How to Determine if Your Small-Block is Worthless or A Winner


Photos by Chuck Vranas









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BY NICK LICATA

t’s hard to believe that we here at All Chevy Performance magazine are celebrating our two-year anniversary. With ACP having a born-on date of January 2021, the magazine you are holding in your hands or reading online is our 25th issue. That’s pretty cool being the odds of success weren’t on our side, or at least that’s what some of the feedback would suggest when we announced the addition of a Chevy-only magazine to the roster of In The Garage Media’s Modern Rodding and Classic Truck Performance magazines.
“Don’t you guys know that print magazines are dead?” “No one buys magazines anymore.” “Which one of you ‘brainiacs’ decided to start a new Chevy magazine?” “Why would you publish a new magazine when everything is on the Internet?”
Yep, we heard all the “positive” and “inspiring” comments you can imagine with some that included more “colorful” language. To us, all the noise just confirmed that we made the right decision at the right time.




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.


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 or ’87-91 L98 Corvette-type cylinder heads, providing mounting for both RAW Hilborn mechanical and electronic stack fuel injection. The Hilborn EFI-R injector manifold kits combine the technology of electronic fuel injection with the racing-born performance and aggressive looks of individual-runner engine induction.
For more information, contact Holley by calling (866) 464-6553 or visit holley.com.


For more information, contact Summit Racing by calling (800) 230-3030 or visit summitracing.com.


Text and Rendering by Tavis Highlander

his 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 new high-end materials.




t 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 long till he graduated from building models at the kitchen table to his first go-kart while spending plenty of time frequenting the dealership. With the local streets packed with hot rods running built Flatheads and small-blocks vying for bragging rights, he also spent time at the regional dragstrip watching his racing heroes lay down blistering times in Funny Cars, ’rails, and gassers. By the time he was 15 years old, Danny was deep into rebuilding a friend’s 292ci Ford V-8 while also cruising the strip in his personal ’57 Austin-Healey 3000 stuffed with a race-prepped 327ci Chevy. Plenty of other cool rides followed, including a diverse grouping of hot rods, rare muscle cars, and restored antiques.




f you’ve been around old cars for very long, you’ve experienced the pressure and anxiety of buying a used engine. It’s always a gamble, whether it’s a freshly plucked junkyard engine or an abandoned build that someone claims is “ready to assemble.” Occasionally, you’ll get lucky, but there are plenty of duds and so-called “Corvette engines” out there, so beware.
Our intention with this article is to give you some clues for quick inspections when you’re under the gun, and some tips for further investigation when you have time to run the numbers.
In the case of our subject engine, we picked it up in a package deal with a ratty late-’70s Nova. No information was provided with the car or engine, so we took a chance because the price was right and we needed to get the deal wrapped up quickly. Upon arrival, we were pleased at first glance because the engine has a set of small Camel Hump heads (also called Double Hump) with accessory holes. These heads were used on performance engines (300 hp and up) and were used on iconic engines like the DZ302 and LT-1 from 1969 through the early ’70s, so that was an instant win.



Miranda Built Custom ’69 Camaro
n 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 sure no one saw coming when they first rolled off the assembly line. You would’ve had to build a timeless piece of machinery with body lines that would hold up visually over a half-century later, which is just what Chevrolet did.





o 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.
In this article we’ll detail how to install a burst plate with a Holley front-feed intake manifold lid as our test subject.


By Nick Licata Photography by Jason Matthew
intage 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.



Notes for Shock Settings in Drag Racing Applications
BY Jeff Smith Photography by The Author
t 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 important. This story will focus on a common problem that is often overlooked once the car is quicker—we’ll draw that line at roughly the low 12s to mid 11-second bracket. Once a car reaches this threshold, applying careful suspension tuning with the right parts can make a big difference.
A recent tech discussion with Viking Shocks co-owner Chris King revealed that a common problem is rear suspension loss of control due to insufficient shock travel. This is most commonly seen in coilover applications but also occurs in stock suspension applications. The scenario plays out something like this: You’ve just added a looser converter or plumbed a mild nitrous kit that now hits the tires so hard on the starting line that the body squats over the rear suspension and the tires spin. This often creates a situation where body movement fully compresses the rear shocks, creating a solid rear wheel rate that translates into spinning rear tires. We’ll first run through some simple measurement techniques that should alert you to the possibility that a shock length and/or a rear spring rate change may be needed.



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.


InTheGarageMedia.com

the Most
Important
Part of
Your Chevy’s
Charging
System
BY Ryan Manson Photography by The Author
attery 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 to replace our tired battery. Turns out, Duralast offers three different battery options that serve the classic car market: Duralast, Duralast Gold, and Duralast Platinum. All Duralast Batteries meet or exceed OE cranking amps and reserve capacity and feature Duralast’s proven robust construction and rugged durability.




inding an unmolested muscle car can be, in many ways, like searching 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 always liked Camaros, especially the Z28,” Vernon explains. “I liked the way the car looked and that stripe on the hood really stood out.” He further adds, “Engines got blown up back then. People didn’t think anything of it and didn’t really care about a car being numbers matching. If an engine blew up, they just threw it away and put something else in its place and moved on.” What he saw was spot-on, and it was realistically priced by ’70s standards, so it went home with him.



he 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 time. During the ’80s, an eighth-mile dragstrip was built on the oval track’s front straightaway. Knoxville Dragway is under new ownership for the 2022 season, and Wes Clapp and crew made a huge effort to roll out the red carpet for the Southeast Gassers Association group.

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