Brian Brennan headshot
Picking Up
By Brian Brennan
What’s on the Horizon
for Modern Rodding
G

oing forward I thought it might be a good idea to provide some “nuts and bolts” for thought that turn outside the classic truck side of our hobby. Some of you, possibly many of you, are aware that Classic Truck Performance is but one of three brands within the garage of titles from In The Garage Media. Aside from CTP there’s Modern Rodding and All Chevy Performance.

ACP is in the process of being assembled and will be available to one-and-all come late December, while MR, which is my “day job,” is onto its third issue. (By the way, all three of the titles will become monthly with their respective Jan. ’21 issues.)

MR, while entering its third issue (November/December), is hitting its stride with the wide range of subject matter that’s covered from within our hobby. MR, while referred to as a “hot rod” magazine, deals with all makes and models of cars. MR isn’t confined to one brand and you will even find pickups gracing the pages, albeit from much earlier decades than say an Advanced Design Chevy/GMC, a Ford F-1, C10, and so on. A roadster pickup from the ’20s or ’30s is as much a part of the rodding scene as a roadster car or coupe.

The issue of MR under construction right now has some cool content that should help you fill your desire for hot rod knowledge. You might even find yourself looking for some ideas that you can move from the car realm to your truck world.

If you like the iconic Ford highboy roadster look there’s the 1932 built by the more-than-capable hands residing within Moal Coachbuilders in the Bay Area and from the Indy-based shop of Jackie Howerton. This Deuce should fulfill your early hot rod appetite. Should the roadster look familiar and you attended the Grand National Roadster Show say two years ago, then it will come to mind as one of the America’s Most Beautiful Roadster contenders.

The cover car is another Ford but this time it’s a 1933 Ford coupe sans fenders built at Creative Rod & Kustom. While it may be “old” in its model year, the coupe runs the latest and beautifully accessorized LS2 from Street and Performance while the suspension is all wiggly from the works of Kugel Komponents with inboard coilovers on its IFS and in back rests a fully polished Kugel IRS.

If you want some pure-fun reading, how about a story on the 50th anniversary of the movie Vanishing Point? If you are a fan of car movies then you will remember the sound of the adventures of character Kowalski coming over the CB radio airwaves uttered by Super Soul to this day. We visit the town of Goldfield, Nevada, where the movie spent some time, and we also get ourselves there in our own recreation of the movie’s 1970 Dodge Challenger.

If you want something more tech-based, how about a look at keeping track of your ride’s electrical system when parked in your garage? Proper charging of a sitting vehicle and how to determine just how much “juice” your ride is losing sitting there without a charger is always good info to have.

Looks old but it isn’t? That’s something we see in the popularity of patina paintjobs but another popular slight of hand is to take a modern LS motor and make it look like its much earlier relatives, the small- or big-block Chevy V-8. We enlist LS Classic Series by Lokar to show how easy, and convincingly, you can convert a modern LS3 to look more like a Rochester fuelie engine from a ’50s or ’60s Corvette, or maybe you want it to look like a big-block with a single four-barrel or maybe even Tri-power. LS Classic Series shows us how to turn the trick with the help of the Holley Terminator EFI system.

And lastly, for here, but there’s much more in the November/December issue of MR, the staff at Hot Rods & Hobbies show us how to take an Art Morrison chassis and fit it beneath a 1959-1964 Chevy. The effort will be the same should you find yourself wanting to do something similar to your C10. AME has what you need.

Well, there you have it. A quick look at the upcoming issue of Modern Rodding. While it’s all about cars, there are plenty of ideas to take on over to your classic truck. Enjoy!