mod@tech

Nothing says “performance vehicle” quite like a red disc brake caliper peeking through the spokes of an alloy wheel. But what was once the realm of exotics and track-day cars, is now a little slice of go-fast heaven you can have for your own, no matter what kind of car you drive. As long as it’s running disc brakes that you can see behind its wheels, of course.

The POR-15 Brake Caliper Painting Kit was designed to do two things: protect your calipers from the elements and make you look like you drive a high-performance car every day. Based on the Rust Preventive system POR-15 is known for, the final paint is available in five colors and the kit comes with everything you need to single-handedly turn your daily-driver from zero to hero.

More than just a layer of shiny paint behind your wheels, the Brake Caliper Painting kit gives you a solid base of protection under that new color. After all, your brake calipers are located in one of the most punishing environments your car can serve up: a constant cycle of heating and cooling, road dirt and debris, varying degrees of moisture and the accumulating dust from brake pads that are constantly wearing away. So, when you can protect that hardware from all that punishment and make them look good at the same time, that’s a win all the way around.

The kit comes complete with:

1. Cleaner/Degreaser: a good paint job starts with a clean surface and the POR-15 Cleaner/Degreaser is formulated to remove oils, dirt, greases and other contaminants, ensuring a great foundation for the paint.
2. Metal Prep: this stuff prepares the surface of your caliper for the best adhesion and consistent coverage of the patented Rust Preventive.
3. Rust Preventive: what POR-15 is best known for, the Rust Preventive is not only designed to cover and seal the porous surfaces of your brake calipers, but add a layer of protection from the elements and sets up your final coats of paint for a long life.
4. Caliper Paint: here’s where the magic happens! Choose your favorite color, as long as it’s black, red, yellow, grey or blue and become a driveway hero with this self-leveling paint that not only looks great, but is tough as nails.

Along with gloves, applicators and detailed instructions, the POR-15 Brake Caliper Painting kit is the easiest way to spruce-up the look of your daily-driver with a complete solution. Find more here and you’re five easy steps away from a new look for ride!

Date: April 1985

Location: Las Vegas, Nevada

Source: Bob Paluzzi, via UNLV Digital Collections

What do you see here?

Ken Block raced in just about every championship-level rally racing series there is, including WRC, but the majority of his rally racing career took place on U.S. soil, either in the Rally America series or in the American Rally Association National Rally Championship series. His—and the rest of the Hoonigan team’s—efforts in the latter in 2022 served as the basis for the hour-long documentary “Go Fast Risk Every Thang” that Block and Hoonigan released just a few weeks before his death earlier this week at age 55. While it’s not difficult to get a sense of Block’s personality from the literal days’ worth of video footage of him online—including the Gymkhana series of videos—the documentary follows him and the team through the entire ARA season and all of the adversity they faced as they tried to secure the championship in an entirely new and unproven car while meeting all the various other media and race commitments throughout the year.

GO FAST RISK EVERY THANG: The Wild Story of Ken Block’s ’22 Rally Racing Title Chase

www.youtube.com

1. What exactly makes Hot Wheels a mainstay on shelves across America? NPR recently examined the enduring popularity of the toy brand and how it’s managed to keep inflation from ratcheting the price of the cars.

Hot Wheels are a retail oddity. They remain one of the most affordable toys in the country at a time when inflation is chipping away at savings accounts and compounding credit card debt for many Americans, experts like James Zahn told NPR. “It is exceptionally rare to find a toy that maintains its price for a few years, let alone more than five decades,” Zahn says. “Hot Wheels are an anomaly in that the continued sales volume and razor-sharp production pipeline manage to keep costs just low enough to maintain that sweet $1 price point.”

2. Mark Axen recently forwarded History.com’s summation of the 1936-1937 GM sit-down strike, one of the most important events in auto labor history.

The strikes had lasted for 44 days, left 136,000 GM workers idle and caused 280,000 cars to go unbuilt. Though much of the public was against sit-down strikes and considered labor unionists to be dangerous rabble-rousers, GM’s public image had suffered, too. And labor would never be the same. Union membership ballooned from 3.4 million workers in 1930 to 10 million in 1942, and the majority of the automobile industry swiftly unionized, gaining benefits and pay they never would have obtained without organizing. “They were the most important strikes in American history,” Lichtenstein says. For decades, he says, industrial unionism reigned supreme, leading to a higher standard of living for working Americans.

