Old school gasser just right for the street

“I’ve always done cars, motorcycles, something, since I was in high school,” Jim Kelly said.

He was a highly rated Top Fuel motorcycle racer before he sold all of his equipment in 1995. He then built a Super Gas car and competed at NHRA strips for several years. His last ride was a blown 1923 T Altered.

“It was a blown big block Chevy. It ran 6.80 and just a touch over 200 mph. I sold it and I haven’t raced since,” he said.

But that didn’t mean he had lost interest in cars. He owns a supercharged ’62 Impala and a twin turbo 2010 Camaro, as well as a supercharged Ford Lightning pickup that he uses as his daily driver.

So it’s not surprising that a year ago, he spotted a chance to reprise his days on the drag strip in a street-ready package: a 1956 Chevy straight-axle gasser.

“I bought it from a guy in Hutch … it was very nicely done, but I can’t leave anything alone,” Kelly said. “I spent all last winter in the garage. I put in a different engine, transmission, rear end, seats, different chrome. I freshened a lot of stuff up, kind of picked up where he stopped.”

The engine he installed began life as a Chevy 396 cubic inch V-8. He won’t say exactly how much displacement is now involved, just that it’s been “bored out a whole bunch of times.”

The powerplant has been outfitted with AFR aluminum cylinder heads, a lumpy Chet Herbert hydraulic roller cam, and Edelbrock intake manifold that has been smoothed and polished to receive a hefty Quick Fuel 1050 cfm 4-barrel carb. Exhaust is handled by a set of polished Speedway Motors wheel well-style headers that dump into a set of flat black mufflers hung underneath the jacked-up Bel Air.

The Turbo 400 transmission, outfitted with a 3000 rpm stall converter, was built locally by Gary Hill and is activated by means of an old-school B&M floor shifter. Power is routed back to a 12-inch Chevy rear end filled with 3:73 Detroit Locker gears. Disc brakes are used at all four corners of the street gasser, which rides on a Speedway straight axle up front.

Ten-spoke Rocket Launcher racing wheels carry 165/80R15 Nexen tires on the straight axle, while traction is provided by big Hoosier 31x12.50R15 radials mounted on 10-inch wide Rocket 5-spoke wheels tucked inside a set of mini tubs at the rear.

“I’m not going to try to set the world on fire,” says Kelly, who explains his idea was to capture the vintage look of a 1960s gasser with a car capable of being driven to area car events. He is always on the lookout for vintage speed equipment parts and pieces.

“I would be happy if it runs in the 11’s. The old school gassers, if you ran in the 11’s back in the day, you were pretty much the top dog,” he said.

Inside, the gasser is equipped with a period-correct roll cage setup and a set of Buick Grand National bucket seats provided by Kelly’s car buddy Rocky Burris. The all-steel dash is painted red to match the clean red and white two-tone exterior scheme. A set of Stewart Warner gauges, including a 160 mph speedometer, fill the arched instrument bezel, and a massive Sunpro tachometer with shift light occupies center stage atop the dash.

Kelly notes that the nose-high gasser trend went away after racers realized they were “pushing too much air” with that stance. But the vintage look has made a comeback in street-driven cars in recent years.

“This is my weekend cruiser. I’m all over the place in this car,” he said. “It’s got manual steering, but it goes down the road world class, like a modern car.

“I drove it down to Winfield and it made 10 miles to the gallon. It doesn’t have any trouble passing people, but it does scare some of them,” he chuckled.

“That’s what’s fun about doing this nostalgia stuff. It comes full circle.”

This story was originally published July 3, 2015 at 6:07 PM with the headline "Old school gasser just right for the street."