5,000 Miles in a Straight-Axle ’55 Chevy Gasser with Pie-Crust Slicks
February 2021 • Photos James SanGrait & Dave Wallace
Presented by RatTrapRacing.com & USAutomotive.co.uk
You’d think that a jacked-up, straight-axle shoebox punctured with 2000 “lightening holes” would wobble down the road on its cheater slicks like a Slinky on speed, but this ’55 recently road-tripped thousands of miles on its maiden outing without endangering anything but eardrums and faulty assumptions.
“Oh, it got a little hairy in crosswinds,” admitted owner-builder James SanGrait of Evil Iron Classic Automobiles, Park River, ND, who fought the red-metalflaked steering wheel through wind gusts and potholes atop original leaf springs that no longer sprung. Completing the 10-month project just one week before the California Hot Rod Reunion left no time for suspension tuning. Thus, did untested Holey Hell’s extended “shakedown cruise” last two weeks and more than 4000 mostly-uneventful miles.
“The only part that failed was a radiator cap,” James recalled, laughing. “We fixed a slight oil leak out of the intake manifold with RTV. On the way home, we hit the Summit store in Reno and replaced those 64-year-old rear springs.”
First impressions can deceive. Ours was not exactly positive — nor at all accurate. What appeared to be a misspelled nickname applied to both quarters in blood-drip lettering only reinforced initial suspicions that these strangers, who’d just rump-rump-rumbled into Famoso Drag Strip with a North Dakota license plate, were either mocking or honoring old gassers and/or dissing or paying tribute to an old movie that vanished almost immediately upon limited release in 1971, before this trio was born. Could it be coincidental that the hot rod happens to be a flat-black, tilt-front, four-speed, dual-carb, tunnel-ram, 1955 Chevy “post” sedan reminiscent of Two-Lane Blacktop?
D’oh! The joke was on us: The closer one looks past those holes, the more beautiful the build. Though his racing activities always revolved around family roundy-round roots, SanGrait has been building gasser-style shoeboxes in his head almost as long as this abandoned stocker had been sinking into a local backyard. While other passersby were mentally adding patch panels to the rotting body, young James was mentally subtracting metal to minimize weight, just like the Tri-Five gassers in old magazines.
He finally made the buy at age 47, inspired by grief to pay rolling tribute to recently deceased Thomas Kuntz— Brad’s dad and a mechanical mentor to both. They pledged to give Tom one last ride, to California, then scatter his ashes somewhere appropriate for a lifelong cement man. (Hoover Dam would get them.) SanGrait’s girlfriend, Krystine Pettis, a working mother of three, planned to fly out if the boys made it to Bakersfield.
As James pulled the car apart, he fulfilled his fantasy of lightening or eliminating factory components unnecessary for a quarter-mile app. Off came both bumpers, the fenders, hood and grille. He sawed off the frame at the firewall and “Swiss-cheesed” the rest, gusseting each new hole for street durability. Into his multitude of machined brackets and mounts were drilled as many holes as could safely be spaced. After drilling, punching, and sawing the last of 200 openings that Chevrolet did not, he thought he was done.
“The next 1800 or so holes happened all because Paul Anderson insisted that a gasser needs a nickname,” SanGrait explained. “He saw my lightening holes and yelled, ‘Hole-eeeeee Hell!’ We had the name. We needed more holes.” Another pal, Robert Alexander, attacked the unmolested interior with a cheap hole punch. To achieve the smooth, dimpled edges that hack jobs always lacked, “Holemaster General” Alexander covered the punch’s individual cutters with beveled cups fabricated by nicknamer Anderson.
His buddies’ volunteer labor, combined with "mostly parts lying around the shop,” limited SanGrait’s monetary outlay to just $4500. Still, he was so cash-poor by the end that friends launched a GoFundMe travel fund. In exchange for $1600 in “gas money,” the travelers shared their journey online, in real time.
California’s notoriously-crappy 91-octane called for conservative combustion. James’s low-compression recipe is based on a .030-overbored 427 rat motor wearing conservative, 290cc Flo-Tek heads. A traditional Muncie M-21 four-speed passes off the power to a quick-change Franklin differential more common to serious dirt racers. Helping offset a thirsty pair of 450cfm Holleys and the body’s barn-door aero was a combination of 2.84:1 rear gears and 30-inch-diameter tires, netting a 3.36:1 final-drive ratio and 11-to-12 highway mpg. “The clutch didn’t much like it in towns, though,” James said. “Had we tried to do a burnout, the smoke would’ve been coming from the bellhousing, not the rear tires. The 5.30s that I run at home make the car very violent, and fun; no problem smoking the tires!”
James built Holey Hell with the intention of eventually passing it on to his grandson, once the kid gets licensed. Considering that young Konner Campbell just turned 2, more hell will surely be raised before Granddad gives up the ignition key.
You can reach James @Evil Iron Classic Automobiles
Vehicle: ’55 Chevy gasser
Owner: James SanGrait, Evil Iron Classic Automobiles
• Engine: 427 ci Chevy rat
• Carbs: Holley 450 cfm
• Trans: 4-speed M-21 Muncie
• Rear axle: Franklin quick-change, 2.84:1 rear gears