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❱Sometimes I need some prompting when trying to write this column, and this time was no exception. Rusty, our intrepid managing editor, posed some topics ranging from a cynical take on today’s political situation to the more germane topic of our latest build for the CarCraftvideo series. Among the suggestions on the list was the question, “What keeps you up at night?” A simple question that’s difficult to answer. Sometimes the easier question to answer would be what doesn’t keep me up at night.
Short answer: lots of things keep me up at night, which has been a problem over the last several months. Some of them are personal and don’t need to be aired out here, but there are plenty of work-related issues that seek to destroy my circadian rhythm. Some of them are just the physical volume of work. Our website needs daily content—a constant flow of feature and technical articles, news items, and personality profiles. Those all need to be assigned, progress monitored, proofread after being received, uploaded to our production servers, input into our web templates, and given final approval before hitting the website. I’m not solely responsible for all those steps, but I am for the majority. That takes a lot of planning and communicating with the staff and our large and growing group of freelance contributors. Freelancers need to be paid, of course, and it’s my responsibility to make sure that happens. I’m also responsible for the freelance budget—begging for more money, then making sure I’m not spending too much. We work with a wide variety of talented writers, photographers, and increasingly these days, videographers and video editors, and that work isn’t cheap.
In broader terms, HOT ROD needs to be flexible and
adaptable in today’s changing media landscape. I try to be proactive, rather than reactive, in how we plan our editorial coverage. What events do we cover, what cars do we feature, who shoots and writes it, and how does it get presented online, distributed on social media, and what goes into the print magazine? What is our competition doing, and how do we stack up against them? Finally, is what we are doing profitable? Afterall, we need to make money to pay the bills, keep the lights on, and pay our salaries.
Reviewing all the things I just listed off, one might wonder, “Where’s the burnouts, the driving fast cars? Where’s the fun?” That stuff does happen, for sure, but first and foremost, this is a job; it has ups and downs just like any job. I’m extremely fortunate that it’s a job I love; however. I’ve always loved cars for as long as I can remember. That makes all the Zoom meetings, spreadsheets, and expense reports all worth it. I do make time to enjoy my job and my life, and that’s usually behind the wheel of one of my cars or riding my motorcycle. If you follow my account on Instagram (@john.mcgann) you’ll find my feed full of weekend motorcycle rides or late-night drives in my ’93 GMC or ’67 C10, because that’s where I do some of my best thinking. I went on a long drive in the C10 last night, in fact, and I slept very well afterward.
One final note: I want to thank everyone who took the time to email their feedback and thoughts on what HOT ROD has been covering lately. I’ve read all the messages and am keeping a mental list of all the constructive criticism. Please keep it up! Let us know what you think by emailing us at hotrod@hotrod.com. Please put “Be Heard” or “Yo John!” or something like that in the subject line so we know it’s not spam. Thanks for reading!
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April 2003: 116 pages, $3.99
Fifteen years before, then Editor Pat Ganahl came up with the idea for a HOT ROD swimsuit issue as an April Fools spoof of the SportsIllustratedspecials. He had no idea the concept would be such a strong newsstand seller that it continued for the better part of a decade. Editor Ro McGonegal brought the models back to HOT ROD in 2001 in retro pin-up style, and the concept was, once again, a big seller. By 2003, the combination of a Miss HOT ROD fold-out poster and a paint-and-body editorial section was an April issue tradition. Randy Lorentzen photographed Mishel Thrope in front of Ryan Murphy’s ’55 Chevy 210 for the cover; inside, the paint section included tips for first-time painters, a tutorial on how to paint flames, and bodywork tips on a fat-fendered ’40 Chevy owned by Associate Publisher Ed Zinke. Elsewhere in the issue McGonegal covered the installation of the Crusher Camaro’s driveline; Senior Technical Editor Marlan Davis fueled the Anvil small-block Chevy project engine with a brew of nitromethane and alcohol (with plenty of charts and graphs and info on the properties of the fuels); Tech Editor Steve Magnante reported on Edelbrock’s new Thunder AVS carburetor; and Steve Dulcich built “The Little Mopar That Could,” a junkyard 318 that produced 400 hp for less than $1,500.
April 1983: 132 pages, $1.75
Pat Brollier photographed George Boskovich’s ’69 and ’70 Boss Mustangs for the cover and Senior Editor Gray Baskerville wrote up the coverage of the modified ponies in “2 Bad.” The 71-year-old Boskovich was a fixture in SoCal’s cruising and street racing scene, and his ’69 Boss—the first one sold in Southern California—had long ago lost its semi-hemi mill for a 427 high-riser. When he retired, Boskovich decided to swap that engine for a built 472-inch Cammer. The ’70 was still Boss-powered, though the engine was bored and stroked to 508 inches and highly modified by Earl Wade. The “Street Machine of the Year” story featured the 10 “baddestquickestnastiestfastestmostoutrageous” feature cars from 1982, with Rick Dobbertin’s “eye-popping” twin-turbocharged and supercharged ’65 Nova earning top honors. Technical Editor Marlan Davis offered street and strip tuning tips for Holley 4150/4160 carburetors; Pat Ganahl lowered the suspension on his Z26 project Camaro; Executive Editor John Baechtel looked inside a Buick V6 drag race engine; David Kimble rendered a detailed cutaway view of Richard Petty’s NASCAR Pontiac; and a busy Baskerville looked at independent front suspension systems for street rods, road tested Vince Granatelli’s Paxton-blown ’72 Nova (12.21 @ 115.68 in the quarter on slicks), and introduced a lakes modified roadster project to be built by Lil John Buttera and Fat Jack Robinson and given away at the HOT ROD Supernationals.
April 1963: 118 pages, 50 cents
Eric Rickman photographed what has become one of the most significant ’32 Fords in hot rodding history, Tom McMullen’s flamed highboy roadster. When Rickman wrote the feature, McMullen was an electronics technician at Beckman Industries; his role as a magazine publisher (and prolific competitor to Petersen Publishing) was in his future. Powered by a ’62 327-inch small-block topped by a 4-71 GMC blower, the daily-driven roadster had exceeded 150 mph on the dry lakes. Technical Editor Ray Brock covered Dan Gurney’s win at the MotorTrend-sponsored NASCAR Riverside 500, and the magazine also profiled Bill Stroppe’s Mercury stock car team. While the racing coverage wouldn’t appear for another month, Rickman shot the Winternationals custom car and hot rod show, where Bill Cushenbery’s Silhouette, Bob Tindle’s Orange Crate, and Chuck Krikorian’s Emperor took top honors. Associate Editor LeRoi Smith road tested stock and D/Stock drag-prepped versions of the Rambler Ambassador, and he also looked into a Corvair handling packaged designed by Don Hellwig. This issue marked a major milestone: Longtime Editor and Editorial Director Wally Parks was leaving Petersen Publishing to devote his full attention to the NHRA, which he formed in 1951 “for the betterment of the hot rod sport.” As Editor Bob Greene said in his column, “better it he has—better yet he will.”
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❱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 resolve to build a modern street roadster of our own.” The
BY DREW HARDIN PHOTOGRAPHY HOT ROD ARCHIVEScar would incorporate “many of the automotive design and performance advances introduced during the past several years,” but at the same time it would have to be “simple enough for anyone to build” with “no strange and exotic hard-to-duplicate items; it had to be relatively inexpensive, and we must do as much of the work ourselves as possible.”
Smith asked designer Steve Swaja to sketch a body based on a fiberglass ’27 Model T tub with a track nose and an abbreviated ’23 T truck bed. Smith built a rectangular tube frame with a Volkswagen frontend and a trailing link rear suspension holding a Dodge Lancer axle. For power, Smith chose the relatively new Chrysler Slant Six backed by a five-speed Siata gearbox from MotorTrendEditor Chuck Nerpel “that had seen service behind a Ford V8-60 race car.”
When Smith next reported on the car’s progress (June ’62), the Siata box was replaced by the transmission from a ’61 Lancer. Smith did some preliminary fitting work on the fiberglass tub, channeling it 4 inches over the frame. Bonneville racer Tom Beatty machined Triumph TR-3 disc brakes to fit on the VW spindles, while Morris Minor rack-and-pinion steering was fitted with help from Indy car builder Frank Kurtis.
