Quote:
Originally Posted by ShelbyLuva
What chassis number did heater installation begin at? Was it then a standard feature on all street cars, or was it an option as listed in the registry?
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Good question and I don't know the answer. The answer should be in the invoices from AC Cars to Shelby at some point as a change in contract price. The earliest chassis sent to NY and CA didn't have any features for heater/demisters. AC had to add electrical including adding a switch to the dash, add holes to the fire wall for heater hose pass troughs, add the rubber grommets in the firewall holes, drill the mounting holes in the fire wall, start cutting slots and drilling holes for the bolt on louvers, modify the shape of the glove box, add a hole in the glove box floor for an air duct, add the ducts, add the formed aluminum bolt on louvers, add the heater unit apparently custom made for Cobras based on a pair of English Ford designs (thanks Roger* and Larry
, add the English coolant hose elbow elbows, add heater hose clamps at the heater core, and of course all the required fasteners. Lots of materials and labor that would not have been free. I don't see any of these features in CSX2019 but CSX2034 has them. The best I can tell is once the change occurred heater/demisters were standard for street cars at the time they were assembled at AC Cars from then on. (Postscript: It is now known that CSX2025 was the first chassis with an AC Cars installed heater-demister system. See also post 25.)
*From Roger’s digging around: the basic design and external shape of the heater appears to be a derivative of a heater for a British Ford Prefect.
**From Larry’s research: the electrical motor shares a basic design with a motor from a British Ford Cortina. It is unknown if the motor’s internals are the same or not but the external wiring is not the same as used in a CSX2201 and later Cobra.