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trip but he was thoroughly enjoying
everything we told him about our trip.
We also had an interesting en-
counter with a San Francisco motorcy-
cle officer. He pulled us over after we
had made a right turn at a light that
he was parked across from. We moved
our licenses, identification and money
around from day to day, hiding them
under the seat or in the headlight. I
asked my friend if he knew where they
were and he said he thought they were
in my headlight. The officer re-
sponded, “
You boys are from New
York; if you made it this far I don’t re-
ally need to see them. I just wanted to
let you know some intersections are
marked that you can’t turn on red
.” He
asked if we were having a good time
and said to be safe. It wasn’t until we
returned with our great stories of all
the people we met and the places we
had seen that everyone was suddenly
happy we had done it.
What causes a kid to latch onto a
particular car and just feel he needs to
own it? I can’t explain it, but it hap-
pened to me with the early GT350s. I
was only 10 years-old when they came
out and I never knew anyone who
owned one. Nevertheless, I wanted one
in the worst way. I kept looking for one
for years. After learning about them I
decided I’d like an early ‘66 because I
liked the unique styling cues better
but still wanted over-ride traction bars
and lowered front control arms. I
didn’t know that they hadn’t lowered
the control arms on a lot of those cars,
and also didn’t know about the carry-
over cars.
After getting married and settling
into a good job, I bought a house. Now
I was finally able to get serious about
finding that GT350, so I started look-
ing hard. It was 1977 and I was chas-
ing down cars that almost always
turned out to be Mustangs and not
Shelbys. It took almost a year of look-
ing before I bought 6S336 fromWayne
Conover and picked it up at SAAC-4 in
Downingtown, Pennsylvania. I drove
it home to New York and it needed a
restoration. That took me about four
years, during which I was able to work
on it at Randy DeLisio’s shop. The
project seemed to drag on and the
work I had sent out wasn’t always up
to my expectations. Randy agreed to
finish the car and said I could do any
work I wanted as long as the car was-
n’t just sitting, taking up space in his
shop. I spent all of my free time, over
four months, working on the car. I was
lucky to be able to do that because I
learned so much about restoring cars
from Randy.
After the car was done I brought it
to some car shows but never trailered
it anywhere. In fact, since I have
owned it, it has never been trailered as
long as it was running. I have always
considered it my favorite car and, as
they say, “
It’s the one
.” I have had
many other nice cars but this GT350
has always been my favorite. To me it’s
still the best car out there and I love
driving it. These cars were meant to be
driven, and the harder the better. I
open-tracked it whenever I could and
it has not had any major failures since
it was completed in 1983.
Last year I had some surgeries on
my right knee. It looked for a while
like I wouldn’t be able to drive stan-
dard-shift cars anymore; maybe I’d
have to get automatics. When I was at
the Cobra 50th Anniversary celebra-
tion at Monterey in 2012 I thought
about driving my GT350 to the 50th
Anniversary for Shelby GT350s if they
had one in 2015. The day it was an-
nounced I decided I had to do it. I’d
work hard to get my knee in shape,
and would be retiring, so I would have
the time to make the trip.
I went back to work in January
and worked hard on my therapy.
Everyone asked if I’d have to work
longer since I had been out for six
months. I said I needed maybe a
month to get back in shape before the
trip. I don’t think anyone took me se-
riously. I retired at the end of May to
give myself some time to get the car
ready and, oh yeah, maybe the knee
since I wasn’t able to drive the Shelby
the way it was. I was driving my
newer cars but the leg hurt after an
hour and I couldn’t handle the
Shelby’s brakes at all.
I rebuilt the brakes (calipers,
wheel cylinders and master cylinder),
replaced all the flexible lines (fuel and
brake), lower control arms, fuel send-
ing unit, spark plug wires and air
cleaner. I greased it up, changed the oil
and filter and the biggest change was
swapping the top-loader four-speed for
a five-speed transmission. I didn’t
have time for many other things I
wanted to do and when I started shak-
ing it down it seemed the distributor
wasn’t right. I lubed it, adjusted the
advance springs and after resetting
the timing it was good to go. The other
problem that got skipped was the ra-
diator hoses. I bought them and took
them with me. I did flush the system
out and noticed that it had some rust
in it. I took a lot of spare parts includ-
ing a carb and rebuild kit, a new orig-
inal distributor, new starter solenoid,
points, condenser, cap, rotor and fuel
line. I ended up leaving at noon on
Saturday, August 1st, instead of early
in the morning. My wife, Leslie, was
supporting me all the way. Dave Red-
man andWayne Taylor were also help-
ful. Dave and Greg Bradner, along
with some other local Shelby club
guys, would be flying out to Monterey
so I planned on seeing them there.
THESTART
Dave Redman stopped by on Saturday
morning just as I was finishing pack-
ing up the car. I was going to change
the oil, jump in the shower and then
head out. He hadn’t seen the five-
speed, so we took a quick ride. Every-
thing was good. I was excited and a
little bit nervous. I hadn’t wanted to
make the trip solo but nobody else was
able to go with me.
The SHELBY AMERICAN
296 Fall 2015
It is surprising how much stuff will fit into
a ‘66 Shelby’s trunk if packed carefully.
It’s common knowledge that bringing
spares pretty much insures you will never
need them. The corollary to that is, the
more tools you bring, the fewer you’ll use.