records from 1962 through about 1974. The man was a core hot rodder, casting his own pistons and hand-carving his cams, as the 1971 documentary Offerings to the Gods of Speed will attest; it's a bonus feature on the movie's DVD. Burt Munro has been an obsession of writer/director Roger Donaldson ever since he made that short film, and The World's Fastest Indian has been in his head since his own first trip to Bonneville in 1971.A few years ago, when the feature film was finally becoming a reality, HOT ROD supplied archival images…

The goldish-orange car with the black stripes isn't Chevrolet's Concept Camaro. Yes, it looks just like the Concept Camaro because, well, it's supposed to look just like the Concept Camaro. But it's actually a sophisticated, high-quality movie prop—a mix of perfectly formed fiberglass, Pontiac GTO mechanical pieces, blatant fakery, and real craftsmanship—all brought together for next summer's live-action revival of that mid-'80s cartoon Transformers. Yes, that's right, the subtle and nuanced emotional drama of Transformers is finally coming to the big screen. And it's bringing the next Camaro—at least something that looks how the next Camaro is expected to look—with it. “This is kind of a special movie in that the cars are characters,” explains director Michael Bay, whose previous films include Armageddon, Bad Boys, and The Rock."! wanted to…

If you worked at Barris Kustom City in the '50s, or if you had a car built there, or if you just hung around the place much, George gave you a nickname: Peeps, Curly, Tubbs. That's how Hershel Conway became Junior. It was appropriate at the time. Hersh was a 16-year-old kid with a mildly customized '50 Ford he and his older brother Herb had been working on in their driveway—taking off chrome, filling holes, priming and sanding … and priming and sanding, and priming and sanding some more. Young Hersh didn't know how to spray paint (it always seems like a mystery until you do), so he took the Ford to Barris' shop to see if he could afford one of his famous paint jobs—perhaps a lower-priced version. As…

Mopar's new Hemi has been on the streets for a few years now, with production starting in June 2002 in Chrysler's LX series 300, as well as the Dodge Magnums, Chargers, and trucks. The modern Hemis have been produced in two versions: the standard 5.7L engines producing 345 hp and the coveted 6.1L high-performance unit, which boasts 425 hp, the same rating as the legendary 426 Hemi of yesterday. While the bigger engine is purpose-built for performance with bigger heads and beefier internals, the 5.7 is the common man's Hemi, an engine in general circulation today as the 318 or 360 was in the past. Already, the 5.7 has lost its exotic bent, and if you want one, used engines and cores are passing down the pipeline to the usual…

“Infinite diversity in infinite combinations.” No, I'm not Spock … and this isn't a Star Trek episode. But that homily could apply to today's hot rodders just as well as it could to future intergalactic explorers. We appreciate automotive diversity and aren't satisfied with the way things are or the way they've always been done. We want things our way, not Detroit's way. To help you go where no other hot rodder has gone before, Pit Stop is here to resolve your technical problems. Whether it's theory, resolving a thorny driveability problem, recommending the best combination, or help locating a hard-to-find part, we'll answer as many questions in these pages as space permits. When e-mailing, don't forget to include “Pit Stop” in the subject line, as well as your real…

FACTORY BOLT-ON SPEED The performance aftermarket was caught with its pants down in 1996 when Ford ditched the reliable old pushrod 5.0L in favor of the single overhead-cam 4.6L engine. Torque went the way of the dodo, horsepower was down, and Mustang loyalists who would fight to the death to defend the 5.0's honor threw up their hands in disgust at the lackluster 4.6. The DOHC Cobra motor that came out two years later helped, but the Mustang GT was, frankly, a slug. Compounding the problem was its complexity that scared off a lot of the aftermarket parts suppliers, the same companies that had made a killing selling 5.0L performance boltons. Eventually, the aftermarket came around, and modular performance is no longer an oxymoron. In fact, the new three-valve Mustang…

INSIDE THE OEs 100 MPG IS YESTERDAY'S NEWS We're usually more concerned with quarter-mile mph than on-the-road mpg, but cracking 100 miles on a single gallon of gas is impressive. GM did it in 1982 with Project Saturn, a jellybean-shaped car with a three-cylinder engine, a five-speed stick, and room for two. Built at the GM Technical Center in Warren, Michigan, it averaged 105 mpg on the highway and 75 mpg in the city during a drip from Warren to New York. Since meeting federal safety requirements and installing creature comforts would have added 200 pounds to the car and required extra horsepower to propel it, GM dropped the program. —STEPHEN KIM DIESEL F-150 Ford is hard at work developing a new 4.4L diesel V-8 for the F-150 pickup. The…

Power Tour™ is America. It's an exercise of the freedom our country gives us to get in our cars and drive where we want. It's the pure Americana of the hot rod itself combined with the rich exploration of the backroads where the workingman's history still seeps from the scenery along the way. Power Tour™ is about community, barbecue, horsepower, and—let's face it—some capitalism on the side. It may not have baseball, but it's got hot dogs, apple pie, and Chevrolet in the form of title sponsorship from GM Performance Division. Flowmaster, appropriately the purveyor of American Thunder, is the co-sponsor. In June of this year, we celebrated the 12 th year of Power Tour™ and the 14th event (there were two Tours apiece for two years), so you probably…

Location: The middle of nowhere PAINT & BODY: HOW TO SPRAY PG.108 Once all the bodywork is done and you're confident the. sheetmetal is straight, it's time to lay on the primer, color, and clear. Here's what you need to know about spraying the paint, as well as how to use and set the gun, the compressor, and the regulator. 700HP BLOWN 5.7 HEMI PG.120 We resurrect our 5.7 Hemi crate engine, stick a Vortech. supercharger on it, and make huge power with out-of-the-box parts. 30,000 MILES IN A ROD PG.126 We check in on one of the most popular HOT ROD project cars of the last 20 years, the Budget Beater Model A, and see what toll 30,000-plus miles of hard driving has taken on the car. TEST AND…

