Índex per Summer 2017 a Roadkill

SKIDMA Every January, in the blistering Aussie summer, hundreds of thousands of petrolheaded pilgrims make their way to the nation’s capital of Canberra for Summernats, a weekend-long horsepower celebration fueled by beer and methanol and packed with Australia’s toughest cars. The event is famous for burnout competitions full of colored smoke, carnage, and fire. Here, Adrian Cuthbertson lives the lavender dream in a 990-hp 1984 Mitsubishi Sigma powered by a 406ci small-block Chevy and topped with that most Australian of hood ornaments, an 8-71 blower. Trust us. It’s in there under the smoke. Photo: Povi Pullinen…

Fans often want a shot to race against ROADKILL vehicles, so we lined up against 10 folks chosen by a lottery and proceeded to lose to most of them. Let’s take a second to introduce the Zip-Tie Drags guest of honor because he’ll figure in much of our Zip-Tie coverage. Victor Gellineau is a 10-year-old car guy from Elk Grove, California. He’s fighting sickle cell anemia, and his family got in touch with us through the Make-A-Wish Foundation, which helps kids with life-threatening illnesses meet their heroes or have dream experiences. Victor’s wish was to meet Freiburger and Finnegan, and they were stoked to have his help in picking car show winners, signing autographs, and pulling the raffle tickets. With Victor’s assistance, we had 10 excellent cars for Freiburger and…

ROADKILL’s loose definition of planning applies to all aspects of the brand. While David Freiburger and Mike Finnegan wing it on camera, behind the scenes is equally in disarray. When the time came to shoot photos of the 1978 Monza and its pushcart of power, half the equation was in El Segundo, California, and the other was in Callery, Pennsylvania. No problem. As Elana Scherr got details on the trailer, I flew 500 miles from my home in Montreal out to Lutz Race Cars, where the Monza would be wintering under the watchful eye of drag racer Jeff Lutz and his son, Jeffrey Jr. The senior Lutz was introducing the radial-tire version of his record-breaking Mad Max Camaro at the Performance Racing Industry show in Indianapolis, but Jeffrey was on…

HARD FACTS: VEHICLE: ’52 Willys CJ-3A ENGINE: Supercharged, nitrousinjected, 1,600-hp 427ci LS3 Dart V-8 TRANSMISSION: GM 4L80E automatic with Jake’s transbrake AXLES AND SUSPENSION: Moser custom straight axle and Omix-ADA leaf springs (front); Moser custom 9-in with 3.50 gears, OEM leaf springs, Moser anti-roll bar and wheelie bar (rear) WHEELS: Weld Racing RTS S71 TIRES: Mickey Thompson Street R BUILT FOR: Smoking the tires and running Street Car Takeover events nationwide ROADKILL'S JEEP HISTORY It’s sort of amazing that there are any Jeeps available for other builders because we really thought Freiburger and Péwé owned them all. Longtime fans of ROADKILL will know that Freiburger has an off-road magazine background, once editing 4-Wheel & Off-Road before moving on to Car Craft, Rod & Custom, Hot Rod, and the video series we all love. Jeeps have…

Freiburger and I were drifting the Raunchero on a snowcovered road somewhere in Alaska during filming of “Lucky,” ROADKILL episode 13, when I got the call from my wife. My dad had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. I listened to the details for nearly an hour while the film crew waited in the snow. Then I drove the Raunchero toward our next checkpoint without talking for who knows how long before I finally told Freiburger what was happening. Eventually I sucked it up, put on a happy face, and got back to work, because that’s what Dad would’ve done. I’ll never forget how it felt to learn that the most important man in my world was battling something even Marty McFly has yet to overcome. Dad and I had spent…

