The Shelby American (Fall 2021)

When Steve Smith visited Shelby American in March, 1965 to get some background for his Car and Driver GT40 article he also spoke with Phil Remington. SMITH: I’m trying to wrap this thing up now. Could you briefly, verbally, go over what we were talking about the other day, the changes that have been made to the car since Shelby American took it over. REMINGTON: We took the dry sump system off completely and went back to a shallow pan wet sump. Opened up the radiator outlet area, increased the area of the ducting by removing the oil tank which enabled us to do that. We reworked the cross brace ducts, the inlet area, to get more efficient cooling to the front brakes. The rear side ducts were split off, the upper portions going to the engine oil cooler and the gearbox cooler. The lower portion of the split went to blow cool air on the exhaust system. We increased the lou- vered area on top of the body behind the rear window. SMITH: Was that there before? REMINGTON: It had a very small louvered panel in there but the lou- vers weren’t effective, so we increased that. SMITH: Does that let the air in or out? REMINGTON: That lets it out of the engine compartment. It’s a low-pres- sure area coming off the top and it lets warm air out of the engine compart- ment.We put the oil coolers at the rear of the car. Those are ducted to the side ducts on the car. The top ducts, there again, were split off, the aft portion of the duct feeding air from each side to the carburetor area. The outer portion of each duct feeds the rear brake ducts. SMITH: These were the outside ducts? REMINGTON: Yes, that were origi- nally all for the carburetors but we split those off and ran part to the car- buretors and part to the rear brake ducts. The rear panel that was lou- vered before, we increased the area there, in fact we just cut holes in there because now we have air moving through the engine compartment and it helps evacuate it with these holes. Before it was just stagnant in that area without the air being forced into the engine compartment. SMITH: And the wheels? REMINGTON: We’ve gone from six- inch fronts and eight-inch rears to eight-inch fronts and nine-and-a-half rears, changing from the wire wheels to the magnesium cast wheels. SMITH: Which also necessitated widening the body. REMINGTON: Right. We had to widen the rear body section and in- crease the spare tire area and move the fuel tank area back to get clear- ance for the front wheels. Do some re- work on the paneling in that area. SMITH: What will happen to the car within, say, the next year? REMINGTON: We plan to do develop- ment mainly on brakes. Use ventilated discs if softer material can be obtained and durability is not effected by crack- ing and other problems we’ve had. We want to increase the horsepower, pos- sibly by going to a 325 cubic-inch en- gine with other engine modifications. SMITH: People have mentioned the aluminum heads may be made up for the engine. Has anyone designed them or decided upon them? REMINGTON: Not a bit, no. There are two different designs we’re work- ing on there, one from England and one from Italy. SMITH: On the heads? REMINGTON: Yes. SMITH: I asked Ken this and I don’t know that he knew. Do either one of them use the staggered valves kind of concept that, I guess you could say, Chevy has pioneered? REMINGTON: No. They’re on the same centerline. SMITH: And use rocker shafts? REMINGTON: Yes, shafts rather than bathtub rockers. But the coring will be quite a bit different on both ap- plications. SMITH: Will the valve area be in- creased? REMINGTON: Valve area will be in- creased somewhat but not much be- cause of the restriction on the bore diameters. If you get too big you start masking off the valves. But the bore, itself, will be the equivalent of the push rod engines. SMITH: Do you feel that within, say, the next year an engine of this type is sufficient to keep ahead of the Fer- raris? REMINGTON: Hopefully so, but you never know what Ferrari is going to come up with. There are other engines in the offing, not out-and-out racing engines, but nothing has been final- ized as of now. SMITH: The suspension seems to the one fact that is pretty well set. REMINGTON: We’ve gone to the solid-type joints rather than the Meta- lastic joint on the half-shaft. Appar- ently that’s pretty successful. SMITH: Is that purely a durability question? REMINGTON: Yes, but also there are some areas that no ones’s really too The SHELBY AMERICAN Fall 2021 51