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damaged box and sent the rest back. I
often wonder where they all went.
We installed the new block in the
car and replaced all the belts and
hoses. I had a set of Hooker headers on
the car but everything else was stock.
The next year I went back to Bon-
neville, this time with my brother. He
had recently gotten out of the service
and had no plans, just $300 and a gen-
eral idea of heading west. We stopped
in Kansas and slept on the ground
next to the car in a rest stop. Then we
drove up to Holcomb to see where the
murders took place in the book, “In
Cold Blood.” We drove to Smith Cen-
ter, Kansas, to the center of the 48
states, saw the largest ball of twine,
visited the home of Walter P Chrysler
and drove through the Rockies. All of
this was done in a Shelby that now
had way over 150,000 miles on it and
was getting tired.
I began to have problems on this
trip. The engine was constantly over-
heating at high speeds. We have since
learned this was caused by using a
non-Hi-Po water pump. We were
pulling up a long hill in Nevada some-
where, cruising at about 100 mph,
when the engine began backfiring and
shaking violently. We pulled off the
road and luckily found a shade tree. I
opened the hood and the engine was
bouncing and dancing around, run-
ning on seven cylinders. We let it cool
down for about an hour and decided to
pull some plugs. I thought it may have
dropped a valve or perhaps thrown a
pushrod but we got lucky when I
pulled the last plug out and it had a
giant chunk of carbon on the tip. I
cleaned it off and reinstalled it. I
started it up and it ran great. Oh joy –
problem solved.
Life has a way of making you
humble and this was going to be one of
those times. I put the car in gear and
moved about ten feet and it sunk down
in an alkali pit. This is like a trap of
baby powder; fine dust and when you
get stuck in it, and you are truly stuck.
We stomped around and found that we
were right on the edge of it. We used a
trusty army entrenching tool I carried
in the trunk and dug our way out.
Back on the road again, we headed to
southern California, again to Disney-
land and then north, to the great I-5
and up the center of the state.
Long and hot was the best way to
describe it, with lots of farm land and
not much else. We diverted over to the
coast and purchased a hang glider
which we had shipped back home. We
then drove north through the San
Francisco Bay area and into the north-
ern part of the state. There were forest
fires burning and the smoke and ash
were all around. Finally, in the little
town of Weott, my brother suggested
that we ought to turn back. We
stopped at Donner Lake to pay hom-
age to the pioneers who were trapped
by a snowstorm and became legendary
when some faced starvation and were
forced into cannibalism.
Then it was off to the Nevada bor-
der. At this time the Interstate High-
way System had not yet been
completed. You would have miles of in-
terstate but when you came to a town
the road would normally drop back
into two lanes and pass through the
middle of towns. We had 398 miles to
go, and 75 miles of it were not inter-
state. So off we drove, 100-plus mph
the entire way. We made it to Wen-
dover in four and a half hours and
pulled in the gas station near the
Stateline Casino.
Right before we stopped I heard a
strange moaning or howling noise
from under the hood. We quickly dis-
covered it was the alternator. It was
about 7:20 p.m. on a Saturday night in
Wendover on Labor Day weekend. The
odds of getting this fixed were cer-
tainly not in our favor. I took the alter-
nator off the car in the parking lot and
disassembled it. One of the diodes had
fallen over and shorted out. We
couldn’t find new parts so I did the
next best thing. I removed the positive
and the opposite negative diode and
we now had a perfectly good alterna-
tor that could produce maybe, 20
amps, rather than its normal 42 amps.
That meant no radio and no heater. I
replaced the diode plate when I got
home and that alternator is still on the
car today.
We drove along through Utah and
got to the edge of Wyoming where we
found ourselves facing at the biggest
and blackest storm I had ever seen, be-
fore or since. It was a storm of mythi-
cal proportions, so we decided to sit it
out in a rest area under a shelter and
as the storm approached it got windier
and the rain felt like little bullets. The
rain was coming at us sideways. It was
raining so hard we couldn’t even crack
the windows for air. It was like being
hit by a firehose. Once it slacked up a
bit we started down the road and as
we were passing a truck, another of
mother nature’s disasters struck. A
lightning bolt hit the truck and we
were momentarily deafened and
blinded. How close we came to getting
hit, I can only imagine. But the Shelby
took it in stride and got us home.
One day at the dealership a guy I
knew who had a perfect 1968
GT500KR convertible, white with a
four-speed and air came in and asked
me if I wanted to buy it. He had gotten
his girlfriend pregnant and her par-
ents insisted they get married. He
wanted $1500. I told him I wasn’t in-
terested and he came back few days
later and offered it to me for $1200.
The next week it was down to $1000
and finally the day before the wedding
he came in and said $600 would make
it mine. Again, it was another one that
got away.
By this time the Shelby was show-
ing its age. It was really getting beat,
the seat frames were cracked, the dash
was split and the interior rugs were
starting to crumple and fall apart. I
also began to see the results of driving
it on the salt flats. The driver’s floor
became soft and nothing was holding
the floorpan together but the carpet-
ing. I trimmed a piece of sheet metal
and slipped it under the carpet and
had it propped on the ragged edge
along the inner rocker panel. I had
gotten another car and was using it
less and less, but was still able to
nudge it over the 200,000-mile mark.
About this time I met a young lady
who found out I had a Shelby. Who
was this girl who knew what a Shelby
was and seemed interested in it? She
said she had a friend who would love
to see it and could she take it to show
him? Sure, why not? Let a girl I really
The SHELBY AMERICAN
Summer 2016 75