In his next two updates (Oct. ’62, Jan. ’63), Smith hinted that Swaja was dreaming up new ideas for the roadster’s body, though readers wouldn’t see the final form until the Oakland show coverage in May. Until then, Smith covered the sorting out of the chassis, revealing it in its finished form in April.
Among the hot rod heroes who helped with the car at this stage were Frank Airheart, who contributed brakes; and Carroll Shelby, who loaned three Weber carburetors to mount on the intake manifold fabricated by Bobby Barr, builder of the headers for Tommy Ivo’s Wagonmaster dragster.
Readers saw the finished XR-6 in the Oakland show coverage, but it wasn’t until the August issue’s final installment that Smith explained the body’s evolution. Between Swaja’s new ideas and the fact that “doors were deemed an absolute necessity,” the decision was made to build a body in steel rather than using the repro fiberglass. The finished chassis, plus “the basic part of a ’27 Model T body,” were delivered to George Barris, “and the bodywork began.” Once the body panels were shaped by Jack Sutton on his English wheel, the car was painted in Tangerine metalflake (as was the frame, though it was “left coarse for effect”). Tom McMullen, then working at Auto Electric Engineering, wired the car, and Tony Nancy made and upholstered the seats.
Oakland was not the XR-6’s final show stop. Smith wanted to take it to the Miami Custom Auto Fair, but there were a few tweaks to do between the two shows. He took the car to Gene Winfield’s shop for an aluminum nose piece and fenders. The car was also repainted, still in Tangerine but without the metalflake, and Tony Nancy made a new set of seats. In Miami, the XR-6 won the Street Rod Sweepstakes trophy.
While the XR-6 strayed beyond Smith’s original plan for an affordable build, he published a chart in the final story tallying the costs for an “economy version.” If only we had a time machine to take us to 1963, when you could pay $10 for a Model A frame, $10-$50 for a steel Model T body (or $150 for a fiberglass one), $3 for wheels, $50 -$250 for an engine, and so on. At those prices, a build like this could cost, as Smith figured it, between $600 and $1,100.
Gary Veeder’s 1966 Nova is a triumph of detail and high-performance understatement.
STEVE TURNER RENZ DIMAANDAL
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 body shop, Veeder’s Collision Center, in Watertown, South Dakota, and thrived for decades because of the fastidiousness he learned from his father’s projects.
Left: This neglected 1964 Nova was given a second chance at life.
Right: Everything you need to know about the history of the Chevy Nova.
“I have loved cars all my life. Restoration and working on cars is really the only hobby I have tried that I am truly passionate about,” Gary stated. “Seeing something old and making it nice brings me great satisfaction.”
There is a saying about the plumber always having leaky pipes, which implies that the customer work usually takes precedence over personal projects. Alas, this is just as true of a body shop. Veeder’s focused on collision work, so a one-off build became an afterhours project. Drawn to the muscular lines of the 1966 Chevrolet Nova, he spotted one at a car show, and after more than two years of pursuit, acquired that car for just $3,500.
“After eight years, my dad’s dream was to restore and modify the car to a semi-Pro Street,” Gary’s son Bryan explained. “Mom had reservations, wanting him to leave it stock. It was a 1966 SS—a six-cylinder, automatic car. He decided to restore it, and wanted it to be stock appearing, especially on the inside.”
Having pursued a career in the body shop business and growing up under another automotive perfectionist, Gary wasn’t going to bring this car back as a basic build. He was ready to go supernova on the car and create the machine he had always dreamed of driving.
“He started the restoration in 2015, but he wanted the car done ‘his way,’ so he took his time customizing and perfecting this build—6 ½ years to be exact,” Bryan explained. “His family wasn’t sure if the Nova would ever be done.”
Being a perfectionist takes time, especially when the work takes place after a long day at the shop, so it was sure to be a lengthy process. Part of what extended the process was Gary’s desire to add some unique elements that would stand out without deterring from its stock-appearing style.
“The original 1966 had a windshield cowl that could not be removed. They were welded in from the factory,” Bryan said. “From the very beginning of the project, he studied how he could remove it, because
“I have loved cars all my life. Restoration and working on cars is really the only hobby I have tried that I am truly passionate about.”
otherwise you could never get down in there to paint.”
This is one small example of the level of detail in this Nova, but Gary had to make it work so that the paint would look just right and the car would retain its factory lines, even on something as easily overlooked as the cowl.
“The removable cowl is something that I have never seen done, but I wanted to fabricate a way to remove it so I could get down in there to completely paint it with base and clear and make it nicer,” Gary added. “It was quite a task to get it to fit and make it look finished and stock-appearing. You know a lot of people smooth that over. It’s a cheap way out, but I think that vent looks nice in there.”
Gary pointed out more unique changes. “The ashtray was moved over to make space for the gauge panel. We moved it over to accommodate the delete panel, and then you see that the gauge panel underneath it all lines up. If you look at a stock car, the ashtray is right in the way, so we moved it over about two or three inches so it looks proportional.”
Taking the affordable, easy path wasn’t in the cards for this project. It began for just a few thousand
dollars but grew into a six-figure build—and that’s without factoring in the hours of work by Gary and his employees at Veeder’s Collision Center, not to mention the consultation from Doug Engels, who was there for advice on the build.
“I did not want a 2-inch cowl hood on the car, but I had to make room for the 1-inch nitrous plate to fit,” Gary explained. “So I customized the hood with an inset to accommodate the nitrous ring while keeping the top of the hood smooth, like stock.”
Under the hood is a small-block Chevy, a 427-inch engine constructed by Shafiroff Racing Engines, based on a Motown aluminum block and fortified with Eagle 4340 H-beam connecting rods. Breathing through a Motown intake and a Quick Fuel Technology carburetor, it wears CNC-ported AFR aluminum cylinder heads that are completed by PAC Racing valvesprings and Ultra Solid Mag roller rockers that
work with a Comp roller camshaft and Comp lifters to actuate 2.08/1.60 valves. Fitted with an ATI Super Damper and Billet Pro Series pulleys, the small-block is cooled by a CSR electric water pump and a pair of electric fans. Fed by a Holley electric fuel pump tamed by a MagnaFuel four-port regulator, a Quick Fuel 850 carburetor supplies the air and fuel lit by an MSD 6AL ignition. It exhales through custom stainless steel headers and a Kriscraft custom stainless steel exhaust system. With a whiff of nitrous from an NX MainLine kit, it generates 564 horsepower at 6,200 rpm and 469.8 lb-ft at 6,200 rpm.
Gary manages that power with a Tremec five-speed transmission mated with a Centerforce dual-friction clutch inside a Quick Time scattershield. As he bangs through the gears, the thrust travels via a chromemoly driveshaft through a Ford 9-inch filled with 4.88 gears, and a custom four-link rear suspension plants the grunt.
Looking mostly period correct, with stock seats reupholstered by Carol’s Upholstery in Watertown, South Dakota, the interior benefits from Auto Meter gauges mounted in the stock dash. Randy Gribble wired up the car with a Ron Francis kit, and Gary modified the dash so that the trick switch panel would line up with that sleek billet radio-delete panel from Tooling Solutions Worldwide of Watertown, South Dakota. With wide rubber out back, the Nova needed mini tubs, but Gary was determined to retain a stock look inside and out. As such, he built a custom rear seat to work with the tubs that makes it look like everything was meant to be. Gary and the team at Veeder’s Collision Center worked hard to get the body lines just right on his Nova. “It takes a team to get it right,” Gary said. They never looked so good back in ’66, nor did the car come equipped with those sleek, billet LED taillights. Likewise, the glass is fresh, and the stainless steel bits are polished.
“It puts a smile on my face and gives me a sense of satisfaction every time I drive it. The sound of its rumble is perfect, and it drives like a rocket,” he said. Though he doesn’t drive it too aggressively these days, Gary plans to keep the car and enjoy it. After investing so much into doing the car his way, and when the result is a Nova like this one, who could blame him?
