SAAC Forum

Mongo, I ordered that book from the Ebay link you sent. I see that CJ Pony has it for 12.50 but the postage was $6. The Ebay cost was 15.60 with free shipping.

My tilt away steering wheel wasn't working when I got the car, I was fine without it. Last summer my garage put on a new Power booster and master cylinder. When I picked the car up they had loosened the steering wheel. When we tightened it back up the steering wheel now has a "loose" feeling, in fact it moves about half an inch. Works ok but I want to figure out how to tighten it to eliminate this slack. Plus while I am at it I might as well see if I can get the tilt away to work.

Ok Guys, I took your advice and got a bottle of finger nail polish remover. Sure enough that black paint came off and there was chrome underneath. If someone else does this be forewarned it's a messy job. And it dissolved my rubber gloves.  I was so excited by the revealing of the chrome underneath I took one of the frames in to show my wife. She wasn't impressed. This is the woman that calls my GT 350 "environmentally unfriendly." (I add octane booster to the tank and the exhaust smells funny.) She also calls it loud and obnoxious. Yes it is, on purpose, Dear. I don't take her to car shows with me.
Love the all chrome frames it has now.

I am looking for a schematic for the tilt away steering. Anyone have an idea where to find some basic info on what makes this work (or not work as the case may be.)

Do what I did if you want to put John's sketches on your wall. Took it to a UPS store, had it blown up and printed. Cost more to put it in a frame than to have it printed.
Dennis

Thanks Guys for the conversation. Lots of good info. I see that I am on point with the questions I was asking.
I will keep you posted as to my progress.

Very Cool. Congratulations on your GT350. Well you know for sure that GT350 is not a garage queen.

Question for you guys. My new 2017 GT 6 speed has me spoiled when it comes to RPM at highway speed. Some of the members of my local SAAC club tell me they have swapped out their TopLoaders with a T5. I have been doing some reading which makes me ask some questions. I know there are different models of the T5 and I would want to use the Z series. Have those of you that have made this swap had any issues with that transmission? I just street drive my GT350. Dyno'd at 260 HP at the rear wheels. Might bump that up eventually.
The other question I have is about that first gear in the T5. My car has a 3.89 rear. There is a big difference in the 1st gear in my TopLoader compared to the T5. Does that make first pretty worthless? Can I swap out to a higher 1st gear? Has anyone done that? Can you do that? Is there a smaller ratio gear available? The close ratio Toploader comes with a 2.32 gear. The T5 gear is 2.95.
The last question concerns the different pieces needed for this swap. CJ Pony offers a pretty broad kit that seems to cover all that is needed including a shorter drive shaft. Is that the way to go? Anyone know which T5 CJ offers?
thanks
Dennis

John was into cars. He went to that LA school to learn automotive design. But I did NOT get the impression that he was a car guy like we might define ourselves today. I am sure he did drive the Mustangs but the only driving story he told me was about that one time in the Cobra. No he didn't say anything about going to races. Worse, once he left AO Smith he was all but away from the Shelby Mustang world. Sadly he missed all those years as they grew in value and appreciation. I got the impression that the car show he ran into me was the FIRST time he had attended a show looking for the cars he help design. I really don't think he believed any of his cars still survived. Mustangs were disposable cars. His wife was carrying a bag of his Shelby American stuff. He still had his employee badge from SA. So he obviously was proud of what he did while at SA. He even kept the drawings.

An add in story on the value of our Shelby Mustangs that has little to do with John. I found my 68 GT350 in January 1982. I knew what a Shelby Mustang was but it was nothing more than a special Mustang to me at that time. The prior owner had been trying to sell the car for a year or more. No one would give him the $6000 he was asking for it. True, the car was not in great shape. When I ran across it, some guy out of Toledo OH was going to buy it for $3000 if he couldn't sell it for more than that. I got his wife to sell it to me for $3500. But my wife couldn't believe I paid that much for a car in such poor shape. It's all relative, right? It wasn't that bad. Well maybe it was pretty rough but it was worth saving. I got it running then restored within that first year. When I took it to car shows, few people had any idea what it was. It looked like a Mustang sort of but the word Mustang was no where on it. I had great conversations trying to explain to the uninitiated what a Shelby Mustang was. It wasn't until Gone in 60 Seconds came out that Shelby Mustang values exploded. But that is more current history. During those early years, a handful of people made offers to buy it from me at shows. But those offers were few and far between. Few people had a clue about it's history. To the rest it was a nice, red Mustang.

John told me that he really enjoyed working for SA. Had some great stories about being there. Said he was real surprised when SA offered him the job over all the other applicants. Per John the key thing he had going for him was his engineering education plus the design school. But as he said it surprised him to be offered the job as his English was pretty poor.

He said that he had a lot of flexibility in what he wanted to do with the 68 cars but had to have everything blessed by Carroll or others. And he had to keep the costs of the mods down. But he did have access to off the shelf Ford parts.

He told me about his first time driving a Cobra. Said he needed to run an errand and someone tossed him the keys for one of the Cobras. John told me he knew what the Cobra was but had no idea what he was going to be driving until he took off in it.

I'd say John knew it was a pretty cool job but didn't appreciate what part he played in Shelby and automotive history while he was there. He later had a better appreciation of the part he played.

thanks for pointing out those SAAC articles on John. Some of the info in those articles is a bit different than what John told me.
SAAC should have identified those Shelby Mustangs in the pictures of John. The red 68 is mine. The Black one is Dan Mattila's.
I took a bunch of pictures and gave John copies of all of them and here are two of those pictures.
John was a pretty great guy. Fun and interesting to talk to.
In his wife's restaurant he had a Shelby American display on the wall when you walked into the small lobby.
Probably didn't mean much to the town's folk in Delano MN.
He was fighting cancer when I first met him. Sad to hear he died.
The local Star Tribune newspaper ran a big obit for him.
A celebrity among us.... John was part of automotive history.

Interesting. I did not know that about those ten spoke wheels. My car came with the steel rims and hubcaps. I bought the ten spoke from Branda back in 83 thinking they were NOS for the 68 model. And yes ONE of the rims rubbed the KH discs. We had to ground off part of the wheel to stop the rubbing. The Wilwood 4 piston are actually more compact than that KH single piston so there is plenty of clearance with the Wilwood kit.
Good to know.
I all but gave away those steel rims and hubcaps. Who would have known how valuable they would become years later?
thanks for the info Bob

Thanks Bob. I have no reason to think my sway bar needs replacing, but after realizing what 50 years of stress did to those front coils and rear leaf springs, made me wonder.

Thanks Guys. On to another project on my baby. Yes, seeing that GT500 next to my car with the full chrome frames motivated me to find out how to do this. Sounds pretty simple. Now if I can sneak my wife's fingernail polish remover out to my garage.

John told me he came to SA in the middle of the design of the 67's and had his hand on that year, then had free hand on the 68. He did say one criteria he had was any mods he wanted should be cheap and he could use anything from the Ford inventory, thus the 65 T-Bird taillights on the 68.