The entry was in '67
17 Dubois / Tuerlinckx Claude Dubois (B) Shelby GT350
It did not finish. I want to do a color painting but since my only ref. photos are black and white, I don't know if the number on the side, racing stripes, and driver's names were in black or dark blue? Thanks for any tips....
interview of Dubois here http://www.ponysite.de/sheleur_dubois.htm
I have these two, front 3/4 not the best.
(profile photo: De Josy B. Margherite)
(front 3/4 photo: no credit)
Looks good.
So roof, front hood and rear deck stripe all dark blue
number on side black
Wheels polished metal outer rims. dull grey on spokes
What did the rectangular yellow sign say? Was it on both sides of the car? Maybe promoting a product? Maybe it's a common product sign in France?
Were they allowed to share the Shelby/Ford pits? I've seen one photo where inexplicably it looks like they are parked in the Ferrari pits...
Looks like from your image above that that yellow sign was on both sides of the car. The round disc in front of the number on the
right side of the car had something to do with I think ? body material, for fire fighting services.
Here's a tighter image of that yellow sign, resolution not the best !
There is a 1/43 model of the car, which may help.
Also see https://ponynsnake.com/1965-shelby-gt350r-5r539-24h-le-mans-1967/ (https://ponynsnake.com/1965-shelby-gt350r-5r539-24h-le-mans-1967/)
Here are photos from the model I have - I couldn't get the one from the photo above, which is sold out.
Mine is less detailed, price has been lower, too.
From the rear.
Front. Logos on the aux lamps are the SEV Marchal ones as on the front fenders.
Fly in the ointment: in two pictures I've seen there is a difference in the nose
1)in one picture it is wearing a short American-style license plate at a tilted (sloppily mounted) angle, not seen in other shots
2) in another picture it has little spoilers on each side below the front bottom metal, looking like they were cut in the pit and mounted there. My question is--did it run those during the race? Or were those tried in practice and discarded? This was still the early days for spoilers but not stock Shelby as that body style was already obsolete by '67.
(I am trying to load them but may not succeed as they ae not jpeg images)
Finally in one picture there is a hill behind it with spectators in the background but to those who don't recognize it, it could be anywhere whereas in the one where it's got pits in the background, you know it's LeMans. Wouldn't a racing fan who wants a picture of a racing Shelby at LeMans want a background that say LeMans more certainly?
Trying again on front picture showing undertray spoilers
the picture in reply #8, that is a 1/32 I think ? slot car model photo shopped onto a back ground of the embankments at Le-Mans,
you can see the slot for the guide below the car ::)
As for the spoilers some info here translated from another forum, I have posed the question there, and await a reply.
Here is a photo, it looks as if the spoiler on the right side is hanging down.
Two different kinds of spoilers. in the latest picture the chin spoiler is black and full width so i am [resuming it wore that during the race (or is that picture from practice?) I notice something else--,the windshield wiper appears to be two blades together--something they never would have done in Detroit.
I think what appears to be a full width spoiler in some photos because of shadows is the bar installed for jacking, marked with the
red arrow, image below. As for the wiper it's a double, stronger, tighter to the window for the higher speeds.
(photo: The Henry Ford)
The story from my link above goes ( and I have no idea if correct) that Dubois got the car handed over at the LM test week in 67. To his surprise the car was not new, but Shelby did send a run down two year old racecar with some races under his belt. That is with high probability the photo with spoile and license plate - a Belgian one which looks mounted as an afterthought. Probably to get the car back to Belgium.
They did complain to Shelby about the condition of the car - fortunately he send them free of charge a complete, new mechanical setup in time for LM proper.
Those who are not artists might say "Well. what's the difference between depicting the car as it looked in practice or in the actual race?" but i can defend that line of questioning because the practice at LeMans takes place in April and the actual race in June so the car could change a lot between practice and the race. Once I decide on the angle (probably front 3/4) if there's other cars in the ref. picture I'll try (by entry list) to see if those cars were in the actual race to make sure i'm not showing the car in practice.
Also note diff. between entry list here
https://www.racingsportscars.com/entry/Le_Mans-1967-06-11.html
and finishing list here
https://www.racingsportscars.com/results/Le_Mans-1967-06-11.html
The second list says it was a piston that put them out at 58 laps. Which reminds me of why Enzo Ferrari selected a V12 because with so many cylinders you can be down a few and keep running (which i cna attest to in my own V12 which never ran on more than 10 cylinders when i owned it)
By the way i am impressed with all the digging in this Q & A
Autoworld Belgium,showed a photo of their display of the car were i got the key identifiers like
-lift bar under the radiator (allowing same manual lift bar used in the pits for Cobras)
-Marchal lamps with covers
-yellow sign on side which has team name on top and SHELBY COBRA on the bottom
-the right wheels, metal color
--two windshield wipers together
so in my first try I went with the front 3/4 view but still deciding which background typifies LeMans most, I chose a pit shot from '63 or '64 as ref. I doubt by '67 COBRA still had a sign (by then Ford was promoting Ford GTs) . But I'm aiming for mood which is why I laid in the fog. I've been to the 24 Heures du Mans but decades later. I'll still look for a long view of the course with the famous Michelin (or is it Dunlop?) tire looming over the cars. By the time I find it,
I'll know more how the car looked in the race at LeMans in '67 (not counting how it looked in practice)?
Three other questions--the passenger side of the grille seems to have a piece of plexiglass blocking part of it off?
On the drivers side there is some circular metal bracket on the hood, like what holds a fire extinguisher extinguisher, what is that?
