Table of contents for Volume 3, Issue 25 - January 2023 in All Chevy Performance

It doesn’t matter what decade you grew up in as there’s always been that particular moment in time sitting at your desk daydreaming about owning the most-wicked hop-up in town while the teacher rambled on about some mundane subject. A flash so real that you could smell the race fuel and burning tires mixed with adrenalin as you launched from the lights during a late-night street race till you got the proverbial tap on the shoulder to snap out of it. The ’61 Corvette gasser laid out across our pages brings a high school flashback to life for Danny Jones of Joppa, Maryland, who dreamed of owning a hot Chevy with a nosebleed stance for an eternity. Growing up in an automotive family since his dad sold Studebakers, it wasn’t…

No one looks forward to an engine backfire. They damage parts, singe eyebrows, or—worse–can send hoods and intake manifolds skyward in a crinkled mess. However, in the racing world there exists a clean and clever solution. It’s called a burst panel and it prevents your expensive intake manifold from ballooning like a tin can with a firecracker inside. Burst panels are designed as sacrificial components that fail in the event of a backfire and direct that dangerous explosive force harmlessly away from the vehicle. The basic burst panel consists of a machined flange on the top of the intake manifold with a thin, replaceable metal cover. That cover positively seals against the intake manifold during normal operation but, should a major backfire occur, gives way to safely relieve excess pressure.…

It’s Harold Clay’s fault our ’66 Chevelle Malibu turned out to be so nice. If it wasn’t for Harold’s Hot Rod Shop and a list of good friends in the automotive aftermarket, this Chevelle wouldn’t have its superb fit and finish and incorporate the best aftermarket components a person can buy. My favorite Chevelle has always been the ’66 SS396 since the day my dad and I visited Clippinger Chevrolet in Covina, California, and ran up and down the rows of brand-new ’66 Chevelles looking to spot SS396 hoods. Many years later I was hired by Super Chevy magazine to work as a tech editor then shortly afterward my duties were expanded to edit tech for Vette magazine, and that was followed by inheriting the editorship of Chevelle magazine. When…

The modern interpretation of the term “gasser” has gone well beyond the threshold of accuracy. We see street gassers at car shows and cruise nights, and while those cars are often built with good intentions they are not typically built with history in mind. That’s what we like about the Southeast Gassers Association. Even though most of the cars feature modern parts inside the engine and transmission, they are otherwise accurate representations of the gasser wars of the ’60s. The rules package is strict, and the racers are dedicated to going as quick as possible in true heads up drag racing. The Southeast Gassers Association recently converged on Knoxville Dragway in Maynardville, Tennessee. This track has history dating back to the ’50s, but it was an oval track during that…

1. TWO-SIDE TACKING Design Engineering’s (DEI) Adhesive Transfer Tape is a very aggressive, pressure-sensitive, double-sided tape designed to bond substrates while maintaining a high tack level. Use it to attach heat and sound barrier materials without the need for a spray adhesive. Available in single-or dual-roll packs, the tape measures 3 inches wide and comes in 32-foot lengths. Providing a high strength, long-term bond, it can be used for scrim reinforcement, as it resists water, condensation, and aging. It is temperature-resistant from-22 to 248 degrees F. For more information, contact DEI by calling (800) 264-9472 or visit designengineering.com. 2. INJECTION BASE The Hilborn RAW “Race-And-Win” Injector is the classic racing unit for the standard Gen 1 small block Chevy. These base intake manifolds fit small-block Chevy engines with ’55-86 262-400…

Vintage muscle cars tend to go through a lot—a lot of changes, and in many cases, a lot of owners. This immaculate ’66 Nova SS was purchased by Eddy Zuchowski who bought it from Scott Jones who bought it from Midwest Muscle Cars in Jonesville, Michigan, that bought it from retired Alabama NASCAR driver Hut Stricklin Jr. This lengthy transfer of power started in 2015, and those are just the ownership changes that we know of, but there were likely others between 1966 and 2015 as well. For our purposes, we’ll focus on the car’s latest incarnation, which was started by Scott Jones back in 2018 and completed sometime in 2020. Scott did some reconnaissance research on the VIN and cowl tags prior to purchasing the car and found it…

SOURCE DURALAST duralastparts.com Battery maintenance is not often at the top of any classic car enthusiast’s to-do list, but if those headlights have started to dim or that starter is beginning to groan, chances are it’s time to address that worn-out battery. While not a remarkably romantic aspect of a muscle car build, battery technology has come a long way since that old Camaro rolled off the assembly line, and one of the brands leading the charge in charging technology is Duralast Parts. Recently, we noticed our project ’72 Camaro was beginning to bear that awful groan that typically precedes the much-more-despised “dead starter clunk.” A couple hours on a battery charger served as naught, so we set out, turning our attention to DuralastParts.com to research what options were available…

This is one Camaro that is deceptive from the get-go. From a distance it looks like another nice Yenko clone. Dig into the details and you’ll find that this build goes deeper than others. Although not originally a Yenko, this series of SPEC Camaros are officially endorsed by Yenko. While the graphics and overall appearance remind you of a restoration, the underpinnings will not. A SPEC Roadster Shop chassis with 14-inch Baer brakes handles some major new power. There’s a Don Hardy–built 427 LS underhood dressed as a stock GM powerplant. The 18-inch Atlas Mags complement the retro styling but offer up room for big brakes and 335mm rear tires. That retro style runs through the interior as well. Stock shapes remain but most everything is fit and finished with…

In the summer of 1969, Bryan Adams bought his first real six-string at the five and dime, Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones purchased an old home belonging to A.A. Milne (author of the Winnie-The-Pooh books) and later that year was found dead in the pool, and on August 15, 1969 the Woodstock Music and Art Fair took place in upstate New York. It was three days of love, peace, and music that featured 32 planned acts and two unplanned births. It’s hard to believe but those two babies would now be 53 years old. Also born that same year was the ’69 Camaro, a car that the GM engineers had no idea would arguably be the most popular muscle car ever built over 50 years later—a remarkable feat that I’m…

At some point trips to the dragstrip become more about improving the car’s 60-foot and overall elapsed time and less about going heads-up against that guy in the other lane. You also begin to notice that the fast cars all leave the starting line hard yet straight while many squirrelly street cars perform these weird gyrations with the car lifting the left front while the rear squats hard over the tires. Somewhere along this timeline you decide your car’s 60-foot times are too slow and you’re ready to make some changes. Drag racing has always been about making more power than the other guy, but it’s also about the art of converting that power into traction to go quicker. That’s when the science of rear and front suspension tuning becomes…

Finding an unmolested muscle car can be, in many ways, like earching for a unicorn. Over the decades some weathered the ravages of time quite well, some didn’t, and many are no longer with us. In 1975, when Vernon Ward spotted his ’71 Camaro Z28 sitting in a shopping center parking lot with a For Sale sign on it, he could tell that it wasn’t as it rolled off the showroom floor. From a distance he saw the obligatory Cragar S/S wheels. When he popped the hood, the LT-1 350 small-block was gone and in its place was a 400ci small-block capped off with a two-barrel carburetor—this on a car that was barely 4 years old with less than 40,000 on the odometer. None of that mattered to Vernon. “I’ve…