Ridler winners get all the glory, but homebuilt street rods are the backbone of hot rodding. And with the rat-rod phenomenon showing no signs of abating, it's apparent a lot of these real-world cars are being driven, and in some cases driven hard. That's good. But with any car that gets used, especially a street rod, maintenance is a fact of life. HOT ROD wanted to know what it was like to put serious miles on a street rod and what toll it took on the car's structure, so we got together to check on the progress of my Budget Beater. One of the more popular HOT ROD magazine project cars in the last few decades, my '31 Model A roadster, named the Budget Beater, was featured in a four-part…

COOL DOWN WITH Q The coolest place on the HOT ROD Power Tour(tm) was the Q Cool Down tent sponsored by Quaker State. Here, Frank and Richard Lindgren enjoy the refreshing spot at the Orange County Convention Center at our kickoff in Florida. Our apologies to anyone whose car still has water spots from being parked nearby. Look for more cool down tents next year on the HOT ROD Power Tour(tm). HUNGRY? Many thanks to Superchips, which sponsored a Sunday lunch stop at its Sanford, Florida, facility. Here's Associate Editor Chris Campbell cutting in line to get more than his share of the chicken lunch that was provided. Additionally, we'd like to thank Shad Dean and the crew at South Georgia Motorsports Park, who hosted the co-sponsored GM Performance Division/GM…

Consider Bench Racing the world's largest automotive scrapbook, a place we can all come together to share opinions, sightings, cars, and ideas. The editorial staff members of HOT ROD share their stuff throughout the rest of the magazine, but Bench Racing is for the readers, by the readers, with an occasional smart-aleck comment thrown in by the staff. So send us your opinions, send us photos of your car for Readers' Rides, fire off a missive telling us what jerks or heros we are … just communicate. And since it's always fun to rag on a buddy, here's an idea: Tell us an embarrassing story about yourself or a friend that involves hot rods and we'll publish the best, most entertaining screw-up stories. For extra insult, make sure to send…

The Mustang was nearly destroyed in the '80s when some nitwit at Ford decided it needed to be front-wheel drive and powered by a four-cylinder. The cacophony of yelling and threats from customers made Ford see the light, and the V-8, rear-drive ponycar we had grown to love (and bought millions of) kept on keepin' on. In fact, it would go on to improve upon the legendary performance of the 5.0L Mustang. The front-drive economy car that was to be called Mustang? It became the Ford Probe. When Dodge unveiled the Viper concept a decade and a half ago, it was more for show than anything—they didn't think they'd actually build it. But as soon as people saw the car, they begged, pleaded, and demanded that it be built, waving…

“Even if I lined up next to it and noticed the screws (in the rear wheels), I might think it had a hidden nitrous system or something—but nothing as sophisticated as this.”—Kurt Urban Kurt Urban and the crew at Wheel to Wheel Powertrain have pulled off one of the slickest automotive bluffs of all time. Their '72 Nova, dubbed the Super Sleeper, is the dragstrip equivalent of a top championship poker competitor. The poker champ, aloof and clad in neutral colors, appears pedestrian at best, a deliberate tactic to lower the expectations of his opponents. Experienced gamblers may recognize his bluff, but—human nature being what it is—there's nothing like a pair of brown shoes and worn corduroys to give your rival a false sense of security. It's the same school…

Finally, the moment of truth. All the steps we've covered so far in this series—metal prep and repair, panel alignment, shooting primer, and block-sanding—have led up to this: making your car-color dreams a reality. To help make that dream come true, we're approaching the subject of spraying color from a number of different angles. We spoke with several professional painters looking for insider tips. We collected information on how to choose the right spray gun and how to set up a gun to get the results you want. (I even took a painting class to bolster my neophyte spraying skills and discovered I'm way more Tim Conway than Junior Conway with a spray gun in my hand.) Yet all the tips and insider scoop we can cram into these few…

SUPER VICTOR FOR CHRYSLER 340/360 Edelbrock 310/781-2222 www.edelbrock.com Designed for 340/360 Chrysler engines with conventional rectangular-port heads [such as Edelbrock's own Performer RPM heads), this single-plane Air Gap-style manifold with its 2.15-inch by 0.98-inch runner exits operates in the 3,500-rpm to 8,000-rpm range and is capable of supporting over 600 hp. The runners have been cast extra thick to allow for gasket matching and porting to tailor the intake to your heads. As with Edelbrock's other Air Gap manifolds, the design separates the runners from the hot engine oil to provide a cooler, denser charge for more power. Price: $295.95 MECHANICAL LOCKING FASTENERS Stage 8 800/843-7836 www.stage8.com Vibration and stress from hard driving have a way of loosening bolts, but Stage 8's three-piece fasteners offer a sure way to keep…

Frankly, we're sick to death of reality TV shows, but if you're going to follow someone around with a camera, you can't get much better entertainment than tailing Funny Car legend John Force. That's precisely what A&A did recently, then edited the footage into a reality show that every racing fan needs to see. It should be fully into reruns by the time this issue comes out, but it's worth watching a second time just to see how insane Force is, how patient his wife, Laurie, is, and how tolerant his daughters are. Three of Force's four daughters are up-and-coming drag racers, with 23-year-old Ashley (center, with Courtney on the right and Brittany on the left) the likely successor to Force's seat in his Fuel Funny. At first we thought…