A Tribute to Carroll Shelby

                                                         

                                                              www.carrollshelby.com

LEGENDARY ENTREPRENEUR CARROLL SHELBY PASSES AWAY

LOS ANGELES - May 11, 2012 - Carroll Shelby International, Inc., (OTC: CSBI.PK) announced today that

Carroll Hall Shelby, a man whose vision for performance transformed the automobile industry, has died

at age 89. Mr. Shelby passed away yesterday at Baylor Hospital in Dallas. The cause of death was not

disclosed.

Born on Jan. 11, 1923, Carroll Shelby was one of America’s greatest success stories. Championship-winning

racecar driver, “flying sergeant” wartime pilot, philanthropist, entrepreneur, car manufacturer and

racing team owner, he embodied the ingenuity, tenacity and grit to overcome any obstacle. He is perhaps

the only person to have worked at a visible level with all three major American automobile manufacturers.

Carroll Shelby founded Carroll Shelby International, a publicly held corporation involved in many industries.

His licensing arm has agreements with industry giants, such as Mattel, Sony, Ford Motor Company

and Electronic Arts. His car company, Shelby American, has a thriving parts business as well as a line

of muscle cars including the Shelby GT500 Super Snake, Shelby GT350 and Shelby GTS. The Las Vegasbased

company also manufactures a limited number of the 1960s Shelby 289 “street,” 289 FIA, 427 S/C

and Daytona Coupe Cobras.

Shelby considered his greatest achievement to be the establishment of the Carroll Shelby Foundation(tm).

Created in 1992 while Shelby was waiting for a heart transplant, the charity is dedicated to providing medical

assistance for those in need, including children, educational opportunities for young people through

automotive and other training programs and benefitting the Carroll Shelby Automotive Foundation.

Shelby remained active in the management of each of his companies and the Foundation until his death,

even though he endured both heart and kidney transplants in the last two decades of his life.

“We are all deeply saddened, and feel a tremendous sense of loss for Carroll’s family, ourselves and the

entire automotive industry,” said Joe Conway, president of Carroll Shelby International, Inc. and board

member. “There has been no one like Carroll Shelby and never will be. However, we promised Carroll we

would carry on, and he put the team, the products and the vision in place to do just that.”

Shelby is survived by his three children Patrick, Michael and Sharon, his sister Anne Shelby Ellison of Fort

Worth and his wife Cleo.

. For more information, visit www.shelbyamerican.com.

Engine painting

After stripping all the blue paint and clean all the oil & grease its time to paint back to original colours which were heat proof black engine block and heat proof ford red paint for the air filter & tappet cover.These colours were under the blue paint when I was stripping off the old engine paint..

Late 1965 Mustangs 6 cylinder motors were painted blue and a lot of these early 6's got the blue paint treatment to make them look like the later model

New water pump and maniflod gets a dark grey manifold heat proof paint and the engine decals on the oil cap & filter and air filter.

Next week back to work on the chassis and under body  and mounting the body onto a car rotisserie.

Windscreen and dash removal

next stage is to remove all the dash parts and the windscreen and clean up the front vent area.

Windscreen frames are in good shape. They still have the factory Vintage Burgandy red paint and it holding out well.

Time to start painting some of that bare metal. The firewall is treated and painted with first coat till I get back to it.

Under the dash these round vent holes normally rust out badly this one has survived very well, so i'll treat them and paint them up with a good coat of paint to help them last for the next 50 plus years.

Inside the vent area there is no signs of rust,

I have stripped off the paint to treat and paint as well.

Wiper motor and arms, note on the close up below the date 11 th june 1965

Heater and vents etc will also need to be cleaned up and painted etc.

Manual peddle assembly removed, will look for an automatic brake peddle to fit into this assembly and keep all the clutch and brake parts for when I locate a manual gearbox at a later date.

Original Radio works well although speaker will have to be replaced as the paperon the speaker cone is perished.

Next week strip and clean up the engine and paint.

More stripping down

 Here we have a rusty front cross member that needs cutting out, These rusted out from the battery acid dripping onto it. The inner fender also needs work.
I managed to get another crossmember of a car in Auckland to replace this part.

 I drilled out all the spot welds and will weld up in the same spots again to keep it looking all original.

Here is the donnor part all stripped of paint and ready to weld back in.

All lines up well should be easy to weld in but to get good access I'll need to remove the motor etc.

So next job is motor out.

Motor and transmisson out.

Here we are motor and transmission removed and heaps of room to weld.Managed to strip all the paint from the firewall and inner fenders at the same time.

Initial strip and evaluate

I started stripping the whole car every bit will be removed and refurbished or replaced, I intend to keep a majority of the parts in this car original unless it is really necessary. If a part needs be replaced, then I'll look for original new or used parts.

First i cut away the sheet metal of those damaged rear guards.

I kept the original back panel as it was not to bad and it will give me some good reference points to line up the rear guards as the chassis rails will have shifted.

The crushed wheel wells were reshaped to help things line up.

Now that the damaged guards are gone I fitted a new guard to see how things line up.

Not bad just a little tweeking here and there at least its not a mile out .

Managed to get a boot lid on Trademe it seems to line square. Also got two sets of wire wheel covers.

Back to stripping it down as I needed to get the damaged drain channels out and repair them.

Looks really naked.

The drain channels were crushed so had to remove them and strip them clean and reshape them.These also hold the boot hinges and the rear panel behind the rear window and in front of the boot lid.

  

It all started in June 2011

Bought this Mustang in June of 2011 from a guy in Hastings who had imported it in from Florida back in 2007.

This was third time lucky,I have had half a dozen other American cars before and had tried twice

earlier to buy a Mustang but the deals had fallen through.

This one had been built 13th July 1965 in Dearborn and came with a 200cubic inch 6 Cylinder and 3 speed manual which had been swapped for an auto back in the States. Apart from the transmission and the colour change it was still very original and in relatively good condition.

The upholstery was the original black trim, most of the panels are in good condition for their age in fact there were lots of original markings from the factory still evident which I have preserved.

Both front and back panels still have the original part number painted on the reverse along with the original inspection date.
After stripping the paint from the radiator panel I found some early production markings etched there.

 

I suppose it was very hot and dry in Florida for most of the time as this car was well preserved, the underneath was coated in what looked like tar from the roads that had melted and had been flicked up while driving around.I had to remove heaps of tar just to get back to the paint, which I was happy to do, as it had prevented rust in a lot of areas.Most of the floor is still original.

See the hunks of tar that came of the inside of the guards.

After chipping away  all this tar I'm left with the original paint that coated the car when it was new. Great to see and preserved in great condition and a lot lighter now should go a lot faster without all that Florida road tar and gravel.

Great floor only a small bit of rust on the passenger side.

That was the good news the bad news was, back in Florida the car was traded in to a car yard called the Corvette shop and all trade ins were kept at the back of the yard. Well one day while it sat at the back of the yard there was a really bad storm and the wall collapsed onto several cars damaging most of them.I was told the Mustang came off lightly.