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 leaves the line with all the drama of a loaded UPS truck, its twin Forced Performance 7275 turbos barely making any boost, but within a car’s length the Mazda’s front end is fully extended and the front tires begin to float inches above the pavement. It’s here where many high-powered track cars make their first mistake, either overpowering the track with tire spin or continuing an upward trajectory into certain disaster. If you are in the opposite lane from Shepherd, this is also the moment when it dawns on you the error of your ways. This is not a car to be trifled with.
JOHNNY HUNKINS KEVIN DIOSSI & AUSTIN SHEPHERD
The amazement of seeing such a performance is not lost on its owner, who experienced the same epiphany. At the time the RX-7 came into Austin’s life, he was running a turbo-LS 1978 Chevy C10 in a Small-Tire Street-Tire class, but it was nothing special. Then he saw the Mazda at a Small Tire grudge race at Bunker Hill, Indiana, in 2019. At the time, the RX-7 had a single-turbo LS; it had won the Small Tire class and that stuck in his head. “That kind of drew me into the car—and a few years later it popped up on Facebook Marketplace. I couldn’t pass it up after seeing what it was capable of.” Let that story be a lesson, don’t be ashamed to improve on the hard work of a previous owner.
Armed with the insider intel that the Mazda’s bite was a lot more painful than its visual bark, Shepherd bought the Mazda in 2021 as a roller for around $5K. Much of the alchemy of Lil Heavy was already baked-in, including a back-half chassis consisting of the rollcage tying the flexible Mazda chassis together and a custom four-link rear suspension attached to a 4.10-geared, spooled Ford 8.8-inch rearend of unknown origin. The Mazda’s rollcage had an important modification that would give it an advantage on dicey track surfaces: a system of attachment points for spare gym weights. In essence, free weights that had never been lifted in the
gym would allow Shepherd to “never lift” off the throttle in a race.
The added rear weight has been a godsend in leapfrogging grudge-race competitors who often have far more money and technology. Shepherd says, “A lot of the cars at places we race have traction control, and my car doesn’t have any of that, so we try to get enough weight in it that you know it’s not going to spin the tire, but not so much that it’s going to stand up and do a wheelie. We kind of ride the fine line of trying to make it do a wheelie and just barely hover off the ground.” According to Austin, Lil Heavy tips the scale anywhere between 2,950 and 3,400 pounds, depending on the type of race he’s running.
To that point, Austin mainly runs two types of races: street car events and a newer kind of racing called back track or back-of-track racing. “For the Street Car class I had to have working windows, headlights, taillights, turn signals, all that. Once I got the built motor and got to where we could get some data, we gutted the car completely. So those red doors and the no-front-end are what I run for every back track race I go to, to get the weight off it. By taking the front end off and gutting it with the same weight bias with the weights in the back, I can cut out about 400 pounds.”
Separate from the crowd-pleasing nature of Austin’s Mazda is the
fact that it’s an answer to the age-old riddle of how to have a competitive car without going broke—the mechanical equivalent of having your cake and eating it. Part of that is picking your battles carefully. Says Austin, “Anything that’s at a good track, it’s hard to be competitive. That’s why we do the back track racing, because the horsepower doesn’t always win. A 1,200hp car can go 5.80s just as well as a 2,000hp car. If you’re going 5.80s at a back track race, you’re going to be one of the fastest cars there because that’s all the road can hold.”
Back track racing? What’s that? When the street racing thing surged years ago with the popularity of shows like Street Outlaws, drag racing was at an impasse; some racers stayed in the legal, sanctioned drag racing camp, while others—sometimes forced into it by metropolitan-area track closures (Chicagoland, Palm Beach, Atlanta, Fontana, Memphis, Houston, Englishtown, and so on)—became outlaw street racers. Street racing is less about making big power and more about the science of traction on bad surfaces, and that learning curve resulted in a third racing alternative: back track racing. In this form of competition, street racers adept at finding traction on ordinary tarmac turned to the little-used, shut-down areas of smaller, rural tracks on which to run their no-prep races, done street racestyle with a flashlight.
Back track racing has its pros and cons. In the positive column, grudge racers can compete to their hearts’ content away from the prying eyes (and handcuffs!) of the law. They also gain the benefit of safety personnel being on hand in the event of an accident. Without a giant investment in lane prep on the shoulders of the tracks or promoters, the cost to racers can be kept low, and the down-home, backyard-tire-fire atmosphere can’t be beat. Traditional drag racers argue that low-traction conditions are a safety red flag and running the wrong direction down a track has the potential to go wrong in a bad way. Considering these concerns, many promoters are steering clear of tracks with challenging back-of-track layouts, choosing venues that lend themselves to safer back track racing. The takeaway is this: Grudge racers who prefer the technical challenge of a typical street surface and the level playing field it provides now have a fresh playground to frolic in.
Austin explains the allure of back track racing thusly, “You can almost be shut down before you ever even make it to the end of the track, and then you’ve still got an eighth-mile or a quarter-mile to stop if you wanted to. It’s perfect for low-budget racing. To be able to be a budget car and still compete is the way to go. We use a traction compound, which you can basically use for your burnout, and that’s
it. After your burnout it’s whatever the track gives. You can’t go out there and prep in front of you or anything.” To take full advantage of the back track racing surface, however, you need to be at the top of your game with power application and suspension tuning.
For the former, Austin has turned to a tried-and-true twin-turbo aluminum 5.3 LS with 10.5:1 compression from a 2007 Tahoe recently refreshed by Northwest Auto & Machine of Fort Wayne, Indiana. The bullet uses box-stock Trick Flow GenX 220cc heads (O-ringed with TKM mini-hoops) with a BTR all-forged rotating assembly and twin-turbo Stage 3 cam. It’s fed by a Holley Dominator ECU that controls a set of 220 lb/hr fuel injectors in a Holley Lo-Ram intake with a 102mm Sniper throttle body. These injectors feed the engine a diet of good ol’ Hoosier-brewed E85, which is a low-cost substitute for expensive race fuel. The twin Forced Performance 7275 turbos mentioned earlier are chilled by an air-to-water intercooler of unknown origin that Shepherd picked up in trade for wiring a buddy’s car.
The powertrain combo in Lil Heavy is simple, easy to maintain, and hits way over its weight for the investment it represents. Making 1,200 hp is not a difficult task, but keeping the car straight and pulling like a freight train is. Taming the beast is the job of the Holley Dominator’s
boost control. Austin says he likes to leave on just 3 psi of boost, then gradually ramp up the boost over the next 3.5 seconds to around 36-37 psi (by the 330-foot mark). One tip Austin picked up from the previous owner was to launch the Beavans Racing-built three-speed Turbo 400 automatic (featuring a Hughes bolt-together converter) in Second gear to kill the tire spin off the line, a practice that has served him well in a camp that overwhelmingly prefers Powerglide two speeds.
“You can’t spin in First and figure it out from there,” explains Austin. Driving the car is a careful balancing act he’s refined over time, whereby there’s only a few precious pounds of weight on the front tires to affect steering input. Lil Heavy seems to bounce lightly off the track its entire run, virtually all its weight on the small 28x10.5 back tires, gasser style. “It’s about trying to have enough weight and the shocks set right beforehand, so you can at least make a pass and kind of work backward on it. Once we make one run we’re usually sitting pretty good because we know about where we need to be on that surface.”
And here is where we get to the real meat of the issue: shock rebound tuning. Austin uses AFCO Fox-body Big Gun long-travel shocks up front, and they are one of the biggest factors in Lil Heavy’s tuning regimen. Austin says, “Some of the surfaces are good enough that you can tighten them up to get full extension past the 60 foot,
“Youcan’tspininFirstandfigure
or if it’s a real bad track, I let it come up right away just to get all the weight on the back. It ended up working out that, when I stuck them on the car, at full travel, it’s probably a quarter-inch away from maxing out at the ball joint. It works out about perfect.”
When Austin puts Lil Heavy’s tune together for an important run, it’s a package that’s hard to beat. It starts with the sky-high, nose-up attitude that puts most of the weight on the rear, then as it leaves, slowly puts the remaining weight on the rear tires, but not so quickly that the weight over-centers the rear tires for a monstrous wheelie. From there the boost comes on, maintaining nearly all the weight on the rear while allowing the front tires (on stock RX-7 wheels!) to occasionally kiss the pavement for any needed steering input. It’s a brute-force ballet worthy of the Bolshoi, and a damn sight more interesting.
