Projects DRAG SNAKE "Vintage Terror!"

Randall, back when I was younger and had more money (before having kids), I owned a couple of Shelby Mustangs and was a member of the Shelby American Automobile Club. I dug out my 1987 Shelby American World Registry and looked up the Dragonsnakes production figures. The production figures list three factory small block Dragonsnakes, one with the 260 engine (later converted to a 289) and two with the 289 engines. But when I went through the Cobra serial numbers I came up with five Cobras sold as Dragonsnakes, CSX 2019, 2093, 2248, 2353 and 2427??? I wonder if three are factory and the other two, although listed as Dragonsnakes, were actually Cobras that were later converted to a Dragonsnake? Anyways, I thought you may be interested in reading about the Dragonsnakes.

 

That is awesome. Thanks. I am working a lot of this out myself so good timing. From my research you are dead on. Even though I have read in several places that Shelby built 4 factory drag cars my research show only 3. The other two were converted from already owned street going versions plus one Big Block car. So a total of 5 small block official Shelby touched units and one big block. There are however several cars that car the name and even decals but they were not touched by Shelby. In particular the black and gold King Snake and the Gold MOTION Cobra. It has been fun doing the research, I am excited to get it all published on a website at some point. Thanks again for the additions.

 

In the book "Shelby's Wildlife " by Wallace Wyss, he states that "the most famous drag racing Cobras were the Dragonsnakes, of which at least two were built". But a lot of errors have been found in Wyss' book over the years so I am guessing that three is probably the correct number of factory built Dragonsnakes. And just to complete the story, here is the entry from the 1987 Shelby American World Registry on the lone 427 big block Dragonsnake, CSX3198.

 

I'll have to see about getting one developed for the Department of Revenue. If one form is good, two is better-er, right!?

 

Okay Boys if you want a killer read (WITH THE ENTIRE DRAGONSNAKE HISTORY) here it is.
As I have said I have been gather information for a while and finally stumbled on this Cobra Registry
Site last night....It blew me away!

For the record there were ONLY TWO official factory built and campaigned Dragonsnakes. Three others were sold as complete race cars to customers and others modified by their owners with official Shelby Drag Racing Parts etc.
Take a look at site. It is an amazing read!

https://www.cobraregistry.org/history/dragonsnakes/

 

Reading through the Cobra Registry link that you attached, there were five factory Dragonsnakes built, 2019, 2248, 2357, 2427, 2472, built but only two, 2019, 2357 were official Shelby ran team cars. Back in the early to mid 70s we helped a friend put his race car in a car show in Iowa. There was a Dragonsnake in the show and the owner was wanting to sell it fairly cheap as he was getting a divorce. I wonder which car he had?

 

Viva Las Vegas Movie (still shot)....and what do you know....there is the first Dragonsnake not even a thought it its pretty little head that it is about light up the Drag Strip! There were two more early Cobras in the movie. The white one (which coincidentally looks like it is in a drag race with it right now) and a silver one as well.








And I just noticed all three Cobras are number in sequence 96, 97, and 98...I need to watch this movie!

 

Randall
I'm sure you have seen these but here is a little Cobra trivia for those who haven't.
Have you ever seen the American five spoke "spline drive" wheels?
A few different sizes were made, also, two styles, drag race and road race.




http://www.clubcobra.com/forums/originality-forum/137484-optional-cobras-american-racing-wheels.html

 

Well do you see anything in there? Good! That is just the look I was going for.... LOL! So this weekend we really got serious up front in preparation for installing the motor. We disassembled the entire front end, cleaned up the frame welds etc., shot it with a really good coat of self etching primer and then 3M undercoated the entire chassis and mounts etc. This is one of my favorite finishes when done right. It basically blacks out everything in a soft matte finish, hides lot of goofy little in-perfections while at the same time making a very tough finish.

