Best Hot Rod Parts at SEMA 2013   What is SEMA? A reason to meet friends, drink too much and gamble? No! Not during the day!   It's a trade show for all things automotive aftermarket... I tell people, "Anything with wheels" is at the SEMA Show. Lucky for me, helping out with the Live from SEMA website, I get to cover my favorite part of the show: Hot rod parts! So here's 13 of my picks for cool new hot rod products from SEMA 2013. Blown LS - For Function and Style   Edelbrock's E-Force Supercharger system for Chevy LS engines is a hard piece to miss! Who wouldn't want to have this polished positive displacement bad-boy poking out of their hood? The E-Force Systems run dual 4150 style bolt pattern flanges, so bolt up your favorite carb or run a set of EFI throttle bodies...  Your final choice? Get your blower polished like this one, or go with a satin finish, either way, both get the job done better than the stock intake setup. No? See a tasty 750+ HP in the video here.   Boost, RPM and Pressure...

Installing Disc Brakes for my Falcon Wagon Cruiser   If you've been to MyRideisMe.com much, you've seen my 1963 Ford Falcon Wagon Build. This might be one of the slowest builds in history, but hey, I'm doing it myself or with the help of friends and my pops. Not often enough, I escape from reality in the smell of grinding metal or the buzz of a MIG. Ahh... you with me?   One project I've wanted to do for a long time is update the front brakes. Trouble is, the disc brake kits for 4-lug cars are usually made from put-together kits with brake parts from a few different cars. For your brakes? OK, well maybe... we've all probably done less-safe things... but I wanted the best for a key safety feature like my brakes. So I got the Wilwood disc brake kit for 4 lug Fords. This kit works perfectly for 4-lug Mustangs as well as Falcons.   If you prefer a video, skip to the bottom of this story and check it out.   This is one side of the kit shown below. One of the best parts? Everything...

Drop's Good Enough for Shelby are Great for Me! Well, I finally got it done! After tons research, probably too much, and asking around about what's commonly known as the "Shelby Drop", if braved the Arizona summer and dropped my 1963 Ford Falcon wagon. Wish I could tell you how it handles, but it's still a project. Why the Shelby Drop? To find out, I did some checking in with my Falcon and Mustang buddies at Fordsix.com. Fordsix.com's a great place to learn about all kinds of six cylinder engines, as well as the cars and trucks that use them. There's folks from all over the world helping out... The main benefits of the Shelby Drop may not be what you think... it does lower the ride height (maybe up to 5/8"), just a little, but the biggest advantages are: Improved suspension geometry Improved body roll (resistance to roll) A higher tendency to oversteer instead of understeer as designed by Ford Better use of slightly wider, better constructed modern radials There's quite a bit of info out there, mostly for Mustangs, to look over. Check out these if you're still on...

Cheap Paint Guns Still Shoot Metal Flake   When I posted  my metal flake FAIL I heard from my new friend Chris at Chaotic Customs. He made a great how-to story about creating a custom metal flake roof for your ride.   (Picture from my vast photo archive, I have no idea what paint gun was used here or who's ride this is...)   Great Chris, but I don't have a $300 paint gun, and guess what, as often as I use one, I doubt I'll spend the money on one since we all have so many toys we want. (plus, as my friends would attest, I'm a tight-ass!)   Challenge accepted! (and then some) Chris came through with a how-to video for shooting metal flake and he used a cheap Harbor Freight gun! I hope we can all afford $30-40 for a gun and if you watch, Harbor Freight has 20% coupons available almost all the time. Chris also shows a few more details about setting up the gun and what he literally throws away when using the HF gun.   It's a fun video with great commentary... Thanks a million...

Chaotic Customs shows us how Metal Flake's done! The internet can be a great source of info, and if you're lucky, you'll find some good friends generous enough to help make a giant metal flake FAIL a big win. I got this email:   Hi, my name is Chris Carlson and I own Chaotic Customs. I saw your metal flake fail on Royboy Productions FB page and thought I'd give you my two cents. Painters have a few tricks up their sleeves to make it look easy. I've attached pictures of the 1965 Thunderbird we're building for the girls here at Chaotic. The roof is flaked, panel painted and laced. Hope this helps you out!   Shooting metal flake and getting the flake to sparkle and dance does take practice. However, I’m willing to let you in on a few tried and true custom painting tricks!   First off, spray a base color that has coarse metallic in the paint.     For the flake, you need two guns, this makes it so much easier for the layering process! Unless you are using Monster Flake, you can use a...

My Friend Made it Look Easy! Custom Metal Flake Looking for help with: How to setup a Harbor Freight paint gun for shooting flake. Please email me.   At car shows, especially the good ones in California, you'll see some stellar custom metal flake paint... like the shot below from the NorCal Knockout, the custom paint of all types is well represented.   See some amazing examples in this story: Custom Metal Flake Paint   After observing, and of course digging the look and appreciating the skill, I wanted to try it for myself. Then, my buddy Joel helped me customize a severely worn out plastic trim piece for my 1963 Falcon Wagon. Here's that piece:     I watched Joel do it, looked easy. Soooo... I tried it myself. Step 1: Base coat of gold     Step 2: FAIL!   So let's hear it... what'd I do wrong? Anyone willing to show me how it's done in a good story with a few pictures, please get in touch: Email pikesan   I'm especially looking for stories about how to set-up a gun for spraying flake, and something like,...

