What makes a Gasser a Gasser?

So what if a young guy builds a gasser style, straight axle car, and it happens to have radials or a touch of billet? It's a tribute car..doesn't have to be 100% correct..That's for the Corvette crowd.

But what I hate is say, a phaeton street rod with no fenders, no hood, and A/G on the cowl..Get a clue, buddy.
Oh yeah ,what I hate too, is fake spindle mounts.

 

Im one of the young uns (29) and I think this is a great thread, I wish I could have been there back in the day, but learning it from the ones who were there is the next best thing. That being said I am building my 55 chevy pickup with a gasser look. I dont know if its gonna meet all the regulations, but it has a 283 and Im gonna put some cheater slicks on it and jack up the front, raw or black steel wheels, no bumper etc. Im not gonna race it or anything, I just think its a really cool look.... I hope that doesnt make me a poser lol. I dont think so because I do all the work myself with my 2 hands and thats what really matters to me. I feel like instead of changing it to how I think it was.... Im adding a little bit of my style that I would have added if I could have been there in those times. I dont like to use any technology that wasnt around back then. (except an HEI electronic ignition cause theyre just so easy lol)

 

Sorry about that I did not see you had a thread the same I would have changed the topic

 

This is why I wanted to start this thread Guys like you that can learn things from the guys who were there. So far its going better that I thought good input on things. Keep the thoughts & ideas coming there are lots of different opinions & it good to hear them

Thanks all of you Trouble

 

If I had a one way ticket to 1955 I would take it no questions asked

 

Take notes make your truck the way YOU want to & have fun with it

 

It's 2013, I call my car a Gasser. For that matter so does every track announcer across the country. My car has a 6.00 C/M cert tube chassis with a fiberglass body. According to NHRA Hot Rod Heritage Rules I can run A/Gas (7.60) or B/Gas (8.60). Times have changed, but it is all good.

 

One thing that hasn't changed, or maybe it has, is this is the HAMB forum and anything newer than 64 is off topic!

So why the hell do 1970-2013 rules keep getting brought up as reference?


It ether is a duck or it ain't a duck. OK lets try this, your car is not a HAMB Gasser, can we agree on that?

 

Moon Rocket,
Actually the cut off date has changed to '65 but you are absolutely correct. While I may concede to late '60s rules, just because I appreciate a well built tri-5 axle car the board is all about what used to be and not what somone is calling it in 2013.

Hell if I was running a T body on a funny car chassis I would not show up the the HAMB Drags with it and expect to run just because the Good Guys call it a Nostalgia Altered. It is just not where the board should be headed.

That would only be a good idea if you were one of the fortunate few to get Salk's vaccine.
I laugh when I see folks that want to go back to the fifties, I was there and still suffer from the '50s. The wonderful 50s was not all Leave It to Beaver and Happy Days. Some things are just better observed from a distance.

 

"I call my car a Gasser. For that matter so does every track announcer across the country."


I know what your feeling bro, I call my dick 12". For that matter so does the wife.

But the truth is, that don't make it so! Sorry.

 

Don't feel so bad. At almost 56, I was at the tail end of it so I didn't get to see much of it either and I'll bet that most here didn't as well.

However I as well as many others my age were still exposed to it either as just old cars at a track or in print & pictures. With that said, it really pisses me off when I see guys today, some younger than me, try to show off what THEY THINK a Gasser is.

History should never be changed, altered or re-written to what someone thinks it should be. For the sake of people like YOU and others like you as well as others that are younger than you who are trying to grasp what this part of automotive history really is.

If you go to a car show or drag race and see a bunch of nose high cars and hear a few guys say that "this IS a gasser", you're gonna think that all Gassers were just like those because those guys said that's what makes it a Gasser. That is completely false and wrong!

That's where and why the "real" Gasser history must be properly communicated. Someone's "idea" of what a Gasser looks like is not what a Gasser actually is. History is never an "idea", it's an "era".

How would it look if someone came on this forum and said that the people on here don't know anything about Hot Rods because for a car to be a Hot Rod it must have a Super Charger, big tires and flames. Anything less isn't a Hot Rod. Well you know that this isn't so because there are many here that preach the history of the Hot Rod, not what someone THINKS is a Hot Rod.

I believe that this is the purpose of this thread, to preach the history of the Gasser and not what someone THINKS is a Gasser.

Okay, I'm done now! Don't forget to cast your vote for me in the next election.

 

Interesting and well said. This point could be well taken by many.