Stellantis media photo

3. Boardroom intrigue typically amounts to inside baseball, but as Bill McGuire of Mac’s Motor City Garage tells the story of the 1960 Chrysler scandal, the ramifications played out in the cars the company built and the scandal itself nearly led to the company’s demise.

On April 28, 1960, Lester L. “Tex” Colbert stepped down as president of the Chrysler Corporation to take the honored position of chairman of the board. His 10-year run as president had apparently been a successful one. Accomplishments under his leadership included the development of three advanced hemi V-8 engine families for Chrysler, Desoto, and Dodge, the Torqueflite transmission, the launch of the compact Valiant, and the transition to Unibody construction. For his successor as president, Colbert hand-picked his longtime lieutenant, friend, and Bloomfield Hills neighbor, William C. Newberg. And then barely days later, hell broke loose.

One influential Chrysler board member, Pittsburgh coal magnate George H. Love, was curious enough about the continuing accusations to press for an independent audit of the company. The audit, conducted by Touche, Ross & Co., almost immediately uncovered an alarming conflict of interest: Newberg and his wife owned a 50 percent interest in two Chrysler parts suppliers, Press Products, Inc. and the Bonan Company. Suddenly the high parts costs and poor quality had a plausible explanation. On June 30, Newberg was forced to resign after just 64 days as president. As part of his separation agreement, Newberg agreed to repay $455,000 in profits he received from his outside companies for their contract work with Chrysler.

While the executive offices were erupting in chaos, engineering, production, and sales were wracked with turmoil as well. It was Newberg who reportedly made the abrupt decision in mid-1960 that the 1962 Plymouth and Dodge had to be radically downsized, and the engineering and styling staffs struggled to meet the sudddenly tight deadlines.

The proposed full-sized Dodge and Plymouth designs for ’62 were hastily shrunk down to fit on a stretched Valiant platform, and no one was happy with the result. In a now-famous phrase, Chrysler design vice-president Virgil Exner called the awkwardly styled cars “plucked chickens.” As one story goes, Newberg made the downsizing decision after mishearing some party gossip about Chevrolet’s plans for the 1962 Chevy II, which he took to mean the carmaker’s full-sized line.

4. Over the holidays, Kustomrama shared a thorough deep-dive into the canted-quad headlamps styling trend that spans the feature’s production-car origins as well as its spread among customizers across the country in the late Fifties and early Sixties.

Glenn Goode’s Big People – The Documentary

www.youtube.com

5. Finally, a recently released documentary on Glenn Goode tells the story of the man largely acknowledged to have saved the muffler men and other massive fiberglass roadside advertising statues from obscurity. (via)

There are storage solutions and then there are garages. And when it comes to the great American garage, nothing makes it a bucket list garage-mahal quite like a collection of classic cars and all the toolboxes, parts, engine stands and workbenches surrounding it.

To take that idea a step further, the ultimate home shop is one purpose-built for the job of housing and protecting all that iron. And a pole building, designed for and by classic car collectors, is not only a great idea, but one that will make owning, wrenching and enjoying these cars that much easier.

Here at Wick Buildings, we’ve got the collector in mind when we design our post-frame structures. We know that a new shop isn’t just a practical decision, but it’s also an emotionally-driven one: you choose the type of building based on needs, but also on how you want to best protect and enjoy your investments. And it’s with that in mind, that we build features you need with the experience and support you want into every one of our pole building shops.

Proper ventilation for classic cars

One of the most important features of a new pole building is one that isn’t instantly noticed when choosing a style and size: proper ventilation. Proper air ventilation is the best solution to control condensation. Keeping that moisture off your tools, undercarriage and parts will keep potential rust from forming. Any internal combustion engine-powered vehicle will emit airborne toxins, but vintage automobiles, motorcycles, boats, snowmobiles, farm equipment and the like are in a class of their own. The architects and engineers at Wick understand this issue and have designed features into every structure to make sure that it’s addressed when you’re in – and out – of your new shop:

1. Vented ridges: everyone learns in grade school that heat rises, but Wick buildings use that natural phenomenon to direct stale air to the roof of the structure and allow it to escape through a protected vent in its peak.