THE WELD SKINNIES UP FRONT HAVE SEEN AIRTIME ON LAUNCHES, THANKS TO GOOD HP, BIG TRACTION, AND A LIGHTAS-A-FEATHER BODY. It seems Columbus, Texas, is home to many wild and wonderful cars, including Justin Guthmann’s buggy, err … thing. Originally it was his dad’s, who ran it back in the day, but after it spent about 20 years sitting around in the garage, Justin breathed new life into it. It’s a custom-built square-tube chassis and body rolling on leaf springs, homemade Caltracs, a ’53 Ford straight axle front end, and a 10-bolt diff with 3.73 gears. It hauls, thanks to a 480-hp, 552 lb-ft 350-cube Chevy that was built by Justin and his uncle Ivy. Bolted onto it is a Holley 650 HP carb, and the inside is stuffed with…

THE FIRST TIME I SAW A DRAGSTER, I WANTED ONE. Alot of them don’t believe me,” Michelle Bongiovanni said when asked what her classmates at Penn State University say when they hear she drives an 8-second Super Stocker and once did a video for Ford showcasing the line lock feature in the 2015 Mustang. It’s all true, though. The 19-year-old marketing major is also a record-setting drag racer in a Cobra Jet Mustang, and she recommends everyone gets a little track time under his or her belt. “I’ve made all my best friends drag racing,” she said, adding that racing is a way to learn patience, sportsmanship, and focus, besides being fun and exciting. Michelle started racing when she was just a little kid. “I was 7 or 8,” she…

We heard many stories of breakage and parts failure at the 2017 Roadkill Zip-Tie Drags, but we think Mike Morgan’s tale of tumbled Rambler is the saddest. On the drive out from Irwindale, Mike got loose in the rain and ended up rolling his 1965 Rambler wagon. Thankfully, Mike and his brother weren’t badly hurt, and he’s been a good enough sport to share the details of the crash as well as the build. Be careful out there, wear a seat belt, tie down your luggage, go slow in the rain, and if the car gets away from you, we hope you’ll be as lucky and as ready to build another as Mike. Here’s the story. “After I retired a couple years ago, a fellow drag racer told me about…

At ROADKILL we’re not really car show people. Given the choice, we feel like cars are best seen in motion, not surrounded by lawn chairs and crying baby dolls. However, we get that sometimes just getting the car out of your garage is challenge enough, and once you get to a destination, you’d rather sit down with a cold drink and your friends than battle breakage on track. So we had a car show at the Zip-Tie Drags, and you know what? It was really fun! We enjoyed seeing all the weird and wacky machines people brought out, and it was a great mix of beautifully finished projects, unique takes on newer cars, and good oldfashioned Roadkill leakers. Well done. WINNER Victor’s Choice: 1966 Dodge Coronet, Jim Hatzelis If it had…

The 24 Hours of LeMons racing series was designed to encourage people to have fun with cheap cars, but even $500 racing gets pricey. LeMons came up with a plan that didn’t require helmets, rollcages, or racetracks. That became the LeMons Rally, a four-day tour that sends unsuitable hoopties almost 2,000 miles over back roads and mountain passes. We covered the first LeMons rally in the Summer 2016 issue of ROADKILL, and it looked like so much fun that Freiburger and Fin decided to enter the next one, which saw cars limping through the snow from Moscow, Pennsylvania to Barber Motorsports Park in Birmingham, Alabama. F&F were on their own in their stinky, crappy rally car, but I hitched a ride with the camera crew and stayed in touch through…

No one can do things quite the way Texans do: big, beautiful, following no rules but their own. It would make sense, then, that a machine as brutal and rulebreaking as this quad-turbo 1980 Camaro would hail from the Lone Star State. Dubbed the Junkyard Bugatti due to its air of sophistication and luxury, Scott Harris’ monster ’Maro is a YouTube star. But what’s the story behind this elegant machine? Leave it to ROADKILL to find out. We hopped into the barely bolted-down passenger seat for a weekend with Scott and the Bugatti as they rolled into Houston for TX2K17. The TX2K event is street racing made legal. Think early Fast and Furious movies on a dragstrip. It’s stupidly fast tuner cars, DJs blaring horrible techno, and barely organized roll…

