Thread: Rail Job?

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Anyone know what a rail job is? My buddy just said he did one on his old volve bug

Well it always meant a dragster as far as I know... but today people interpret things however they want.

rails to me were always VW bugs with the bodys removed and a roll cage added

Hoss has nailed it !
http://www.google.com/images?client=...w=1024&bih=562

Originally Posted by HOSS429

rails to me were always VW bugs with the bodys removed and a roll cage added

Thought that was a VW dune buggy?? To me a "rail" is a full blown dragster, long and lean, big engine, fueler class ideally.

Originally Posted by rspears

To me a "rail" is a full blown dragster,

that also .. just a matter of which came first

I can see where anything automotive that runs and drives with only the barest of essentials could be called a rail job and I guess a different picture flashes through different minds when it comes up. What flashed through my mind was a dragster with rails made from the wing struts off a PBY (shortly after WWII).

Alex....I'd like engineer's profession for 200 please .

IIRC, the earliest dragsters usually used frame rails with narrowed crossmembers and were thus known as "rail jobs." The name remained even when the frame rails were replaced with tubular frames. VW "rails" came much later.

Maybe some confusion also came from the term "sand rail"... which surfaced years after the dragster terminology. The VWs would naturally be linked to that.

I'm doing this from memory, sso cut me some slack.
In 59 or 60 Don Kraft stripped everything unecessary from a lakes car and ran it at the Santa Anna strip and turned about 110. His competetors called it a rail job and purpose built dragsters were called rails for years till the advent of the long wheelbase cars when they became slingshots. Personally, I still call them rails.

I guess we should know what his car is.

He said a "Volve bug". Is that a Volvo?... or a Volkswagen?