Classic American magazine - October 2013 - Sample

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Oc m tib er er ica 20 n 13

Regulars 6 12 14 16 18

News Letters Tony Oksien Across the Pond From Here to Obscurity 20 Subscription Offer 86 Readers Rides 89 Discoveries 92 Back Issues 94 Reviews 96 Merchandise 98 Club News 108 Events & Cruises 115 Service Directory 121 Private Classifieds 130 Next Month & Credits

Features 22 2013 Corvette Z51 Stingray 28 1969 Mustang & 1969 Mach 1 36 1958 Chevrolet Brookwood Wagon 42 1963 Studebaker Avanti 46 1973 Dodge Challenger 50 1941 Buick Super 8 55 Cruisin’ Cuts 59 Karl’s Kar Klinik – voltage regulators 64 1974 Chevrolet Custom Deluxe 69 Rally of the Giants 75 Stars & Stripes 81 Mopar EuroNats 103 Drive Buy – 1970 Plymouth ’Cuda

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Words: Fran Markus Photography: Wesley Allison Syndication: Fox

Corvette C7 Z51

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g n i n Tu ied a f i r t n e g ll new ad test. a e h t n o hands unforgiving ro s t i s t e g erican le C7 Z51 for an ll read on‌ m A c i s s Cla ? We stab k u j n i d h a t y e l l w u f What did

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014 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray Z51 Corvettes have always been adept track stars – maintaining a close relationship with a successful racing team assures that. Well, the time has come to see if indeed with the C7 generation the beast has been tamed, and if so, whether said taming has neutered the lovable aspects of the beastliest C6s. In short, can it still lay down hero numbers – without soiling the hero’s pants? Our first answers lie 3.5 miles away on the ‘black lake’ at GM’s Milford Proving Ground, Michigan; but before Corvette chief engineer Tadge Juechter will turn us loose to start measuring numbers, he’s got a PowerPoint presentation for us.

While three eager testers fidget, knees bouncing, the slides reveal a few new factoids such as the now SAE-certified engine output ratings: 455bhp at 5900rpm and 460lb-ft at 4700rpm for the base

engine; 460bhp/465lb-ft (at the same revs) with the $1195 Dual-Mode Performance Exhaust. This system more or less bypasses the rear mufflers with a pair of exhaust butterflies. Juechter also discloses that, when operating as a 3.1-litre V4, the LT1 produces 126bhp and 221lb-ft at 3000rpm – that’s 10 times the power needed to maintain 50mph, and it’s sufficient to sustain 90mph on flat ground.

Other bragworthy numbers include the preliminary fuel economy estimates of 17 city mpg/29 highway for the seven-speed manual. (Figures for the automatic are not yet available). That’s up from 16/26 for the C6 and ranks the Stingray as the least thirsty 450-plus-hp car on the market.

Let’s fast-forward to the road test. I warm the car up with numerous laps of the figureeight course, trying different modes.

Everything off proved too hard to control,

but Track mode with the Dry programme seemed to allow the ideal slip angle. The new Michelin Pilot Super Sport ZP tyres are supposedly quite a bit stickier, but GM’s asphalt feels a smidge smoother than the aggregate at California Speedway, where we tested the C6 Grand Sport. Hence lateral g increases ‘only’ to 1.11g from 1.09; our lap time of 23.9 seconds at 0.82g was 0.2 second off the Grand Sport’s; and our 60-0mph braking distance stretched to 104 feet from 101.

With all gauges and tyres showing ‘warm’, I line up for eight acceleration runs – four with launch control (traction off, clutch in, floor the throttle, let revs stabilise, release clutch and let computer modulate) and four without. The computer launches at around 4000rpm and each run registers within a tenth of a second – great for bracket racing, but I know she’ll bite harder with fewer revs.

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Words: Mike Renaut Photography: Matt Richardson

1958 Chevy Brookwood wagon

Kev Greenwood’s 1958 Chevrolet Brookwood wagon may be rare but that hasn’t stopped him adding a few period customising touches along the way.

J

ust for a minute imagine it’s the summer of 1963. You’re a kid in America ready to buy your first car and of course you know exactly what you want. Since you were eight years old you’ve wanted a ’32 Ford hot rod, but recently you now want a Corvette Stingray, a Cobra or maybe one of those fancy Jaguar XKEs. Trouble is good ol’ dad won’t entertain the thought of a foreign car on his driveway and anyway your $800

budget doesn’t stretch to a sports car. But your aunt Mary is getting rid of her old car and it’s pretty much yours for free. All you know is it’s a Chevrolet V8. You’re hoping for a hot red, fuel injected 1957 Bel Air Sport Coupe… but what turns up is a ’58 Chevy, and even worse it’s a wagon. The only cool wagons ever built were the old two-door Nomads, but this is a four-door Brookwood.

