The J now employs a 700 R-4 trans, but it still uses its original rear end, which came out of a ’56 Ford station wagon, a Dana 44 with 19-spline axles but with an early ‘70s locker rear that came out of an International Scout. Modern touches include Weld Pro Star wheels with Mickey Thompson slicks. Tim will tear it apart and re-sand it and paint it yellow over the coming winter. The paint on it now is 33 years old.

It can run 12-seconds in the quarter-mile, mid 7s in the eighth. Nostalgia races are in store, and probably some local Georgia bracket races.

More Tommy McCray touches: The Henry’s hot rod steering wheel is mounted on backwards. His best friend, a machinist who built the headers for it, said that he could cut the steering column down and put the wheel on the right way. Dad Tommy had a ready fix. He said to hell with it, I’ll put it on upside down just to make it clear my chest.

Then there are the headers, which exit out of the heads into a collector that go through a hole in the front fenders above the front tire. “I’ve never seen another like them. Dad used to screw with his opponent on the starting line. He’d clear the engine out and the exhaust would blow right in their ears when they were trying to concentrate on cutting a good light,” Tim McCray said.

And the Henry J tradition will continue in the McCray family. Tim has two more Js at home that he’ll make into one true drag car, “a gasser like the old days but with something off the wall engine-wise, like say a Buick, Olds, Pontiac or Cadillac. I’ll make some serious horsepower, set the engine way back with a straight axle and skinnies on the front and a Moon tank in the grille. I want something I can take to the track and thrash on and if I tear it up, it won’t hurt my feelings. But it would break my heart if I were to crash his Henry J.”