Quote:
Originally Posted by Bernica
"Far more leeway", yes. These cars were not built in an assembly plant in Detroit. These were basically custom built hot rods and race cars.
I have said it before...If you could line up 30 S/C cars every one would have something different about them, even as they rolled out of the SAI shop in '65 and '66. If I am wrong, I am sure someone will correct me.  |
Ned made the basic point well, I will just add that there were some variations, but they tended to follow typical rational related to any manufacturing operation. For example, on a small end of the scale my 427 street car had one throttle linkage rod end that was a different manufacturer from the rest, as the parts purchasing person obviously bought some from a different supplier that was functionally equivalent and they were mixed in together.
One style of steering wheel center cap was seen exclusively on early big block street cars and then within a range of chassis numbers you see those alternating with a new black style, then late production had pretty much exclusively that new style. The chassis number range where it could have been either style was obviously where the new ones were mixed in the box with whatever remained of the old ones.
Speedo reversers were used on all the early cars because when Ford engineers modified the parts list of the Galaxy toploader to make the Cobra transmission, they erroneously left the Galaxy speedo drive gear on the output shaft when they went to the shorter tail housing that had the speedo cable coming out on the opposite side. Shelby's people told AC about the issue early on and AC had Smiths develop the counterclockwise speedo to eliminate the reverser. The reverser is then accordingly absent on some cars in the middle of production with the counterclockwise speedo. Then Ford obviously caught on to their mistake and started putting the Mustang speedo drive gear in the Cobra transmissions, which forced Shelby American to put reversers back on the cars in late production.
The sand cast valve covers mentioned on 3047 were used on most of the 32XX series cars, but you will find a few early 32XX cars that did not have then because the sand cast ones were not available yet.
In some situations the buyer ordered something different that may have been done at Shelby American, but that was usually noted on the invoice so the customer would pay the extra cost. There are countless stories on variations, but the common theme is there is systematic rational for what went on that was tied to production time periods, not just random build-em as the assembly line guy wanted.