Motortopia >
Muscle Car Power > TECH
Knowledge comes from experience, and Jim Sleeper has been designing, engineering and just plain working on high-performance, race-oriented suspension systems for more than 25 years. He’s a master of choosing just the right combination of “off the shelf items,” along with building a few pieces of his own design and manufacture to go along in customers builds. (more…)
Chicago Pneumatic Must-Have Tools for the Automotive Enthusiast
When we set out to build a place called Gearhead Heaven our first part focused on cleaning and patching of our workspace. The floor coating alone transformed a dingy, oil filled, cracked floor into an automotive showplace. Nobody serves fillet mignon on sourdough bread, so why should the fruits of our labor sit on cold, oil stained concrete. (more…)
The Hurst Comp Stick is an easy way to give your late model Mopar the retro muscle car look.
Hurst’s Comp Stick for Late Model Mopars
Back in the heyday of muscle cars the hot ticket was a hot-rodded small-block Chevy backed by a Muncie four-speed topped with the Hurst shifter. A Hurst shifter was synonymous with performance, and your muscle car was lacking without one, unless you had an automatic.
For those who grew up in `60s and `70s, who could forget Miss Hurst, Linda Vaughn, who was a regular at most major racing events, and the Hurst Hairy Olds drag car. In fact, Hurst’s relationship with Oldsmobile spawned a whole lineup of Hurst Oldsmobile performance cars. (more…)
How to Setup a New Lincoln MIG Welder With a Quick Stop at Our Local Praxair Store
You’ve saved up some money and now you’re ready to invest in a new MIG welder. First, you did your homework to figure out how much power you need and you found out whether or not your garage is wired to support a 220 circuit—just like we did. We decided to go with a new Lincoln Electric 255XT MIG machine, mainly because so many useful options are included with that model for free, like trigger lock, a spot weld timer, run-in adjustment and burn-back adjustment. (more…)
In the annals of hot rodding there is a rich history of cutting off body parts, and no, we’re not talking about your high school auto shop teacher (ours was missing about a finger and a half). We’re talking about shaving things like drip rails. For those who live in Washington State, drip rails may actually be a good idea, but for the rest of us they look awful. (more…)
This new Camaro now has legendary ZL1 performance thanks to the addition of a Magna Charger LS3/L99 supercharger kit.
Supercharging has gained popularity among street-driven cars in recent years for several reasons. Efficient supercharger systems can reliably create legendary old school muscle car performance on a modern engine with minimal impact on fuel economy. (more…)
Even we found it hard to believe, but there are still some cars rolling around out there that don’t have adequate brakes. Take this ‘67 Camaro, for example. When it arrived at D&P Classic Chevrolet in Huntington Beach, California, the owner told Darryl Nance that he wanted his Chevy to stop and handle better, but that the car wasn’t a race car, just one that he wanted to cruise around town in. (more…)
As muscle car owners, we’re proud of that bass note burble that forces us to shut down at a drive-thru. (“You want what with that cheeseburger?”). Truth is, as authoritative as that exhaust note can be, over time it can get tiresome and actually add to driver fatigue. And if you’ve hot-rodded your engine, the increase in heat can be a problem as well. Without sufficient insulation for heat and sound, your muscle car could end up being a hot and noisy ride, which is an uncomfortable experience at best. That might be kind of fun for a short run, but not on a longer drive. (more…)
Instrument repair is becoming somewhat of a lost art. There are a lot of little springs, magnets and other items hiding inside the average instrument, and it takes knowledge and practice to get them working again. Sure, you can get entire clusters from the major suppliers, but what if you want to retain the stock appearance? Back in the day, there were plenty of places where one could get stock instruments repaired and upgraded, but not any longer. Repairs have become a virtual cottage industry. (more…)
There are many ways to get more horsepower from an engine, but not many of them also include adding reliability. For many, a Chevy HEI is the perfect addition to their engine because the coil is part of the overall distributor package. But the HEI is a large unit and for some space is an issue. Such was the case of this Chevy Nova. There’s not a lot of space under the hood on one of these cars, and the V-8 Chevy engine takes up most of that room. As such, there wasn’t enough space (without pounding clearance into the firewall) for the traditional HEI. (more…)
