Does it need a straight axle to be a Gasser?

And this is the baddest a-arm gasser i have ever seen always has been

 

Traditional gassers only had beam axles if they came that way. I up until '65 is was against the rules to lift the body or the suspension to gain a traction advantage. Once you did that you moved to Altered class, or you match raced. So yes very fast and sitting pretty close to stock is a gasser or a gas class car.

I'll send you the '64 NHRA rules if you want to ease your consience.

or you could just build it fast and don't call it anything. Like in this is my ride ya wanna see my traditional tail lights?

 

This car is a true gasser from the 1960s. In 1968 my senior year in high school we srarted attending or local drag strip. This car was a regular runner with a big inch Olds injected alchool. Ran prety good untill a couple of the 1955 chevys switched from injected SBC to injected BBC. Poor little olds never had a chance. There is a econline stright axle under there. The car had sold a couple times. It went from Olds to BBC to wedge Mopar. My buddy ended up with it and put in the mopar. And set about lowering the front end and changing the scoop to make it look more modern.so he could bracket race. I will be trying to get it back to its glory.

Ok why i jumped in i have race since 1970 and have owened many cars two of which were chevy shoe boxes one 1955 and one 1957 bouth these cars had springs and ball joint spacers. Now here is something some of the guys are missing ball joint spacers do not raise the car up. They only move the upper A arm up which give the suppenson more travale. If you run a coil spring tightley wound close coil the spring will rebound quickly. thus the ball joint spacer allowing more travle before botteming out. Great weight transfer. OH wagions and 4 doors wer not gasser. At least not were i grew up. thanks jim

 

check this link. It'll show gassers in the 60's.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjtB_UFUVQ0&feature=related

 

How did Rick get that 55 so high? Springs,spacers? Like to get my 57 a little higher without the lumber wagon ride.

 

No offesne but if it was running in '68 it is a little out of the traditional era and if it was running on alcohol it was not a gasser it was a fueler.

Nice car though.

Every loves a straight axle car hell evem I do but we are supposed to be about traditional here and I always make the assumption that when someone asks a question they are talking traditional, wouldn't you make that same assumption?

here are the last rules from the NHRA in 1964, that would be the recognized cutoff year for what we consider traditional. You have to reall all the way through them to get the whole picture and I suppose that they are open to interpretation. Many of the ground breaking builders and racers used a pretty loose interpretation of the rules and it was often said that the rules were made to be tested.

 

No, that is an 'SBD' , Silent But Deadly....

 

hotroddon,americanpie,and beaner have it. Grab a rule book of the early 60's and educate yourself on what you are calling yourself,aka gasser,custom etc. The terms change a little with time. You build whatever suits you.

 

Like it or not gasser is now just a generic term for a nose high car. Kinda like Kleenex for tissue.

By the way my '39 is going to run at the strip(hopefully fast!). But it will probably be called an altered since the engine will be setback more than 10%. I don't care, I just want to finish it!

 

Not true - the rule book says "Every car in this section must have a full production type suspension system, one commonly used by an automotive manufacturer, and equipped with at least one hydraulic shock absorber per wheel. Rigid mounted axles not permitted."
It does not say that it had to be the suspension type that came in the car. That is why you found straight axles in 55 Chevy's etc very early on.

 

That's how I kinda understood it too. A beam axle made by a manufacturer, not a tube.... so to speak. But I'm still learning.

 

They ran tube axles pretty early in the 60's. I think they were talking design and not production on automotive TYPE suspension.
Larry T

 

We used tube or I beam because they were easier to put under a car and get the 24"center of crank to ground measurement for weight transfer. rear end had to be sprung( maybe not much,but it had to be sprung). At first we weren't required to have a roll bar ,that came later. Had to have interior,headlight,bumper. Car had to be streetable??? right! When you're young you cut a lot of corners to get a little lower E.T. Sometimes not the safest. God I miss those days.

 

Early '60s I had a home shop biz of changing over '55-'57 Chevs to tube axles.
Some went to the Fremont strip, most did not.
One early traction trick was to cut a leaf in the right rear spring pack: the 'squat', assisted by Traction Masters, was said to give a 'better bite'...Hillary (tech master) discovered this in two weeks...He went underneath every car after that, scraping and examining right rear springs.
One jerk I knew had a manhole cover underneath his '57 Tudor trunk carpet. (His 468" Pontiac was an 'A' gasser without the extra weight...)
he'd dump the manhole cover in the pits, and run 'B' gas...They caught him eventually.

 

Well said

 

Around here (So. Cal.) back in the Irwindale (orig.!), Orange County, Long Beach, Fontana, etc., there was basically TWO...."Gasser" camps.

1. The guys with money.
These were the guys with the blowers (AA/GS, BB/GS), the heavilly modified cars, mostly with nice paint, cars that made the rounds from track to track.
Mostly populated by older cars, 33 to early 40's, Willys, Stude's, Henry J's, Auston's, a few Corvettes, etc.

2. Then there were the low buck cars.
The guys (more like me), that took their 55-7 Chevys, Fords, a few Chryslers off the street and made'em into race cars. You'd mostly see them at their "home" track. Usually just in primer. Some ran good, some..not so much.

Most, if not all of the #1 cars had straight axles under them.

About half or so of the #2 cars had straight axles under them.

Mike

 

Gasser ran in a gasoline class and were designated by engine cubic inch vs. car curb weight rating to keep things fair ( A/gas, B/gas/ C/gas etc...).

Here is a real gasser that ran C/A with a crower injected 427 and clutchflight, 10.36 @ 134 mph at Freemont, CA in '73.

THe front springs were actually cut on this car to lower it.

 

keep the stock suspension then you can build it as a gasser then go custom later. like it has been said alot of gas classes didnt have straight axles

 

gasser = race class, not street cred.

 

If it fits the NHRA specs for Gas class (when there was a Gas class), then it's a Gasser, as in my a-framed avatar

 

There still is a gas class, part of Comp elim.

 

"Does it need a straight axle to be a Gasser?"

No.