Still, with $800 worth of wheels, mechanical

work and lowered it might just not be laughed at too much when you cruise the beaches and drive-ins this weekend…

That’s the fictional backstory I came up with when I first clapped eyes on Kev Greenwell’s 1958 Chevrolet Brookwood. It’s just the sort of mild custom you might have seen roaming the streets in the early Sixties.

The Chevy shares space in Kev’s garage with the beautiful green, mild custom 1954

Sweet ‘n’ Low Gauges and controls for airbag system and stereo sit under the dash.

Oldsmobile convertible we featured back in our December 2011 issue. Kev believes in using his cars so, despite torrential rain, he was happy to bring his wagon out for photos. Even better the windscreen wipers he’d been having trouble with the day before suddenly began operating two minutes into our journey.

Kev’s Chevy is model series 1693 – the four-door station wagon. As a six-passenger

Speedo is a strip-type affair.

version the 3751lb Chevy would have retailed at $2678. The VIN plate correctly identifies it as a Biscayne/Brookwood V8 built at the Los Angeles plant. After 1957 it seems Chevrolet no longer broke down production figures by individual model series, only body style. But we understand that 170,473 four-door station wagons were built and Kev’s was born right in the middle of the run. This ’58 was a California car.

Owner: Kevin Greenwood.

“That’s the reason the wipers weren’t working,” laughs Kev, “they probably never needed them out there. It came in from Los Angeles to Weston-super-Mare in April 2012.

I saw the Chevy on eBay just after it was brought in and bought it from a guy in Basildon. When I first saw it the colour stood out. I have varied tastes when it comes to cars but this is only my second Chevy, previously I had a 1957 truck.” ❯

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Words & Photography: Ian Shipley

1941 Buick

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he early Forties marked the end of automotive production for many car builders with the onset of the Second World War, as metal and other raw materials were redirected to the war effort. This Buick Eight is a great example of the last of the opulent four door sedans that were to roll off the mighty American production lines before the war shut them down. This particular car was built at the Flint plant in Michigan, one of three that made the Buicks.

We came across this car at the Kilbeggan American car show in Ireland and just had to do a feature on it after talking with Christian Hoey who has the tile of “official caretaker of the car”. It turns out that Chris is into

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anything and everything Forties and is a barber at Waldorf’s, a Forties-themed barber shop in Dublin. He had the good fortune of being asked by his friend Brian Hurson if he would mind looking after his Buick Super eight for a few months while he was away in Canada sorting out a permanent move to that country. Needless to say Christian jumped at the chance. Brian is obviously a wise man, knowing that not only would Christian look after the car, but more importantly he would use it rather than just laying it up in storage.

The question of whether to restore or preserve is a question that every classic car owner must struggle with and part of the

delight of this car is the patina that the twotone pale green over dark green paint work has, giving it a faded, lived-in look. Many people would have considered having the car resprayed, but the appeal of this car is that it is almost totally original having been owned by a lady in North Carolina, until her son took it back to the original Buick dealership.

The son of the dealership owner put the car into a private collection where it was until around 2005 when it was released for sale and that’s when Brian bought the car and eventually had it shipped to Ireland back in 2006. As of May 2013 the car had only clocked up 38010 miles from new, so you could say the engine is barely run in. Perhaps

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So you are sitting back having a quiet drink when your pal says: “would you mind looking after my ’41 Buick for a while”. A low mileage, four door sedan that would grace any serious collection.

the low mileage is due to the fuel rationing back in 1942 as indicated by the rationing sticker still in place on the windscreen.

The look of this car was enhanced with the styling evolution taking place at the time that saw the running boards of the previous generation of cars removed, although it still retained a lot of styling cues from the Roadmaster. The lines on its fisher body just flow from the hood backwards in a great sweeping curve that slopes down to the rear fender. For car production of its day, this particular model was short lived and only ran in production during 1940-41, being curtailed by the war.

One striking thing about the early

American car engineering are some of the exotic and imaginative names given to various innovations; for example this car carries the then recently redesigned ‘Turbulator’ pistons. The key design element of the Turbulator pistons is that they had a dome shaped head which allowed for a more controlled burning of fuel at a higher compression rate, this was an evolution of the Buick engine system a few years earlier in 1938 and had the effect of increasing the power output on the 40 special engine from 100 to 107bhp without the need for reboring or increasing the overall engine size.

The motor is a 248cu in (4.1-litre) straighteight cylinder Fireball engine, the same ❯

Re-regulation Words & Photography: Karl Anthony

How to upgrade to a solid-state voltage regulator in your Sixties GM car (or virtually any other post-’60 American classic) and maintain a stock appearance.

