Not all gassers survived....This is KS Pittman's car he crashed in Cado Mills TX..Before and after....
Even after development of better slicks, and frontends came back down, most guys continued to run a solid front axle. I'm sure if a control arm setup was better, or lighter they'd have switched at that time to improve things; but they didn't. A lot of guys building gasser clones today toss a beam or tube axle under the front, and jack the nose up as high as possible and have handling or death wobble issues. And then we hear all the horror stories about how ugly a solid front axle is, and why you shouldn't do it. When in reality it's not the axle that's to blame, it's the installation and setup that's to blame. We didn't hear all these myths and horror stories when every car and truck on the road ran a solid front axle. So maybe guys need to look at how the factories setup theirs, and duplicate good engineering.
I just ran across this photo last night, it’s the former Colson & Woods Studebaker resting peacefully. Edit-My apologies to Mr. Wood, I don’t know if he is still alive but I called him by the wrong name.
Engine setback is always required on almost every small British car when a V8 is swapped into them! I cut off both footwells on my Austin, and set the firewall back and barely fit my SBC in it. And I'm sitting in the backseat area looking out the rear side windows when I drive. Price you pay to get HP into a small package.
Not that I remember Marty. He drove both small and big block gas dragsters then went to top fuel with a hemi, was in the Chi Town Hustler for a while, he drove a bunch of Roland Leong’s cars and then I think he gave up driving. He turned to promoting races and was a track consultant too. We ran the altered at Cordova and that’s when I met him. He went to dinner with us one evening and it was story after story, he had a million of them.
The Jalopy Journal
