RESURRECTED: Gene Cromer's "MOONLIGHTER" Willys Gasser - Hot Rod Hoarders Ep. 43

this time on hot rod hoarders we're featuring gene cromer and the history and resurrection of his 1941 willys coupe named the moonlighter stick around to see this thing evolve from 1960s gasser superstar to being stashed away in gene's barn to finally being restored and put back on the track with gene behind the wheel back in the day gene cromer was a well-known drag racer in the southeast and this 1941 willys coupe is what gave him that reputation gene bought this car at guy motors in anderson south carolina he paid 150 bucks for it and he drove it home but he didn't have intentions of driving this thing on the street he wanted to build a race car his long list of hopes and dreams ended up making for kind of a slow process and he got impatient and he ended up buying a 55 chevy that was already sort of turned into a drag car and he put his motor that he was planning to put in the wheelies in the 55 chevy now this was a ford motor and a chevrolet it's kind of an odd combination but he hit the track with this thing and he said almost every time he raced it that it broke something and you know he got discouraged with it he ended up taking the motor back out of it sold the 55 body and jumped back on the 41 willys project around this time which was about 1964 gene was running an automotive repair shop and speed shop and he was doing work on regular passenger cars hot rods drag cars anything he could bring in to make a dollar and he had a customer come in his name was melvin kraft and melvin had an issue with a shifter gene ended up installing a hurst floor shifter in his car and put him back on the road but what they didn't realize is that gene and melvin would become great friends and they really hit it off melvin wasn't necessarily a car guy but he became one finally after countless hours day and night working on this wheelies gene was able to debut the car at an nhra sanctioned race at the donaldson air force base in greenville south carolina after gene got home from that first big race in greenville he was pretty happy with the car's performance but he wanted to spice up the appearance with some hand lettering so he had the mad striper come in and they named the car the moonlighter and that name actually came from gene's wife ruth who made the observation that this car was being built under the light of the moon because it was happening during the middle of the night during the evenings and weekends when gene had some spare time it was pretty much all getting used on building this car so the moonlighter was born when that famous hand lettering was applied back in 1965 and he always pulled it with this 1958 ford ranchero and an open trailer just imagine being a kid and seeing this thing go down the highway it was an awesome combination and it got a lot of attention you'll notice that the ranchero has a custom tube grill and gene actually used the leftovers from the original grill to make the insert in the wheelies because you might notice in some of the early pictures of the wheelies it just had sort of a homemade wire grill and he added this mesh in there looked a lot better filled in the hole and still allowed the radiator to get some air when he originally built the car he put fiberglass doors fiberglass fenders hood deck lid to lighten the car tremendously and he gutted out all the interior again just trying to shave as much weight as possible gene kept the original front axle but he did lift the front suspension a little bit to kind of give it the weight transfer that it needed but you'll notice through the years that he lowered the suspension a little bit at a time out back he installed a nine inch forward rear end with 486 gears and originally set it up with the original willy's leaf springs and ultimately he landed on sort of an early version of a ladder bar setup so it's got these rectangular arms that mount to the rear end into the frame and then it's got a set of coney coilover shocks which were revolutionary at the time he bought them from holmen moody which they were at the forefront of racing technology during that time and it really changed how he could tune the way that this car launched because back then you didn't have much control over how the track would be prepped in fact most tracks didn't get prepped at all there was no such thing as glue on the track you know you'd be lucky if they just went out there with a broom and brushed off the gravel or dust or whatever that was on the track so you know back then you really had to try hard to make these cars hook up the tire technology wasn't there the track prep wasn't there so you had to use the weight of the car in any trick you could to make the thing hook up and stay hooked up all the way down the track although you may not notice it at first gene actually altered the wheelbase on this car ever so slightly you'll see in some of these pictures that the rear fender has sort of a different look to it and that's because he reshaped that fender to go along with the new rear end placement so it didn't look out of place at all it actually looked like a factory fender with a factory wheelbase but it was actually scooted forward just a little bit and the point of that was to help with weight balance the further forward you could get that rear end the more weight would kind of hang off of the back and that would help with traction so you know they were looking for every little trick they could get and moving that rear end forward just a little bit was one of those tricks and he disguised it very well by reshaping that rear fender originally the car had a set of magnesium american racing torque thrust wheels 15x4 up front 15x8 on the back and those things changed throughout the years he went through several different configurations on tire and wheel packages sometimes to change the weight bias on the car sometimes to just change the appearance but ultimately through the years he changed to several different combinations here we've got a picture of it with some steel wheels that are chrome plated kind of an odd look compared to other 60s gassers i'm not sure exactly what those wheels are then he changed later on