Continuing our tradition of forcing our production staff to learn car stuff that scares them, we took our copy editor Mary Kaleta to Ace’d Auto Worx in Ventura, California, for a welding lesson with professional fabricator Aron Cranford. Iwas convinced I was going to die. My cause of death? Welding. I knew absolutely nothing about the craft. I even told my teacher, fabricator Aron Cranford, that I thought welders used the same sort of torch chefs use to make crème brûlée. He thought I was joking, so he laughed. I went along with it. I’m a copy editor. If good welders become fabricators then my career goals are to advance enough to be considered a word wizard and a grammar guru. Sticking hot metal together is not usually a part…

SPECS 2017 Volvo V60 Polestar ENGINE: 2.0-liter supercharged + turbocharged 4-cylinder OUTPUT: 367 horsepower, 347 lb-ft of torque LAYOUT: Front engine, all-wheel drive SUSPENSION: 30-way adjustable Ohlin shock absorbers BRAKES: 6-piston Brembo front (14.0-inch rotor), 2-piston rear (11.9-inch rotor) ACCELERATION: 0-60 mph in 4.5 seconds TIRES: Michelin Pilot Super Sports PRICE: $61,600 The first thing people do when you tell them you’re spending the afternoon driving a car on a frozen lake is take a few steps back, as though maybe your particular brand of crazy is contagious. It’s understandable, I guess. Not everyone has access to 367 horsepower of twin-charged fourcylinder fury feeding all four wheels wrapped in a Rebel Blue wagon packaged and imported from Sweden where people probably construct skyscrapers and schools on the Arctic ice without…

Random Tech Tips For Roadkill Beginners It’s a little nuts that anyone would want to take advice from us, given our propensity for hack jobs and failure, but secretly all of the ROADKILL crew are reasonably competent wrenchers. Roadkill Extra, our daily show on Motor Trend OnDemand, has featured several quick tutorials, and we occasionally share tech tips on our Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter accounts. One of the things we’re proud of at ROADKILL is how many folks come up to us or write in to say they are just getting into hot-rodding and appreciate the Car 101 information. So if you’re a grizzled veteran, you’re going to know all this stuff. Make sure you’re out there sharing it with some newbies. If you’re a newbie, hiya! Here, learn a…

HOW DO YOU prove the worthiness of your product? You install it on a random vehicle in front of a crowd. A random car means you can’t prep ahead of time, and spectators ensure you can’t hide hiccups in postproduction. It’s what one Zip-Tie Drags sponsor, FiTech, did in the pits at Tucson Dragway, and the victim was the Vette Cart, our flyweight, nekkid cornerin’ machine. After some blasts down the dragstrip on the carbureted small-block, FiTech owner Ken Ferrell and his crew installed a digital fuel delivery system in place of the analog carburetor. The system he chose was FiTech’s GoEFI 4 Power Adder kit, which supports up to 600 hp and contains a 2.5-bar MAP sensor to handle up to 25 pounds of boost if used in a…

At 2:30 a.m. on a Wednesday, the pits at South Georgia Motorsports Park were a dark Tetris game of motorhomes and race haulers. We slotted in to a space and did our best to get air in the inflatable mattresses. Morning would come soon enough. I had caught a ride to the track with Rick Prospero and his family by pretending I’d be useful as a crew member while Rick raced his big-block-Chevy-powered 1990 Mazda RX-7 at the famed Lights Out 8 race in Georgia. With his built-in team of son, Cole; wife, Tracey; and daughters, Reece and Chiara, Rick hardly needed my help, but he let me tag along anyway. Rick’s car is a surprise to most folks who see it. It’s an RX-7, but there’s no spinning Dorito…

