Southeast Gassers Association - Paying Tribute to the Heroes of Drag Racing's Past

hey guys welcome back to the channel if you've seen any of my other videos you know that i love old drag cars and one of the most popular old drag cars out there is called the gasser and this type of car gets a lot of attention sometimes it can be confused as far as what is a gasser and what's not a gas or so i thought i'd cover that so follow along as i explain a little bit more about period correct gassers and then dig into the rules package of the southeast gassers group and then i'm going to show you some racing action from knoxville drag strip it gets a little bit wild and crazy you want to stick around to see gary klein's wild ride in his tasmanian devil 41 wheelies he's okay but the car not so much so back in the early days of drag racing there were lots of different class designations you know you had your dragsters and your roadsters and your competition coupes you had all sorts of different things that separated the cars you know it was just there was a lot of ways to level the playing field so you didn't have a dragster running up against a completely stock street car one of the most popular classes especially in the 1960s was the gas coop and sedan class this class consisted of stock-bodied vehicles now they could have fiberglass front ends or fiberglass doors anything like that to lighten the body but it had to be stock appearing so the rules changed throughout the years and kind of followed the theme of the cars and in the late 60s and early 70s the gas classes changed big time they made some big changes that really took these cars from kind of stockish looking cars to almost a funny car you were allowed to run spindle mount wheels at that point you're allowed to do a lot of things to alter the car that you were not allowed to do earlier in the 60s and that's the area that queen stott and his group the southeast gassers association that's where they focus they want to focus on that mid to late 60s where the cars were fast the cars looked cool they had the right stance you know this was the absolute sweet spot of the gasser era if the name quaint stock sounds familiar that's because he's a world championship winning drag racer he raced pro modified cars for many years and when he decided to retire from that he wanted to build a nostalgia car he wanted to build a period correct gas something with a four speed something with a straight axle something with a high winding engine you know he really wanted to dig in and make this happen so he did and a few other friends kind of followed suit and they built a just a handful of cars and they started doing little races here and there and this thing took off and despite what others might have said about this organization it grew quickly and grew you know it continues to grow and to the point now where the races have 80 to 90 cars competing in all different classes and it has a extremely strict rules package this is something that quaint has taken very seriously he wants the cars to be as authentic as possible and to put on the best race as possible so he's balanced the rule package to include side by side heads up racing he doesn't want people to you know just absolutely outrun the competition he wants it to be side by side and he's not going to do bracket racing that's out of the question it's going to be heads up first to the finish line wins no bracket race no handicaps no buybacks none of that it's first to the finish line wins he's got several classes he's got several ways to get involved and it has really just exploded it's turned into a big deal it's also turned into a huge spectator sport over the years you know it's kind of been hard to convince people that these things are fun to watch and because they might have seen other gassers at other events they're like it's not really all that exciting because you know they're not all that fast well quaint change that he made all of his drivers run four-speed manual transmissions he made all of his drivers set the cars up in a certain way to where they're excited they do wheel stands they do wheel stands in second gear and third gear and they're they're wild and crazy cars so from a spectator standpoint there's not a better action-packed race out there one thing you'll notice is that they don't show any et's every southeast gasters race is an eighth mile race it's all heads up but they decided not to show the et's so that if there was a dominant car that you know your your fans your spectators didn't say well i know that he's going to win there's no use in even staying to the finals and that's really worked because as you see some of these crowds at these places where they're packing two or three thousand people into these little tracks you know the crowd is still thick when it's time for the finals and that's a big deal because any other race you go to that's not the case by the time the finals are running people have kind of got burned out and they've already hit the road and gone home so let's go over some of the rules and some of the classes to give you a better idea of how these guys build these cars so you've got a gas that's kind of your top dogs that's going to be your lightest weight cars with your biggest engines and essentially they build these cars to a six pounds per cubic inch rule b gas is your next step down that's eight pounds per cubic inch and similar set of rules otherwise as far as straight axle manual transmission you know a certain height off the ground wheels have to stick out just a little they can't be pulled in they can't have narrowed rear ends with the tires tucked up under that's that's not accurate for the 60s uh sea gas is the next one down that's 10 pounds per cubic inch so let's just that's the easiest one to do the math on so let's say you've got 300 cubic inch small blocks chevy you're going to have to weigh 3 000 pounds so this this is a tough class to compete in and a lot of the guys are building smaller motors so that they can run lighter cars so again you've got some really cool combinations you've got some really high winding engines in that sea gas class i'm talking about 10 10 000 rpms plus that makes for a huge difference for the fans when somebody pulls that thing into the burnout box and turns it up to 10 grand people notice i mean it gets