GASSER MUST HAVES and cant haves?

I've seen a couple of Olds rearends that broke the caps in the case. I've seen quite a few stock Fords break too. Mark Williams sells and installs billet caps on Olds (and about any other rear end around). And ,of course, you can upgrade the Fords with nodular iron cases and Daytona pinion supports.

 

I also have a 67 Olds posi unit under my 49 Ford Panel that's been there since 1979 and has never given me any problems. I would guess that it has 150,000 miles on it, as I took it out of my 67 Olds 98 that had over 100,000 on it in 79. I'd go with the Olds if I were you.

 

To the best of my knowledge, no one ever made a 9310 (high Nickle)gear set for the Olds/Pontiac, only 8620's which are more brittle and break easier, especially in clutch cars or trans brake cars. If you want to run one anyway, give it preload on the drive side, it'll howl on deccelleration, but the preload gets rid of the pinion gears "run" at the ring gear when you drop the hammer. Also, get some 1/4 steel squares with a hole in the middle for the axle to pass through. Weld the plates inside the housing, where the axle tubes attach to the center (it'd be a good idea to have the axles in place when your doing this, so you can center the plates. Now take some 3/16-1/4 thick, steel angle and cut 4 lengths that will just fit inside the housing front to back where the pumpkin bolts in. Place them 2 on the bottom spaced 2-3 inches apart open end down so they look like a long triangle and weld them in, now do the same to the top (you can also using tubing, and more of them), just make sure they don't interfere with any moving parts. This greatly strengthens the axle tubes reducing axle movement front to back, an also greatly stiffens the pumpkin mounting flange so the pumpkin can't move fore and aft. This will save the carrier caps, as well as the ring and pinion. This little trick is used in all the Nascar housings and is why you don't see them with back braces. NASCAR is not a drag race launch you say.., they have put sensors on the housings and found that when the drivers rev up the engine (so they burn the tires and not the clutch coming out of the pits) when the jack man drops her down, there is 30-40,000 psi of strain put on the rear end assembly. I know that this will greatly extend the life of our beloved '57-'64 Olds/Pontiac rears, and it works equally well on any other removable pumpkin type rear ends as well.

 

Kinda makes you wonder how butt welded axle housing ends stay on a narrowed rear end.

 

Way back before the technology was around to have someone narrow a rear axle as they do today; we did our own. A friend of mine was building an Austin A40 around 1970, and we used a Olds rear axle that we got from another racer. It already was a 4.88 with spool, but way too wide for the Austin.
Since we worked maintenance at a local steel foundry, we had access to the machine shop after our swing shift. We stripped down the axle housing and turned the tubes off in the big lathe. Then we cut off the length we wanted and tacked the ends back on in the lathe. We stick welded the tubes back on and then turned to the axles.
We turned the spline section off the axles, and then drilled a centering hole in the splined piece. Then cut the axle shaft off and created a stepped down end that had a dowel turned on it. We made it a close fit to the hole in the spline piece, and we pressed them together, but left a bevel on each piece at the joint. We welded the joint (again with a stick welder!) by tacking it in various places and then burning them in.
After we finished we checked runnout on the axles and tubes in the lathe and all checked good.
We put the narrowed Olds rear under his Austin, and dropped a pretty stout 44o Mopar with factory cross ram intake, in the car. The engine had been built to about 600 hp, and backed by a 727 trans. Ran the car for 4-5 seasons with this combo, and when he sold it to another racer the narrowed Olds was still holding together somehow.
When I think back on what we did, I'm not sure how it handled the abuse so well, and never broke an axle, and our welds held up so well? I'd probably never do it that way again, but on a lower HP drivetrain, I think it still might be a viable option, if a guy had access to a lathe large enough to do the axle shafts.

 

Another funny part of the Austin story. We built the box tube chassis at work also! They had a weld shop there, and we would lay it out on a big heavy weld bench each night after shift. We'd fab and weld all we could for 6-7 hrs a night. Then pick it up with the jib hoist and lean it against the wall, and head home. Next night we'd repeat the process, and that took us 3-4 weeks to do it all, and drop the front and rear axles in, so we could mount tires and wheels to load it on his trailer and take it home to finish!
Those were the good days, when a company didn't worry about liability, or whether you used some of their rod and electricity!

 

Scott

Gas turned over his Mustang in 65' I think and did not get hurt , you do not forget seeing a full size car like that doing endo's and makes you think more about how safe your own race car is?

You guys just don't know how slippry the tracks were back when I ran my 37', each run I would haze those 10 hundred 16's with a 327' that put out 420 hp on Landy's wheel dyno

So maybe it made 450 at the crank and would lite up those rear's pretty good, even when I had the 700 lbs in the rear it never lifted a front tire

You could even walk on the strip and not pull your shoe's off like today, but that's OK as the feel of the wheel spin was really neat

G Don

 

I have a lot of passes on my olds with a 557 and a fabcraft spool and no problem so far and none of it was new when it was installed

 

"amen!!!!!!"

 

When Dennis was racing our car and made it a track only deal, he painted it red himself in the spray booth where he worked at a cabinet shop on a Saturday, with the owners permission. He then had it lettered by Dennis Jones when he first started doing lettering, and before he went to trade school to learn how too do it properly.

 

A properly done weld is actually stronger than the parent metal.This is one area I feel qualified to comment on due to my piping and QC background.
That does seem like a shitload of strain though...!

Scott


Posted using the Full Custom H.A.M.B. App!

