The Shelby American (Fall 2021)

ally, what we’re having built for the car, is a similar system which will be more like permanently installed. The weight of it will be substantially re- duced by having instead of a steel crash container, we’re having crash containers made out of fiberglass which will cut the weight by about ten times. This will be a much better idea. As I say, it’s one of these things that some might like to have, but it isn’t by any means essential. If you get in- volved in an accident and you’re un- conscious and trapped in the goddamned car you’re in no position to start working a fire extinguisher. There’s always a chance of mechanical failure. If we could devise some sort of an inertia-controlled system that would only operate in the event of a serious impact, but there again, you still have the possibility of mechanical failure at any time. No one has been more cognizant of safety than I am. I’ve lived this long by paying attention to it. But you get to a point of no re- turn. SMITH: The only two areas left that we haven’t talked about are the brakes and gearbox. MILES: Brakes we’re doing some- thing about. We experimentally fitted the car with ventilated discs. And the ventilated discs we fitted had proved our purpose in regard to tests. Kelsey Hayes was magnificent in testing under simulated racing conditions. The brakes we ran at LeMans after tests showed up absolutely perfectly. Unfortunately, conditions which we operate were not laboratory conditions and the brakes failed in practice. The discs cracked. We’re doing something about this; we’re doing two things. Kelsey-Hayes, who manufactured the discs for us, is coming up with a new disc material that should be substan- tially better. We’re in a very fortunate position because they also manufac- ture gas turbine brakes, and if they can make gas turbine brakes, they can make brake discs for us. We had a problem at Daytona. The vented discs, while they were working, substan- tially improved pad life. Had the vented discs worked we probably would have gone through with no brake pad change at all. SMITH: And as it was? MILES: As it was we only had to change them once in my car and twice in the other one. The vented disc is definitely the way to go. We are going to get a better vented disc, and im- prove the air flow – which we know we can do. We’ve got the air from the air- flow pretty much figured out. In order to improve pad life at the back we’re going to a different type rear caliper which gives us a much bigger pad. Ac- tually what we’re going to do is fit on the caliper off the Cobra, the one we use on the back of the racing Cobra. SMITH: 427 Cobra? MILES: Yes. The 427 Cobra. It’s a three-quarter-inch thick pad... SMITH: As opposed to... MILES: As opposed to a half-inch. SMITH: So that problem, to, seems well in hand. MILES: I wouldn’t say it’s solved; there’s no such thing as a solved prob- lem until you run it and it works. But we think we know the answer. SMITH: So then, as Phil Remington said, this kind of brings you full circle, because the original weakness of the car was in the gearbox. MILES: Well, there again, we’ve made some progress. We’ve dismantled the transmissions after Daytona. SMITH: There have been changes made to the transmission from the time that you received the cars, then? MILES: Yes. The main change we made was to get away from the pres- ent car’s Colotti ring and pinion. A far better ring and pinion was made by Ford and they were much more accu- rate than Colottis and being spiral beveled they reduced the impact load on the transmission and ran much more smoothly and improved the speed life of the transmission. This was the main change and there were some other minor changes made sug- gested by Colotti. SMITH: In the future I suppose the way to go would be with a different gearbox. MILES: We have two possibilities or three possibilities. Colotti has come out with a new box – a five-speed which may be better than the four- speed. We have a couple of those on order but we really unfortunately don’t have time to get one installed and tested before Sebring. But we’ll do some work on them as soon as we can. ZF is building a box for us and Ford Advanced Vehicles in England has three of them and we should get a car very shortly with one in it. It’s an un- The SHELBY AMERICAN Fall 2021 47