diff --git a/src/http.cc b/src/http.cc
index 0ea0909afa..945d98856b 100644
--- a/src/http.cc
+++ b/src/http.cc
@@ -192,12 +192,7 @@ HTTPConnection::on_body (http_parser *parser, const char *buf, size_t len)
   // TODO each message should have their encoding. 
   // don't look at the conneciton for encoding
 
-  if (connection->encoding_ == UTF8) {
-    // utf8 encoding
-    Handle<String> chunk = String::New((const char*)buf, len);
-    argv[0] = chunk;
-
-  } else {
+  if (connection->encoding_ == RAW) {
     // raw encoding
     Local<Array> array = Array::New(len);
     for (size_t i = 0; i < len; i++) {
@@ -205,6 +200,11 @@ HTTPConnection::on_body (http_parser *parser, const char *buf, size_t len)
       array->Set(Integer::New(i), Integer::New(val));
     }
     argv[0] = array;
+
+  } else {
+    // utf8 or ascii encoding
+    Handle<String> chunk = String::New((const char*)buf, len);
+    argv[0] = chunk;
   }
 
   connection->Emit("body", 1, argv);
diff --git a/test/mjsunit/test-http.js b/test/mjsunit/test-http.js
index 83c8a36140..94a1905303 100644
--- a/test/mjsunit/test-http.js
+++ b/test/mjsunit/test-http.js
@@ -34,7 +34,7 @@ function onLoad () {
   req.finish(function (res) {
     assertEquals(200, res.statusCode);
     responses_recvd += 1;
-    res.setBodyEncoding("utf8");
+    res.setBodyEncoding("ascii");
     res.addListener("body", function (chunk) { body0 += chunk; });
     node.debug("Got /hello response");
   });