Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2023 i Hot Rod

From an early age, Gary Veeder knew he loved cars. His father, Ozzie, loved Chevys. He invested time and money buying used Corvettes and working on them. That passion for hot rodding took hold in the youngster and shaped the rest of his life. “I always tinkered with my dad. He could never afford to buy new ones, but he always bought Corvettes to work on and fix up,” Gary explained. “He inspired me to get into the body shop business, which I was in for 45 years, retiring last year.” Not only did Gary carry on his father’s gearhead tradition, but he took it a huge step forward. Upgrading those Corvettes with his father also inspired Gary to take that attention to detail into his business. He opened his…

Photos: Wes Allison & Steven Rupp If you’re into crazy LS swaps, then you’ve come to the right place! You see, for the last 13 years Holley has been hosting an event specifically targeting LS- and LT-powered rides. Hot rodders being who they are, find the craziest cars, trucks, and whatevers to swap GM LS and LT engines into. And, given the massive size of this event, many show up to show off their creativity. LS-swapped rat rods? Yep, they were everywhere. What about an LS-swapped Jeep? Yeah, everything from Wranglers to Cherokees were lurking about. Corvairs, Mazdas, BMWs, Volkswagens, Subarus, and even a freakin’ Rolls Royce were there, all of them LS- or LT-swapped. Oh, and Fords of all shapes and sizes, especially Mustangs, were there throwing down with LS…

By: Cam Benty Photos: John McGann If you’ve ever driven a classic muscle car equipped with a four-speed manual transmission, you probably experienced the joys of commanding a Muncie transmission. While some classic 1960’s General Motors-built cars ran Borg Warner’s Super T-10 four-speed, if your vehicle featured a big-block or high-horsepower engine, a Muncie trans was probably hiding under the floorboards. With the ability to handle higher torque and horsepower, the new Super Muncie (shown here) can handle up to 600 lb-ft of vicious torque. Named for the town where the transmission factory was located in Indiana, the Muncie came in basically three flavors, the wide-ratio M20, the close-ratio M21, and the heavy-duty M22 close-ratio transmission. The reference to wide- or close-ratio gearing comes from the “spread” in the gearing…

The first time you see Austin Shepherd’s 1985 Mazda RX-7 fly down the track, you’ll ask yourself, “Did I just witness that?” The second thing you’ll think is, “I gotta take a closer look.” Lil Heavy, as it’s known in the rural hamlets and backwoods tracks of northern Indiana, is not possessed of huge amounts of power. On the contrary, it’s relatively modest and somewhere between 1,000 and 1,200 hp by Shepherd’s own admission. The thing it’s good at is getting down a rotten road fast and doing it straight as a string. What you see is definitely not what you get as the bruised and battered beer-can of a car pulls to the line and its 5.3-liter LS begins to build boost. But it’s 100 percent subterfuge. Lil Heavy…

Heat is a byproduct of combustion. Both air-cooled and water-cooled engines need to dissipate that heat to keep the engine from running too hot. Can piston rings play a role in managing that heat? Before we get into the details on that, we need to talk about another significant source of heat in an engine: friction. Heat is also a byproduct of friction. Think about rubbing your hands together to warm them up. The faster you rub your hands together, the warmer they get. Now think about the pistons in your engine—they’re moving faster than 200 cycles per second. That’s why piston rings matter when it comes to engine temperature. The primary source of friction-related heat in an engine is from the piston rings rubbing against the cylinder wall. Multiple…

The last time we dropped in on Troy Ladd, he had just started work on his One-Day Coupe. Not a hot rod built in a day—that would be nigh-on impossible—but rather a car built on the one day a week he has off from running Hollywood Hot Rods in Burbank, California. Inspired to build something that was quick, simple, and inexpensive, Troy dug through his abandoned pile of parts and came up with a chopped ’31 coupe body and a Brookville Roadster Lakester chassis that had been ordered for a customer whose build went in a different direction. The engine is an old Chrysler 392 Hemi block he had in storage for years. “It was enough to make a good start,” said Troy. During that first visit, Troy assembled the…

You know what they say about beauty and the eye of the beholder. To my eye, the angular, asymmetrical XR-6 isn’t a beautiful hot rod. The judges at the Grand National Roadster Show thought differently and awarded the HOT ROD project car the America’s Most Beautiful Roadster trophy in 1963. The XR-6 (experimental roadster, six-cylinder engine) was the brainchild of Associate Editor LeRoi Smith. As he recalled in the buildup’s first installment (March ’62), he was bench racing with other staffers during a coffee break and pointed out that “the cost of the average rod had risen considerably during the past decade, but hot rod design had failed to keep pace. We were immediately frowned upon by the ‘old heads.’ We stuck to our guns, and the result was our…

Like most good stories, this one starts out with the dreams and longings of a kid. When we’re young, before the realities of life beat the innocence out of us, we see nothing but a world of possibilities. We see a poster of a car, or maybe even Farrah Fawcett, and say “one day.” Todd Evans was that kid, and the experiences of his youth did a lot to shape the desires of his adulthood. “I remember the old World of Wheels cars displayed with all the chrome, mirrors, and even fur! I remember the Imperial Stormtrooper Vega on the cover of the program, and I remember Rick Dobbertin’s Nova. I like cars that grab your attention even if you don’t know the first thing about cars. I like life-size…

By: Marc Gewertz Drag racing fans got to relive those memories at the 5th Annual Nitro Revival at Irwindale Speedway, where the pits were once again filled with the legendary cars of drivers and teams like Stone, Woods & Cook, Tommy Ivo, The Surfers, Kuhl & Olson, “Big John” Mazmanian, and many more. With their metalflake paint and chrome shining under the California sun, these front-engine dragsters, vintage Funny Cars, and Fuel Altereds that once dominated the quarter-mile were all brought to Nitro Revival to share their stories. Nitro Revival is about drag racing history, and who better to tell it than those who lived it? Drag racing legends Don Prudhomme, Roland Leong, Richard Tharp, Tommy Ivo, Vance Hunt, Kenny Logan, and Bob Muravez (aka Floyd Lippencott Jr.) were just…

Photos: The Author & HOT ROD Archives Trick question: What’s the difference between a sway bar and an antisway bar? Absolutely nothing. The linguistic shorthand of gearheads has abbreviated the more accurate term, antisway bar, in a way that mirrors the equally ambiguous role that this important suspension part plays in drag racing. (Note that in MotorTrend new-car speak, this part is referred to as an “anti-roll bar,” which, though correct, may cause confusion to drag racers who know the part as an “antisway bar.”) A rear antisway bar is the kind of part that is seldom pondered until you realize you need it, which is a good measure on which to base your need. We realized we needed one for our long-term 1968 Plymouth Valiant project car years ago,…

Email us at hotrod@motortrend.com When they say, “LS swap the world!” they really don’t mean figuratively. Nope, they quite literally want to swap every motorized whatever on the planet, and nowhere is that more evident than at the Holley LS Fest. Of course they have just about any type of LS-swapped vehicle at the event, but what about lawn mowers? After all, lawn care is tedious work, so if you can get it done much faster, why wouldn’t you? This early-’80s Murray mower has been in the family for decades and has mowed a lot of lawns. It was passed from the owner’s grandma, to his aunt, to his uncle, and back to his grandma before finally wearing out and being parked out back. The owner thought about putting a…