Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2007 i Hot Rod

A SLEEPER’S SLEEPER Looking for something different? Meet Big Red. It’s a ’52 Ford F-1, a real ranch truck … no fauxing going on here. It has never stopped running in its 55 years, has never been in a garage or on a trailer, and has more true patina than most could ever hope to see. It makes grown men in pretty hot rods cry, with a 425hp, 427 stock four-bolt Chevy, coated headers, 3-inch exhaust with Warlocks, a TH400 with a B&M, 2,800-stall converter, ’57 Ford 9-inch with 3.23 gears, and Traction Master traction bars. Everything else is stock, even the six-cylinder Ford radiator and hoses. Get on your belly and you will not see any of the above items. This is a sleeper’s sleeper. This photo is on…

Penultimate. It means next to last, and this is it. Our twin-turbo F-Bomb Camaro has been lingering around these pages for six issues–this month we’re finally done showing you how to build it, and in the September issue we’ll be able to gloriously reveal what it’s like to drive the thing. For a lot of the players, that moment will culminate with one big sigh of relief. That’s certainly true of Mark Bohlen, who’s the last in a long line of F-Bomb craftsmen we’ve introduced you to. Along with his wife, Michelle, and Twig, the ubiquitous Italian greyhound shop dog, Bohlen operates Bent Custom & Performance out of a super tidy shop that’s in the same industrial complex as Nelson Supercars, the instigator of the Bomb. While Bent is a…

Mark Sanchez’s ’83 Mustang convertible has been around the block and then some. Serving as a test mule for Advanced Engineering West, Sanchez’s hightech Ford engine swap and ECM reprogramming business, the well-worn ride has seen everything from carbureted 5.0L small-blocks to muscular 460 big-blocks. Now in its latest incarnation the engine bay is packed with a Vortech-supercharged 4.6L, DOHC ’97 Mustang Cobra engine. At the time the photos were shot, Sanchez was using a production T45 five-speed, but since then he has also test-fitted a stronger T56 six-speed. Yet another alternative is a TKO five-speed, which installs behind a 4.6/5.4L Mod motor using Lakewood scattershield PN15230. Longtime Ford man Sanchez prefers to use factory or equivalent aftermarket replacement parts where possible. Many of the parts used in this swap…

CELEBRATING THE BOX CAR ’57 AND PEDREGON RACING HOT ROD Television keeps rollin’ on ESPN2, and we’ve hit the midseason mark to rave reviews and the hottest cars of 2007. In the June ’07 issue, HOT ROD magazine introduced Experimetal’s all-new ’57 Chevy body. Watch HOT ROD TV to see the very first one built from the ground up as the team at Wheel To Wheel works with retailer CARS to build the Box Car ’57. We’ll take you from the conception to the build to its unveiling at the ’07 Detroit Autorama. We’ll also bring you the story of Pedregon Racing. From the roots with the late Flamin’ Frank Pedregon to the current scene with Tony and Cruz, see the real work behind Top Fuel Drag Racing. Now produced…

1959 HOTROD HQ With the passing of Mr. Petersen, we were musing about his legendary wealth, much of which came through vast real estate holdings. It’s been said that he owned half of Hollywood, including many buildings that housed the magazine empire. We scoured back issues to see the addresses on the HOT ROD masthead over the years; all are in the Hollywood, California, area. Starting in Jan. ’48, home base was 112 S.La Brea Ave., which we believe to have been Petersen’s apartment. By the June ’48 issue, the magazine grew into a real office at 7164 Melrose Ave. HOT ROD moved to 548 S. San Vicente Ave. for the Aug. ’49 issue, and in less than a year, by the June ’50 issue, it went to 1015 S.La…

“I’ll need a new car. I gotta have a new car to block for the truck, ya know. Speedy car. Speedier than that.” As Little Enos Burdette peeled off the hundreds, the world was one scene away from first sight of the most iconic vehicle in movie and pop culture history. When Burt Reynolds as the Bandit wheeled his black and gold ’77 Pontiac Trans Am out of the big rig in Cledus Snow’s driveway, the car world would never be the same. Over the next two hours we witnessed the glory of a 6.6L automatic T/A, big gold screamin’ chicken and all, tearing it up from Atlanta to Texarkana and back with the goal of scoring 400 cases of Coors beer in 28 hours, picking up chicks, jumping bridges,…

It’s just a ratty patch of 65-year-old concrete, but it’s got the power to obsess. It’s wholesome at first, simply allowing guys to satisfy the most nuclear curiosity in all of motorsports: “How fast can my car go?” The answer is rarely enough, and users soon need to run just a little faster. Then they need a record. Finally there’s the craving for entry into the 200 MPH Club, and by then the corruption is complete. The East Coast Timing Association is the source and HOT ROD is the pusher. For three consecutive years, the magazine has showed up at the ECTA’s season opener to introduce readers to the glories of top-speed racing over the standing mile. The meets held on the 1942 runway of the former Laurinburg-Maxton Army Air…

There’s a lot of buzz surrounding the new DCX Hemi powerplants, and not just in the mass media where the tag line “That thing got a Hemi in it?” has everyone from tax accountants to soccer moms uttering the holy H-word in unison. Much like the Ford modular and GM Gen III V-8s of recent decades, hot rodders are also clamoring over this latest Hemi family in search of even more power than the 5.7’s [345 ci) 340-345hp and the 6.1’s [370 ci) 425hp ratings. One sure path to increased power is added displacement. There are some recipes out there that take the 6.1 all the way to 7 liters. Yes, they’ve hit the magical 426ci mark set back in 1964 and made legendary by Tom Hoover’s NASCAR-and NHRA-dominating Race…