2. Vented eaves: a vented ridge design feature is only as effective as the fresh air that can replace the stale air it’s so good at removing from the building. Our vented eaves allow fresh air to flow into the pole building as the other half of the total air circulation process. These vents are protected from the elements, while being effective in keeping your classics cushioned in fresh air.

3. Vented building features: as an optional design feature, we’ve designed a vented cupola that can be incorporated into the roof your building – they look great and function just as well. The gables of your building can also be vented on both ends, which create more natural ventilation.

4. Powered ventilation options: natural, passive ventilation designed into the building is always a good idea, but you might need more. In that case, a few options are available:

– Attic fans or ventilators. Mounted either in a gable wall with opening and closing shutters or under a covered vent in the roof, they can move a lot of air and can be triggered by temperature or humidity levels.

– Power vented cupolas. These electric fans mount in the cupola and can also be triggered by temperature or humidity levels.

– Exhaust fans. Similar to the common bathroom fan, these can be used to remove moisture, vapor, or odors from interior spaces or rooms under the attic. Use the appropriate filtering system for the type of exhaust you are removing.

– Air exchangers. This option is commonly used in residential and commercial environments when you are exchanging interior air that is heated or cooled.

Fresh air enters through the vented eaves. Warm and humid air exits through the vented ridge.

For more information on the ventilation features Wick Buildings has designed:
https://www.wickbuildings.com/blog/pole-barn-ventilation-essentials/

Storing your collector cars

Choosing the right type of pole building to house all your collector car dreams is one thing, but maintaining those vehicles so they don’t turn into nightmares goes hand-in-hand with that choice. And making sure your treasures enjoy the proper atmosphere will go far in making sure you do, as well.

1. Proper heating: if you live in a region that sees all the seasons, make sure your new building can properly heat itself in colder months. After all, moisture is your enemy and the properly oscillating air – at the right year-round temperature – is key to keeping your cars warm and dry.

2. The man cave: if you’ve got a collection of cars, chances are that you’d like to spend some time around them, especially when you’re not under them. A few couches, a bar, a TV or even a kitchen of some scale might be an essential element of your dream garage: make sure you design these elements into your new pole building with the climate control ideas in mind to keep you as comfortable as your cars are.

3. The plastic sheet: hot tip: park your car(s) over a plastic sheet to keep any moisture coming up through the floor during temperature fluctuation from affecting its undercarriage.

4. Drainage: speaking of moisture, make sure the floors in your new pole building have proper drainage features. Nothing worse than puddles of water or fluids that can’t escape the interior of your building quickly and efficiently.

5. Keep it lubed: the worst thing for a classic is not driving it. Remember, these cars were meant to do one thing very, very well: move. While you’re not driving it, keep its moving parts properly lubricated, greased and maintained. And while we’re talking about storage, disconnect the battery (better yet, remove it) when it’s parked for extended periods of time.

For more tips on storing your collector cars:
https://www.wickbuildings.com/blog/store-classic-car/

Contact us!

When it’s time to start making your dreams a reality, take the first step and contact us: not only do we love hearing about your passions, we love building the ultimate garage-mahal to house them!

Dates: 1979 (above), 1971 (below), 1974, 1977 (bottom)

Location: Boston, Massachusetts

Source: Photos by Spencer Grant, courtesy Boston Public Library / Flickr

What do you see here?

Photo by Spencer Grant

Photo by Spencer Grant

Photo by Spencer Grant

Two years after the Black Ghost joined the National Register of Historic Vehicles, the son of the street-racing, Hemi-powered 1970 Dodge Challenger R/T’s original owner has decided to put it up for auction, consigning it to Mecum’s Indianapolis sale.

Godfrey Qualls, a Detroit native who had spent time in the Army during Vietnam, had just entered the police academy when he decided to order the Challenger. The impetus behind the decision came not from his chosen career but from his brother Cleolous, who had bought a black 1968 Dodge Charger for organized drag racing—the kind that takes place on a drag strip in clear view of anybody and everybody. According to Gregory and his uncles, Godfrey had urged Cleolous to order the Charger with a Hemi, but when Cleolous instead chose the less expensive 440-cu.in. V-8. That galvanized Godfrey to buy a Hemi of his own and to prove it in unorganized street racing—the kind that takes place under the cover of darkness far from the purview of authorities.