 

"I was actually being polite when I mentioned the slots and the hair cut but now I am going to call bullshit. You prove to me that your picture is from '64. Turn it over and scan the back there will be a date stamp on it if it is from '64, it will have the month and the year that it was developed."

Beaner, I'll get a hair cut if you'll slow that Harley down some!


Like I said back in post 89, it's not me in the picture. And it may be a little later than 64. (No date stamp on back, I looked)

The car is mine. And it is the closest of any car to a bone afied vintage 60's era Gasser.

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Thanks ^ ^ ^

 

Back in 1969 we took a 55 GMC pickup and put a 389, 3 duce out of a wrecked GTO. Finder well headers. If my memory severs me right we ran C/G. We could not get that thing to hookup with 6 fat girls in the back. My buddy took it home and drove it on the streets for years. Have fun with your build and do it the way you want.

 

The word "gasser" sure stirs the emotions on this board. I'm building a 39 Olds coupe gasser, and no this car was never a gasser in it's previous history, so I guess it's being built as a "poser". It is being built to race with a tunnel rammed BBC and a frame and cage that will certify to 8.50's even though I don't intend to go any where near that quick. After examining the factory frame, it was found to be too rusted and cut up by the previous owner to safely use so a new frame of 2x3 tubing was built. That hurt because it bumped me to a later set of rules than I had originally intended to build to, but in the interest of safety, that's what we did. The car will still be street legal like the early gassers were. Even though it's an imposter I plan to race it and fun with it.

On another note - the saying that is thrown around here so often "if you don't have pics it never happened" just truly p..s's me off. I had a steel 41 Willys coupe in 1971 in high school but as a 17 year old never thought to grab a camera and shoot pictures of it. I guess because I didn't, I imagined it and half of the 60 some odd other vehicles I didn't take pictures of either.

 

Why would anybody want to build a Gasser like they used to be in 65? If you ever looked at most of those cars they were a piece of Shit! most everything was cut with a torch or an axe! I was there, I saw them and yes I did some of that Butchering! be THANKFULL you can get the parts you have access to ! even some of the" Magazine" cars you didn't want to look under ! and yes there were some real nice cars back then, but out in the sticks where most of us lived, you did with what you had,when I first got an electric drill ,I thought I had a machine shop!! didn't have to "drill" holes with a torch anymore! Best to look at the past through the internet, looks beter than it was that way!! THANKS Chris

 

For the same reason people on here build Hot Rods like they use to be.

Here's a good example..........

 

Dam you guys turned this into a pissing contest

 

Beautiful example.

 

Agreed!

 

Because guys want to race their old cars and in order for an old car to "legally" race it must pass today's tech.

Cars like the Oddy Austin or the King Kong Anglia are restored so correctly to what they were back in the early 60's can not be raced because they will not pass tech.

In other words, when it comes to have the wheels hit the track, you can't have your cake and eat it too. If you want to race you have to follow 2013 rules.

 

I made a mistake. I did not mean to say that glass bodies and tube frames didn't meet the rules, just that I didn't like them then, or now. The glass bodies and tube frames are what killed the Gas class.

 

I think that somone actually posted an ad from a hot rod magazine for them in about '65 as proof that they didn't exist in '64 one time.

it was a poor arguement for a picture probably not being from '64. I am pretty sure that the wheels did exist in '64 but I was pretty young and I could be wrong. They did not get common use on the streets until the later '60s. When I started highschool in '68 my dream was to run Ansen Sprints on the back and Americans on the front. So I know that they had become common enough by that time for me to be seeing them on street cars.

They were not common enough to be cheap at the swap meets by that time or I would have owned some.

Now onto bigger n better things, if we are just talking gasser from any era than about anything goes. If we define gasser as in gas coupe/sedan. Then we have a strict set of rules that would apply to any sanctioned race. It is pretty simple to define if you look at the rules and go by them.

Maybe someone could post the '65 Rules, I believe that '65 was when a "gasser" was no longer required to be a street legal car.

The question is too wide open, for this site it should be pretty cut and dried but it is not. Everyone wants recognition for whatever they own or have built and if it does not fall within the guidlines of the site they just want to bend them to fit their own personal idea if what should have been.

 

Now we have something else we both agree on beaner! Without setting an era it's all academic.

 

We agree on a lot of things. Some of them we don't know that we agree on because we speak the same words but sometimes it is a different language. Sometimes I disagree or you do just to be the devil's advocate. It has to happen it helps people to think about what it is that they believe.