The F-Rod Is Born! '31 Model A Drag Racer | Roadkill Garage | Motor Trend

[Music] first of all i know this looks like an old man street rod it is not i'm going to reveal my goal right here i want to run eights in the quarter mile naturally aspirated with a big block chevy no blower no turbos no nitrous all motor and all hanging out this is a 1931 ford model a coupe don't call it a five window in 1931 they were all five windows also don't call it a milner car i hate that that car from american graffiti was a 1932 ford this is a 1931. people ask me if it's a fiberglass car no way that is genuine henry ford steel i love this thing because of the patina the pinstriping on the car was done april 1st 1962. it says so on the back it still has the original soft top insert it's got the factory wood on the underside that holds the thing together it is an antique it's sitting on a reproduction 1932 ford frame the 32 frame is wider than the model a frame and i think it's going to make the thing have a wider stance lower center of gravity and be good for drag racing the interior is where this gets really serious and the first thing is the roll cage which is nhra certified to 8.50 seconds in the quarter mile the big deal about the roll cage is that i could not have lived with myself building this car if i needed down bars out the back of the body and through the trunk and down to the frame rail the big deal is that the x bars that support the main hoop are at exactly the right angle laying over this way and exactly the right height down from the top of the bar here to fit inside the body and be legal no rumble seat here watch this boom i actually find this one of the more trick parts of the vehicle right here underneath all of this stuff they've made a complete sub floor that's welded to the frame so they can mount this stuff directly to the frame to keep it safe once again in the event of a rollover this is one of the greatest things ever thank you sam you pull this pit pin and then you lift the box up and it comes right out see how it's got these pins right here which engage in a bracket up at the front and then it's got that tab on it right there that takes the pin with the cotter through it and there you've got a tool box and look at those cool old stickers this is perfect finally the real beef in order to hook this thing up at the track we went with a ladder bar suspension and a moser engineering ford nine inch with an aluminum center section a spool and 411 gears tim irwin was the guy at moser who did us a big favor by installing all of the ladder bar brackets and the bracing and everything as well as the mounts for the coil over shocks and then sam was able to measure that all out get the whole thing as a unit plop it right in the car weld in some cross members and make it good sam also figured out how to add a new cross member here at the very back of the frame that then has some ears on it that go up to allow a full length qa1 double adjustable coil over shock to go up into the trunk that's why they raised the floor for that panel that i showed you up there with the fuel cell and everything this episode is like watching paint dry literally while we're doing that i thought i would reveal the engine foosh so yes the model a is to be powered by a big block chevy and this is not going to be the final big block chevy in the car but it's going to be the one that i'm going to start with it's a 572 chevy it began life as a crate engine i've rebuilt it myself a couple of times this thing actually took me to 261 miles an hour at the bonneville salt flats with a different cam and heads right now this thing makes 800 horsepower by the time i get the tunnel ram on it it's gonna make 840 i'm gonna guess because that intake that's on it is not that good and so it's gonna be fire breathing but not as fire-breathing as my long-term plan so we're gonna do is pull this thing out of here and i think i'm gonna paint it red which is a much better hot rod color than this weird gm orange that's a little bit different than a normal chevy orange and change the valve covers just make it look a little bit better and plop it in the car to clean up the block i'm going to use mineral spirits and a brush it's not going to make this existing paint too gummy but it's going to get all the grease off of it it's the dosage trick there we go i just happen to have the right tool this thing has those rubber freeze plugs in it or had two of them and i just fought this thing for half an hour and finally got it out crew lounge once again we're fighting the cold i guess now it's like 45 degrees or something like that and we can't even get like painters tape to stick to the engine because it's so freezing so we got two propane heaters going at it on both sides and i'm doing detail work with a heat gun we'll get this done one way or another i'll just kick back while the 572 is cooking now let's look at the actual f rod and take a deeper look into how i made it work in order to start the complete rewire of the car i did a ton of planning no joke i spent a week straight of like every free moment sitting around thinking making lists drawing out circuits let me tell you the few things that i do that are super helpful in making this happen you can see this is my overhead view sketch of the entire car and i think through every little electrical thing that i'm gonna have to deal with in the entire car front to back and i drew where they were sort of on the car like for example the battery in the trunk and just made a good mental picture of everything that i was gonna have to deal with here is another interesting sort of diagram that helps me figure out where wires are going to go if you look at this is the front of the