Courtesy Ford dealer emblem

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Marsh
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Joined: Sun Dec 30, 2012 4:30 pm
Location: Oakham, Rutland

Re: Courtesy Ford dealer emblem

Post by Marsh »

Paul Blore wrote:I stand corrected Lee. I hadn't realised the road cars were always intended to have 7½" rear wheels. I knew the Sunburst wheel were a substitute due to supply issues at Halibrand, but ironically, the Sunburst wheels were also manufactured by Halibrand I believe, so they ran into the same supply issues again.

Paul
To be honest Paul, there's very scant information available with the passing of time about 'the wheel situation' and I literally fell over it in the Shelby book. In no other written material is it covered in any detail (as no one else is probably interested).

Add to the fact that the majority of street cars upgraded either in period or subsequently to the S/C set up, it's probably unsurprising that the original specification of the wheels has been lost in the mists of time. I doubt there are more than a handful of original Halibrand wheeled street cars with 7.5's on each corner now, if any, of the 10 cars originally supplied.

The Sunbursts were actually manufactured by Kelsey-Hayes (but a number of books have attributed Halibrand incorrectly). There was a casting fault with the initial batch of wheels at the K-H facility in early October '65, which further delayed production, but was eventually resolved later that month and normal service resumed thereafter.

Thinking about it logically, it wouldn't have made sense to give Halibrand the job of casting the wheels if they were already experiencing production issues and conversely, if you were Shelby, you would have absolutely outsourced to someone else and Kelsey-Hayes were a very well respected wheel maker at the time, having produced wheels for Chevrolet; notably the finned 'Turbine' look wheels on the Sting Ray of 1963 on models.

L
427 'side oiler' in 1965 Street trim
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