​Built to Race

Qualls ordered the Challenger from Raynal Brothers Dodge on Chalmers Avenue in Detroit in black with a white stripe, similar to his brother’s Charger, and with the Hemi that he had his heart set on. Along with a four-speed manual transmission, he also ordered the A34 Super Track Pack with 4.10 gears, J45 hood pins, S83 Rim-Blow steering wheel, R35 multiplex AM/FM stereo, V1G Gator Grain vinyl roof, and a host of other options that added up to a total cost of nearly $5,300. He also specified a Shaker hood, which didn’t come with the car when it arrived. According to Gregory’s uncles, Godfrey threatened to sue either the dealer or Chrysler; he eventually got the hood assembly, but then never had it installed. The only race prep he deemed necessary consisted of an aftermarket coil, 11-inch slicks, and unhooked mufflers.

Sometime after ordering the car, Qualls graduated from the academy and joined the Detroit Police Department, assigned to traffic enforcement in the department’s 11th Precinct. By day he rode a motorcycle, writing speeding tickets. Then, by night, he’d back the Challenger out of his garage on the East Side and prowl the streets for the next race.

“I’m pretty sure he’d have lost his job if his superiors found out,” Gregory says. “They wouldn’t take kindly to that.”

How It Earned the Name Black Ghost

He was careful. He took few chances at getting caught. He didn’t tell anybody his name, didn’t hang out with the racing crowd, and only appeared for the occasional race. The Challenger thus became a sort of urban legend among the Detroit street racing crowd, a car that would show up on Telegraph or Woodward or Stecker Street to dominate, then disappear for months at a time. “That’s what made it so mysterious,” Gregory says. “Everybody apparently called it the Black Ghost.”

Qualls took care of the car, too. He racked up more than 45,000 miles on it but it still has the original Hemi and it reportedly never needed a clutch. After its street racing glory days, he socked it away in the garage, covered with blankets and NOS parts that he accumulated with a full restoration in mind. He’d beat cancer once before, but it came back in 2015. Before he died on Christmas Eve of that year, he had Gregory bring a thick envelope full of papers to his hospital bed. Godfrey pulled out the title and handed it over to his son.

“He said he wanted me to have the car, just not to get rid of it,” Gregory says. “He just smiled, and that was the last time I saw him happy.”

Gregory Qualls had gone for a ride in the car here and there as a youngster and talked about restoring it with his dad, but he’d never driven it. He took the Challenger home and, with the help of a few friends, went through the car to determine what it would need. “Everything looked pretty decent, not corroded like we expected it to be,” he says. Still, they had to change all the fluids; replace the belts and hoses; swap out the Tiger Paws that were on it for a set of reproduction F60-15 Polyglas GTs; rebuild the brake booster and carburetors; and install a new radiator, clutch fan, and master cylinder. “We didn’t want to take any chances—we wanted to make it safe and drivable.”

Into the Daylight

Since then, he unveiled the Black Ghost at the 2017 Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals, then took it to the 2018 Chrysler Nationals at Carlisle, where it won the Historic Vehicle Association’s National Automotive Heritage Award and where he met the HVA’s Casey Maxon, who later nominated the Challenger for a spot on the National Historic Vehicle Register. He also displayed the Black Ghost at Amelia Island and met Ralph Gilles, who advocated for the car to serve as the model for one of Dodge’s Last Call cars—a series of seven Charger and Challengers meant to send off the Hemi-powered rear-wheel-drive muscle car platform and to pay homage to Mopar history.

The Black Ghost Last Call Challenger features a Hellcat Hemi V-8 along with black paint (set off by a white bumblebee stripe) and a simulated Gator Grain roof graphic. It’s one of two Last Call cars—alongside the King Daytona inspired by Big Willie Robinson’s Charger Daytonas—meant to recall Black racers in Mopar history.

As Gilles told Hemmings late last year, the decision to pay tribute to Qualls and Robinson—which he made with Tom Sacoman, the director of Dodge Product and Motorsports—resulted from “the shortest conversation ever: ‘Yes, of course we will do this.’ There wasn’t any hesitation.”