On what another reader said is a transverse rod below the grille for quick jacking, there seems to be a soda pop-sized can over the rod on the passenger side? What is that? I can't imagine the bar had any hydraulic function
Thanks for the observant interpretations,
Is it possible the LeMans GT350 had a small racing windscreen, ,tbe flip=up type like on an MG-TC, a couple feet down the hood from the windshield? That's the only explanation i can see for metal brackets on the hood driver's side. My theory is if the windshield broke that would still allow the driver some protection. But the hole in my theory is the brackets I think I see are only few inches apart and wouldn't offer much protection. still, Dubois had raced at LeMans at least six times before so he might have wanted backup since he might have broken a windshield previously (Bondurant once told me he went into the gravel on purpose to shatter someone's windshield that was hounding him on a track) (Hey, shit happens)
The model car found on a French slot car website seem to have the wrong grille -a mesh rather than horizontal bars--so I don't think the model is very representative of the way the Dubois Shelby GT350 looked at LeMans in '67. Why go to all the trouble to make a model and have something big like the grille be wrong?
Its probably been repurposed
Maybe the extra bits of metal on the hood is just a second set of hood pins. That's because in some kinds of racing they don't bother with having a hood with hinges with little springs to hold it up, they just have four pins poking through the hood and you lift the whole hood off and park it on the roof so you have full access to the engine compartment So now I'll have to find a shot of that car in the pits to see if the hood (bonnet in Brit-speak) is like in the street car or had to be detached and lifted off to service the engine.
Photos of the GT350 of Claude Dubois Le mans 1967 ;)
THE SECOND PICTURE , IN MOTION, SHOWS THE SMA; HORIZONTAL CHIN SPOILERS, AND THE SOUP CAN SHAPED OBJECT OVER THE TUBULAR BAR UNDER THE RADIATOR, WAS THIS TAKEN DURING THE RACE OR IN APRIL PRACTICE?
Quote from: joephil on January 09, 2023, 12:17:43 PM
Photos of the GT350 of Claude Dubois Le mans 1967 ;)
First time I can recall seeing a GT350 with the dual wiper arms.
Were those used before...or am I forgetting something I've probably seen numerous times (possible.)
Dual wiper arms were used on the GT40 as this Superformance mk.II shows
The original use was on airliners. at least one Shelby man (Ritchie Ginther early on) came from the aircraft factories. I never noticed them on mass produced GT-350s
but an ad on ebay claims they were avaiabje. here's the ad copy:
BRANDA PERFORMANCE INC.
SHELBY & MUSTANG PARTS
*** PRESENTS ***
1964 1/2 - 1966 MUSTANG
(FITS ALL MODELS & ALL BODIES)
&
1965 - 1966 SHELBY GT350
ORIGINAL / USED
TRICO WINDSHIELD WIPER ARMS
1-PAIR
2 NICE ORIGINAL / USED & USABLE FORD / TRICO
WIPER ARMS: 64 1/2-66 MUSTANG & 65-66 SHELBY
TRICO WINDSHIELD WIPER ARMS
MADE by TRICO for FORD MO.
Found more pictures of '65 R model at LeMans in '67 and
came to more conclusions (what's your opinion?)
-front separate chin spoilers were only used in practice in April
--the metal tube running across the front bottom (for jacking up car) did not have the soup can-sized object on the passenger side all the time, maybe not during the race
-the bonnet/hood had the hinges and springs to lift it a la American style so still leaves a mystery was the second set of pieces of metal (halfway between windscreen and nose) are
-rear window trim was black and not chrome or is that black racer tape?
-who dat bozo in the pits huggin' every girl wot walks by?
The car pictures didn't load...except for this
More pictures of the '65 Shelby running LeMans in '67.Still can't figure out which ones were shot during the race. Seems like the white chin spoilers are smaller in some pictures than in others
Any opinions appreciated? (Painting done but I can go back and paint in the spoilers once sure it wore them during the race)
Wally, read my interview in the first post again for the sequence of mods. You need to decide, if you want to paint it as raced in round 1, during the stop or one of the following hours. I am not sure, if any artist does a composition this way, typically one takes one race pic with facts as raced in this moment with the exact background to be factual correct. Composing theories makes it opinion based. Most of the internet is today opinion-based, rather than realistic or factual. Maybe artwork has changed as well?Just my thoughts😉
Claude let put the second set of hood pins on, because the hood bulged upwards during April testing at high speeds, it was already slightly out of shape, when it arrived.
Thanks for your research, TransAm Ed. I agree on the hood pins, the second set has lengthy wires going from the hood to where it's held down outside the hood. The hood did bulge badly even after the pins were installed.
I would prefer and did in my first painting, to depict the car as it looked during a certain point of time; preferably at the start of the race when it wouldn't have any battle damage yet. There is another school of thought that likes to depict the car after damage when it's still carrying on valiantly despite its wound (like the GT mk.IV which had its whole rear body fall off and it was taped in place in the pits). I'll do the rear 3/4 next, out on the track, in traffic.
I saw Steve Beck, the Shelby expert, at the Petersen Museum show and showed him the painting He said the car went out with a failed transmission. I thought it was a bad piston Anybody know?
The website Racing Sports cars was my reference.
https://www.racingsportscars.com/results/Le_Mans-1967-06-11.html
Still if I were a GT350 owner I'd be proud it posted more laps than a GT40 or V12 Ferrari further down the list of cars that DNF'd.
14 Piper / Thompson Mirage M1 Ford J. W. Automotive Engineering 59 Broken inlet valve P+5.0
17 Dubois / Tuerlinckx Shelby GT350 Claude Dubois 58 Piston GT5.0
44 Preston / Wagstaff Lotus 47 Ford Team Elite 42 Overheating P1.6