Getting to this point, however, was by virtue of a tightknit group of grudge racers and builders that are as close as family. At the top of the list is Nick Taylor, aka Nickky Bobby. Taylor’s shop in Fort Wayne, Indiana, is where Austin has worked for a couple of years. He says Taylor taught him most of what he’s learned about building and racing a
competitive grudge car. A little closer to Shepherd’s hometown of Wabash, Indiana, is Lil Heavy’s crew chief and Austin’s right-hand man, Chase Ladig. Whether it’s going out to make test hits or to advise on lane conditions, Ladig has proven indispensable to Austin. “It doesn’t matter where we go, he’s always with me,” says Shepherd. He also credits Justin Davis with helping maintain the car between contests. Last, but certainly not least, is Shepherd’s fiancée, Amber Ballard, who helps with topping off the intercooler ice, tire pressure, and moral support.
You’re probably dying to know if this car’s a moneymaker. “Yes,” says Austin. “I’ve done really well this year with the help of the people I’ve been with. I’ve won probably three or four this year. It’s nearly paid the car off for what I’ve got in it,” Austin says, citing his biggest win in Michigan for $12,000.
“Overall, it’s paid off my racing for the year. I’ll get to race the rest of the year without any money out-of-pocket.” Since showing up for Roadkill Nights this past August, there may be a bigger target on his back. Austin put on a show that was noticed by us—and by would-be competitors. Think you’ve got what it takes to put Lil Heavy on the trailer? Let the callouts begin!
Point your phone camera here to read about the differences between no-prep, no-time, and grudge types of drag racing.
itoutfromthere,”
STEVEN RUPP TODD EVANS
With a little today and a whole lot of yesterday, this throwback Trans Am makes us feel like a kid again.
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 Hot Wheels. I like obnoxious,” Evans said.
Fast-forward quite a bit, and Evans now had some cash burning a hole through his jeans and a plan to make his childhood fantasy a reality (the car, not Farrah). He did what we all do these days: hit up the interwebs. As Evans told HOT ROD, “For some reason, I just did a one-word search. I simply typed in ‘blown.’ Results came back mostly empty from the big hitters
like eBay, Craigslist, and Facebook, except for a few junkers that had the bad kind of blown engine. But there was a result from HemmingsMotor News. Honestly, I hadn’t even thought about HMNsince I had a subscription when I was about 10 years old. And there it was, that famous screaming firechicken, with a blower in its beak, near Cleveland, Ohio.”
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Evans called the owner, John, the next day and was regaled with the story of what was turning out to be quite a find. John had bought the 1979 10th Anniversary Silver Edition Trans Am new off the dealer lot, and over his 42 years of ownership the car lived a pampered life, but John was moving and couldn’t take the T/A with him. It was rust-free, shocking for a Midwest car, due to being stored indoors since the day John bought it. It was a fair-weather ride, and the T-tops hadn’t been installed, nor the windows rolled up, in 25 years! For the last 10 years the Pontiac had only ventured out to the occasional car show or cruise around town.
The other good news was that John was a paint and body guy, so about 12 years ago he had stripped the T/A to bare metal and done a correct repaint! The best part, though, was the engine. The original Olds 403 was gone and in its place was a 0.030-over Olds 455 bigblock replete with a polished BDS 6-71 blower and a pair of Holley carbs poking through the hood! As Evans explained, “The car is set up as a cruiser. Yes, I could run more boost. Yes, I could squeeze a lot more out of it, but I enjoy driving my cars. I could drive the Trans Am to New York tomorrow at 90 mph with AC/DC blasting on the stereo and engine temps would never get above 180 degrees.”
Once Evans had his blown ’79 Trans Am back home he found it was almost perfect. John had done all the heavy lifting during his ownership, and Evans only found a few things he wanted to change. The first thing to go was the poorly designed rollcage that was a recipe for bruises any time you went for a drive. According to Evans, getting in could lead to a concussion and turning left would bust up your knuckles. It was replaced with a simple single-hoop bar. For better drivability the TH350 was ditched in favor of a Bowtie overdrive Stage II TH200 4R transmission.
The best part,though,was the engine.The original Olds 403 was gone and in its place was a 0.030-over Olds 455 big-block replete with a polished BDS 6-71 blower and a pair of Holley carbs poking through the hood!
To get the car closer to his memory of the World of Wheels cars, he removed the 15-inch Centerline Champ 500s in favor of some chrome 17-inch Cragars wrapped in 255/50/17 rubber. A Bluetooth stereo and all-new wiring were added so he could blast period-correct metal while cruising. Engine tunes now pump through a set of polished Hooker long tubes into a full exhaust with splitter tips and electric cutouts because he likes obnoxious. There’s even a new line-lock, but it’s there for
nefarious reasons other than dragstrip use. “I also replaced the carpet since, although it had been stored inside, I can tell you that I strongly DO NOT recommend storing your car with the windows down in a musty Ohio basement garage. It stank. Badly!” quipped Evans. The result is what you see here, a retrolicious Trans Am with enough modernity to make it fun to cruise and more than enough retro to make us remember what it was like to be a kid dreaming of making that poster a reality.
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,
QA Lambo at LS Fest? Wait, did someone decide to cause heart attacks across Italy by swapping an LS engine into this iconic European supercar? Nothing is taboo when it comes to LS swaps, including cars that cost more than some houses. ICT Billet worked its LS-swap magic on this 2005 Lamborghini Gallardo and decided to go big with a built LS3 and twin turbos. Mamma mia!
QOne of our favorite oddball swaps at the event was this 1973 Toyota Celica built by JH Restorations up in Canada. From the outside it just looks like a vintage Toyota modified for road-course work, wearing a bit of patina. Pop the hood and you’re treated to a 5.7-liter LS V8 pumping out a bit over 500 hp! The mill is an iron 5.3-liter Vortec that was bored out and stroked with Eagle rotating parts and DSS forged pistons to get the extra displacement. Topping the short-block are some Edelbrock CNC heads and their Cross-Ram intake. Behind the LS there’s a Nissan (not a typo) 370Z six-speed manual transmission that spins the Ford 8.8-inch rear. Custom double-wishbone suspension, Wilwood brakes, QA1 coilovers—the list goes on. If the keys were in it, we might have gone all GTA and ended up on the news.
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 power! Donks, drag cars, and even donks that drag race were in attendance. Oh yeah, some of the coolest LS-swapped oddballs were also some of the fastest rides at the event, from 10-second BMWs and Hondas to David Carroll’s autocrosscrushing 1975 Datsun 280Z (which bested quite a few C6 and C7 Corvettes). We were blown away by the hot rodding creativity on display. So, shuffle through our freaks and LSswapped oddballs gallery and, who knows, maybe you’ll come up with a way to surprise us next year. But be warned: The bar has been set pretty high.
QSome LS swaps look like they were done at the end of a “hold my beer” contest, and others end up looking like they came from the factory with an LS between the fenders. This 1965 Volvo falls firmly into the latter category. We first spied Greg Carnforth’s Cameo Cream LS-swapped Volvo on the HOT ROD Power Tour, and it was great to see this stunning ride again at the LS Fest. Powered by an LS1 from a totaled late-model Pontiac GTO and backed up by a Tremec six-speed transmission, this Volvo is a collection of all the right parts and a ton of top-notch craftsmanship. Carnforth autocrosses the ’65 so it fields a custom chassis with upgraded suspension, Wilwood brakes, and QA1 coilovers on all four corners.
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From the Archives: That time we took a 3,000-mile road trip in an AMC Marlin.
❱Imagine being able to transport yourself back to early 1965 with the task of getting to take a new car, any new car, on a cross-country journey. Would
an AMC Marlin be top of mind? Would the Marlin even be in your Top 20 list of cars to take a road trip in? Well, it was for HOT ROD, when staffer Eric Dahlquist hit the road in the brand-new, swoopy coupe from Kenosha. Starting in Milwaukee, he logged more than 3,000 miles on a combination of freeways and two-lane roads, including iconic Route 66, on his journey from Wisconsin to Los
Angeles. He loved the car, too, raving about the experience. Among the praise lavished upon the Marlin, Eric particularly liked the seating position and the overall comfort and high feature content of the cabin. This story has it all: road trip narrative, new car review, some maintenance and performance tuning, and more than a few fish puns for good measure!