“We auto enthusiasts don’t talk about diversity enough,” Gilles says. “We didn’t set out to solve any problems with these cars […] we want to shed a light on the diversity in our history and open the doors to that conversation.”

Gilles at the time said the car was a million-dollar car. While Mecum has released no pre-auction estimates for the Black Ghost, Mecum Vice President of Consignments Frank Mecum said the car’s value “is well into seven figures.” Hemi-powered 1970 Dodge Challenger convertibles have crossed the million-dollar threshold at auction before (a Plum Crazy example sold for $1.43 million in 2019 while a Sublime example sold for $1.65 million in 2016), but it appears no hardtop Challenger has done so.

The Black Ghost will cross the block as part of Mecum’s Indianapolis auction, which will take place May 12-20 at the Indiana State Fairgrounds. For more information, visit mecum.com.

Adding new parts to an unrestored car often creates enough aesthetic dissonance to warrant either refinishing what hasn’t been modified or, as we’ve seen in rare instances, distressing the appearance of the new parts to match the originals. Rather than taking the restomod or fauxtina routes, the builder of this 1963 Ford Falcon Futura listed for sale on Hemmings.com decided to retain the original patina and modify it as he saw fit—with function in mind rather than form. The end result appears to perform as intended with its stroker 347, stiffened chassis, and body mods, but it also manages to effortlessly blend the old with the new.

From the seller’s description:

This Falcon was built with influence from experience racing at the legendary Mexico La Carrerra Panamericana and at Pikes Peak. It was built with the intent to be a street drivable, track capable car. The build began with a “little old lady” futura and all the fabrication and mods retained the original paint “patina.” The car was put on a rotisserie and the front clip and undercarriage were media blasted. The front structure was solid welded and then raptor lined.

A complete rollcage was fabricated and tig welded into car. The dash was removed and a cross bar installed for a cleaner look and more leg room. The significant addition of metal made for a significantly stiffer chassis all around.

All the suspension components were purchased from Evergreen performance in Co. who specialize in vintage road racing Mustangs and Falcons. The rear suspension includes a full floater 9 inch with their overrider system and vintage style rear disc brakes, a big sway bar, Bilstein shocks, and road race leaf springs with panhard bar. A Borgeson power steering box now handles steering duties. Bronze powder-coated 17×8 American Racing wheels were fitted and pack substantially more rubber than the car would have originally run.

The engine is a custom-built 347ci in Ford with forged internals, a solid roller cam, AFR heads with roller rockers and stud girdles. Induction is by way of a cobra intake with Weber 48IDA carbs. The engine is tuned, starts well, and drives good. It produced 505hp on the dyno and also features an MSD ignition system and Doug Thorley tri-y headers with custom, stainless 3 in. exhaust. Shifting is handled via a fully built top-loader 4 speed by David Key.

The interior is all business with a custom fabricated aluminum that has been powder coated black and the inside floor is raptor lined with a painted roll cage and other details. A handmade Steering wheel by HRG features a racing quick release hub. All windows are plexiglass with a new, real-glass windshield.

Part of the charm of squarebody Chevrolet pickups is their ruggedness. For their utility and simplicity, most people who gravitate toward the 1973 to 1987 generation of pickups expect a tradeoff in conveniences and comforts. Rather than accept that compromise, the Roadster Shop has introduced its Legend Series squarebody chassis, the first production platform for the custom chassis producer, and will offer the first truck from that series at auction later this month.

“We designed these to drive every single day like a new truck and to not think twice about using it,” said Jeremy Gerber, the co-owner of Roadster Shop with his brother Phil. “Everybody loves the old truck look, but people forget what it’s like to drive an old truck.”

Typically, Gerber and his crew build custom chassis for high-performance muscle cars and restomods, utilizing updated suspension technology and geometries to make them “feel like a brand new sports car,” he said. Seemingly every other car built for the SEMA Show or for the Ringbrothers these days sits atop one of the company’s chassis. The natural evolution of that approach, according to Gerber, is to apply it to pickups.

“The squarebody is the quintessential truck,” Gerber said. “They just don’t drive well, and that’s a limitation of the steering and suspension.”

