small block Windsor in a Morris Minor Gasser

[southcross2631]

This is my 1958 Morris Minor that I bought 3 years ago . It went from a stock Morris to the stage it is in right now.
I found this car setting in South Carolina in a car port. It had been setting for 10 years waiting to be hot rodded.
Unfortunately the previous owner has cancer and couldn't do the car so I bought the car and took it home to my shop in Florida.
Here is the day I got it home and the day I took it to the first Southeast Gasser race in Knoxville Tn.
I will show you the transformation in future posts to show how much went into building this car. It is not a bolt together project as nothing is
available to buy to just bolt together a new car and then go race. I started with 4 chalk marks on the floor of my shop to tell where the wheels were going
to be .
The only thing I did not do myself is the machine work on the block and the driveshaft.

 

[southcross2631]

When I first started on the car I stripped it down to the shell and got rid of everything that I didn't need or plan on reusing. I recouped about half of the price of the car by selling the original glass, steering column. wheels and tires and some misc. stuff to a collector.
Then it was time to start on the chassis. I knew I was going to run a straight axle so a friend contacted me about a 53 Ford that already had disc brakes and the guy was converting to a Mustang 11 front end .
I just had to drive over pick it up . I had to narrow it 6 1/4 inches to make it fit , but it was free. Another friend had a blown Studebaker drag car that he had recently finished . Unfortunately for him he had a shop fire and the car was a total loss except for the 9 inch Ford rear that had a spool and Strange 33 spline axles.
It just happened to be the right width. I had done some work for him on a 64 Merc convertible so he gave me the rear end.
So a pile of 2x3 tubing and some 1 5/8 tubing and about 3 weeks worth of work I had my gasser chassis and 10 point roll cage.
this car is built to run with the Southeast Gassers. they have a very strict rule book. It also has to look like it was built before 1967 so this is built all wrong in comparison to the rules and trends of todays race cars.
I knew it was going to have a small block Windsor motor and a top loader 4 speed. So I had a 5.0 block machined by my machine shop in Florida and I scored a Liberty prepped top loader.
I will post some more photos now and more in a day or so.

 

[General karthief]

Cool! I like gassers. There was a 50 Pontiac gasser in my neighborhood when I was growing up. Always wanted one.

 

[southcross2631]

Some more picture of the car as progress went and I realized I had to make it a roller when we moved from Florida to Tn.

 

[southcross2631]

It's a roller ! This was just before it got loaded on the trailer for the move to Athens. tn. Sure miss that shop. Now I am in a one car garage.

 

[southcross2631]

Building the motor. First motor . .040 over 5.0 block bored,honed with torque plates and square decked. Mahle 2 eye brow flat tops, Scat I beam rods , .010 under stock crank. Assembly balanced and assembled with .000 deck height.
ProMaxx 1201 CNC ported heads , Parker intake , Scorpian roller rockers, .600 lift solid roller cam . Comp cams timing set , Melling oil pump . Arp oil pump drive and head and main bolts. Jegs oil pan.

 

[southcross2631]

Well next update of my little project car. Had to make motor mounts and headers and fab the radiator mount. The radiator is from an 89 Honda Civic. Ebay special 89.00 bucks with the cooling fan . Perfect for 1/8 th mile drag racing.

 

[southcross2631]

Another attachment to my build. Getting thing plumbed and the brakes hooked up.

 

[southcross2631]

It was time to wire the car. I used a Mallory ignition box that I mounted under the pass front seat. The gel battery is from Advance auto parts. The 2 gauge battery cable is available from Advance by the foot. All circuits are fused and the switch box was made out of scrap aluminum that I had left over from the interior panels.
All of the switches were purchased from Lowes in their electrical section. 50 amp rated. The fuel pump and electric fan and water pump drive motor are protected by 30 amp circuit breakers.
The dist is a Jegs mecha

nical advance unit. the gauges are from Speedway and the tach is a Bosch . All period correct appearing.

 

[General karthief]

Out standing!

 

[southcross2631]

The interior sheetmetal. The floor under the feet of the driver is sheet metal as mandated by NHRA. The rest is aluminum. The pedal are the original Morris Minor pedals converted from floor mount to hanging pedals . The gas pedal is the original pedal cut and modified. The seats are from Speedway. The covers were found from a fellow gasser competitor from Canada. The cage was bent up by me on my Speedway tubing bender. The paint is Rustoleum hammer finish.

 

[General karthief]

Is the minor streetable?

 

[southcross2631]

This is after I painted the interior.

 

[southcross2631]

By streetable , how do you define that ? I drove it around the block a few times before I took it to the track on my trailer. It does have head lights and tail lights and I could install a brake light switch. Tn,is pretty lax when it comes to hot rods.Depends on the cop I guess.
It has a 6.00 gear in the back with a spool and no synchros in the trans. It has no exhaust system other than the headers, but I plan on taking it to some cruise-in car shows next summer. I could get a license plate if I wanted to. The inline Hurst shifter is not meant to downshift all that easy either.
My new motor will have 12.5 to 1 compression and a .683-.672 lift cam so it will be hard on valve springs so driving it long distance especially with my tiny radiator might present a challenge.

 

[General karthief]

My opinion of streetable would mean safely stop and go with working lights.
you're almost there.
i had a friend that drove a liberty 4 speed big block on the street for a while, I drive it a couple times and I'd have to swap in an auto trans.

 

[Anti_Hero0932]

BAD ASS!

i like the gold.

 

[southcross2631]

thanks. The hammered paint from rustoleum works really good and you can buy it in quarts. I didn't want a shiny paint for the inside of the car. The dash is the Hammered black. you can spray it in a paint gun just thin it with acetone. I painted my car trailer with blue.
I am getting ready to paint the outside. I have 2 gallons of school bus yellow that I got for free so that's what color it will be.
Trying to get ready for the season opener in Holt ,Florida in March. I have to finish building my short block and send my input shaft to Liberty Gears to have them build me a shaft from 300M.
The next pictures are making the old school ladder bars. This is the way it was done back in the 60's before you could pick up the phone and dial 1-800- performance and order some bolt in parts. It also shows the coil spring set up. coil -overs were not common back then and if you don't have a set from the 60's they are not legal.

 

[CoosawJack]

BEAUTIFUL WORK........I just wish I had the space and ability to do projects like this!!

 

[southcross2631]

Thanks, actually about 50 percent of the car was done in a one car garage. I am 70 years old and started building hot rods when I was 15 years old. I am a self taught car builder. You only get better by challenging yourself. Anybody can bolt on parts and say look what I built.
It's when you can't buy parts for what you want and have to make it yourself that you can truly say look what I built. You would be surprised what you can do when you can't afford to have your stuff built by somebody else. Growing up poor was a blessing because I was forced to learn how to fix or build my own cars if I wanted to have something special.
These pictures are when I bought a sheet of Lexan from home Depot and made the patterns and installed my windows. I went to Harbor Freight and bought some casters then to Lowes for some flat bar and some schedule 80 pipe then to Rural King for some rod ends to build my wheelie bars.

 

[southcross2631]

You can see my home made rear bumper mandated by the rules of the group I race with. Also the tail lights are 1939 Ford for a different look I mounted them upside. down. The rear wheels are vintage Ansen sprint 9x15 wheels with 28x 9 Hoosier slicks. The fronts are American torq thrust 4x15 with Moroso tires.
This is when I got the motor and trans ready for installation. It has a Lakewood scattershield. the clutch setup is a Spec 10 1/2 inch with an aluminum pressure ring and a low static pressure spring set up to lessen the shock on the drive line and to limit the tendency to wheel stand as

this is an 87 inch wheelbase car.