t’s been a long time (1970) since the first Street Rod Nationals in Peoria, Illinois. Louisville, or one of its southern speak derivatives, has acted as home for the NSRA Nats at the Kentucky Expo Center since the late ’90s. The Nats is now the keynote event hosted by the National Street Rod Association while also serving as host to eight additional regional events. This year was the 54th running of the Nats (remember we are near the home of the Kentucky Derby).

From the numbers the NSRA tells us, there were 649 swap spaces—and we must confess it did look very busy—and 224 exhibitors. The truly big numbers are a direct result of the 9,112 registered street rods and a spectator gate (including participants) that was a tick over 58,000 individuals. Now that’s a four-day get-together.

More on the numbers, as they are impressive. Did you know that this event needs more than 500 volunteers that represent 40-plus car clubs and other associations as well as the NSRA staff that is ever present? The Lone Star Street Rod Association had six members driving a total of 4,770 street rod miles to Louisville while the Northeast Arkansas Street Rod Club had 13 members rack of 5,289 miles. If you like miles then how about the Long-Distance Continental USA Award garnered by Cody Bilson with his ’55 Chevy Bel Air from Bakersfield, California, coming in at 2,099 miles. Not to be outdone there was Mario Fortin of Saint-Eustache, Quebec, Canada, with his ’41 Dodge who captured the Long-Distance Outside Continental USA Award with his 926 miles.

he availability of complete custom frames has changed the game for hot rodders, especially those in the Pro Touring segment of the hobby. Chassis and suspension technology has come a long way from the days of hacking the front suspension out of a Mustang II or Chevy Nova in a junkyard. These days, a full frame makes a lot of sense, but make no mistake—a full frame swap is a lot of work, no matter how you slice it. In the case of this ’67 Chevy II Nova, it goes a step further, thanks to the extreme fabrication efforts of Divers Street Rods (DSR) located in Sultan, Washington.

DSR ordered a new reproduction of the ’67 Chevy II Nova body from Real Deal Steel and a custom chassis from Art Morrison Enterprises (AME). The process of converting a unibody car to a full frame is already complicated because many of the body’s original structural areas must be removed to make room for the chassis. Part of the Air Sport product line, the chassis was designed to use air suspension and provide the absolute lowest ride height possible. DSR took that a step further by channeling the body over the chassis. With that in mind, DSR gutted the brand-new body, removing the original style floorpans, trunk pans, and firewall. This allowed them to place the body exactly where they wanted it.

DSR already had a specific tire and wheel combination in mind, so the tires were ordered to provide a nice mock-up for additional modifications. The AME chassis was ordered with a 112-inch wheelbase, 2 inches longer than the original Nova wheelbase. This was intentional, and DSR stretched the wheel openings to account for the added wheelbase and the extremely low stance. Other body modifications included stretched front fenders, a stretched hood, shaved door handles, shaved driprails, and much more, but the real focus of this article are the extreme measures taken to convert this unibody car to a full-frame Pro Touring beast.

hey may not make ’em like they used to. But they sure never finished ’em the way we can now. The quality of contemporary body- and paintwork is truly unprecedented. More than straighten a panel, we can straighten an entire body from tip to tail.

Of course, nobody said it was easy. Prepping a straightened body for paint is a labor-intensive process of raising low spots with fillers and milling the surface to a consistent level. And historically speaking, it was a rinse-and-repeat process of filling and sanding interspersed with long cure times.

The act will always eat up time, money, and energy, but today’s techs figured out ways to minimize the investment. Rather than incrementally build up the surface of a panel bit by bit, they discovered that they could just skim vast sections of a panel with filler and knock it all down to the panel’s highest level in one fell swoop. When done properly, the filler ends up no thicker than it would by any other method. But the process reduces time and minimizes material that ends up on the floor as dust. And at today’s labor and material costs, that’s saying something.

here are often some adjustments needed when cramming modern powerplants into early cars. In this article we will follow Jason Scudellari at the In The Garage Media Tech Center as he modifies the firewall, toeboard, and floor of his Brookville ’29 Ford roadster body (sitting atop a Speedway Motors chassis) to accommodate a small-block Chevy engine and a TREMEC TKX five-speed.

The back of most V-8 engines is knobby and convoluted, so it often makes sense to take an incremental approach, nibbling away at the firewall, toeboard, and floor until sufficient clearance is created. It’s usually a good idea to position the engine as far back as practical. This gets more of the weight transferred to the rear, and on early cars, extra room is often needed between the engine and the radiator so a proper fan can be fitted.

It’s worth mentioning that if you mount the engine back a lot, it does put more weight on the rear wheels, but it will reduce the foot room for the driver and passenger and make underhood engine access more challenging. Usually, finding a reasonable compromise is the best approach.

n this installment, we’ll wrap up our coverage of the outstanding build on Danny Shaffer’s ’57 Ford Ranch Wagon that’s being constructed at Ironworks Speed & Kustom.

One-off wheels were designed for this project, inspired by Halibrand racing wheels of the ’50s. As with many other components on this car, the wheels were rough sketched by hand, then final design was done in CAD, and they were printed in plastic to make sure everything was spot-on before machining from billet aluminum. The wheels were machined by EVOD then polished to perfection and chrome plated for durability.

A huge amount of work went to the underhood area, with the goal of cleaning up every surface while keeping an OEM flavor. After exploring several variations, the inlet tube for the fuel injection was routed diagonally across the driver side cylinder head, which required a specially machined adapter to position the throttle body at a precise angle. It is ribbed and contoured so it is consistent with the styling theme used underhood. Special covers were machined to hide the plug wires and the injector wiring, and special grilles with curvaceous louvers were machined for the inner wheelwells.

he death of Andy Brizio, The RodFather, is a powerful and deeply felt loss for all of us, but the Celestial Rodding Hall of Fame just welcomed one of the truly great ones. Andy, who has long served the hot rod world in many capacities, will no longer be gracing the hot rod world; he died on August 1st of this year.

A great deal has been written on and about Andy throughout his famous career. He was a regular on the pages of car magazines going back to the ’70s and pretty much any hot rodder around today knows the story about his time as a flag starter at Half Moon Bay, which led to a job at Champion Speed Shop and then a partnership with Cub Barnett in Champion. It was in 1967 that Andy produced the Instant T, and it was in 1970 that he built an America’s Most Beautiful Roadster–winning Instant T. More on Ts … Andy was also very well known for his Andy’s Tees, a company that produced T-shirts for years for hot rodders all over the country.

He was friend and driving partner to many hot rodders over the years. To me Andy will always be my friend but there are three stories in particular that are “pressed between the pages of my mind” forever. I first met Andy at Crow’s Canyon in NorCal at his long-running and famous Andy’s Picnic. I believe the event started in 1966 and I was to meet Andy at the “Picnic” in 1971. I had just started my lifelong ambition to take pictures and write about hot rods. It was Tex Smith who introduced me to Andy, and I clearly remember his smile and how he shook my hand. I felt I had known him for years and that he was my friend. Over the next 50 years that feeling never wavered.