All fiberglass 7000 & 8000 cars, frame & body, are made by SAI. My understandning is that they are made at the prison, but I may be mistaken about that. The aluminum cars are sourced from Kirkham, but my understanding is that the cars built for SAI are different. More on that in a bit.
The car took until about September of 2009 to get to the guy who is finishing it for me. It took probably 8 months just to get to the paint shop, then after the build out it took several months for the handmade grill to be completed. If you look at the picture on Shelby's page (the same picture is on my picture page here) there is no grill in the car, it was still waiting for the grill when SAI used the car for
PR photos.
Once the car got to my builder, the real nightmare began. The car it totally different from a fiberglass car, even the motor mounts different. The aluminum cars use original motor mounts, those took a while to find. This car is designed to be as original as possible, down to a K code 289 with cast iron intake with Ford 4 barrel carb & cast iron exhaust manifolds. At every turn problems have been encountered, parts had to be hand made, fabricated or one-offed. For instance, we found that the footboxes are actually molded from an AC Ace, so they were designed for the 6 cylinder. They are OK with headers, but didn't work with the cast iron manifolds. So, the manifolds had to be mildly milled to clear the footboxes, but that's not going to be visible. The throttle linkage had to be hand made. And, try to find an original brass radiator overflow tank.
Right now it is having the stainless exhaust finished , the exhaust shop has been working on it for 3 weeks so far. From there the engine gets fired up for the first time (in the car) and it gets tuned. Then it's off to the alignment shop and I get to go pick it up. I figure mid-April, which will be a total of 22 months.
If the cars are built to original specs, the 427 cars I think are a more reliable handling car. The leaf spring suspension can be a bit unpredictable and tends to slide more than the coil spring cars in turns. The big torque of the 427 can really bite you in a turn though.
Yes, TRT is Terlingua Racing Team.
Also, the roller that kris-kincaid saw in January at SAI is CSX8040, nice blue fiberglass car. It's not for sale, it's for Amy Boylan.
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