your attention same way with leaving the line i mean they're leaving the line at big rpms stretching these things out banging gears you know really putting on a show for the fans meanwhile they're racing their hearts out to try to be the first to the finish line you have no idea how much work goes into these things because when you get there and you're in the pits these cars look extremely simple you look at one of these motors there's not a bunch of wiring hanging off of it there's two carburetors sitting up on top of this thing and it's going out there and absolutely running wild i mean these things are fast so some of the cars whether it's sea gas b gas or a gas some of them are running mechanical fuel injection which was a popular thing in the 60s uh hilburn fuel injection you know got the eight stacks sticking up that's period correct that's actually preferred by queen he'll give you a little bit of a weight break on that to try to mix it up a little bit so not you know you don't want every single car and every single combination to be the same you don't want you know 90 small block chevys with tunnel rams and two fours in the in the field you want it to be mixed up a little bit so you know certain combinations get a weight break quaint is really picky about the wheels on these cars because the worst possible thing is to have a period correct car and have the wrong wheels on it and i mean i i agree with that even on a regular street car wheels and tires make a big difference in the overall look of the car so for him he's got to really put his foot down on these wheels because there's a lot of wheels that kind of play into the vintage crowd but they don't quite do the job when it comes to being correct or authentic so he has made a list of wheels that are accepted and he's made a list of wheels that are not accepted so the racers kind of have to follow that what a lot of the guys have done is they've restored vintage magnesium wheels for the cars because number one they're the most correct things you can possibly get and number two they're a little bit lighter than aluminum wheel so you kind of kill two birds with one stone there i actually sold two pairs of magnesium wheels to todd oden who has two cars in the southeast gastric group he's got an a gas 57 chevy station wagon and a sea gas 58 chevy two-door post and he on both cars he had aluminum slotted mags on there and he wanted real deal magnesium wheels so he bit the bullet he completely redid both cars as far as the wheel and tire package and now he's got magnesium wheels front and back on both cars i'll show you a little bit more of todd odin's cars in a future episode on the channel so stay tuned for that some of the rules that claim put in place are more for keeping a level playing field and not quite so much about being authentic because you'll see you know not every gasser in the 60s had a straight axle under the front it was just a very popular thing to do not every gasser had a manual transmission but again a very popular thing to do so quaint decided to level the playing field and not give anybody a specific advantage he was going to make every car have a straight axle front end he was going to make every car have a manual transmission but he was going to allow you know an aftermarket type transmission like a high tower or g-force to compete because he didn't want cars going out there and just breaking the guts out of a muncie four speed so you know he stretches the rules as far as authenticity goes when it comes to making sure the cars go down the track without breaking all the time you know he wants for there to not be a lot of downtime he wants the cars to go side by side and that's kind of part of the equation there is getting these things to be consistent and dependable even though they're unpredictable the nature of these cars is that they could go left they could go right they could go straight up onto the back bumper there's so many variables that go into these cars so you know you can only tune so much of that out of it so the number one rule for the southeast gasers association is that all the cars have to run on gasoline now that seems pretty simple but in some of the other nostalgia groups they allow alcohol which you know wouldn't have been allowed back then so wayne wanted to stay pretty strict on the type of fuel that people could use now you can use high octane racing fuel that's not a big deal but no alcohol the only alcohol that's allowed in this racing series is in the afx class which there's just a handful of cars that run in there and that's kind of an exhibition class they don't really have the points championship like the gas classes or anything like that so you know they kind of have a different set of rules but they also have to be period correct so plane's pretty picky about that kind of stuff and i don't blame him because it'd be really easy to fall off the wagon in terms of rules when it comes to those exhibition cars but he's really strict on it and it puts on a great show from fans so let's get right into the action from knoxville drag strip i was fortunate enough to go there and cover it for all chevy performance magazine it's a brand new magazine coming out and so i didn't shoot the whole thing in video i shot it in stills for that magazine but i also wanted to bring you some video action from this event so i did that i kind of mixed it up a little bit so let's go ahead and get into that enjoy and if you want to find out more about the southeast gasters or find out if they're coming to a town near you go to southeastgasters.com you can check them out on instagram youtube 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Channel: Hot Rod Hoarder

Views: 34,389

Rating: 4.9140272 out of 5

Keywords: southeast gassers association, southeast gassers, gasser drag racing, drag racing, nostalgia drag racing, hot rod hoarder, hot rod hoarders, Knoxville Dragstrip, drag strip, knoxville drag strip, maynardville, Tennessee, Quain Stott, southeastern gassers, sega, southeast gassers 2020, period correct gasser, 1955 chevy gasser, 1941 Willys gasser, 1948 anglia gasser, nova gasser, falcon gasser, gasser wheelstand, gasser burnout, gasser wheelie, gasser crash, gasser wreck

Id: xljIWFFhgsE

Length: 21min 19sec (1279 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 02 2020