On this episode of HOT ROD Unlimited
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MotorTranscript
00:00 One of Hot Rod Magazine's best-known project cars is the Crusher Camaro.
00:04 And on this episode of Hot Rod Unlimited, you're going to get to see a little bit of
00:07 the history of the car, and then come with us to the drag strip for the very first time
00:11 to see how it runs with its new blown big block.
00:21 The Crusher Camaro is one of few cars to have appeared on the cover of Hot Rod three times
00:25 – 1995, 2003, and 2009.
00:29 The Crusher's been with Hot Rod since 1994, when we set out to prove that there was a
00:34 California emissions law that was completely bogus.
00:37 The state was letting oil companies buy cars and crush them in exchange for a small credit
00:42 that would let them pollute from their refineries.
00:45 And so what we did is we went to a junkyard parking lot where they were buying these cars
00:49 in and just went on the hunt for a car that we could use for a project.
00:52 And I spotted a '67 Camaro and I thought, "There's no way the guy's crushing this
00:57 thing."
00:58 But he was.
00:59 And we bought the car for $700.
01:01 The first thing we did is turned it into a smog-friendly street machine that ran 12s
01:05 and drove on the very first power tour.
01:07 Next, we threw the whole greenie thing aside and put a 632 cubic inch big block in it and
01:13 gave it a pro-touring look.
01:15 Honestly, we didn't like it that much, and the thing was stripped apart and sat in our
01:18 shop for five years.
01:20 And it was a mess when finally I brought it back and thought I would make sort of a '70s
01:25 street machine out of it.
01:27 And we didn't go all the way.
01:28 We just put some Kragers on it, gave it a nose-high stance, and put a small block in
01:31 it that ran low 12s.
01:32 It was pretty cool.
01:34 But next, I went all hanging out.
01:37 Built a blown big block Chevy, raised the nose of it even more, put on a Grant steering
01:43 wheel.
01:44 This thing is a flashback to 1978.
01:46 At Hot Rod, we are not about trailer queens.
01:48 We're all about really using the cars.
01:51 So to practice what we preach, we took the Crusher on a 1,000-mile road trip from LA
01:56 all the way to Scottsdale, Arizona, and back.
01:58 It ran mint.
01:59 Well, the road trip was cool, but I wanted to know how quick the thing is.
02:03 So today, we're taking it to the drag strip for the very first time with this setup.
02:14 We rolled into Auto Club Dragway, and the weather's looking pretty good.
02:25 I'm not so sure about the track prep, and I don't know if this thing's gonna hook up
02:28 because it is so nose-heavy.
02:31 Let's bolt the slicks on and see what we can do.
02:32 You know you're cool when you have fireproof socks.
02:35 Chicks dig it.
02:36 I have fireproof underwear, too.
02:37 They really dig that.
02:38 We're gonna throw on a set of 30x9 Hoosier radial slicks, and that's it.
02:46 Otherwise, this is the straight-up configuration, just like we drove it 1,000 miles, and just
02:51 like we drove it to the track today.
02:53 We're gonna run on legit 91 octane pump gas.
03:09 First pass, 10.70 at almost 125.
03:12 Dude, I'm stoked.
03:15 I just left completely off idle, and it hooked up and went.
03:18 I cut, like, a 1.5 60-foot.
03:24 I wanna go straight around to another pass, see if heating the blower up really makes
03:27 a difference.
03:34 That pass was a 10.83, but the mile an hour was the same, 124.9.
03:38 Thing is, I got greedy and torqued the thing up against the converter to try and leave
03:42 harder, and I lost all my ET in the 60-foot.
03:44 It was a 10th slower 60-foot, but by Bench Racing standards, that's a backup pass.
03:49 We should pull a plug on every single pass and just have a look what's really going on
03:53 inside the motor.
03:54 Okay, open up the MSD and turn on the ignition.
03:56 Go to the bottom where we're pulling ignition for boost.
04:00 The fuel tune-up looked pretty good, but we thought we might be able to add one more degree
04:04 of ignition advance, but we did that, and the car slowed down to the worst pass of the
04:08 day.
04:09 So that boot broke in half in between passes, and we just butchered it back together and
04:13 fixed it with some electrical tape, and now we're going to go make another lap in the
04:16 Crusher and hopefully do a little better than 10.70.
04:30 Turns out we really only wanted half a degree of timing advance added, and we ran the fastest
04:35 pass of the day, 10.62 at 126 miles an hour.
04:40 The Crusher Camaro is awesome.
04:42 Everybody looks at the thing.
04:43 We could drive it 1,000 miles to Arizona and back, and now it runs 10.62 at 126 miles an
04:49 hour here at the drag strip, and that's on pump gas.
04:52 The question is, what do we do with it next?
04:54 I'm thinking it needs to be faster, maybe some lower rear gears, a little bit more boost,
04:59 chassis tuning.
05:00 Got to run that 990 just at least one time, and if we do, you'll see it right here on
05:05 Hot Rod Unlimited.
05:29 [music]
05:34 (upbeat music)