car and this is the back i've got segments here this is the engine segment this is the dash segment this is the shifter panel segment and down here is the trunk i wanted to look at what wires are going what direction and through what area of the car so i can sort of figure how many wires are in each place that does me a huge mental favor of picturing how to get all of this done next up i'm gonna solve a couple more problems one i'm gonna get power up to the front of the car for all the other accessories and i'm gonna do it so that i don't have a hot wire running up there when the main disconnect is off this is also gonna solve the problem where you throw off that main disconnect and the car keeps running here's how i'm gonna do it by powering the entire car through another relay now it's really important to understand that i'm using continuous duty relays for this these are genuine cole hersey brand 200 amp continuous duty relays i hate to break it to you these are 50 bucks each but worth it i'm gonna use the relay to turn on and off the main power to the entire car so i've got my battery grounded back here to the frame the power side is going to one lug on the relay on the output side i've got a six gauge wire running through another 125 amp fuse that's going up to the fuse box in the car so the key is that this whole wire that powers the car is not hot unless the main disconnect switch is thrown now to switch this relay on and off i have a completely separate circuit that is not involved with the fuse box of the car i'm picking up 12 volts here i'm going through a 5 amp fuse i'm going through this main disconnect switch i also have a disconnect switch on the dash and another one on the firewall so that i can shut off all the power to the car at any time from any one of these switches therefore i've got remote power on and off for the entire car by running main power through that continuous duty relay [Music] okay success i got it to go on it's zero clearance and it's a nice tight fit so i'm gonna bolt it up torque the specs and this job is done [Music] this is trick super drag racy stuff yeah the trans that i chose for this thing is a gear star power glide a power glide's actually an ancient chevrolet design did you know they made cast iron cases and they were air cooled you're mansplaining me here what are you doing fryburger it's true it's a two-speed automatic transmission and they're super common in high-end drag racing applications for lightweight cars and they have been for decades the reason that i chose it is two-fold one we're making a lot of power and it's a lightweight car with a lot of gear so i didn't think that i wanted a three-speed automatic transmission i actually wanted to tame down the launch with a first gear ratio that's higher than what we would have in like a turbo 400. it's not going to be tamed dude i know it's not going to be taken this gear star unit is actually made with an aftermarket case it's sfi approved which means it's technically explosion proof you don't need to have a trans blanket or an extra shield or anything like that to use this thing and what about the torque converter it is a yank billet unit and i hope it stalls at about 5 500. oh yeah yeah it's gonna be super cool on the trans brake [Music] we go i wish i thought this was the last time that this was going in the car that would be wishful thinking on your part i know you need to come uh passenger i'm right between the jack stamps now very centered keep coming okay stop down going down this should be our easiest engine installation ever you think so yeah it looks like it's going to swing right in doesn't it yeah looking good ready got it yeah okay [Music] this is another item from mazir and what it is is a water-cooled automatic transmission pan so this is going to take the place of like an air to fluid cooler that you would normally have on an automatic transmission check it out water goes in here and out there and then it's going to end up going through all of these passages that are drilled in this billet aluminum pan and then these ridges in here are going to cool that fluid mazer claims that the transmission fluid will track the engine temperature by about 15 degrees so to me that's way better than having to plumb a high pressure cooler just for the automatic transmission however it better work because i paid 800 for this pan nothing cheap about this car anyway i'm gonna have to go under the car drain the fluid out of the existing gear star power glide take the pan off of it install this one and then run those water lines still it's gonna be way better than a regular cooler in my opinion there we go just gonna leave that right there as a drip pan by the way i also put a moroso dipstick in this thing which was the greatest automatic transmission dipstick i've ever installed it was bent perfectly wet and easy i didn't have to modify the tab bolted right to the bell housing and it's got a thread on nhra approved locking dipstick thing and a cable type dipping stick it's awesome okay i have lubed the o-ring that seals this whole shebang just didn't bolt it on one thing i was thinking about with this water cooled oil pan is that when you're at the drag strip and you're chilling down your engine with your electric water pump and electric fan you are simultaneously cooling your transmission fluid which could be a good thing you know what else needs to be water cooled right now my credit card last night i started plumbing the carburetors and i was gonna tee it all together at the back and that just turned into a disaster for a number of reasons so i'm gonna end up plumbing it up the front i put together this conglomeration of stuff 90 degree dash 8 fitting that is an