The Shelby American (Fall 2021)

oxygen. And he was giving me infor- mation that in some ways I could check, and it was all very accurate. It was apparent to me in speaking with him that he was an incredibly intelli- gent person who remembered things from the 1960s that I knew to be true. Everything he pulled out of his garage that was Shelby-specific was correct for that application. Most of the parts in his garage were throw-away stuff but he kept it because that’s the kind of person he was. He rebuilt the com- puters himself, and rebuilt the fuel pump while I was out there. He made everything work, and that was proba- bly the most incredible part of the whole thing. It probably would have went a lot faster if I had remembered what the firing order for a 351 Wind- sor was [ Laughs ]. Other than that, things went incredibly smoothly. I was really fortunate to have made the con- nection when I did. I need to give Phil Murphy some credit for that because maybe he feels a little left behind when the project started to gain mo- mentum, but that’s the way things worked out. SAAC: When did David Long pass away? DISHER: November 19, 2014. SAAC: And then #101 came along. DISHER: I had been working of #56 when #101 came up on eBay. I recog- nized it as a factory engineering car and when I looked it up it had been an EFI car. At the time Jose Amario was looking for something to buy and I told him that this car came up on eBay sev- eral weeks ago and nobody bought it. “ I think it’s a valuable car. ” I told him, “ because it’s a factory engineering car. ” I understand that not everyone appreciates the engineering cars like I do. They’re a little strange and a little weird and to a lot of guys there’s not much difference between them and production cars. But I think they’re cool cars. He said, “ Can you recreate the EFI system? ” And I said, “ There is a problem with that, because there just are no parts. I have a blueprint for everything, I have a drawing for every- thing. I have all the specs, but I do not have the hardware .” He said, “ If we could overcome that problem would you restore the car? ” And I said, “ Yeah, absolutely. ” And he said he would help me come up with these parts. I’m not really sure if he knew what he was getting himself into but I was all in. It required me to take apart my own car, ‘69 #1088, because some of the EFI parts were, basically, the only ones left in the world. We had to have each part individually made. I would give him a part and the corresponding blueprint and he would come back to me with a contact person who would reproduce the part. So I was able to get every part we needed to recreate the fuel in- jection system for his car. SAAC: When these parts were repro- duced, did you only have one of each made or did you have a few made? DISHER: I always had a couple extra made, and I ended up with enough to build four or five complete systems. I really wanted to use those parts for original EFI cars because otherwise you got into selling individual parts and liability issues. Initially Jose had talked about becoming a partner but I said I’d just pay for the parts. But he was getting stuff made through his contacts, and he had very good con- tacts. He was, at the time I met him, one of the executive vice presidents at McDonalds (not the place under the The SHELBY AMERICAN Green Hornet – the other Conelec car. Disher assisted with the installation of the Conelec Electric Fuel Injection. Fall 2021 39