❱Did you know every page of every issue of HOT ROD is available on the MotorTrend App?
That’s right, 900 issues (and counting) and more than 128,000 pages of HRM have been scanned, digitized, and are presented in an easy-to-read format. Scan the QR code and catch upon 75 years of HOT ROD history.
A must-attend event for fans of vintage drag racing, the Nitro Revival is a tribute to the golden era of the sport.
■ Left: In the 1960s, front-engine dragsters were the kings of the quarter-mile. On any given weekend, they raced under the lights at tracks like Lions, Orange County, Fontana, Riverside, San Fernando, San Gabriel, and Irwindale. It was the golden era of drag racing, and Southern California was the epicenter of it all.
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 frontengine dragsters, vintage Funny Cars, and Fuel Altereds that once dominated the quartermile 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 a few of the legends who reminisced about the good ol’ days and talked about their biggest wins, rivalries, and shared crazy stories from their racing exploits.
Nitro Revival was created by Steve Gibbs and the late Ron Johnson, who shared a lifelong passion for drag racing and had the desire to create an event where they could honor the pioneers of the sport they loved so dearly. Gibbs has spent most of his life at the dragstrip. His career began at the old San Gabriel Drag Strip in 1961, when he was just 16 years old. One of his first jobs was writing numbers on race cars with white shoe polish, and he later became the track reporter, writing event coverage for DragNews. Gibbs did whatever the track needed and loved every minute of it.
He got his first full-time job at the original Irwindale Drag Strip, which opened in 1965. He became track manager there in 1968, and he’s been a fixture in the sport ever since. Call it fate, or maybe destiny, that Nitro Revival calls Irwindale Speedway home, bringing Gibbs full-circle to his start in drag racing 62 years ago.
“Nitro Revival is not about the racing or the cars; it’s about the people,” said Gibbs, and just about everyone in attendance would agree. “There are people here I haven’t seen in years,” said Carl Olson, who won Top Fuel Eliminator at the Last Drag Race at Lions. “That’s what makes Nitro Revival so special—the social aspect, and at Nitro Revival that it’s supercharged.” Event promoter Cindy Gibbs concurred. “It’s always been about the people,” she said. “There’s so much history here, we’re just trying to keep it alive.”
Racing royalty, including nearly 50 drag racing hallof-famers, participated in an autograph session on Saturday afternoon, the likes of which may never be seen again. Don “the Snake” Prudhomme, Roland Leong, Tommy Ivo, Ed Pink, Joe Schubeck, Al Bergler, Herm Petersen, Don Prieto, Bob “Bones” Balogh, Gary Beck, Danny Thompson, Linda Vaughn (who is still as sweet as ever), and 101-year-old Ed Iskenderian were just a few of the legends that fans couldn’t wait to meet. Sixteen-time NHRA Funny Car World Champion John Force showed up as a spectator, hoping to visit with some of the people he idolized growing up. “There are people here I haven’t seen in 20 years,” said Force, who pulled up a chair and joined the autograph session.
Each year, Nitro Revival honors several Southern California drag racing icons. This year’s recipients were Gas Ronda, Doc Conroy, Jim London, Stan Adams, Charlie Allen, Bill Schultz, as well as Don Ratican, Don Gaide, and Kenny Safford, the trio known as the “Sour Sisters.”
Nitro Revival reunited longlost friends and even a few drivers with their old cars. Richard Tharp was all smiles when he climbed back into the Creitz & Donovan Top Fueler (currently owned by John Neas) for the first time since he drove it back in 1970. Tharp was in the other lane in this car at Lions Drag Strip on March 8, 1970, when
Don Garlits had the clutch explosion that changed the sport forever. Saturday evening culminated with the “Line of Fire,” for which nearly 50 legendary race cars lined up on the track as the sun began to set and, on Steve Gibbs’ command, fired up one by one. Header flames lit up the California sky and nitro fumes filled the air. “We burned a lot of nitro this weekend with some really historic cars,” said Gibbs. “We’re trying to capture the spirit of the golden era of drag racing.” Drag racing fans around the world should appreciate that.
Though this was not a race, there was plenty of on-track action that included 48 gassers from the Outlaw Gassers SoCal group, dozens of AFX cars, and exhibition runs featuring Fuel Altereds, nostalgia Funny Cars, and Bob McClennan’s Champion Speed Shop nostalgia Top Fuel dragster, with Adam Sorokin behind the wheel. Off the track, more than 100 colorful hot rods filled the special parking area known as the “hot rod hangout”. Spectators wore their vintage racing jackets and their favorite drag racing T-shirts, adding to the flavor of the event.
Garlits once said, “Alcohol is for drinking, gas is for cleaning parts, and nitro is for racing.” Though not one of the nearly 80 hemi engines burning nitro all weekend long at Nitro Revival did any racing, the fans loved it all the same.
Gear Vendors; 800.999.9555; gearvendors.com
Wright Connection Speed & Gear; 661.304.1967; wrightconnection.net
❱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 ratios, specifically First through Third, with Fourth gear always set at 1.00:1.
The ability to choose wide- or close-ratio gearing is appealing to many owners who like the ability to pick either high-multiplication gearing for off-the-line performance (wide ratio) or close ratio for more road-race-style usage. For drag racing, the wide ratio was often the better choice, utilizing either 2.56 or 2.52 Firstgear ratios. In contrast, close-ratio transmissions (which use a 2.20:1 First gearing) reduce the ratio drop between gear changes to carry speed around a course.
The Gear Vendors overdrive unit shown here is perfect for our application, as it gives us far better highway gearing (reduced engine rpm) and better fuel economy due to a 0.778:1 overdrive in all four gears even though it will mostly be
used in Fourth gear. The Gear Vendors system is very strong and mates perfectly to the unique tailhousing Craig Wright utilized for our build. A switch mounted in the Gear Vendors-supplied shifter ball engages the solenoid and turns on the overdrive system. It’s just that simple to switch from standard 1:1 final drive gearing to 0.778:1.
Follow along as Craig, owner of Wright Connection Speed & Gear, demonstrates what it takes to rebuild a Muncie four-speed and adapt a Gear Vendors overdrive unit to your vehicle. Muncie mastery is only moments away.
01 The master of Muncies, Craig Wright, is our tour guide on how to stuff one of these legendary transmissions with all the “right stuff” (pun intended).
02 To help with the assembly of the mainshaft we applied assembly lube to help prep the area for the synchronizer hub and other gears and sliders yet to come. The mainshaft features an ultra-strong, 40-spline design.
03 The same prep holds true for the Second gear, synchro, and slider assembly. This gives a better view of the mainshaft assembly going together.
04 Not every step is as simple as sliding on the part. In this case, the synchronizer requires more persuasion, and a press helps to install this hub assembly. You can also do this step by carefully tapping them into position with a rubber mallet.
05 To facilitate the installation of the mainshaft bearing, Craig heats the mid plate at the landing point where the bearing will finally reside. Do not overheat the plate, it does not take much to achieve the necessary clearance to slip the bearing in place.
06 With the mid plate now installed, this is what the completed mainshaft assembly looks like with the gears and slider/synchronizer systems in place.
07 The cluster gear fits into the bottom of the case and is held there with a pin that runs through its center. To allow the cluster gear to ride with a minimum of friction, a series of roller bearings are slipped inside the cluster gear, held in position with heavy grease before the pin locks it in place.
This means a 4.10:1 rearend gear ratio can be effectively changed to 3.19:1 gearing with the flip of a switch.
08 This bearing is placed into the front of the input shaft/Fourth gear assembly. This bearing will fit into the front of the transmission case opening.
09 Prior to inserting the input shaft into the front of the case, this is what the assembly looks like with the front bearing installed. Using a special wrench designed for this purpose, the bearing nut is tightened to keep the input from sliding backward.
10 As with the previous bearing install, Craig heats the front of the transmission case, making it much easier to slide the inputshaft bearing in place.
