Gasser Style

At the beginning of the Pontiac project the client was talking about turning the car into a Gasser style build.The Gassers were a style of drag car in the 60's and the look was punctuated by a nose high stance and very long tube headers that were run into the inner wheel well and dumped down the side of the car. When we discovered that the 287 was junk, the new motor got to be a lot more serious and it was decided to do a period correct Gasser style build. The idea is to preserve the nice patina of the car as it is, with high level of detail and finish on the parts we've built (or rebuilt) like the motor, etc.

To that end I started building a wild set of fender well headers. These things have got to have 60" primaries! It took 9 U bends just to build one header. The passenger side is finished and the driver's side is well underway. Here's some progress photos.

Here's the passenger side header. It shoots up off the head and right through the hole I cut in the fenderwell.

Here's a shot with the tire off. That's one hell of a primary!

Here's what it will look like on the ground, except the car will have another 3-4" of ride height. The 3" collector goes right into a 3" dump that goes under the rocker. It will have a lightly muffled exhaust using a two chamber Flowmaster.

Here's the beginning of the driver's side header. I started with the siamesed center ports and then began building the end tubes to match. This side was a tight squeeze around the steering column.

The number 7 headpipe coming along.

And the number one headpipe. All four are ready to make the bend into the fenderwell. I like to use hose clamps to keep everything aligned when building headers.