aeromotive clamp an aeromotive filter this is a female to female and coupler that's an earl's y and that's 2-6 hose ends i'm going to end up cutting this bracket off right there so that it looks a little bit better drilling a hole on the motor plate and mounting it right like that so shorter lines way more serviceable and it doesn't violate the nhra rule about having fuel lines in the plane of the flywheel like my original plan did so now all i have to do is do it there's my notch nice and flat it's gonna bolt on and keep that from rotating now i'm gonna cut this ear off [Music] now i gotta shape it done and pretty close to mint now i'm gonna finish up all the fuel system up here on the engine and then i'm gonna move back to the trunk and i got a bunch more plumbing to do there the fuel system is almost done let me tell you what i got going on first of all the fuel safe fuel cell i like it way better than a plastic one it's got a bladder inside it's super safe i ordered it with a bunch of custom fittings in it first of all the dash 10 pickup that's the really big size line that's feeding fuel to the engine that has a hose that goes down to a sheet of holly hydra mat so that's my pickup i ordered a second pickup in dash 8 in case i ever put nitrous on the thing but i've got that capped over here there's a return line in case i ever run efi or have an electric fuel pump with a return line i'm protected for the future there that's also capped off this one here is a vent line every fuel cell needs a vent that also has a one-way valve in it so if the car gets upside down fuel can't leak out of it but it can breathe air in the last tip that i wanted to give you is these two bulkhead fittings i installed last night to go through this sheet metal panel in the floor i hate it when somebody just drills a big hole and runs a hose through it that's not the right way to do things instead you want a bulkhead fitting like this a fitting can go on this side and on this side you drill a big hole you stick your sheet metal in right there you tighten it down with a nut and boom you've got a really nice clean way to pass hoses through sheet metal panels so there you go i'm pretty stoked on all of that see how all of the gauge lights are on that means master power is on and this is another master power switch it does the exact same thing as the main disconnect at the back so this should shut off everything yep and i have another emergency shutoff switch on the firewall does it work it does so far so good okay this should be the water pump yes it is this should be the fan it is this one's not used and this is headlights that are not wired yet all right i'm doing pretty good whoo does the engine crank ready no ah neutral safety switch that's why now it'll crank yeah wow i'm doing good we can start this pooch dolcek right and does the engine crank from the remote crank button awesome all right we've gone as far as we can go on this thing for this episode we're about to fire the engine up in the car for the very first time ever so when this goes bad it's gonna be legit it's not gonna go bad come on well i want confidence level freiburger 35 degrees of locked out timing we'll see should be good should be good okie dokie turning it on let me give it a little go go juice ready [Music] first thing i'm going to do is just hop in and go drive the thing around make sure that i'm comfortable with it parts aren't falling off make sure the brakes work breaking the brake pads i'm gonna find out if the torque converter will stall up to 5000 rpm on the trans brake or not just sort of shake it down before i get it on the track and try and go fast no smokes all the gauges are good next fun part parachute so this is required for any car by the nhra that runs faster than 150 miles an hour in the quarter mile and we have not rigged ours yet although sam made a mount for it and so we're gonna have to hook this up to the car pack it up into the bag and uh it's a big ordeal nowhere near as fun as it seems to have a car with a parachute in truth boy this is the episode that keeps on delivering first we had the hood scoop then we had the parachute and now wheelie bars another thing i have never had before now i have to tell you the honest truth about why this car is gonna have wheelie bars and it's because if it wheel stands really hard and falls back down my back can't handle it i've got an exploded disc from a season one of uh roadkill jumping the buick station wagon and so i can't handle just a dead pancake drop like that if i lift out of it so basically that's a safety item all right we're gonna do this it's gonna be the first eighth mile pass for the fraud no sam i got the crotch strap it's okay no not this time yeah [Music] okay there we go [Music] okay our plan here is to do a small burnout about a 4 000 rpm lot [Music] all right this is gonna be it he's rolling up to the starting line i'm checking out the beans he hasn't brief station yet he's rolling up rolling up all right grant break is on okay his free stage is coming down whoa that hooked up hard 5.95 at 120 in the eighth first pass ever straight smooth no problems no drama there's only 6000 rpm at half pack all my cages are good and turn it out you

Channel: MotorTrend Channel

Views: 107,072

Rating: 4.8995171 out of 5

Keywords: motortrend, motor trend, motor trend channel, automotive, auto, motortrend on demand, motortrend full episodes, roadkill garage, classic cars, roadkill garage full episodes, roadkill, roadkill garage f rod, f rod car, frod, model a, model a car, drag car, drag racing, 1930s car, 30s cars, vintage car, roadkill garage frod

Id: UMKJJZ0x0OA

Length: 19min 15sec (1155 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 11 2021