If you’re one of the 4.5 million YouTube views on “ZR-1 Corvette vs LSx Willy’s Jeep,” then you’ve seen Justin Miller’s 1952 CJ Willys lift the front tires and gap a (flat) fender on a Corvette, a Porsche, and even a sport bike. We caught up with Justin at the 2016 SEMA Show in Las Vegas, where he and fellow quick Jeeper Matt Nappier were showcasing all the ways to stuff an LS engine in a World War II–era jeep. Supercharged, turbocharged, and nitrous-huffing, Justin and Matt’s 1,000-plus-hp setups are a far cry from the 60-hp straight-four Go Devils that powered the military jeeps to victory in the 1940s. How did the guys even think of making drag machines out of off-roaders? “I used to play on this Jeep when…

HARD FACTS: VEHICLE: 1948 Willys CJ-2A ENGINE: Turbocharged, nitrousinjected, 1,000-hp 5.3L LS1 Chevy V-8 TRANSMISSION: GM 4L80E automatic AXLES AND SUSPENSION: Narrowed two-wheel-drive ’95 Jeep Cherokee and original ’48 leaf springs (front); GM 10-bolt, 3.73 gears, original ’48 leaf springs (rear) WHEELS: Cragar Soft 8 TIRES: (Front) BFG Radial T/A (Rear) Mickey Thompson Street R BUILT FOR: Smoking the tires, Horsepower for Hope, and running Street Car Takeover events nationwide…

Alongside Scott and the Junkyard Bugatti, Austin Hammett spent the weekend with us cruising around in his tough ’93 Chevy S10. Scott’s longtime friend, racer, and four-wheeler buddy Austin owns Starr Powdercoating in Columbus, Texas, and built this mean blue machine about two years ago. He says Scott convinced him to splash out for the performance upgrades. He ditched the baby factory motor and shoehorned in a nitrous-fed LS1 in the front. It’s fitted with a F.A.S.T. intake, ported heads, Diamond forged pistons, and a Texas Speed cam. Charlie Wheatley of Wheatley Performance handled the tune, and with a 100 shot of the giggle gas, it’s good for about 530 hp and 550 lb-ft. The LS mill is coupled to a T56 six-speed box with a Monster Stage 2 clutch…

“WE LIKE TO BE THE FIRST ON THE SCENE.” –MARK KONO It’s so early that the sun is still sleeping, and the only light over Whiteman Airport in Pacoima, California, is the weak glow from a few streetlamps on the perimeter of the airfield. I can just make out the figure of pilot Mark Kono waving me through a series of security gates before he hops in an idling pickup truck and motions me to follow. Night still cloaks the small airport, dissolving the structures. Hangars and tarmac-harnessed planes rise up in the headlight beams then fall away. I’m creeping through at idle, concerned I’ll sideswipe a Cessna with the ROADKILL Viper. The rearview mirrors are empty black holes; everything behind me has ceased to exist. It’s kind of funny…

Steve Örnberg sent us this cheeky photo with one short caption: “A true swap from Sweden.” Needless to say we were a bit blown away, so we asked to know more. Here’s Steve’s explanation: “It isn’t an actual swap between the vehicles. I own the Volvo and swapped in the 5.3 LM7 last summer. My friend bought the Camaro because of the drivetrain. He needed the engine, trans, and rear axle for his ’56 Chevy truck. “In Sweden, 15-year-olds can drive cars that are rebuilt as A-tractors. Top speed can only be 19 mph and has to be at the rpm where the engine makes the most horsepower (5,000 rpm with the Volvo engine). So it has two gearboxes: One only has the first gear, and the other one has…

I magine a bald eagle doing a 500-mile burnout from Charlotte, North Carolina, straight onto pit lane of Daytona International Speedway to take the green flag at the 2017 Daytona 500. That’s what we figured would happen when we were invited to drive a 650-hp Camaro ZL1 to the start of the NASCAR racing season. The Camaro has a muscle car rep, but since its introduction there’s always been Camaros on road courses and autocrosses. The new sixth gen is a spectacular handling machine, and with Nürburgring lap times that shame a hypercar—7:29.6— the ZL1 has proven that it doesn’t overpower that handling. Track handling doesn’t always make for a pleasant street car, though. Both the GT350R and the fifth-gen Z/28 have demonstrated that to us on more than one…