Mopar gassers?
Love the Henry J and the 33 Willys for sale. I have another shot of that HenryJ. It was on Facebook.
tmm
I used to wonder why there weren't more Henry J's turned into Gassers, until I built one.
All Gas Coupes were allowed a ten-percent engine setback by the rulesmakers at the time (mid '50s to late '60s.) The Willys coupes and sedans that were popular (think Stone Woods and Cook, and Ohio George Montgomery,) and early Fords (say, model A's and 'thirties-era Fords, and such) had a ten-percent engine setback in the original design; adding a different engine required no heroic measures to take advantage of that important rule.
But, the original design of a Henry J had the engine sitting really far forward in relation to the position of the front wheels. That meant that in order to move the engine back to a ten-percent setback (to take advantage of the weight-distribution advantage afforded by getting the bulk of the engine and transmission's weight far enough rearward,) you had to cut the firewall and floorboard a great deal.
I (and my partner) put a brand X V8 into a Henry J for C Gas, and with the legal 10% setback, the #1 sparkplug was directly underneath the base of the windshield!!! No kidding! With the engine cover off, I could reach across and adjust the timing (turn the distributor.) Virtually the whole engine was inside the passenger compartment!
Tires (slicks) of that era were so poor, that you HAD to take advantage of the rules for every little advantage, or get left in a pile of molten, smoking rubber. Now, you can build a Henry J with the engine in its original location and still hook respectably, but back then, it was just not possible. It was a LOT of work to cut away the firewall and floor to get the engine back to an advantageous location for an effective race car. Now, with the tires we have access to, it's not so important.
Engine setback was measured by noting the forward-rearward distance from the #1 sparkplug to the centerline of the front spindle. Gassers were allowed 10% of the wheelbase, while Altereds were allowed 25%.
Good-biting tires eventually made that rule unnccessary.
The Henry J in the picture obviously is getting ahold of the strip with no engine setback at all... Good tires make that possible.
Times change!!!:cheers: This was 1963...