W

hile cruising down the highway in our ’67 Buick GS400, I glanced at the aftermarket gauges under the dash and noticed that the volt gauge reading was 18 volts!

The alternator was overcharging the battery. If it kept happening it wouldn’t be long before we broke down. Since we were about three hours from home and it was a Sunday, when many automotive businesses, including parts stores, are closed, and the weather was turning to rain, stopping wasn’t really the best option; but neither was toasting the battery.

To put more load on the charging system and reduce the alternator’s output to a safer level, I turned on the headlights, the radio and the windshield wipers (by then it had started to rain) and turned the blower motor on high. It worked; the gauge dropped to 14 volts, we got home safely and the Buick’s battery wasn’t damaged.

After performing the tests in the service manual to confirm the cause, my initial thought proved correct, the voltage regulator was at fault.

As I contemplated purchasing a new one, I recalled a story a friend had shared a few years ago. He went to the auto parts store to buy a new voltage regulator for his Sixties GM muscle car and was sold one that looked somewhat different from his original and was lighter in weight. First thinking that the replacement part must have been some inferior knockoff, he questioned the counterman.

He soon learned that the replacement part was actually more advanced than his factory issued unit and employed solid-state circuitry to replace the double-contact electromechanical design of the original. As such, the new part was lighter, had no moving parts, never required adjustment like the old unit and suggested increased durability. Stock regulators are comprised of a field relay and a double-contact voltage regulator unit. The regulator’s purpose is to constrain the alternator’s voltage output to within a preset upper limit. The field relay connects and disconnects the alternator field and voltage regulator to the battery.

Since alternator output depends on engine speed and field strength, but only field strength can be controlled, the regulator has to operate in different modes to match the operating conditions. It must ensure that the alternator provides the required current to keep the battery charged and to run accessories. The stock regulator handles the task thusly: lower contacts closed – current need is high but engine speed is low; lower contacts vibrating – current need is lower and engine speed is a bit higher; both contacts open – current need and engine speed allow for ¾ ampere to provide the required alternator output; upper points vibrating – current need is low and engine speed is high.

The solid-state unit replaces all this

mechanical contact action with electronics; integrated circuits now control the voltage limits and do it more precisely than the old method, and diodes act as the cutoff with their added benefit being no chance of reverse flow of current to the alternator, as was possible with the original design. Resistors in the integrated circuits provide variable temperaturecompensated output.

Given the attributes of the solid-state voltage regulator, I decided to buy one for my Buick.

What I found was they are available from most UK parts suppliers advertising in Classic American, but they do look a bit different from stock. The metal base is nearly the same, but the cover can vary in material, height and logo (or lack thereof), not to mention the different methods by which it’s attached to the base. I also checked a few popular restoration houses that sell voltage regulators with the ‘DelcoRemy’ and ‘MADE IN USA’ lettering on the cover, some correct, some replacement-style.

However, none that I found with the correct cover had solid-state internals, all were simply stock replacements.

With all this in mind, I decided to buy a new solid-state unit from the local auto parts store, remove its incorrect cover, bolt on the Buick’s correct cover, install the unit and enjoy troublefree operation on the road while maintaining a stock look. Easy, right? Let’s find out…

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External voltage regulators were used on most GM cars into the early Seventies. Later units were integral with the alternator. Our vintage electromechanical double-contact, external regulator had seen better days. Its operation had become erratic, so we decided to not just replace it but to also upgrade it in the process. It’s shown here with the radio noise suppressor still attached.

The new voltage regulator was purchased from a parts store for £25. Its solidstate design promises more precise and reliable long-term operation, but the unit has an incorrect, nonlettered, shorter than stock plastic cover.

We freed the regulator from the firewall by removing the wiring harness connector and then three retaining bolts with a 3⁄8in socket. Since the cover is original with the correct split ‘DelcoRemy MADE IN USA’ lettering for our application (replacements have ‘Delco-Remy’ on the same line), we wanted to reuse it. As you can see, however, it requires some restoration work.

This is the underside of the voltage regulator we removed from the Buick…

…and the underside of the new solid-state unit.

Note how much simpler the design is in appearance. If you’re shopping for a new regulator, now you can tell the difference between the solid-state and the original type without having to remover the cover.

On Sale October 17

Next Month

1957 Chevrolet

1968 Chevrolet El Camino

Brooks Stevens

1965 Dodge Coronet

1960 Pontiac Catalina

1974 Ford Maverick

1968 Ford Torino EDITOR

Ben Klemenzson, bklemenzson@mortons.co.uk DESIGN

Michael Baumber CONTRIBUTORS

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Tim Hartley

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