Road and Driver

Congratulations to everyone who participation in the 2010 HOT ROD Power Tour(r). We celebrate everyone who made the long journey from Newton Iowa to Mobile Alabama with the official 2010 Long Hauler(tm) photo.

Photo Gallery: Official Long Hauler Photo from the 2010 Hot Rod Power Tour - Hot Rod Magazine

Photo Gallery: Official Long Hauler Photo from the 2010 Hot Rod Power Tour - Hot Rod Magazine

Envision a world where every car in sight is a hot rod or street machine and you’ve pictured life on the HOT ROD Power Tour(r). An explanation for those of you who’ve not left your hovels for 15 years: HOT ROD maps a road trip through seven cities and sets up party stops every night, title sponsor GM Performance Division makes it happen, and 3,000 to 4,000 cars join us each day to live the dream.

Photo Gallery: Official 2010 Hot Rod Power Tour Coverage - Hot Roaders

Photo Gallery: Official 2010 Hot Rod Power Tour Coverage - Hot Roaders

You can’t throw a Crescent wrench in Orange County, California, without hitting at least two fab shops, so it’s easy to hop in the car and visit a bunch of gearhead facilities in just one afternoon. Our most recent search for new project cars sent us to Huntington Beach, a city overrun with automotive customizers. Surf City is the home of Dan Fink Metalworks (DFM) a company specializing in building uncommon cars for discriminating clients. John West and the crew were hard at work on several cool customs when we arrived, including a Rolls Royce, a Willys, and a Ranchero.

Photo Gallery: Dan Fink Metalworks Shop Tour - Hot Rod Magazine

Photo Gallery: Dan Fink Metalworks Shop Tour - Hot Rod Magazine

HOT RODS
Road Race Track T
Bill Holland finally builds a real hot rod, for himself.

Photo Gallery: September 2010 Hot Rod Magazine Table of Contents - Hot Rod Magazine

Some companies hold picnics and corporate retreats. Not Lingenfelter Performance Engineering - these guys organized a track day at Muncie Dragway as a way to thank their customers and allow the employees to have some fun. The quarter-mile strip just outside Albany, Indiana is conveniently located less than an hour south of Lingenfelter headquarters in Decatur. While the skies were black and threatening all morning, the rain never quite arrived, allowing several dozen LPE customers and friends to try their cars on the track.

Photo Gallery: Lingenfelter Performance Track Day - Hot Rod Magazine

Photo Gallery: Lingenfelter Performance Track Day - Hot Rod Magazine

The turbocharger, or exhaust-driven centrifugal supercharger, is the world’s most efficient power-adder, but it is also the most complex to install. It’s been six years since HOT ROD examined turbocharger design, selection, and system setup (see HOT ROD, Dec. ‘03, Jan. ‘04, and Feb. ‘04). In that time the technology has continued to advance to the point that turbos in racing clearly dominate beltdriven superchargers or nitrous oxide. If anything, turbos used in competition have become victims of their own success: Rule makers have been forced to legislate against turbos, adding vehicle weight, reducing engine displacement, restricting the turbo’s size or numbers per engine, relegating turbos to a separate class, or even banning them entirely.

Photo Gallery: What’s New In Turbos - Hot Rod Magazine

Photo Gallery: What’s New In Turbos - Hot Rod Magazine

HOT RODS
THE BLUE MODEL A
Scott Miller’s neato, homebuilt, Cadillac-powered Model A.

HOT RODS
Road Race Camaro

Replacing floorpans is one of the most basic sheetmetal jobs there is and among the most common. Even an otherwise rust-free car will often have some Swiss cheesing of the floors-40 years of wet shoes and the occasional bust-ed heater core take a toll. The floor in the ‘73 Duster we used for this story was marginal.

Photo Gallery: How To Replace Floorpans - Hot Rod Magazine

Photo Gallery: How To Replace Floorpans - Hot Rod Magazine

To start with, there’s really no right or wrong way to spray metalflake. Ask 10 painters how they do it and you’ll probably get at least eight different answers. It’s all about experimentation, experience, and sometimes just dumb luck. But we spent a day with Mark Oja at Custom Rod Garage in Huntington Beach, California, to see how he applies metalflake to automotive flanks, and it doesn’t seem all that difficult, at least not on the small panels we used as examples. Painting a complete car is certainly a whole ‘nother ball of wax, but here we captured the basics.

Photo Gallery: How To Spray & Mix Metalflake - Hot Rod Magazine

Photo Gallery: How To Spray & Mix Metalflake - Hot Rod Magazine