Rarest car ever made into a gasser? Steel Willys

Original 1941 Willys FRAME Vin tag & numbers Gasser Coupe Drag Racing nhra 39 40
Ebay buy it now $1400

If anyone wants to start a Willys Woody Gasser I have a 41 sedan firewall, rear wheel houses/rear fenders and rear bumper left over. Sell them for $600 to support your efforts!
Got Wood?
Not a lot to start with but.........a dream is still a dream righ?
U.S. Body Forging Company body manufactured in Frankfort, Indiana.

 

Car is coming along nicely Steve

 

Steve the car is looking good and your sheetmetal work looks good also. From one Willys owner/builder to another since you need to put a firewall in it anyway reconstruct it so you can use the factory hood hinge and bolt the fenders on like they where originally. Willys had a brace from the firewall to the chassis to support the doors from sagging but when made into a gasser all that stuff got ripped out. It is difficult to see but I left the cowl section on mine and welded in a flat firewall back to where the cowl starts.

Pat

 

Hello Pat,

Your car looks great and I appreciate your input on putting a firewall back in my car. It might be the smart thing to do I know but getting away from what it is.

After giving it a lot of thought over the last year I am keeping the car as raced by JP & DEE. and using the aluminum firewall the way they installed it. Plus the added bracing.
The engine is high and way back as you can see in the old pictures.
For me the car is a tribute to the era and the guys that lived the no rules racing days.
Just to cool for me to change much.

 

Thanks Jay

 

There is / was a Chrysler Airflow made into a Pro Gas car some years back.
Made into a "Gasser" later on.



Mike

 

Racing weather now but progress continues!

 

I'm drooling... in a good way...

 

Bump for an update

 

OK
Jay/All

Thanks for the bump reminder of how much time has passed since I poster any update.

Here are some pictures, including the B&M Hydro UC that I found on FBM, it had been removed from a 57 Cameo years back.
Picked up a 1 inch thick aluminum Hemi to Chevy Wilcap adapter and chopped off the starter mount because it interfered with the steering box.

We plugged and welded the Chevy Taurus plate 6 bolt pattern then drilled the 8 bolt Hemi pattern on a milling machine for accuracy.
With that finished we tapped the crank flange 1/2"-20 and bolted the Taurus plate to measure the required thickness for the crank spacer. Back to the milling machine, made the spacer and installed pilot bushing.

Next step was to assemble and place engine/trans on front mounts and build the transmission to frame mounts. As you can see in the pictures the 57 Chevy Hydro aligned with the frame mounts as built back in 1961 confirming it had been run with a Hydro in the day.

Going forward have to modify the starter as follows, we need to cut the starter flange/nose and rotated it about 30 degrees so the solenoid clears the block on the right side.
Once that's installed fabricating headers is the next priority.

 

Sick man, just sick.

 

Nice fabrication, and the transmission even has the cool B&M vintage sticker

 

Any updates?

 

Only that I got a bit distracted and have been working on my 1915 Locomobile Boat Tail Speedster project.
Took 14 inches out of a Limo chassis, now 128" wheelbase. Designed an built the ash wood structure to be skinned with aluminum. Rebuilding the 525cu T head engine this winter.

The Willys is high ang dry for now, NOT forgotten.