11 After assembling the
input-shaft assembly, the bearing is locked in with a snap ring.
12 A pocket bearing that connects the input shaft with the mainshaft is outfitted with a series of roller bearings trapped inside a cage retainer. These small parts are shown on the table along with the cage.
13 The completed roller bearing/cage assembly fits into the back of the input shaft in this location.
14 In preparation for the connecting of the input shaft with the mainshaft, the synchronizer slider ring is moved forward so that it will help make the connection between these two key shafts.
15 The mainshaft assembly slides in from the back of the case around the cluster gear that has already been placed in the bottom of the case. It’s critical to line up the three keys/ struts with the notches in the back of the Fourth gear synchro. Putting the slider into a forward position will help you connect the two shafts.
16 We held the mainshaft assembly in place by bolting the mid plate to the back of the case. Note that all the bolts will have to be removed to attach the tailhousing. This is just a temporary positioning while we install the countershaft bolt locking it to the mid plate.
17 Craig applied assembly lube to the inside and face of the rear Reverse idler gear before pinning it in place.
18 The Reverse gear goes on the mainshaft in this location.
19 This image shows the proper engagement of the Reverse idler and Reverse gears. Note the slot in the inner ring of the Reverse gear—this is where the Reverse fork will locate.
20 The tailhousing slips on in this manner. Remember that all the bolts used to hold the mid plate in position have to be removed to install the tailhousing.
21 This M22 transmission features a tailhousing specially designed for attachment of the Gear Vendors overdrive system. Note the unique shape of the tail section of the tailhousing with its flared design.
22 The bearing retainer slips over the input shaft and seals the transmission from the front.
23 Fully lubricate the detent levers and side arms with assembly lube. Move the spring arms from side to side to make sure there is full movement/ lubrication with the detent for each of the gears.
24 Insert the shift shafts followed by the shift forks.
25 The finished side cover will look like this with the forks in this position.
26 Use Lubriplate 105 on the synchronizer slots. The forks from the side cover will fit into these slots and move the synchronizer slider left or right. This will determine the individual gear selection.
27 After making certain that all surfaces are clean and have no residue, the new gasket will be coated with Gasgacinch, and the side cover installed. Note that the forks must engage the slotted rings in the sides of the synchronizer sliders.
28 Craig always uses Sta-Lube 85w90 for our transmission to achieve the best lubrication and protection. This is listed as PN-SL24229 from Wright Connection Speed & Gear.
29 After getting the forks in position, align the holes in the side cover with the holes in the transmission, insert the bolts, and torque them to spec.
30 The Gear Vendors electric overdrive allows for a 0.778:1 ratio multiplication of the final drive. This means a 4.10:1 rearend gear ratio can be effectively changed to 3.19:1 gearing with the flip of a switch. In easier to understand terms, if you are driving at 65 mph and seeing rpm of 3,318, with the Gear Vendors overdrive in action, at 65 mph, you’ll see 2,581 rpm and achieve much better fuel economy.
32
33 This picture shows the shifter ball and the controller. One of the best benefits of this system is the ability to retain the original factory or custom shifter location when desired.
34 The Hurst shifter linkage is still one of the best ways to achieve a positive, tight shifting experience from your Muncie transmission. This classic system allows for lots of adjustment, including shifter position, by swapping in a different shifter mounting plate, rods, and levers.
❱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 research studies from Ford and the U.S. Department of Energy have concluded that the piston ring and cylinder wall account for as much as 40% of all engine friction. No wonder today’s OEM engines have thinner piston rings than their predecessors. Think about a 1972 Camaro and its 350ci small-block, which had a piston ring pack with two 5/64-inch rings and a 3/16-inch ring. Now think about the LS7, with two 1.2mm rings and a 3.0mm ring—that’s a 40% reduction in overall ring thickness!
In a recent test at Shaver Specialties Racing Engines, the effect of ring thickness and tension on engine operating temperature was measured. The baseline for this test was a set comprising two 0.7mm rings and a 2.0mm ring, which is 55% thinner in total than a pack made up of two 1/16-inch rings and a 3/16-inch ring. The engine was run at 2,800 rpm with a fixed load setting of 75 lb-ft, and a fixed coolant-flow setting. At the end of 30 minutes, three consecutive dyno sweep tests (3,000 rpm to 6,000 rpm) were performed. At the end of those three tests, both water temperature and oil temperature were recorded.
0.7mm, 0.7mm, 2mm Gas Ported Ring, Total Seal Gas Ported 1-16, 1-16, 3-16, Standard 1-16, 1-16, 3-16
0.7mm, 0.7mm, 2mm Gas Ported Ring 300
Total Seal Gas Ported 1-16, 1-16, 3-16
Standard 1-16, 1-16, 3-16
OilSmp [Max =3031
The engine was then fitted with a standard set of rings in the fractional measurements mentioned above. Again, the engine was run at 2,800 rpm with a fixed load setting of 75 lb-ft and the same fixed coolant-flow setting. At the end of 30 minutes, three consecutive dyno sweep tests (3,000 rpm to 6,000 rpm) were performed again, after which both water temperature and oil temperature were recorded.
To verify the results, the test with the fractional rings was run twice. That ring package generated about 15-degrees higher water temperature and nearly 20-degrees higher oil temperature compared to the thinner metric ring set.
The results confirm piston-ring-to-cylinder-wall friction as a meaningful contributor to engine operating temperature, and identifying friction as the source of the heat was quite easy. The standard fractional rings reduced engine power by nearly 20 lb-ft of torque and more than 15 hp compared to the gas ported metric ring set. In fact, the fractional ring set generated so much oil temperature that the label on the oil filter began to “shrink” from the heat!
In a real-world comparison, Joe Gibbs Racing Engines built the new JD-1 desert off-road racing engine using metric rings in the aforementioned sizes. Many other off-road racing engines use traditional fractional rings, and those teams tend to struggle to keep engines cool in the desert, while the JD-1 engine runs remarkably cool. In fact, the JD-1 engine nearly ran too cool during the Baja 1000, when overnight temperatures dropped to near 40 degrees F.
Some people might speculate that the reduced water temperature only proves the heat was “trapped” in the piston. That seems logical at first glance, but it doesn’t hold water, so to speak, under closer investigation. Here’s why.
Each combustion event releases a given amount of heat. If the thinner piston rings trapped the heat in the piston, then the oil temperature would have increased. Motor oil provides as much as 40% of piston cooling, so a hotter piston would lead to hotter oil. However, in both the dyno and real-world tests, the oil temperature decreased along with the water temperature.
These dyno and race results point to the same conclusion: Piston rings rubbing against the cylinder walls generate friction, and that friction produces heat and robs power. By going to thinner piston rings, friction can be significantly reduced, and the benefits are increased horsepower and reduced operating temperatures.
Does this performance increase come at a cost in durability? The answer is no. Back to the test at Shaver’s—used oil samples were taken from each test cycle and analyzed by an independent oil lab. Those results revealed a 55% reduction in wear by going to the thinner rings. Interestingly, the 0.7mm rings are 55% thinner than the 1/16-inch rings, so there is a direct correlation between ring thickness and wear.
Let’s return to our comparison of the small-block Chevy to the LS7. Automakers have gone from thicker, cast-iron rings to thinner steel rings over the last several decades. Why? Primarily to improve fuel economy, but as a convenient side effect, today’s engines also last much longer than before. A recent presentation at an engineering conference revealed that
typical production engines from all three domestic automotive manufacturers in the ’70s and ’80s lasted between 50,000 and 70,000 miles before the cylinders were worn out. Today, those same companies produce engines that live 150,000 to 200,000 miles before the cylinders are worn out. Again, today’s production engines utilize thinner, lower-tension steel piston rings, and these engines see less cylinder bore wear as a result.
The evidence clearly shows that thinner piston rings not only reduce engine temperature (both water temperature and oil temperature) but also reduce cylinder bore wear. So, before you decide to buy a bigger radiator for your hot-running hot rod, you might want to consider trying a set of thinner piston rings first. It’s not hard to find off-the-shelf pistons these days with either 1.0mm/1.0mm/2.0mm or 0.043-inch/0.043-inch/3.0mm ring grooves. These might seem too thin but consider that today’s NASCAR engines run 0.5mm or 0.6mm rings (that’s 0.020 or 0.024 inch), and those engines last three to four times longer than they did 20 years ago. Thin isn’t just for racing anymore.
