For example, Drag Racing Slicks are illegal for street use.  Their lightweight, low air pressure, thin wrinkle sidewall, tread less design is too dangerous in a down pour of rain and easily damaged by debris and curb shots while parking.   A Department of Transportation Street Legal Racing Tire is legal for street use. This means you can drive your Hot Rod to a Drag Strip racing facility, race your car and then drive home on a public street.  Hot Rods can actually be much safer than the cars were before they were modified.  Heaven forbid, but if you were to be hit broadside in your Hot Rod with a full roll cage, by some drunk running a red light, you might survive a wreck where others would be killed instantly.  Watching a Nascar race should make this obvious.  According to legend the Chinese gave Drag Racing it’s name which has sustained joyful laughter.  In the fifties Quarter Mile Racing became very competitive and Chrysler designed a new engine that was much stronger and heavier.  It had an advanced valve arrangement and hemispherical combustion chamber.  At first the advantage of the big Hemi was not totally accepted and racers could not understand why everything was so brutally strong.  People called it a boat anchor.  Eventually they realized it’s potential by running the Hemi on Nitro Methane Rocket Fuel.  They were so fierce they could not run the exhaust pipes together into a collector because it would melt and burn off.  Running eight pipes pointed down into the pavement would melt the asphalt.  This led to the creation of Zoomies, eight short separate pipes which leave the engine downward and are swept up and toward the rear of the car to exit their blow torch like exhaust flames which can reach above the roof of the cars.  It is said grass hopper, that Chinese diplomats witnessing the races called them “Fire Breathing Dragons”.  So there you have it.  There is no one thing you can do to any car to instantly transform it into a real Hot Rod.  This article is for people interested in the real thing which is a combination of many things.  So please enjoy this information in a safe and sane responsible manner.  Happy Hot Rodding!

This information is general in nature and not totally brand specific so that you can apply it to your favorite engine, brand, chassis etc., etc.   I have owned a 1967 Ford Mustang GT fastback, a small block and two big block 1966 Chevelles, one with a Corvette tri-power, three two barrel carburetors and a Muncie four speed, the other a single four barrel, with a Stall Converter equipped Turbo Hydro 400, and a 1966 El Camino pick up truck, a Chevy custom surfer van, and a rare 1970 Dodge Super Bee stock factory race car with factory fiberglass hood, 440 wedge, three two barrel carburetors, Hemi four speed, and a Dana rear end, that according to the National Hot Rod Association ran a best of 10.60 seconds in the quarter mile on the national index.  They were all Hot Rods and I enjoyed them all.

Preparation:

Invest in Factory overhaul manuals and aftermarket books for your brand drive train and chassis, and cross reference them for accuracy.   Authors of these books will provide you with brand specific details, which can be important and beyond the scope of this article.   Find out who are the successful racers, builders for your brand, and stay away from books that try to be like socks.  One size does not fit all and a book that covers a bunch of different models may be almost useless.  H.P. Books How to Hot Rod Series is highly recommended.  As an example for a Chevrolet small block owner, guys like Pro Stock Champion Bill Jenkins and N.H.R.A. Champion John

Lingenfelter will give you the details, add a How to Hot Rod Small Block Chevrolets from H.P. Books and few Factory General Motors service manuals for your engine and chassis, and your off to a good start for references.

Let’s get to the bottom of this:

I am going to start with the oil pan.  Get the oil pan with the greatest capacity, the best ground clearance, and the best oil control baffles, to keep the oil in the pan away from the crankshaft.  Utilize a windage tray if possible and make sure it fits in the oil pan you choose without interference. When you buy it, don’t forget to buy the main cap extension bolts to mount it.  How well can you walk in a swimming pool?   Oil is thicker than water and it takes a lot more horsepower to spin a crankshaft in oil, than it does in air.  Most importantly the baffles must keep the oil around the oil pump pickup during hard acceleration, cornering and braking, in fact at all times. If the oil is allowed to slosh away from the oil pump pick up, and air gets into the system, a bearing can seize, spin, and ruin the block, the crankshaft, and a connecting rod or rods, and cause total engine failure. The increased oil capacity helps prevent this and lower oil temperature as well.  Replacing your five quart oil pan with an eight quart oil pan, with sufficient ground clearance, will keep you from going through a dip in the road too fast, and tearing the bottom of the oil pan off.  Making sure the oil pan you choose has ground clearance, and is protected by, and fits the chassis you intend to install the engine into is very important.  While the engine is on the engine stand, mount the oil pan and headers on the engine to make sure the headers do not touch or get too close to the oil  pan, or starter if at all possible, and you can change all the spark plugs.  Some brands of headers for one particular engine and chassis combination  may make spark plug changing very difficult.  If so, you may want to try another brand.  More on headers later.   Making sure all the engine parts fit before final assembly is wise, and makes for a good photograph to document your creation.

You must know with exact correctness dimensional and torque specifications.  Many oil pump pickup tubes are pressed into the oil pump body.  After checking for proper clearance  between the pick up and the bottom of the pan, you may want to weld the pickup tube to the oil pump body to eliminate any movement.  The oil pump is a precision machined component, so it is wise to heat sink the pump while electrically spot welding it quickly, so the metal is not warped.  With a metal inert gas wire feed welder this should take about one second.  I recommend this if at all possible because racing camshafts produce a nasty rough idle, we have all come to know and love, which causes the engine to shake violently and rather randomly.  Furthermore the engines become even more violent when the intake system, camshaft, and exhaust system start suddenly resonating where upon the engine starts firing hard on all eight cylinders and revving to high R.P.M. to the point of exploding were it not for electronic rev limiting.  Modern racing camshafts can exceed the physical R.P.M. capabilities of an engines design.  More on that later.  Although engine balancing makes the engine run smooth from a sheer mechanical perspective, the phenomena of  the internal combustion can and does generate harmonics and vibrations which may not even be perceived.  Thus, engines have mounted on the crankshaft, harmonic balancers.  That little spot weld holding the oil pump pick up to the pump may prevent a freak incident from occurring that would leave you shaking your head in disbelief.

You may want to get a high volume oil pump, they use more horsepower, but if you are making more than enough power anyway, it may be the smarter thing to do.  Study your brand.  Stock oil pumps on small and big block Chevrolets are good enough.  I have run both.  I sleep better at night with the high volume pump.

It is time for Mr Clean.  This is a two step operation at least.  A preliminary cleaning for the purposes of handling the parts is at first in order.  So as not to waste time, every thing should be tested for fractures with Zyglo and magna flux, then you can proceed to improve the parts, to debur, debooger, and remove casting flash on the non machined surfaces.  Burs would be sharp edges which might be the source of stress fractures.  Boogers are bits of cast material stuck to the surface that really shouldn’t be there, and casting flash is usually a flap along the parting lines of a casting, at the point of mold separation.