History 1933 - 1936 Willys, picture thread

Soo coool

 

Well I don't own one, yet...... Here is a Pic of what I like to call My "Little Willys Fleet" They are all (about 9 in the pic, 14 total!) owned by a customer of mine that has been Drag Racing Willys Gassers since the Early 1960's..... Most are finished but I have a bit to do on them all!! I LOVE my work!!!

 

Cool.

 

Found these recently. Nice glass 33 Willys race car built by Dennis Taylor for a customer.

 

Few more shots...

 

Is that the Willys collection of Bob Panella,

 

There's one in Tassie (I think) with a holden red six - unless it's this one?
Cheers

 

Yes it is.

 

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Is it out of place if I run a stock chrome grill on my Willys gasser project, 33 front end?

 

It's all personal preference, but there weren't many gassers from back in the day that ran a stock grille. Most of those guys wanted fast & light, and blanked out fiberglass grille shell seemed to be the most popular choice. There are a few examples that ran grilles. Two really nice examples that come to mind are the coupes of Carl Hegge and the Wynn's car now owned by ltownrodder (just look back a couple of pages). Both of those cars were black, and the chrome grille contrasts nicely.

If I can ever scrape enough money together to work on my coupe, I hope to run a blanked out grille with the radiator under the deck lid. If that proves to be too difficult, I'll probably run the glass grille with some slots cut out similar to many of the current 33 gassers running.

The stock grilles don't look too bad on a nose high car. But the grille has such a low point/peak at the bottom, it always looks like it's the limiting factor on a low car. To me it looks like it's keeping the car from going as low as it should.

Just do what you like. If you want to drive it, it's got to be functional.

 

Here's a stock type grille on the one piece flip front on my Panel - not a gasser but at least it gives you a visual....

 

Weasel:

Do you still own that car? Pretty sweet.

 

Looks like they belong to a man with a trucking company???

 

Recently found an early shot of the old Ron Bizio truck. These old high sitting gassers just seem to defy the laws of physics.

 

Yea I am tossed , grill or not to grill(lol) when I start on my panel I want to sit up as high as the original dog catcher or the brizo truck, the guy I purchased the car from still has a grill and bullnose and he holding it for me, gonna go ahead and pick it up and will fiqure out what to do with it later, it is a new grill still in the wooden box,

 

I like your panel, looks stock for expect the super lights. Do you have a straight axel under the front?

 

No it had a Mustang II with stock spindles when those photos were taken. It is now awaiting a new chassis and I haven't yet decided which way to go with this one....

 

How about these..... Projects being properly stored inside, warm & dry!

 

Carl Hegge's Willys was actually a very dark Rolls Royce Green. It looked black, but was green. The stock grille was in that car but man, what a fragile thing that was. Those grille bars were really thin. I crewed on that car from the day Carl bought it 'til I got drafted. It was really a work of art. Exceptionally well built car. I've had a few conversations with the fellow that originally built the car. He was a pretty good craftsman.

 

Here's a crappy old photo of my '33 with the repro stock grille. Never hit anything with it at this height.

 

Since I drive mine on the street as well as run it as a Gasser I made a functional grille from 1/4" stainless tubing and a hammerformed framework.

 

Tell us the story of the car you used to listen to as a kid, I love that story.

 

Kiwi Kev,

You're lucky - I saved every shred of info on my build to add to the car's provenance.

Is this the story you are referring to? Also attached is your letter of encouragement, and a picture of The Barnes Brothers car as it appears today - pretty much the same as fifty years ago except for the fading of the pearl white paint job. I actually got a chance to race Ben Barnes and photos of that exist somewhere but I could not find them:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v608/6racer/GASSERS/willyshistory010001.jpg








The text reads as follows (ca 1988):

"Here is the reason for building my ’33 coupe. I grew up in a rural river valley in Eastern Ohio. A family of three boys, older than myself, The Barnes Brothers, built a ’33 coupe with an injected 268” small block Chevy. Sometimes on a summer evening they would pull the Willys out on to the 2-lane blacktop road that ran across the valley. I lived about a mile from where they kept the car, but when I heard the sharp staccato idle of the old D/Gasser pierce the stillness of the summer air I would put down my toys and run to the front porch to listen to what was to happen next. As Richard or David dropped the hammer and sidestepped the clutch my ears would enjoy the most wondrous sound in all my childhood memories.
I was later to learn that they had a nine grand tach in that fantastic little machine and that they buried the needle on every shift! I seldom saw the car, but just listening to it made me think to myself, "Someday, I’m going to build a Willys coupe.” The noise didn’t stop when they shut the car down but it just seemed to resonate back and forth across the valley until it faded like a summer thunderstorm.
When I got older and started going to the drag strip I saw the car race. The youngest son, David, was the best driver as I recollect. The car ran in the elevens, which was really screaming in the early 60’s. He’d pull the wheels on every shift and was in the finals more often than not.
Last year I visited the valley I grew up in. It’s a bedroom community for Cleveland suburbanites now. I decided to visit one of the Barnes Brothers and ask him what became of his Willys. He took me downstairs in his basement and I watched with quiet reverence as he lifted the car cover on my childhood memories. The story should have a happy ending because the teen-age son of my long time hero is assembling a new350 small block to put the car on the street.
Two thoughts keep crossing my mind lately. The first is that I hope the Barnes Brothers like my version of the ’33 Willys Hot Rod when I drive it back to Ohio to show them. The second thought is this. When I uncap the headers, bring it up to full stall on the converter and fire my Willys across the valley will there be a young boy on a front porch somewhere across the valley… listening… - and dreaming."

 

Couple old ones I had in my files.

 

Man that too cool of a story
So how long did it take you to get the car out of the guy? If you did? Just new too the story

 

abone,
I did not get the car out from him. The car is still under the care of the Barnes family.They race it at least once a year at the Thompson Gasser reunion, where the car was a driving force in Little Eliminator decades earlier.
I found a steel bodied coupe (as seen in the photo of my 1988 letter) on the East Coast (That's another entirely fascinating and mystifying story in itself - I know it was a gasser but can't track down its history) and built it into a street / strip champ after nine years.

I wonder if any other gassers in original condition, in the care of its original owner, and still raced by that family even exist? What a legacy.

 

original paint with 11,000 miles. saw it yesterday in San Jose Ca.

 

Didja ever??

 

Oh come on, Never considered it??