Steel hoods on Hertz cars

[alexgt350h]

Is there any Shelby documentation on the use of steel hoods on the 66's? Specifically on the 4-speeds?
Or a time frame on when they might of been used?

[Road Reptile]

Hi Alex,
The main man for this is Howard Pardee. The book by Chuck Cantwell mentions they were a real production headache for several reasons, and they cost more than they saved. They sold the surplus through the parts dept at year end. Woulda shoulda coulda bought all of them if we only knew....
R.R.

[JFriend]

The tale I heard (take this with a grain of salt) is SA wanted to go with fiberglass hoods, but they has a lot of fitment issues. As they tried to sort that fitment issues out they used steel hoods as needed, so there was no real pattern in production numbers as to which cars got steel and which get fiberglass. FWIW 687 (a GT350H) came with a steel hood.

[hertzz350]

#689 had a steel hood

[J_Speegle]

There is no records as to which cars got which hoods in 66 as has been mentioned. Also over the years a fair number of original hoods have been replaced by the hoods that were put in the body panel replacement system that were installed cars due to things like accidents. Determining of a hood could be original to a specific car takes a little bit of investigation and even then you can't be certain all the time and that is not even considering the reproductions out there. Subject has come up on this site and others many times

Examples of a couple

https://www.saac.com/forum/index.php?topic=25070.msg186143#msg186143

https://www.saac.com/forum/index.php?topic=15223.msg124540#msg124540

[alexgt350h]

Has any paperwork at all been found on steel hoods? How many were made? When they were made?

[Bob Gaines]

Has any paperwork at all been found on steel hoods? How many were made? When they were made?

If there is any paperwork Howard would most likely have it.

[computerworks]

If there is any paperwork Howard would most likely have it.

That's for sure....

About 30 years ago, SAAC found a document that put the number of all steel hoods shipped from Pigeon Manufacturing to Ford's San Jose, CA assembly plant at 780.

Pigeon coated the hoods with some sort of a oil to prevent rust during shipment.

San Jose normally didn't normally have this oil on regular Mustang hoods when they were sent from the Ford stamping plant, so San Jose didn't do anything to remove the oil before they painted the hoods.

When the cars were received at Shelby American the paint wasn't adhering to the hoods and Shelby American had to strip and repaint the hoods on these cars.

Shelby told San Jose not to install any more steel hoods and the earlier fiberglass/steel frame hoods were then installed by Ford.

The unknown number of remaining all steel hoods were shipped to Shelby American and Shelby sold them through their parts department and eventually through a fire sale that cleared out all the take-off parts that had accumulated at LAX. What wasn't sold was sold as scrap.

Owners have reported that about 318 '66s have all steel hoods when the cars were sold. The lowest serial numbered car with a steel hood is 6S257 and the highest serial number is 6S2377.

I was curious because 6S517 (Hertz) has a steel hood....so I reached out to Howard.

I might point out that if anyone has a doubt about becoming a SAAC member... consider the benefits of a staff, like Howard and our Registrars, that hunt down, harvest, store and curate such data as this... all made possible by your membership.