Well, you have to understand that the real purpose of magazines is to sell ad space; that's where the money comes from. How many times have you seen HotRod, CarCraft & others mention "so-an-so provided this $368 fan & shroud", etc, for a project car? Notice that most project cars belong to someone at the magazine, and they get thousands of dollars worth of stuff thrown at them?
The benefit I get from the magazines is working out WHY or HOW something worked, or looking at a build-up and thinking about alternatives.
I think Mopar Action is probably the best as far as tech and details; the Mopar Muscle engine contests have very little hard info or details by comparison.
What bugged me in the current HotRod was Cole Coonce's article on the funny car gal was pretty off-handed compared to his previous stuff like an article he wrote about The Surfers (Skinner & Jobe AA/TF) years ago. But maybe that was a subliminal message from Mr. Coonce.