AJE Suspensions; 800.877.7233; ajesuspension.com
BMR Suspension; 813.986.9302; bmrsuspension.com
Calvert Racing; 661.728.9600; calvertracing.com
Currie Enterprises; 714.528.6957; currieenterprises.com
Reilly MotorSports; 800.474.1534; reillymotorsports.com
Rhodes Race Cars; 219.525.4910; rhodesracecars.com
Strange Engineering; 800.646.6718; strangeengineering.net
Wilwood Engineering; 805.388.1188; wilwood.com
❱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 MotorTrendnew-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, and we’ve put it off for too long. Nevertheless, we’ve some serious explaining to do before we dive in.
Mopars, which have a leaf-spring rear suspension, are probably the least likely cars to need an antisway bar for drag racing. They almost never need one—unless they’ve been converted (like
ours) to a suspension type used mostly by GM and Ford called a triangulated four-link. This is the type of rear suspension used in the Ford Mustang from 1979 until 2004. It’s also the same one used in GM intermediates (A-body and G-body) from 1964 to 1988, and in full-size GM B-bodies over their entire lifetime. Other rear suspension types, like the torque-arm suspension found in GM F-bodies (1982-2002) and the three-link found in 20052014 Mustangs, also benefit greatly from a rear antisway bar.
Forget for a moment that our subject vehicle is a 1960s Mopar—it might as well be a 2003 Mustang Cobra or a 1980 Chevy Malibu wagon. Our car suffers from the same ailment called the “G-body shuffle” by many a grudge racer, and we’re here to tell you how to deal with it successfully. So if you’ve got any one of these vehicles with a triangulated four-link, GM torque-arm suspension, or Ford threelink, listen up: The diabolical handling you’ve experienced at launch and down the dragstrip isn’t in your imagination, it’s not about you being a bad driver, and it’s not about having too little air pressure in your tires. It’s about controlling and counteracting the body roll your engine’s torque is causing.
located laterally, which further reduces body sway. Leaf-spring cars can suffer from other problems like axle wrap, tramping, and wheelhop, (usually solved with a pair of Calvert Racing Caltracs bars) but generally not body sway or body roll.
In this image taken during testing at Fontana’s quarter-mile several years ago by EngineMasters’Steve Dulcich, you can see the body roll in our 1968 Plymouth Valiant subject car, which is equipped with a Reilly Motorsports four-link coilover rear suspension conversion. When launched with the full force of its 650hp
Let’s go back to Mopars for a moment and see what’s happening there. In this photo of Mike Clifford’s mid-10-second 1966 Plymouth Barracuda we photographed a couple years back at Lights Out 11, you can see the body has not rolled over on its right side at launch. Mopar engineers fixed this a half-century ago with stiff, over-the-counter Super Stock leaf springs that limit vertical suspension travel. The right-side spring has more lift at rest so that when the axle torque hits it at launch it’s preloaded to go straight. There’s also a nifty adjustable pinion snubber that helps leverage the axle away from the right side of the body and limits axle wrap at launch. The leaf springs also do a great job of keeping the axle
big-block Wedge, the left rear tire jams into the pavement while simultaneously lifting the right rear resulting in a hard uncommanded turn to the right. This sets off a periodic swaying that arises from the steering input needed to keep the car going straight. Eventually, the run is terminated for safety reasons as the car’s swaying only gets worse as the speed increases.
In the diagram you can more easily see the dynamics of what’s happening in a dragstrip launch. When engine torque is applied to the axle, it rotates the axle
counterclockwise, as seen from behind. Since the engine torque is applied to the body through the engine mounts in the opposite direction, the body rolls in a clockwise fashion. In drag racing, where the idea is to go as quickly as possible in a straight line, this creates a lot of problems with vehicle stability and safety as it almost guarantees that a high-powered car like this is going to move out of the racing groove and become hard to control. At this point, the advantages of the four-link’s lower unsprung mass, improved ride quality, range of motion, and pinion-angle stability is moot—at least on the starting line of a dragstrip.
Fortunately, solving this problem is an easy one if you don’t mind a few hours of work adding an antisway bar. If you’ve got a Mopar with a Reilly Motorsports Street Lynx rear suspension, the kit we’re installing is available from RMS for $395. If your Mopar has a four-link conversion kit from QA1, then you’ll want to check out their Mopar rear antisway bar kit for $352.95. Competition Engineering offers a very popular drag rear antisway bar kit for universal and Ford Fox-body Mustang applications and BMR (shown at right) has a comprehensive line of drag antisway bar kits for all the usual four-link suspects including Mustangs. Rhodes Race Cars is another company with a great universal kit, and AJE Suspensions—the biggest long-haul player in fast Fox-bodies—has a constellation of kits for a bunch of GM and Ford four-link designs. When your triangulated four-link street/strip machine starts showing signs of schizophrenia on the starting line, you’ll know where to go for the Rx!
The prescription for our A-Body Mopar, however, is a Reilly Motorsports unit designed specifically for that company’s Street Lynx rear triangulated four-link coilover suspension conversion ($395, shown). The kit consists of a solid 3/4-inch diameter steel bar with welded flanges on each end for a pair of bolt-on bellcrank levers. (A 5⁄8-inch hollow bar is available for road race and autocross use.) The bar is attached to the axle via mounting brackets with urethane bushings and to the frame by means of adjustable endlinks that pivot off the lever arms. Finally, a pair of aluminum collars allows the bar to be centered between the coilover mounting brackets. We found the kit well engineered, and it did not interfere with any important things such as wide tires or exhaust.
Helping us with our Valiant’s antisway bar kit installation was Eric Bishop of Bishop Custom Cars in Palm Desert, California (442.666.8621), a shop in California’s Coachella Valley with a lot of experience building custom chassis and fast hot rods. Bishop fabricates a lot of serious machinery, which turned out to be overkill for this job, but we wanted the best in our area just in case something needed a little professional persuasion. Thankfully, the RMS kit was a breeze for Eric to install, only taking him four hours— including the replacement of our old control arms with new ones containing upgraded Johnny Joints for less axle movement. (We’ve used Johnny Joints successfully in Currie Enterprises line of GM A-body control arms on an 11-second big-block ’68 Chevelle over a decade ago, but the company no longer offers these A-body control arms.)
Before starting, lay all the parts out and bench-assemble the antisway bar setup so that the corner assembly looks like this. The lever arms bolt onto the outboard side of flanges welded to the bar with three bolt sets on each side, and the arms are oriented to bend outward toward the tires. The adjustable-length endlinks are mated inboard of the levers and the aluminum sleeves locating the center bar are sequenced between the axle bushings and the lever arms.
This view shows the layout of the RMS Mopar Street Lynx triangulated four-link coilover system prior to getting the antisway bar. Note that the antisway bar does not come with the basic Street Lynx rear suspension kit. Four-links like this have an advantage over simpler leaf springs because they take a bunch of unsprung weight off the rear axle, making road irregularities easier to swallow. Pinion angle is also well controlled and lateral motion of the axle is eliminated. The only downside to a triangulated four-link is its misbehavior on the dragstrip starting line. Other cool pieces of hardware here include a 3.54:1-geared Strange Engineering S60 rearend, Viking double-adjustable coilover shocks, Wilwood 11-inch fourpiston Dynapro disc brakes, and TTI exhaust with Dynomax Super Turbo mufflers.
the right side of the bar, lifting the bar into place to bolt the right side on last. The bar is bolted on, but still must be centered. This is not preset in the bar’s design because the axle location and rear framerail position are slightly different in every car, including ours. Here, Eric is pointing to the two billet aluminum sleeves that will be tightened once you figure out where exact center is. This is achieved by
Here’s the moment of truth when you get to find out how well the product is engineered. Does everything line up? Does it fit? Will we need the full arsenal of Eric’s fabrication chops to get us through the day, or will beer-thirty happen early? Due to the fact this antisway kit was designed specifically for the RMS suspension, everything matched up perfectly with no surprises, as you’ll see.
rotating the ends up toward the framerails where you plan to mount the endlink tabs; you may discover the bar needs to be moved over a little to one side to make things symmetrical. (Fourth-gen GM F-bodies are notorious for having a left-offset pair of rear framerails.) This procedure will be similar for any of the antisway bar kits on the market for any model of car.