to actually a four lug wheel he put a set of four lug halibrand front runners on this car and then he had halo brands on the back for a little while sometimes he ran them conventionally and other times like in this picture you'll see that he has the wheels turned around backwards and a lot of times people will do that to kind of change the offset and you'll notice the first version of his wheelie bars were actually just wheels that kind of came straight down from that big stainless steel rear bumper and you know that evolved through the years and he eventually built his own wheelie bars out of leaf springs and that mounted to the rear end and allowed for a little bit of adjustability and a little bit more forgiveness than that straight down wheelie bar like his original design the engine in the moonlighter started life as a 427 cubic inch ford fe but gene had plans to make big horsepower with this thing so he started with a crankshaft company crank which brought the displacement up to 468 cubic inches he had mickey thompson aluminum rods and a set of forged true pistons that had 13 and a half to one compression gene did some custom tricks to the high riser heads and then he had a custom ground camshaft from holmen and moody to finish off the big stroker fe motor it's got a vertex magneto and hilburn mechanical fuel injection and it was mated up to a four speed originally but gene switched over to an automatic in 1967. the intention of switching from a manual transmission to an automatic transmission was to try to tame this car because it was doing some big wheel stands and it was really unpredictable you know he had to figure out some other ways to kind of tune the launch on this thing to control it a little more and make it a little bit more consistent the best this car ever ran was a 983 and 145 miles an hour which was on pace for a gas in the mid 1960s gene raced this car competitively in a gas in 1965 66 and 67. he raced in georgia south carolina north carolina tennessee florida and as far north as indianapolis for the u.s nationals and he made a name for himself this car made a name for itself and you know after winning some races and having some really good success that led to him getting booked in for match races and it made him extremely busy he was on the road all the time going to different drag strips sometimes two or three different drag strips in a single week just to go out there and compete either in an a gas sanctioned race or in some of these more outlaw type match races that tracks all over the southeast so he raced at tracks such as 13 forks drag strip jeffco dragway greer blaney shuffletown atlanta speed shop dragway paradise drag strip and then he raced at big tracks like rockingham bristol indianapolis he raced all over the place and did really well with this car it was a very successful and a very busy racing program there were a few occasions where gene and melvin put nitromethane in the moonlighter a couple of those times it was at run what you brought type races which were pretty common at outlaw tracks in the southeast and gene ran the wheelies in one of these runway brung races at paradise drag strip and put on a pretty big show for the fans paradise had actually shortened the track to a thousand feet for these runway brung races for safety reasons because these cars were just kind of out of control and the braking systems weren't great and you know parachute technology wasn't what it is today gene made his run and he made a great pass as far as speed but he actually went through the lights backwards out of control but he didn't actually hit one of the guardrails or anything like that but he did have to put it on the trailer pretty much you know his tires were kind of messed up and he had a broken spindle according to this article but you know that's the kind of action you came to expect with these match races and run what you brung events when 1967 rolled around gene started making some changes on the car and we talked about the rear suspension changes how it went from leaf spring over to this new coilover system on the back and you know there was other changes in the car set up as well but the real change in gene's racing program was he was building a new car he was building the moonlighter too it was a ford mustang it was a roadster type car and he was going to run it as a funny car this was a nitro burning fuel injected ford motor and you know he was planning to kind of go with the changes that the drag racing world was seeing in 1967 and a lot of gasser racers started building afx cars and these early funny cars he jumped in did the exact same thing and then he raced this car for a couple years while using the wheelies as sort of a backup car you know if he had a match race booked in and something major broke on the mustang he could always bring the willies and still put on a great show for the fans he raced the willies periodically through the late 60s but you can see in this picture in 1968 that he actually had a 427 camera sitting in this thing and he eventually built a ford maverick with a camera in it and he raced it in pro stock for a short amount of time but during all of this time the willys was still somewhat active you know he was still making some changes here and there on the car and you know it's still a pretty relevant car even up into the early 70s so by 1971 gene's racing days were starting to slow down a little bit he was still working really hard in his shop he was still fooling with hot rods and drag cars but as far as being out on the road every single weekend that was starting to slow down a little bit and you know he had a family at home his wife ruth and his two daughters you know they were growing up time was rolling by as he was out on the road and even though he was able to take them with him on occasion you know it was still really tough on the family for him to be out on the road all the time so ultimately around 1971 things started to slow down the wheelies sort of got pushed off to the side the ford maverick got pushed off to the side the funny car was outdated and just wasn't in the picture anymore but gene decided to hang on to this willys and he did for many years he stashed it away