The Shelby American (Fall 2021)

sure of; how much wrap you’re getting in that rubber when you change gears or when you go on and off track appli- cations, what it’s doing to the gearbox. No one’s really been able to pin that down. It’s some people’s thinking that it might be a disadvantage to have that type of a joint in there because of the adverse effect you could get from the wind-up of the rubber. The only problem that we’ve found in these ex- perimental joints were the lack of lu- brication at the critical points which throw it out away from the ball area, the half-shaft linings, so we’re putting plates in there to retain the lubricant. SMITH: As you indicated the other day, you seem to have taken care of the internal and external aerodynamics and the weight reduction program seems to be well underway and the brake problems seem to be well on their way to being solved. Which brings you full circle back to the gear- box. REMINGTON: As far as the gearbox goes, we do plan to run a five-speed ZF box. SMITH: Beginning with LeMans, probably? REMINGTON: Hopefully, yes, if the box has proven itself by that time. We hope to have one in one of the test cars.We need to do more testing. From there we hope to do some more testing with a car in England. After that we should have a pretty clear picture of what the box will do as far as durabil- ity. SMITH: The various other gearboxes that Ford seems to be working on probably wouldn’t be used in the car this year? REMINGTON: I’m quite sure none of them will be developed enough. The Hewland gearbox is a little too big to go in the present package. It’s awfully tight for the Hewland box. SMITH: At one time [Roy] Lunn said that the four-cam engine would fit in the car. It seems to me that somebody said that it wouldn’t. REMINGTON: There were sill modi- fications for the exhaust pipes planned. In fact, they had it in Eng- land at one time and it was over at Derrington’s getting the pipes put in and the Ford Division said that they need their engine back. But they did seriously have an engine in a car. What their plan was, was to run the exhaust pipes down and run the Weber carburetors at the top. SMITH: They were going to run We- bers rather than fuel injection? REMINGTON: Yes. On the road rac- ing applications mainly because of the vapor-locking and starting problems with the injectors on gasoline it was quite a problem. SMITH: Do you know, yet, when the roadster will run? And if so, what ad- vantages will it have? REMINGTON: Well, actually some- one, at one time – no one seems to admit it or pin it down – said that they wanted two open cars, possibly for Nürburgring and the Targa Florio. And now that they’ve got an open car nobody seems to admit the desire to have it. As it stands now I think what we’ll do is use it for whatever testing we need; if we want to try out a ZF gearbox or we can use it for brake test- ing, possibly a new nose and see what we can do to clean the back end up. SMITH: That one has the old, old nose. REMINGTON: No, that’s the same nose that we’re currently running. The old, old nose is different from the one we have now, the second stage; it’s the one we have on the coupes down here. SMITH: Would you care to comment on the role of Shelby American taking over the car and developing it? REMINGTON: I always felt that with the two big races here, Daytona and Sebring, that we would be in a position to probably better develop the car than they would be in England because of the difference in the tracks between Europe and this country. SMITH: There wasn’t any reluctance on Shelby’s part to take over a project like this that wasn’t really instigated by him? REMINGTON: No, I think Shelby thought that we could definitely im- prove the car and thereby probably help our own image in the eyes of the Ford people. Up to that time it hadn’t been too successful. SMITH: Why was the color of the cars changed? REMINGTON: Carroll wanted to run them under our team colors. SMITH: The British had this flat black front edge. Was that considered any particular advantage to cut down on reflection? REMINGTON: No. None of the driv- ers ever complained about it. The only problem they did complain about was the sun coming in through the glass. To get the proper windshield height to be legal you had to run the glass so The SHELBY AMERICAN Fall 2021 52