Dayton Daily News

The bare chassis of an old Gasser sits right inside the door. In the back of the shop on the chassis jig, welded metal tubing begins to resemble the frame of a front engine dragster, circa 1960. Jim Unger is hunched over his welding table, fabricating the spring brackets for the Gasser he's restoring.

"Most days I'm welding for six hours," said the 55-year-old chassis builder and fabricator.

Unger Racing opened in the three bay shop off Dayton's Webster Street in 1996.

"I spent lots of years doing structural work in body shops, but my real love has always been drag racing — old dragsters and gassers. I raced myself and learned a lot about suspension and how to get the most out of cars. It just sort of evolved, and I finally went on my own and opened my shop," Unger said.

Currently Unger's main project is building a 185-inch front engine dragster for nostalgia racing.

"I never drove one of those, so I decided to build one myself."

It will take Unger about 250 hours to construct the chassis out of 4130 chrome moly tubing.

"I designed the chassis on my CAD (computer-assisted design) system, then I use the numbers to bend each piece, then weld them together. The chassis jig I use for all of my work, I built myself. It's accurate to within 30 thousandths of an inch.

"It'll be ready to go in the spring. My buddy Bub Houtz is providing the engine for it, a big-block Chevy that's fuel-injected and blown. It should put out about 750 horsepower. I'm hoping it'll run in the low 8-second range with a top end of about 175 mph," Unger said.

In addition to the dragster, Unger is currently restoring a 1948 Anglia Gasser for Gary Paxton. It's an original car that raced until 1970 and then was put in storage.

"I'll bring it back to life and they'll take it to nostalgia events and let the public see some real drag racing history," Unger added.

He builds one or two complete chassis each year, in addition to repairing, rebuilding and fabricating all types of chassis, suspension parts, roll cages and headers for customers throughout the Midwest.

"With the technology and the computer-aided design system I have, a customer can just send me all of the measurements of what they want, and I can plug those into the computer. The computer then designs it, spits out the exact numbers, and I can build it for them," Unger said.

Unger also specializes in aluminum welding. "If it's made of aluminum, I can work on it," he said.

Unger works closely with his customers as they race their cars, but spends lots of his time working on restoring the old drag cars of the '60s.

"I just love the old Gassers. In addition to restoring Paxton's historic Anglia, I've also redone the Burgess' '48 Fiat, Brian Wenrick's '52 Willy's and Steve Morgan's Anglia."

"I fell in love with these cars when my grandmother bought me a book about drag racing when I was 11 years old, and I guess I never got over it."

Unger Racing is located at 1943 Lucille Drive.

For more information, go online to www.jimungerracing.com.