and you know the car sat pretty much untouched for a lot of years and you can see the car here sitting in a barn it's all in gray primer which is kind of the last step of this car's racing career it was just in primer it didn't have the lettering or anything like that on it but you can see it sitting here on a trailer no wheels or tires it's just kind of you know remnants of what it used to be and ultimately the car ended up leaving gene's possession he let another guy borrow it who was building fiberglass bodies he was starting a new business and he wanted to build a 1940 or 41 willie's coupe body to be able to sell the street riders and this was during the 1990s and the car been sitting for almost 20 years so it was one of those things that gene didn't mind letting him borrow this car well unfortunately they had to completely disassemble the car to make molds and build patterns and stuff for these new bodies and gene didn't end up getting the car back until quite a while later unfortunately he had to go pick the car up and it was completely disassembled it was sitting there pretty much in shambles so he loaded everything that he could get onto the trailer and brought it back home and just stashed it away for many more years you know really kind of losing hope in any potential of making this thing a project because now that it was all tore apart it just didn't have the same look and feel that it did even when it was kind of sitting there in the barn just in primer with no wheels and tires it still looked like his old car now it was just kind of a basket case so fast forward lots of years and gene gets a facebook message from a guy named quaint stott now if you've been around drag racing very much you've probably heard that name he's a world championship winning pro mod driver and at the time he had built a 41 willy's gasser which was called the executioner and he built this thing because his first real taste of gas or drag racing or any drag racing in general was at shuffletown drag strip just outside of charlotte and he saw jean cromer and a few other really big names at a big gasser race he saw them making passes and it hooked him he was hooked for life and so his first gasser build was this willy's kind of you know as a tribute to gene so what really kicked off this relationship is that quaint wanted to share these old home movies that he had found from shuffletown drag strip that featured the moonlighter and he wanted to be able to go take that to him talk drag racing you know let him know about this new association that he had put together the southeast gassers association and just share some drag racing stories you know regular bench racing and so ultimately that conversation turned into talking about the fact that the moonlighter still existed except it was all took apart and you know it was really kind of a forgotten project at this point but it really kind of gave quaint some hope that he could help gene put this car back together so the more they talked about it the more quaint realized that most of the parts were still there gene still had so many memories and so many keepsakes from his gasser racing days that this was going to be the ultimate race car restoration so after that initial conversation gene and quain really hit it off and a plan was put together to bring the old moonlighter out of the garage bring the parts out of the barn and put this thing back together now they could have just stuck it back together with those original parts and they could have made a really cool survivor or a really cool static display car but that was not in gene's interest he wanted to get this thing back on the track and he had plenty of stuff left over he had lots of engine parts that he had been hanging on to for years he had enough stuff to build this car without spending a tremendous amount of money tracking down parts and things like that they started working on this thing in 2012 and really kind of the first steps were getting it out and i've got this great video that darren gray sent me of them carrying the body out and you can see gene and quaint talking things over you know you can just see both of their wheels turning as they're looking at this project and just figuring out how to go about making this thing safe making it period correct and making it fast you know there was no point in doing this if this car was just gonna put down the track he wanted it to be able to really make some noise and make some fast passes so the first big step in this process was getting that chassis and body up to quaint stock's shop he had been building drag cars for years he's been doing chassis work roll cages suspension work you know he's been doing this stuff for decades and you know to build a period correct gasser is kind of going backwards as far as technology goes but he had to really take a step back and look at how to set this car up so that it would work number one you know so that the suspension would work and the car would hook up and go straight but number two he wanted to still pay tribute to the way this car was set up back in the 60s so he started by getting the frame straight uh from the rear frame section being broken you know there was a lot of stuff on this car that was kind of tweaked and so that was priority number one is get that frame straight get it strengthened add a few braces and cross members so that the thing would be solid and square and then start fabricating new suspension components to go along with some of the leftover parts that gene had in his collection quaint completely rebuilt the rear suspension but he stayed true to the design that gene had put in place back in 1967. he built two ladder bars and he built new mounts new everything to make this thing structurally sound and get rid of some of the rusty and crusty pieces on this thing and he actually utilized those original coney coilovers that gene got back in 1967 they actually sent those things back to kony and had them rebuild them and they're as good as new they're a really rare pair of coilovers you know only a handful of these things were made but they're still in action on the back of this car today quaine was also responsible for updating the safety items on this