Improving the Squarebody

So in 2017, Gerber tasked his staff of engineers with designing an entirely new chassis for the squarebody, one that would incorporate as much modern componentry as possible. Built from two-inch-by-six-inch .125-inch-wall rectangular tube, the frame carries over nothing but the body mounting points. Instead, its designed to mount a front differential and complete independent front suspension from a GMT K2XX platform Chevrolet 1500 Silverado, along with hydraulic rack-and-pinion steering, an LT-series V-8, an 8L90-E eight-speed automatic transmission, an MP3024 transfer case, and 13-inch disc brakes, all sourced new from GM. The 12-bolt rear axles, fitted with 3.70 gears and 12-inch disc brakes, hang from softer Deaver-built long-travel multi-leaf spring packs similar to those used on Ford Raptors. Specified for the chassis are custom two-piece aluminum billet wheels measuring 17 by 9.5 inches and designed to accept the stock hubcaps.

“This isn’t the chassis to put 5.13 gears and 44-inch tires on, then go bury in the mud,” he said. For that, the Roadster Shop already offers the solid-axle RS4 chassis.

Plans call for Roadster Shop to offer both rolling chassis complete with drivetrain and wiring and turnkey pickups using donor bodies supplied by the customer or by Roadster Shop. As of right now, Roadster Shop only offers the Legend Series in Blazer or shortbed wheelbases (106.5 and 117.5 inches, respectively), but “we are working on a Suburban chassis design, and we’ve seen a lot of interest in early 1969 to 1972 Blazers,” Gerber said. Engine choices will be either the 480-hp naturally aspirated LT1 or the 650-hp supercharged LT4.

Preparing for Production

While Gerber had Roadster Shop’s LT4-powered Legend Series test mule done by early 2019, he and his staff have spent the last few years putting miles on it and tweaking it in preparation for series production. In the meantime, He’s also started to stockpile clean, rust-free squarebody trucks with a little bit of patina to use as donors for turnkey trucks based on the series.

“We’ve been searching high and low for good examples of nice, original trucks,” he said. Because original shortbed K10s of that era are in such demand these days, he’s typically sourcing shortbed C10s from the southern and western United States. He said he has about half a dozen ready to go at this point.

(As a side note, Roadster Shop is not selling the turnkey Legend Series square bodies under the recently passed low-volume replica laws. Rather, they still wear their original C10 VINs and are being sold as any other shop would sell a restomodded or hot-rodded vehicle. However, “we are seeing some interest among replica manufacturers with using our rolling chassis,” he said.)

Serial Number 001

The donor for the first production turnkey Legend Series truck, however, came from right inside Roadster Shop. According to Gerber, a customer had already brought a clean Fremont-built 307-powered 1973 Chevrolet C10 to the shop, but didn’t like the color and instead found another. With the development on the test mule done and production of the chassis underway, the Roadster Shop crew began by lifting the Burnt Orange Poly truck’s body off the two-wheel-drive chassis and rolling the latter—complete with small-block, steering column, and brake system—away.

Gerber decided to keep most of the interior intact for the first truck after so many customers showed their appreciation for the original interior of the test mule, equipped with the same old blanket that covered the test mule’s ratty bench seat when it first arrived in the shop. “It was unanimous—everybody loved the character of the factory interior,” he said. That’s not to say the interior of the 1973 remains factory stock. After stripping out the original interior, the shop updated every mechanical aspect of the cab, from the Corvette door latches to the modern air conditioning system. They then added a layer of Boom Mat to quiet the truck before layering in insulating fabrics developed specifically for these trucks by a Detroit-area OEM interior provider.

The paint, Gerber said, remains 100 percent original. “All we did was wipe it down. This seems to be what everybody wanted—a finish that was old and distressed that they didn’t have to polish and keep nice.”

As with the test mule, the 1973 received an LT4 in its modernized chassis.

With all of the development work done, Gerber said it’ll take roughly four weeks to assemble the Legend Series trucks. Prices for the bare frames start at $30,000 and run up to $100,000 for complete LT4-powered rolling chassis. Gerber said he has 10 of the trucks going together at the moment and will “let the market decide” how many Roadster Shop will build rather than limit production to a certain amount.

The first production Legend Series truck will cross the block with no reserve at Barrett-Jackson’s Scottsdale auction, which takes place January 21 to 29. For more information, visit Barrett-Jackson.com.