The RMS Street Lynx system employs axle brackets that serve as pick-up points for the lower control arms, the Viking coilover shocks, and pivot bushings for the optional antisway bar kit. The holes for the bushings already exist on the axle brackets so it’s just a matter of bolting up the hardware. Eric mounted the left-side bushing first, slid the bar into the left side, then put the bushing on
The only welding you’ll need to do is for mounting the endlink brackets to the framerails. Here, Eric has positioned the bracket where he wants it and is marking the bracket’s outline on the framerail with a marker.
Using a Millermatic 211 MIG welder with Auto-Set (one of our favorites), Eric had our endlink brackets stitched to the Valiant’s rear framerails in no time. For this operation, you’ll want to prep the surface for welding by removing any paint
or undercoating so that you get a solid weld with good electrical conductivity.
A quick coating of Dupli-Color acrylic enamel in Satin Black protects the bare metal against corrosion and matches the existing chassis black. Note how the
bracket is positioned so that the endlink translates motion to the antisway bar lever vertically.
One thing you get with dragspecific antisway bar kits like this one is adjustability. Factory triangulated four-link suspensions typically use C-shaped bars made in a tubing bender. These bolt directly to the lower control arms—when
they’re present at all—and don’t have the preload adjustability needed for drag racing. By contrast, this type of antisway bar (which uses bell-crank levers) allows the endlink to be lengthened or shortened on either side. This means you can compensate for any unevenness between sides, or you can add preload to the right side when you get to the dragstrip. Here, Eric shows how easy it is with the built-in “flats” for a tool on the lower portion of the endlink.
If a picture can tell a thousand words, then this one is worth a closer look because you can see how the antisway bar would control how flat the rear of the car handles—whether accelerating hard in a straight line or going flat around corners. Before we added it, the back end of this Valiant would wander and sway all over the road under hard acceleration (i.e., long, lurid burnouts) earning it the nickname “the widow-maker.” Now when we step on the gas it doesn’t require a bunch of whip-sawing on the steering wheel to keep it in a straight line. (We like not making the epic-fail highlight reel at Cars and Coffee.) We felt the difference immediately and dramatically—as in, there’s no more drama. It just hooks and books. All we can say is we should have done this years ago when Fontana’s dragstrip was still open!
❱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 rolling chassis using mostly So-Cal Speed Shop parts up front, including a transverse leaf spring and a traditional dropped-and-drilled I-beam axle located by split wishbones. Out back was a quick-change axle that had been a Speedway Engineering display piece, suspended on a Model A spring and located with So-Cal ladder bars. Tube shocks were used front and rear. It was all simple, tried-and-true parts.
This time around, Troy worked on the front brakes and the driveshaft loop. The front brakes are very traditional ’56 Buick items of the kind used by hot rodders for years. Some people have even reengineered them to accept a disc
brake while retaining the classic Buick finned drum. Troy’s original drums were found in the parts pile, and he soon had them machined to fit the Ford spindles and backing plates.
Once the front brakes were resolved, Troy moved on to the driveshaft safety loop, using a $23.99 kit from Summit Racing. “You can’t make the parts for $24,” said Troy. “It’s so much quicker, easier, and cheaper to just order them.”
Unfortunately for Troy, because the shop was so busy his own project had been pushed outside, half in the sun. However, he’s a fast worker who makes quick decisions, so progress is therefore equally quick.
02 These early Lincoln backing plates are designed to fit the 1937-41 round-style early Ford spindles. The Lincoln brakes are easy to adjust, simple to service, and have 2-inch-wide shoes.
03 The Buick backing-plate assemblies are very similar to the Ford parts but have a small hole for the Buick spindle assembly, hence the Lincoln backing plates.
04 The stock ’56 Buick brake shoes are wider than the early Ford shoes, at 2¼ inches compared to the Ford 1¾-inch shoes. This affords a considerable increase in effective lining area.
05 Troy brushed some Dykem on the leading edge of the backing plate before installing the drum and snugging it up.
06 After installing the Buick drum, Troy spun it up to ascertain where the drum was interfering with the backing plate. You will be able to hear it if it touches, and it will show witness marks when the drum is removed.
07 You can just see the blue Dykem that Troy applied to the aluminum drum behind the sleeve. When the drum is installed on the spindle and turned, any interference will rub the Dykem off.
08 The drum was put into Troy’s Bridgeport milling machine so that the aluminum part behind the sleeve could be milled back to accommodate the early Ford backing plate.
09 With the drums machined, Troy reinstalled them onto the spindles and spun them again just to verify he had milled away enough material from the drum.
10 Shown here is a before drum on the left and a machined drum on the right. You can see that the aluminum behind the sleeve has been machined down to accommodate the early Ford backing plate.
11 The driveshaft, laying across the car, was custom-made by Inland Empire Driveline Services.
12 Although Troy had previously torched out the floorpans, the edges still had to be removed by drilling and grinding the rivets.
13 Here, Troy lifts out the edge of the floorpan that is riveted into the crossbraces of the body. Gloves would be a good idea here as those edges are sharp.
14 Behind the transmission tailshaft, Troy added a brace to tie the two legs of the X-member together. The center of this brace would have to be removed to accommodate the driveshaft safety loop.
15 Troy purchased the driveshaft safety loop from Summit Racing for just $23.99. Here, he’s holding it in position to see how much needed to be removed from the brace.
16 Troy used a cutoff wheel to remove the center of the crossbrace. Note that he covered the trans with a fireproof blanket so as not to cause any damage.
17 Once the center of the crossbrace had been removed, Troy trial fit the driveshaft to make sure there was enough clearance between it and the body crossbrace.
18 The body brace may eventually have to be removed to increase driveshaft clearance, but for now Troy felt it was enough just to remove the front and rear flanges.
19 You can clearly see where the front and rear flanges of the body crossbrace have been removed to gauge clearance of the driveshaft. The top might have to go later.
20 With the driveshaft in position, the driveshaft safety loop could be positioned and marks scribed where it needed to be cut.
21 Once the driveshaft safety loop had been marked for cutting, Troy sliced the ends off in the bandsaw.
22 With the legs of the driveshaft safety loop removed, Troy positioned the loop on the crossbrace, and tack welded it into position.
23 Once the top of the safety loop was tacked and checked for squareness, the bottom half was held up for positioning and to make sure that the driveshaft can be easily removed.
24 After making sure that the driveshaft could be easily removed and installed with the driveshaft safety loop in position the top half was finish welded, then the bottom half was fit welded in place as well.
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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 Murry 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 replacement engine in it, but one day when hunting parts at a salvage yard, he came across a 5.3-liter Vortec engine in a 1999 Silverado. They were
having a half-price sale at the yard so he scored the complete LS for just $120.
To cool the LS, the owner found an aluminum Mustang radiator, complete with fan and shroud for just $130!
Feeding the LS is left to a small eBay fuel cell and a budget pump and regulator from Speedway, which also supplied the throttle assembly.
The engine was fitted with a low-mount ICT billet alternator bracket and an LS1 intake manifold, all of it controlled by a Summit LS-swap ECU. The headers are Schoenfeld pieces designed for dirt track cars.
A straight axle found on Facebook was chopped down and set-up with brackets from
Speedway to handle the trailer leaf spring. Simple front disc brakes actuated by a Wilwood pedal and master setup is all the brakes the mower has for now.
Backing up the 5.3 is a TH350 three-speed automatic feeding power through a short driveshaft to the ’78 Malibu rearend.
The owner says the Murray V8 is a handful if you don’t know how to drive it, but it was a fun year-long project he tackled with the help of his dad.
We're not sure if it is still used to mow the lawn, but we bet it makes for one hell of a ride.
wAll we know is that we love being continuously surprised by the crazy ways people find to LS swap the world!
VScan here for a complete rundown on how to build your own V8-powered mower.YOUR SISTER’S DOG’S BIRTHDAY PARTY
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