car and the first big project was building a roll cage and quaine's done tons of roll cages but this one was a little bit different because he wanted to add safety to this car by having a more significant roll cage but he didn't want it to be seen he didn't want it to stick out like a sore thumb on this historic car so he added lots of bars to this thing made it safe made it legal and ultimately he built a false firewall which completely hides all those roll cage tubes and it looks cool it looks the part and it really just looks like a continuation of that aluminum dash that's in the car and you'd never notice unless i was telling you that that was the purpose of that but it was one of those really creative designs that quaint is known for when it comes to hiding modern safety equipment or modern features on these period-correct cars quain was also responsible for doing all of the tin work in the car he made new wheel tubs new floor pans lots of new interior panels and you know he made tons of little brackets tons of pieces to like mounting the steering column mounting gauges mounting everything you know it was really well thought out it wasn't just a thrown together car and there was no formula for it it wasn't like he was following a pattern of building a new pro mod car or something like that this was something he had to really think about put a lot of effort into 40 years how does it feel to be back in it jim feels good just right does it feel like it's supposed to yeah when queen finished up with the chassis and suspension work the car went back to gene's shop and it underwent a complete restoration as far as the car's appearance goes the car was completely blasted stripped down to the bare metal and the bare fiberglass he had rick miller do the blasting he had chris dunn that helped him with some fiberglass work he had all sorts of people come through and you know even if it wasn't an outright donation people were donating their time people were lending their time to help him get this thing back going again and it was a big deal for gene and for melvin to be a part of this and you know it's kind of a big team effort other people who helped on this thing were dennis john and chris glenn they handled the interior work putting that tricky headliner in there they put blue lexan in they did a lot of work to make this thing completely trimmed out and look really good chris harper was in charge of the bodywork and paint on the car and he really straightened up the old body and put a coat of nassau blue on this car and that's originally what it was back in 1965 and that's what gene wanted to go back with for this restoration and after it was sanded and buffed and polished charlie tire put the hand lettering on there and recreated that iconic moonlighter logo on the side of the car and really put the finishing touches on this restoration while all that work was going on to make the moonlighter look good jean was focused on making it fast he actually mocked up a 427 camera in this thing originally but ended up building a high riser engine because that was the most successful setup in this car's history this new engine setup is very similar to the high riser that gene ran back in the 60s except this one's got a stock crankshaft instead of the stroker but it's got a ton of old school parts on it and the inside of it lots of old school tricks and you know it really looks the part it's got all period-correct parts on the outside including those white headers the chrome valve covers the hilbern injectors everything about this thing is 1960s the aluminum radiator might look out of place but that's actually a factory ford piece from a lightweight galaxy it's period correct and it's extremely rare he actually ended up building another engine for this car a little while later and this one was based off of a 427 tunnel port [Music] you know and it was really satisfying to watch this car progress and go from you know basically a forgotten old project into a masterpiece a completely restored piece of drag racing history one of the coolest things about the restoration of this car is that they made a really big deal about debuting it they didn't just show up at some show or drag race it was made into an event and all this happened at greer drag way in may of 2013 and they rolled the car out there they had a cover over it you know tons of people were surrounding the car people who had chipped in on the build process and the restoration and then of course gene and his family were there as well and it was just a really special moment to be able to pull that cover off of the car and you know just to hear the fans cheering because this is an iconic piece of drag race and history especially in south carolina that in the years after the debut gene wanted to actually race with the southeast gasers association and queenstot actually made a rule just for gene to allow him to run because he had an automatic transmission and quaine has a rule that every gasser must have a four speed or any type of manually shifted transmission so you know he made an exception grandfathered in gene into the rules package so that he could come out and race with these period correct cars and he was competitive he ran in the a gas class and we're talking 50 years between this car's beginning and its restoration so you know quite a bit of time had passed and gene got behind the wheel of that car and it was just awesome to see it was awesome to see him be in his element again and you know i think for a lot of people especially quaine and a lot of the people who chipped in and helped on this car it was more than just a happy emotion you know of watching this car go down the track i mean this was just like watching your hero get back into the car that made him a hero and see that car go down the track again under full power we're not talking about you know just babying it down the track we're talking about lifting the front wheels off the ground and you know blasting down the eighth mile and that's something you know that people don't necessarily understand is the importance of keeping this history alive sure it's great to have cars that are restored perfectly that are museum pieces or that are like