Brakes
Always hard at work in the never-ending pursuit to do something just a little different, Darryl Nance and the crew at D&P Classic Chevrolet in Huntington Beach, California, recently added a pair of Chevy Cobalt taillights to one of the mid-’50s pickups that they have been working on. The Chevy is a frame-off project that was completed to exhibit all of the tricks that the D&P team can throw at it, and we were on hand when they installed the late-model lights to the old-time treasure.
The showroom is what every auto parts store dreams of being: diced in checkerboard black and yellow tile with a heap of pegboard. Up front, the sales counter is the hub of business, fueled by eager customers that keep the phone ringing off the hook. Bob, Sam and Robin deal one-on-one with customers, keeping all 50 states Moon-equipped.
Nothing is more terrifying than cruising down the street to the fairgrounds when some idiot pulls out in front of you and you have to jump on the binders. Making a panic stop can be difficult when you are trying to stop 800 throbbing horsepower with a set of 9-inch rotors and single-piston calipers. You might even wonder if it will stop as you mash the brake pedal. When it comes to street rods with big motors, one braking concern is vacuum pressure. Is there enough? Many high-performance camshafts add power to the motor but produce low vacuum levels. This is something to consider when selecting your engine components. Of course, if the motor fails, you will have no vacuum, so stopping will be a real problem.
There are many reasons why the icon cars have achieved the lofty status they now enjoy, but one of the more obvious reasons is the simple fact that they were finished. Their existence and subsequent high-level exposure have inspired many a young lad to undertake similar projects, and for every famous car built in the early years, probably two others were started in an attempt to either copy or outdo it, but they never saw the light of day.
For every hot rod shop that has a show on TV, there are countless smaller shops that will never get mainstream TV exposure or clothing lines sold at Wal-Mart. But all across the country, it’s these smaller shops that turn out the majority of the street and super rods that you and I enjoy, and that we see at shows. And even though these little guys may not have big reputations yet, they churn out consistent and excellent work—and, that is precisely how some of these smaller shops will eventually become bigger shops with even more prestige.
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.
Getting a ’55 Chevy to sit at the right ride height is as easy as installing a set of 2-inch drop spindles, such as those from Superior Spindles and others. Getting the big ol’ car to slow down offers many more choices as well, and as long as you’re swapping spindles it is an excellent time to install those long-overdue disc brakes. When you think about it, it doesn’t make good sense to put a newly rebuilt tri-5 Chevy on the same road with stock OE cars with ABS four-wheel disc brakes. If ever you came upon a situation where a car ahead of you had to stop in an emergency situation, the performance of even a stock set of disc brakes will far “outdistance” your drum setup, meaning you would not be able to stop in time and could well end up in the trunk of the car ahead of you. Not good.
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.
