Because Gasser

Blaze

Blaze

The Jeeper Reaper
Joined
Aug 9, 2005
Location
Wake Forest, NC
So after seeing someone had bumped up my "because racecar" thread, I figured I'd show WHY I sold it back to my buddy. Came across this right about the time my wife and I took my sons to the Southeast Gasser race at Piedmont. The boys fell in love with gasser racing, so I found this and bought it. It's been sitting in the yard for months now, but last night we finally got cleaned up enough to get it in the shop.

It's a 56 Pontiac Chieftain 2-dr post car. Factory 316 V8 and 3-spd manual. The front spring pockets are rusted completely out. It has a little rust but not bad. Interior is complete junk. Perfect car to gasserfy.

Plans are a 61 Ford Econoline front axle with disc brake conversion. ET Slot mags 15x10 rear and 15x4 front. We're going to paint it and do colored Lexan windows. Hand painted lettering, etc. SEGA requires it to be pure vintage stuff, so we're keeping it that.

Initial motor will be a warmed over Pontiac 400 with a T10 4-spd, but that's just while we build a destroked 400 (326ci, 400 block with 316 crank) and back it with my inline shifted Nash 4+1 manual. It has a weak 10-spline rear axle in it now (57 got the good axle) so it'll get a Ford 9" with a spool.

Caged and two front seats with a tilt frontend and we'll rock this thing.

Teaser pic.
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The boys and I got some work done last night on the car. Took the giant front bumper and mustache off of it. It is a whole lot more rusted than we though, but being a racecar not like it really matters. We'll have to make new pans throughout. The body seems to be relatively straight but the underside is pretty eaten up. We'll get it fixed up though.
Before:
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After:
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Awexome! I'm about to gasserfy my nova. No plans to compete with sega....so turbo LS
 
No real update on the Chief other than that I kind of half ass have the front axle hung. I was trying to do a disc brake conversion on it so I could get it rolling, but apparently the front axle isn't actually a 61 Econoline axle but a F100 axle which has different bearings. After much searching and crossreferencing I found that the front rotor/hub out of a 2007 RWD Ford Ranger will work. Hopefully, going to test fit parts tonight.
 
Got a bunch of work done on the car. Complete interior is pulled out, steering is all pulled off, doors off, about ready to pull the body off of the frame to start cleaning it and hopefully welding the front axle solid to the body. It is just mocked up right now. Both my boys have been digging away on it.
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OutLander469 said:
What u want for the baracuda?
Click to expand...
Barracuda?

Also, the car ended up way rustier than we thought. It was rusted up through the cowl and the entire pan and both inner and outer rockers were trash. We ended up selling it for parts. We'll build another one one day, with a better body.
 
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