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After looking at these two pictures you can tell the cars are not the same. Like I said before show me pictures of the car before the resto. The question is easy Tom is your car real or a clone,a simple yes or no will do. Ed
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I will run through this once quickly so listen up.
1. The picture you are comparing the completed car to is one of 3 that was used to restore the car. In order for it to be posted it had to be scanned and put back together since it was larger than the scanner would do. The angle of the two pictures is not exact though close.
2. There are 2 or 3 things that anyone can see is different. Rear wheels (still looking for the right one's),
rear quarter windows (at the time of this pic., which was about 1 hour after completion, we had not found any of the blue shaded plexiglass that they used)
Fuel and water tanks (after ordering and returning 3 sets of tanks to an outfit in California we decided to go with the closest they had come up with, not right but we needed to get the car to a show the next week I think)
Rear spoiler ?????? maybe there is a difference, maybe not. The spoiler was almost completly broken off the car when we started on it. The previous owners had used aircraft stripper and putty knives to remove old paint and even the gell coat from the body. In places the fiberglass was eaten all the way through.
3. Look at the lower ladder bar bracket...we were told that this was wrong on the car at Englishtown. When we showed Mr Libby these pictures he said that he must have forgot that they were on the car. We chose to install the front ladder bar in this bracket until we could run the car and find out how much traction the car had. We figured that wheel spin would be better than too much traction the first few times out. Now here is a question...if the car that Mr Libby worked on most of the time didn't have the lower bracket...then could it have been a different car?
4. Now for the tinwork...the chassis and body had been cut and redone several times in it's life. Engine had been moved who know's how many times. I cut off at least 3 different rear mounting tabs from the chassis. Every time the engine was moved the body was cut to fit. The body tin work had at least 3,000 rivets in it and needed another 1,000 to make all the metal stop flapping. We spent several day's tring to find pictures good enough to restore the tin work back to origional, but no one took detailed pics of the tin work that we could find. The tin work in the car had been cut and modified several times, moving engine, manual trans. with hand brake, etc. After talking to Bob Gibson from Ill. (who has done several funny cars) he told us that no 2 cars were ever done the same on tin work. Usually simpler was better, if the tinwork done its job then that was all that was required.
5. I know that the car is not 100% correct....but I will bet that it is at least 85%. We knew when restoring the car that there was some things that we didn't have enough information on. At Englishtown Mr. Libby was telling us a story of how the car was wrecked and the left front fender busted and repaired. We all walked over to the car and sure enough there was the patch on the fender just like what he described. Dale P. pointed out 2 or 3 safety items that we needed to address on the engine. Bruce Larson was very helpful that day at Englishtown with advice and help that was priceless. But at no time, not from anyone there, was the authenticity of the car questioned.
So to answer your question:
All the stories and history of the car fit when restoration was started. Besides modifications done to chassis and body the parts matched the pictures.
When car was shown for the first time Mechanics and Drivers from that time period verified the car. Some with stories of things that happened, some by looking the car over and just saying man that brings back some good memories.
I can say that Tom and myself have had a blast restoring, showing, talking about and running the car. Lots of hours and miles have been put into this car over the last 3 or 4 years.
So is it real because They said so?
Or is it a fake because They said so?