THE DUAL-CARB SOLUTION Performance Carburetors 909/673-1080 www.performancecarburetors.com Rather than just six, here are eight barrels of seduction for guys with factory-style, dual-quad intakes or tunnel rams. Performance Carburetors’ dual-inline PC Series 750-cfm, vacuum-secondary carburetors incorporate high-flow, Holley HP-style, CNC bodies with adjustable air bleeds, dogleg boosters for increased signal, and billet secondary plates with adjustable jets. Also included are quick-change vacuum secondaries with equalization ports, high-flow needles and seats, power-valve savers, and nonstick gaskets. Price: $575 90MMs FOR LS ENGINES HiTwwwech Motorsport 763/712-9088 www.hitechmotorsport.com It takes a big throttle body to feed high-horsepower LS-series engines, and the new 90mm billet throttle bodies from HiTech Motorsport may fit the bill. HiTech claims its flow-bench testing shows that these throttle bodies are capable of flowing over 1,250 cfm, and that should be…

This month’s Gearhead Life tells the story of our aborted mission to Australia to race the HOT ROD Spl. at Lake Gairdner. During our brief trip to and from the Land Down Under we did manage some automotive diversions such as a visit to this great boneyard, the Port Wakefield Wreckers in Port Wakefield, South Australia. The 40-acre plot of snakes and sheetmetal is on the site of a former racetrack and, from what we were told, is one of few wrecking yards that retains older cars rather than crushing them for recycling. The wonders of the yard included many ’50s and ’60s cars that were slightly familiar but not quite right-things like Dodge Phoenix badges on sheetmetal that we’d call a ’69 Fury, a Ute that looked like a…

Bench Racing is and will always be your place to be heard, so keep the mail coming. One thing though; a lot of you don’t “sign” your e-mailed letters with your name and where you’re from, and that prevents us from publishing some great letters. So pay attention to that on your e-mails, folks, and you’ll have a better chance of seeing your letter in the magazine. For those of you sending in photos of your cars, make sure to enter them in our Homebuilt Heros contest. Check out www.hotrod.com for more info on that.–ROB KINNAN IRAQI TRACKI Check out this track dryer (actually, it’s a runway FOD blower) sitting at the Kirkuk Regional Air Base in Kirkuk, Iraq. I have photos of the engine bay and engine, and it…

LONG LIVE THE KING In the spring of 1968 at the New York Auto Show, Carroll Shelby and the Ford Motor Company unveiled the Mustang Shelby Cobra GT500KR. The KR stood for “King of the Road.” Powered by Ford’s 428 Cobra Jet V-8, the GT500KR was the biggest, baddest Shelby Mustang offered up to that time. Hot rod lore has it that Shelby had gotten word of a Chevrolet project that was also called the “King of the Road” and decided to beat GM to the punch with his own road ruler. On the 40th birthday of the original GT500KR, in the spring of 2007 at the New York Auto Show, Ford and Shelby uncorked a new King of the Road, the ’08 Ford Shelby GT500KR. And this one is…

High-end car companies like to brag that they are all about the relentless pursuit of perfection. If, rather than luxury drivers, they were talking about antiseptically clean musclecars that could eclipse the quarter-mile in 8 seconds or better, then cars like Darren Tedder’s ’71 ’Cuda would be sitting in the showrooms. This ’Cuda, which finished Third at HOT ROD’s ’06 Pump Gas Drags™, is the product of Darren’s own unremitting quest for perfection. An obsession over details certainly comes in handy for building cars, but Darren’s was honed in his career in underwater production, where sweating the details is absolutely vital. Darren’s life and the lives of those who work with him rely upon every little thing being triple-checked, since there’s often not room for slip-ups in front of the…

Back in 1965, HOT ROD wrote a piece about the EMPI Inch Pincher, a 13-second ’56 Volkswagen sedan that became the terror of the NHRA Gas classes. The article finished with these words: “The next order of business would seem to be a crack at the 100-mph mark and possibly a shot at the 12s. This e.t. projection may seem to be a bit ambitious on our part, but then who would have thought a Volkswagen could win Street Eliminator?” A Bug running under 13 seconds appeared implausible at the time, especially when considering that a then-new ’65 model could barely achieve 23 seconds in the quarter-mile. Guess what: VWs are still being drag-raced today, though now they can run faster, much faster, than 12s. THE EARLY DAYS To most,…

Corner-carving is among the most rousing activities practiced in the driver seat, yet it can also be the most humiliating and frustrating if you don’t know what you’re doing. Handling pursuits are the golf of gear headdom. You’re not going to get any better without some lessons, and even afterward you could flail aimlessly, not really improving. It’d be nice to have an instructor coaching your every lap. That’s what this new gizmo is all about. It can provide handy training for first-time road racers, and hard-core data and community interaction that will compel the most diehard slide-rule stroke. Just watch. First, the 30-second history. Think back to 1984-ish when Top Fuel racer Kenny Bernstein and crewchief AA/Da le Armstrong were among the first to bring attention to race car…

Got a question about anything hot rod-related? You’ve come to the right place. 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. If you have quality digital photos of the car or problem, and if they’re at least 300 dpi at 4x4 inches or larger in size (bigger is always better), we may throw them in as well.–MARLAN DAVIS DRILLING BRAKE ROTORS Is it safe to cross-drill my own brake rotors? If so, how should I do it? Matt Sliwinski Croswell, MI Once upon a time, many racers favored crossdrilling the brake rotors. It was believed that cross-drilling helped vent gases created when the resin bonding agents within the…