Actually Chevrolet was Shelby's first choice. They were on board for a few hot minutes in the late 50's. They gave him three Vettes to play with and here is what he came up with: Yep there is a 283 powered c1 Vette under that Italian body work from 1959. Ed Cole put the kabash on the whole plan saying the last thing Chevy wanted was to produce competition for their own sports car etc. Then you know the rest of Shelby's story... Sent from my SM-G970U using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
Randall, Ford put power steering on those trucks, one style with a bunch of hoses, stay away from them! Those were around 67 or so, by the seventies they had an integral steering box. If you could score one of those it would solve a lot of your backwards steering problems. Those cab overs can be tricky to work with! I know! I build this, years ago! Bones
Very cool Bones. Yes I am finding out quickly by tool box is not exactly filled with the right stuff for a truck like this...LOL. We started this weekend on the disk brake front end from the Bluebird chassis. I about got a hernia just trying to get the lug nuts off the crazy thing! But we finally broke them all loose and got our first real look at the rotors and calipers etc. They are pretty rusty but there is a lot of meat on them. After getting them off and cleaned up, I took them over to our local auto parts store. I asked if they could turn some "one-ton truck disks." I didn't dare say anything about a bus etc. They took a look at them and I helped them load them on the brake lathe. They spun really true and they made quick work of resurfacing them. I mean look at these pads, I think whatever went wrong with the old bus back in the day happened not too long after a break job. After we got the calipers off the old rotors spun like new ones. Obviously we took the hubs off and the bearings and surfaces all look really good, the spindles look like brand new ones. I have been beating on the calipers but they are stuck hard. We even tried the old air pressure in the backside but 110 or so didn't move them. I am not interested in the grease gun method...too messy. But after the air pressure failed, I looked them up and found they only cost about $30 each. That was the end of fooling around with old frozen calipers! LOL. The Bluebird chassis has given up all the goods and is now cut up in manageable pieces and headed to the recyclers.
I'm not saying that you will have problems with the new calipers, but keep the originals around until you have a few miles on the rig. Had an altered WB '57 Ford sedan years ago. Went through the brakes and only had to replace one wheel cylinder. Guess which one leaked after 6 months? Also, check you local suppliers for 3/4" impact and socket sets. 1/2" isn't enough for that HD stuff!
The Jalopy Journal