By Ben Mozart Photos by Moore Good Ink Ever heard of a "dual clutch"? My experience with dual clutch systems is in Audi. Their DSG system makes your automatic feel like a manual, somewhat, with the goal of achieving faster shifts and a better feel. It also eliminates the torque converter. So when I read that Tremec made a dual clutch system, I had to know more... Here's a bit more info. Keep your fingers crossed this will appear in a hot rod Mustang near you! FOR ROAD-GOING CARS THE DUAL CLUTCH IS THE APPARATUS OF THE FUTURE. Equipped with two input shafts (one inside the other), torque interruptions are imperceptible during gear shifting. In fact its gear-shifting technology is so rapid the “head-bob” is eliminated. With half the gears on one main shaft and half on the other and a cluster between them, the dual clutch brings the two transmissions together. Odd number gears reside on one shaft, even number gears on the other. When shifting from one gear to the next the second gear is already pre-selected and the dual clutch operates in 200 milliseconds. For racing...

Valve-Lock Inspection to Save your Engine By Fergus Ogilvy Photos by Moore Good Ink   This advice may only help hard core race engine builders, but any time we have a chance to publish high quality tech like this info from Trend Performance, we'll do it. Wish I would have saw this before putting the valves back into my Falcon! (course that's anything but a racing engine!) Enjoy!   Assemble the valve locks on a valve and using your thumb and forefinger raise the spring retainer to its full height. If the assembly defies gravity and remains in place and doesn't rock, the quality of the valve locking assembly is superior. If, however, the assembly falls apart, the valve locking mechanism is deficient in one or more of its dimensions. The three critical dimensions of the valve lock 1. The outside angle: The precision of the outside angle, which might be 7, 8, 9, or even 10 degrees, is properly measured on a sine vice. For ease of valve lock removal, high revving racing engines often use locks with the greater angle. The greater the angle, however, the more...

No Keys Needed - Modern Ride Convenience for your Hot Rod Story and Install by Rob Zoller AKA: Mr. Freeze   Ok it’s got power steering , power brakes , ice cold AC, power windows, deck-less sound system, a GPS speedometer and an electronic shifter so I figured when Pikesan asked me to put another electronic gadget into my seemingly “Rat Truck” (on the outside) I figured, why not! I've been test driving new cars lately and it seems like all of them have keyless ignition. To seal the deal, I rented a car for a week that had keyless ignition. It's funny, but when I got home and drove my own car, I started thinking... what a pain to pull your keys out of your pocket!   So problem solved on my COE. Think this bad boy deserves a keyless igntion kit?   Upon my new Flaming River keyless ignition arriving I noticed that this was gonna take some time to install and once again there were a lot of new wires and another control box to contend with, but once I got into it I was pleasantly...

Building a Battery Tray for an Optima Battery   Is there anything worse than when your car cranks, but doesn't start? (overheating must be a close 2nd) That was the deal with my 1927 Ford Roadster named Bonnie. Especially when I first put the dual Weber 44 carbs on, she was a little hard to start and wasn't afraid to flood if I wasn't careful. At the time, I was using a gel-type motorcycle battery. That worked out great because I could mount it anywhere (space is precious in a roadster!) but it was TINY! And... it never lasted long enough when extra cranking was needed. After one last jump-start at a cruise-in, I decided to step up to an Optima Battery. With some help finding their smallest & lightest battery I decided on the Group 51 Yellow Top  (part number 8073-167). At 450 Cold Cranking Amps, it was double the output of the motorcycle battery I was using and will easily survive under the car and mounting on it's side. Why Yellow?  Good questions! Choosing Red Top or Yellow Top Optima is a mistake alot of people make, so I'll...

By Dennis Overholser Get the step-by-step as Jim Whittenburg of Custom Auto Wiring installs Painless Performance Product's 18-circuit universal wiring kit (#10202) into Roc Strickland's 1956 Belair. Page 1: Getting Started Removing old wiring Page 2: Layout the new wiring harness Start routing wires Mounting the fuse block Ignition Switch wiring Page 3: Light switch wiring Turn signal wiring Dakota Digital Dash wiring Tail lights wiring Page 4: Head and turn signal wiring Engine compartment wiring Final Test Jim sits in the 56 and refreshes himself on the installation instructions furnished in the Painless wiring kit. Even though he has installed several over the years, he always checks for improvements added to the manual. When doing any type of wiring repair or installation the first thing to do is disconnect the battery for safety. Jim has a plan and he likes to remove any accessory that might be in the way when routing the wires. Here he removing the air cleaner for better engine access. For better access to the under dash, the seat and fire extinguisher will be removed. John Roberts came by just in time to help...

How to Build a Custom Dash for a Barracuda My buddy Scott Hallner's a hard working man! He found a 1967 Barracuda that I think alot of people would have passed on. It had what's known as some, "rust issues". OK, the car was rusty BAD! Check this out: Scott did a pretty amazing job replacing body panels and a host of other body work & paint, then he got to work on updating nearly everything in the car to install a pretty nasty Dodge small block. See all of his work in his MyRideisMe.com Garage. Along the way, he turned his attention to dash. He'd already installed a Vintage Air system, so to finish it off, he made a completely custom dash. Here's the finished product, then you can see how he did it below. Making a Custom Dash and Gauge Cluster 1) The plastic cluster and trim were trashed so I started w/sheetmetal. A local HVAC shop bent my piece for free. A piece of cardboard was used to mock up the layout. 2) Making the gauge pods: Scott used exhaust scraps that were 3.5 and 3" in diameter. 3.5"...