cackle fest type cars that's fine and that's to be appreciated but when you rebuild a car and you actually go out there and put the hammer down it's a whole different animal and of course there's a chance of wrecking that car there's a chance of parts breaking there's all sorts of risk involved in this but it was a risk they were willing to take [Music] um [Applause] gene is a man of great faith and he put joshua chapter 1 verse 9 on the little dash panel when he restored this card and it says have i not commanded thee be strong and of good courage be not afraid neither be thou dismayed for the lord thy god is with thee wherever thou goest and for gene that means whether he's behind the wheel of this incredible willie's gasser or whether he's at home or whether he's in the shop he knows that god is with him and that's a really powerful verse and it's you know something to kind of live by you know that verse means a lot to a lot of people i had the pleasure of watching gene make several passes in this car he was making some pretty quick passes you know if you do the math really this thing is actually quicker than it was back in the 60s and that's mainly because the tracks are better the tires are better you know there's been a lot of advancements in that 50 years between this car's heyday and the car's current status so you know this thing is it's definitely quick it definitely puts on a show and people just love the history of it they love the story behind it and if you walk through the pits and you see gene and see his family and you see the smiles on their faces you can see what this is all about you can see why it's such a big deal that this car was restored and brought back to its former glory and that's part of why i wanted to feature it here on this video you know this car had been featured in several magazines it was featured in the writers journal which was a beautiful feature beautifully written article by jerry berger and you know it's been in lots of other publications but i wanted to tell this story in a little bit different way be able to give you all the details that i could scrape up on this car show you all the old pictures that i could dig up and i had to say a huge thank you to frank taylor he's one of the guys who was around the car back in the day and he was around for the restoration and you know he took lots of videos of the car in action in its current state and you know he's just been around this thing pretty much all of its life so you know huge thank you to frank taylor another big thank you to darren gray he was there for sort of the unearthing of this car in the early stages of rebuilding it and again just great pictures and videos that these guys have captured that really helped me tell the story so you know i'm very appreciative of that and i'm appreciative of queenstop for documenting so much of the build i mean that took special care and special effort to be able to stop what he was doing and take those pictures of the progress of this rebuild and most of all i'm thankful for gene for hanging onto this car and hanging on to all those old school parts 90 percent of this car is original 1960s components and you know the other 10 percent were just made up in modern conveniences modern safety equipment things like that but for the most part this car is very original very correct for the era and i mean it is as real as it gets gene held on to a lot of old pictures and time slips and other pieces of this car's history so i really appreciate his efforts in keeping this stuff because it allowed me to document this car better than any other car i've featured on the channel there's no telling how many people were influenced by this car whether they saw it at their local track or they might have even saw it on the highway getting pulled by that awesome 58 ranch arrow you just never know how many people that you're affecting when you have a car that's this iconic and you know gene may not have even realized that during that time that this car was a fan favorite or that it was putting a smile on a lot of people's faces but now he knows hearing all these stories and hearing all these real-life experiences of people who remembered the car people who you know dreamed about that car and now he's getting to see that he's getting to hear those stories getting to see those people that he affected long ago i mean quaint stott is a good example of that he saw this car when he was just a kid and it made him want to build a drag car and it's just cool that he ended up being a part of this car's rebuild now gene hasn't raced it quite as much as he was there back in 2014 through about 2017 but the car is still out there it's still running it's you know it's something that he's still holding on to and you can bet that the chromer family is just in love with this car even more now than ever because you know it's continuing gene's legacy it's continuing the moonlighters legacy it's really you know it's just a piece of history it's a piece of their family so you know it's not going anywhere anytime soon and it's continuing to hold a special place in a lot of people's hearts and that's what's cool about it to me is that this car is more than just metal and fiberglass and more than just that ford motor and it's more than those magnesium wheels it's more than that it's a very meaningful car you know it's just irreplaceable i hope you enjoyed following along with the history of the moonlighter wheelies i plan on featuring many more historic drag cars in the future so stay tuned thank you for watching

Channel: Hot Rod Hoarder

Views: 158,504

Rating: 4.9418383 out of 5

Keywords: drag racing history, legend, Gene Cromer, gene cromer's moonlighter willys, moonlighter, the moonlighter, moonlighter Willys, 1941 Willys, 1941 Willys coupe, Willys gasser, historic Willys gasser, Willys drag car, historic drag car, historic gasser, drag racing legend, southeast gassers association, quain stott, moonlighter restoration, A/G Willys, gene cromer's A/G Willys resurrection, Gene (moonlighter) cromer's A/G Willys resurrection, hot rod hoarder, hot rod hoarders

Id: QmLi3XhjBWI

Length: 32min 41sec (1961 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 12 2021