 

We used a 9" 57 F100 housing (one year only) in this '55 Chev, they have the appearance of an Olds, when viewed from the rear. The tubes are over 1/4" thick and don't have any weld seams at the center, or the bearing cups.

 

I know the feeling still Don! We have a couple local tracks that don't use VHT, and they're like ice rinks with even modestly high HP cars. At the Billetproof Drags I was spinning the tires on my BBC powered Falcon the length of the strip. Next year I hope to hook up better when I swap out my pie crust slicks for some Goodyear Eagle wrinkle wall slicks.

 

Hi 19

When the wrinkle walls started here they used a 5" wide Crager's with a 10" wide tire and just 3 lbs of air, you could push the car back & forth with the tire side wall moving

I'am otta here as that looked so scary, so after 4 yrs in b/gas I sold it and never back as the gassers getting run out of town by the factory cars and the new funnys

G Don

 

You just described the big Olds rearend, currently in my Hillman project!!!. It would be funny if this is the one you built years ago! Did you by chance do something different to the hole pattern for mounting the wheels???

 

Only thing I remember is the axle narrowing we did. Not sure if my partner did any changes to bolt pattern to accept a pair of wheels he may have already had. He did have a Roadrunner he took all the engine, trans, and wheels from, so maybe changed to 5x4.5" pattern to fit his tire/wheel combo.
That would be interesting if that old axle was still alive somewhere!

 

Did 60s Gassers have supercharge/Boost gauges? If so, what did they use?

 

I
Would guess that West Coast cars would be more prone to have them than east coast cars,just because there seems to have been so much military surplus/aerospace stuff readily available in California that was not accessible to the average guy in Michigan or Ohio...?

Scott


Posted using the Full Custom H.A.M.B. App!

 

Those A/Gas Supers were a handfull to drive, I dought if they had much time to be looking around at gauges

G Don

 

military surplus was all over the country and it was for real stuff at give away prices---you just had to be there...

 

I bet!
I once read an old interview with the driver of an early Chevy II AWB car who got paired against the SWC Swindler car in a match race.He said:
" it was
A handicap start,so I got out early and was really haulin the mail,so I didn't think they had a hope in hell of runnin me down..."
"then,all of a sudden,through the open back window,right behind my head I hear the most gawdawful loud whistling you've ever heard in your life,and that car drove right around me like I was tied to a tree..."


If it crushed a nasty little rig like an early Nova funnycar mercilessly,then those AA/GS cars must have been absolutely ferocious.....why was I born so late..!?!?

Scott


Posted using the Full Custom H.A.M.B. App!

 

Scott

I was at old San Gabe and Cook was hazing the rears pretty good, and it started to come around on him and he had a Brodie knob on the steering wheel

Boy he was doing ' Tank Slappers ' and used the knob to spin the steering wheel back & forth, and he saved her

Old man Tim came walking by and he was so shook up he could barly talk

Doug earned his pay that nite at San Gabe

Ahh ya man those early Gasser's were the deal, glad I got to race mine then in the good times when they were a good part of the show

G Don

 

Those guys were savages Don......With that much weight,hp,and torque in one of those flimsy little junk Willys frames...!!!
The first Willys frame my Dad brought home,I actually argues with him for a while,until he was able to convince me it was DEFINITELY a 41 Willys frame,as he and a buddy had pulled it from under the mess that used to be a rusty sedan body....
The frame was so poorly made,from such cheap materials,that I never would have thought anyone in their right mind would consider putting a stock V8 into it,let alone a stroked,blown Chrysler...!
Guys like Cookie must have been almost immortal to wheel that shit.He looked like sort of a mild-mannered fellow in photos,but clearly,when he strapped into a car,he was one badass son of a bitch who feared NOTHING.
I've always been in awe of those guys......and green with envy every time I talk to guys like you,who got to build and run cars back in the days when you could build your own shit and go out and be competitive....instead of using an unlimited bank account to have Chris Alston,Reher/Morrison,etc build your car.


Posted using two Dixie cups and a medium length piece of string.

 

I'm not sure when they first showed up, but Stewart Warner was producing them in the mid to late 60's I believe.

 

Saw Big Jim Dunn In Seattle years ago, That guy NEVER lifted for Anything!! different breed back then !! Chris

 

I think that if you'll dig deep enough, you'll find a lot of the top cars were the result of professional work, even in the 60's. Folks like Chuck Finders, Don Long, Keith Black, etc. made a good living back then.

But I'm not saying there wasn't a place for the "little guy" either. And if you were good enough you got to be a "big guy".

 

Chris,
About ten years ago I saw Paul Romine and Clay Millican in the T/F final at the IHRA Mopar Nat'ls at Grand Bend,and I have to say,I think both of those guys are reincarnated from some of the "Old Gnarly Dudes",as my buddy Dave used to say....Lol
They were both loose as shit,side by side,using every inch of track,and neither one lifted,and ran em right out the back door.Best race I ever saw.
If I can have half as much nerve,I will be pretty proud of myself...!

Scott



Posted using the Full Custom H.A.M.B. App!

 

I read a quote from Ohio George once about his '33 Willys. It was written after he built the first Mustang gasser. He said he never realized how terrible the '33 Willys handled until he finished the Mustang and took his first trip down the strip in it. He swore he'd never make another run down the strip in the Willys again.

 

Everything about that car must have been a handful:
-PILES of horsepower
-super high center of gravity
-flex-o-Rama Willys frame
-barn door-esque aerodynamics

With that 427 SOHC Ford firing it down the track like a missile,I'll bet 'ol George never got bored driving that one...!

Scott


Posted using the Full Custom H.A.M.B. App!