SAAC Forum

c9oz. 69 torino cobra snakes go on tailpanel and sides of torino. I bought a 69 torino cobra from original owner back in the 80s.

Steering column signal horn wiring harness had a sleeve that held all the wires together routing down the bottom steering  column partrly covered with that metal flat shield that attaches to bottom of column. Also another wireing  covering behind dash cluster holding wires together.

originals are dark greyish face  and repos are black face and 2 versions of repo has been made over the years and the first repo is better than the last repo.

Vinman da man

I am cleaning  all my 69 shelby wheels now soaking entire wheel in gallons of evaporust in a round cattle feeder bucket that the wheel fits perfectly inside of so it can be done with 4 gallons evaporust. Its best to clean them by hand first before evaporust bath but this soaking gets into all the hard to reach areas to really clean good but it dont help much on the centers mainly the steel rim.  I have 2 glue in wheels now cleaned with the 7-Lx15  3.5t  stamped on rear outside of rim visable when tire is mounted and no stamped TOPY  5 68  inside top of rim not seen when tire is mounted.  So there are 2 versions of the rims on how they were id stamped and i dont  see any differences in the rims so i am thinking the later 7-Lx15 3.5t stamped rims were a later service replacements and they were ink stamped dated inside rim and may have showed up on very late 69 shelbys but not sure probly a service replacement wheel. I havent seen a TOPY stamped rim with a 69 stamped date yet only 68 dates. So has anybody seen a 69 dated TOPY rim.

originally a D3TF-EA   5A21 changed to C7AF-AA  5B24  one month later date and autolite distributors were gone in 71 so no more around and changed to motorcraft if done by ford  in 75 but if done by reman company it may have been  done in 85.  I have had many ford reman boxed parts over the years water pumps fuel pumps starters altenators carbs dist etc even reman voltage regulators.

That is most likely a reman (remanufactured) distributor sold thru service department in a reman box in 1975 probly fred jones or another reman business.  Nobody would restamp a common distributor like that just to resell and its old used covered with grease and crud. Restamps were done on rare valuable HP distributors in recent years .  The stamps on that distributor were done on a machine look at how straight lined up and spacing is perfect. The restamps (for resell  profit anyway) were hand stamped 1 # or letter at a time and not all the same depth and uniform spacing. That distributor was machined down around the ID stamped area  before restamping see how smooth it is not the normal cast look and the EA was crossed out with angled lines and  AA  restamped next to the old EA enginneering #. Nobody  hand restamps a common 70s motorcraft  2 V distributor that has little value for cars of no collector value.  The FOMOCO and AUTOLITE distributors get restamped for valuable collector cars. AER was another authorized ford remanufacturing company in texas and fred jones in oklahoma city OK that started back in the 40s or so.

I have and had several 69 shelbys with both wheels on them and back in the mid 80s i took the wheels off low mile purple car to change tires and 1 side they were riveted and the other  side glued. This could have something to do with aosmith assembly line if wheels and tires were on both sides of assembly line and they didnt care about keeping them matched all 4 the same depending on how the inventory was stored 2 wheels were installed on left side of assemby line and 2 wheels installed on right side done by 2 different workers kinda like we see kelsey hayes on 1 side and bendix on the other etc just an example. Years ago at portland swap meet i came across 4 69 shelby wheels with red paint on the backside and a very early date on rim  and remember something was different about the design so thinking they were maybe prototype i called billups and said they would be good on the  early black gt500 vert recently found in detroit so i went back to buy them and they dissappered or were sold after i looked at them but i did take photos of them but dont know where they are now but something was different on them wheels that i never seen before. Remember the new 15x7'' 69 shelby rim was the first wheel to be used with new F-60-15 polyglas gt tires before the 69 boss 429  15x7''magnums that started later in jan 69. These shelby rims are dated so thats one way to tell when the rivet design started. The lugnut hole depth problem is what i think the recall was mostly about as i started watching the lug nut hole depth on these wheels after the  recall letter was found and have seen several machineing hole depths that vary some much deeper cut than others so its more of a machineing problem than the wheel inself in most cases anyway. The riveted wheel we took apart had glued in center also but he glue wasnt all the way around the rim as there was a 4'' area that had no glue between the rim and center but being glued and riveted it was a stronger design. 

Finnally foundthe exact stud after 5 attemps were wrong as its an odd size and took 6 weeks to locate the correct size and were shipped from across the pond. These studs are pressed in and out and have locking teeth (that u cant seee once installed)  and i bought a quanity as many of these studs are missing or twisted off so i got extras to sell   so how many 69-70 shelby owners are needing them selling in pairs of 2 it takes to fix 1  69 shelby gravel guard?

just talked to the guy making seals and one is done buy color is wrong so need to get correct color foam.

i sent one to a guy to have made but have no info yet as to when they will be done.

Second place was told .

Tom Kotter and Whayne Carini judged the barn finds . Hunt Palmerball  ( OO   6000 mi 67 blue gt350 KY ) would know he called me telling me about the shelby judging there.

Nate and kelsey go with matt and jen to all automotive events so nate has all his contact info as they just came back from amilia island concours.

The idler arm was assembled wrong as the arm off the shaft is pointing downward should be pointing upward so that makes the draglink hang down on rh side as it should be level. Have seen these idler arms assembled wrong before on rebuilt idlers but this arm looks aftermarket so the company making them either made a mistake or someone took it apart and assembled it wrong. Just sayin because the rh  steering and rh tierods will be in a bind.