Brakes
Since we don’t really have to search for vintage parts anymore, gone are the days of scouring the local “Pick-a-Part” in search for that illusive part that will interchange or convert your muscle car to bucket seats, tilt steering, A/C or some suspension upgrade. But there was a day when you and a rodding buddy could venture to your favorite junkyard and come home with a whole truckload of cool vintage goodies that would aid you in your rebuild, all in the span of a day.
Well, those days aren’t completely gone. While at the local wrecking yard looking for any useful hot rod parts, we stumbled across another enthusiast, Sean Rievley, who is in the progress of upgrading his ’71 Chevelle chassis
In the ’50s, home-delivery baker Helms Bakery went door to door, delivering bread and bakery goods on the streets of Southern California. All you had to do was call and order what you needed, and the next day it was delivered to your door. You could also stop the drivers on their route to buy their goodies, and that’s how we remember the early ’50s Chevy Helms delivery trucks. We figured they must have a rather large fleet of them to cover the L.A. Basin. We aren’t sure exactly when it happened, but no doubt rapidly changing family lifestyles took their toll, and Helms stopped the delivery portion of the business. As a result, there were a lot of early Chevy panel trucks that went somewhere.
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Have you ever looked at another enthusiast’s ride and noticed something unique, yet very clever, that made the vehicle stand out or perform better and thought, “Why didn’t I think of that?” Well, we’ve done some of the homework, legwork and research to provide you with a similar advantage. We scoured the tuning shops and interrogated the pros to find out what tips they have done that our readers could apply to their own vehicles.
It’s springtime and around here activity is definitely flourishing, as guys prep for all the events they plan to attend. Just about everybody is upgrading their cars for the season, adding a few new parts to really make an impact. This month we bring you an upgrade to Underground Motorsports’ demo 240SX. Stillen big brakes are hot items and we are psyched to present this install.
Have you ever noticed how some people can take their car to the strip and look as if they’ve raced all their lives, while others look totally out of control in the bleach box and during staging? More often than not, the driver with the calm, cool and collected approach seems to regularly trigger the win light. The reason for this smoothness isn’t completely initiated by the driver; in most instances, it is the correlation between man and machine.
There’s no denying the popularity of Camaros; they have been a rodding favorite since their initial release in 1967. The first-generation Camaro has always been an enthusiast car because it is small, lightweight and had a sports-car-design feel to it. Underneath, the early Camaros were based on a Nova platform and featured many good mechanical attributes. Right from the start, they became a popular choice for teenagers and young adults, and most of the performance enthusiasts wanted the SS model that came with a choice of a strong-running small- or big-block engine. Things haven’t changed much, because they are still a popular choice for enthusiasts to restore or modify.
If you are driving down the highway in an older car, you are at a major disadvantage if you have to make a quick stop. Many of the high-performance cars being built today have fantastic stopping power, and if you can’t stop as well as the car in front of you, that could certainly be a big problem. The owner of this ’55 Chevy improved it with front disc brakes that work well, but he wanted the Chevy to stop even better, so he decided to add rear disc brakes.
In the eyes of the Chevy enthusiast, ultimate acceleration reigns supreme. Everything plays second fiddle in the performance-oriented minds of many enthusiasts, including handling, comfort and so on—besides, those things are tough to quantify. Acceleration and top speed are what we are into and unfortunately, all too often, last on the performance priority list is braking. Remember, no matter how quick or fast a particular Chevy is, and no matter how well that Bow Tie handles, no matter how plush it is, no matter how straight the body panels are or how crafty it’s built, eventually you have to get the thing to stop.