Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2023 i Hot Rod

This is not your ordinary hot rod, and this is definitely not going to be your ordinary HOT ROD article. For one thing, I’m about to break every rule of proper journalism; I am anything but objective, and I’m definitely not supposed to be speaking in the first person. You see, I built this car, and the owner is a good friend of mine, so I might be a little biased. But I’m also able to tell you a very personal story about this unique hot rod and how it came to be. I’m hoping you’ll forgive a few journalistic transgressions while you read this story. It’s a long one, so buckle in. I think it will be worth it. The owner of this beast, and my confessed friend, is…

When Chevrolet dropped the 427ci LS7 on the performance world in 2006, it was the most powerful naturally aspirated V8 powerplant ever put into mass production. A lot has happened in the interim, including GM’s later 650hp LT4 and 755hp LT5 production engines. At other brands, there’s the Hellcat family of V8s at Dodge, and Ford’s excellent Trinity and Predator V8s, but all of these are supercharged and intercooled. In fact, only super-high-tech, super-expensive flat-plane-crank engines (Ford’s 5.2-liter four-valve Voodoo and Chevy’s 5.5-liter direct-injected LT6) have been able to best the LS7’s power output in the past 16 years. As the first of the rectangle-port cylinder heads that subsequently came through the years (i.e., LS3, L92), the LS7 cylinder head still reigns supreme as the best flowing two-valve production small-block…

How hard can it be? An exhaust cone looks to be such a simple thing to make. Take some sheetmetal, roll it into a cone, weld it up, and you’re done, right? Well, it’s not quite that easy, as we learned from observing Jeff Johnson of Accurate Mobile Welding in Upland, California. We watched as he rolled up some stainless cones for Larry Jacinto’s ’41 Willys pickup being built at the Veazie Brothers’ fabrication shop in Pomona, California. Although it is possible to purchase cone components from a supplier such as Cone Engineering in Los Alamitos, California, the Veazies thought it would be better to make them from scratch and add a rolled edge in the process. Making exhaust cones is a task that almost anybody can attempt in…

“Nobody cares about a 1972 Scamp.” Bob Florine and Steve Strope both said that to me, even though we were talking about the incredible hot rod that is disproving their assertion everywhere it shows up. Every hot rod, from the mildest to the wildest, begins its life as an idea in somebody’s imagination. For a lot of hot-rodders, coming up with ideas is easy and driving the finished car is desired—but the in-between step, the actual build, keeps their concept from ever reaching the street. The purchase price of a project car, the cost of elaborate parts, and the fabrication chops required to create the kind of cars you see at shows, on the web, or in magazines, can prevent the average enthusiast from building the hot rod they see…

The interpretation of the term gasser stretches well beyond its original definition, but we still occasionally see an example of what gassers were really like in the 1960s. Although this car has been partially disassembled and updated with a fresh engine combination, many of the details are true to its original build in 1964. The most spectacular aspect is the weathered paintjob, which still retains all its original hand lettering and just the right amount of patina. Dustin Barton is the car’s current caretaker, and he plans to someday put the car back on the dragstrip. He was able to track down some information, thanks to local hot-rodder Shaun McCarthy, who knew the car’s original builder, Bill Peck. Although there are still some missing details about why this car sat…

A MIG welder is an almost universal tool for resto work. In recent years, inverter power technology has been incorporated into newer units, and with that advancement came many improvements. Old-school welders with transformer power delivery have been around for more than 100 years because they are very reliable, but they’re heavy and take more skill to operate, especially with delicate work. Inverter welders are much lighter and are easier to learn and control, although they do cost more. The main challenge with MIG welding is controlling the arc. Heat levels vary depending on the type and thickness of the steel, so a stable and controllable arc is crucial for consistency in welds. The traditional way of doing that is with an electrical transformer that converts the high-voltage (120 or…

Email us at hotrod@hotrod.com For the last three weeks, I’ve been helping get Project X ready for its big re-reveal at this year’s Power Tour, which begins in Atlanta. Though the details will be public by the time this issue hits newsstands, we finally put a gasoline engine back in the long-running magazine project car. Even better, it’s the engine that should have been put in it two years ago, but that’s a topic for another conversation. HOT ROD Garage filmed an episode highlighting the installation the ZZ632 crate engine and Gearstar 4L80E transmission, then promised to “turn it over to our friends at HOT ROD to finish the car in time for Power Tour.” Gulp! There are only two of us who work from our El Segundo office on…

When the origin of the muscle car is debated, there’s a reason automotive historians point to the Pontiac GTO as ground zero. Sure, performance sedans predated it, and the big-engine-in-midsize-car packaging concept wasn’t new either. What set the GTO apart was a wide-ranging campaign to sell it to a new, younger group of buyers, the teenagers and early-20-somethings we now call Baby Boomers. The architect of that campaign was Detroit ad man Jim Wangers, who passed away in late April at age 96. Wangers’ background as a car guy and drag racer—he won Top Stock Eliminator at the 1960 NHRA Nationals driving a Royal Pontiac-prepped Super Duty Catalina—had a major impact on Pontiac’s advertising even before the GTO. In those “Wide Track” days of the early 1960s, Wanger-influenced ads showed…

Pro Touring cars have been following the same formula for many years now: lower the center of gravity, tune the suspension geometry and spring rates, install big brakes, and utilize some type of modern V8 and manual transmission. These methods have been applied to many types of cars, but when it comes to application types, most people gravitate to GM’s F-body platform, or perhaps a Ford Mustang. But Matt Graves isn’t most people. He has an affinity for obscure builds, and his 1983 Cadillac Coupe DeVille is the ultimate example of a funny idea that morphed into a real thing. “Pro luxury,” as he calls it, is the concept of building a Pro Touring car out of a full-size luxury coupe or sedan. Lowering a big Cadillac isn’t exactly a…

When does “just a little bit more” become too much of a good thing? The answer is that it occurs a lot sooner than most hot-rodders think. We’re not sure when it happened, but at some point, an engine didn’t start becoming impressive until it was churning out 600, 700, or even 800 hp. Ironically, in the world of street machines and Pro Touring cars, an 800-horsepower twin-turbo engine is nearly useless unless you’re good at throttle manipulation. Ever have a pair of turbos go into boost during the apex of a curve? Let’s just say it’s an easy way to transform a 70-degree turn into a 360-degree spin fest. Straight-line performance is tough as well, since even massive 315 tires end up being spun into molten slag by a…

We love engines that fall into the “different” category and, thankfully, so does Steve Brulé at Westech Performance. When he’s not cohosting the Engine Masters video series, he’s running countless engines on Westech’s Superflow 902 dyno. This time, he’s got a 355-inch Ford Y-block stroker in the test cell! We don’t see very many of these early Ford OHV engines, so we thought it would be worth checking out this Y-block built by Todd Ferguson and John Mummert for Joe Cebe’s project. We’ve all heard about the legendary side-valve Ford flathead V8. It was a great engine, but by the late 1940s it was starting to become dated, especially when compared to what the competition was offering. So, in 1954, Ford introduced the new overhead valve Y-block V8 to complement…