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- #21
Again , thank you all for your input on the 59 T-bird. What ever it was or is, it is a neat car. I am only trying to piece together conjecture sine 10 yrs of searching for anything concrete has found nothing. I know the car exists and its modifications must speak for themselves in what ever way they can be interpreted. There seems to have been no attempt at a roll bar installation. So that is a important in the conjectures. As far as the fender vents, when the inner fender shields are removed behind the front wheels, you can see the body work done to create the vents, each just a little different in final formation on the inner part of the fender. I have some pictures of that if I can find them. This is a unibody car so the front fenders were not removable. Someone was very very good with cutting those in. Same observation with the hood vent, the trough running back from the opening is very neatly sculpted into the metal. If it was a show car though, why all the suspension additions? I remember talking to an old stock car driver on one of my trips to the Carolinas. He said he ran some T-birds like mine. He said on higher banked tracks, the body would slide sideways downward and cut into the tires. He thought the mods I described might be an attempt to prevent that? It has a conventional rear leaf suspension and the front is conventional coil spring. Again, all speculation. By the way, the traction rods had the brackets welded to the body and welded to the rear axles and were adjustable. The pan hard rod was also welded in. The flip side of all this is if it had been some type of competition / race car, why such neat body work? Most stock cars I see raced are not all that concerned about the neatness of the body modifications. And none of the pictures of T-birds like mine that were raced ever had a hint of vents or radiused wheel wells. I will try to find pictures of the inside of the fender vents and post those. Again thanks for your replies.