Now all the gloss black and chrome pieces really jump out etc. We also came up short on final assembly on the Boss 363. Even after waiting an extra week for the correct rocker pedestals shims I was not happy with the geometry. So we did exactly what we planned to do the first time and remeasured for about the 80th time and ordered the correct length push rods. After shopping around a bit I decided to go with Manley chromoloy units. They have .120 wall thickness so they should be pretty tough. Our final calculation was 6.746 and Manley (like most other makers go in .025 increments. I snagged a set of 6.75" so we should gold!

 

Actually it is one way to distinguish the 1st Dragonsnake Factory car from the 2nd one. The original was a 260 car so no side vents and it ran the Halibrands like mine. The second car was a 289 rack and pinion car so it has side vents but it ran the five spoke!

 

Hallelujah!

 

Pretty exciting news today. I spoke with my painter this morning as we are basically at the perfect place in the final assembly to go ahead and shoot this thing. He is making space right now to get it in as soon as possible. So this weekend we are going to assemble the engine (finally) and then start working on any body part that needs some body massaging in preparation to turning her over to the paint shop!

 

Exciting times!

 

Did you say paint seriously it's gonna have paint I figured you would just paint it with stickers lol


Sent from my iPhone using The H.A.M.B. mobile app

 

Yes sir paint. Actual paint. I have been shaking the cans now for several days.

Sent from my SM-G930V using The H.A.M.B. mobile app

 

Check out the front bumperettes on for the first time. We fabbed a couple if cool mounting brackets and mount plates. I am digging the look.





Sent from my SM-G930V using The H.A.M.B. mobile app

 

Push rods are in and gap is set! Holy cow!





Sent from my SM-G930V using The H.A.M.B. mobile app

 

Just read all 54 pages over 3 days. Great thread, looking forward to seeing the final product.

 

This has been a fairly productive weekend even though we didn't touch the Cobra. We did however make the trek over to Tulsa for the Daryl Starbird Show with Dad's Coupe. It was a blast. The "Roth" flake boys were set up about 20 feet from our car so I had a quick chat with them. Here is the color dilemma I have right now.

If you think way back to the early part of the thread I spent quite a bit of time talking color. Basically because at that point we had nothing better to do while we awaited the arrival of the body. After some research I found the color in question was Ford Viking Blue. I went to a local paint shop and had some mixed up and even shot the dash.

However since then my Cobra studies have revealed a twist in that color as several Cobra historical sights actually call it "Sun Gleam" Viking Blue. Both the two factory raced Dragon Snakes were painted this color. However there is no such paint name out there, and believe me I have put in an exhausted search.

Here is what I was thought might have happened. Actually all of first round of Factory Race Cars were painted Viking Blue (not just the drag cars). So I am thinking the Dragon Snake boys wanted to march in line but maybe just a bit out of step. My thought was they took Viking blue and flaked it, which would explain the "Sun Gleam" addition to the paint color. So I headed over to talk to flake professionals to see what they thought.

They agreed it would make since but thought the time line was wrong for a flake job. They said as far as they knew (and they should know) the flake phenom was just in the experimental stage in '64. While they would not rule it out, in their opinion for the time period the Sun Gleam probably meant they added "pearl" to the Viking Blue.

 

Well, not a lot of progress to report as of late but we are getting ready to hit it pretty hard again here soon.
We have been testing a lot of paint over the past week or so and I think I am finally happy. Thanks to
some killer paint advice from a couple of old school California paint shops. This is probably
the best photo in the free world of our target car, Dragonsnake number one. You can see it is wearing the
Halibrands and has no front side vents (implying a 260 car). This photo is sometime after the Mecum Auction
the video of the car eludes to... If you remember back to the video the car did not have a hard top on it. I am
not sure if I have shared this but right after its decommission in 1964, the original hardtop went to a privately
campaigned Snake (the Magenta car driven by Larson).


I feel pretty sure while it is not wearing it original roof, that it is wearing the original paint as the chips
on the lower rear wheel wells seem to attest. This has been our point of study for a while and it has been
decided (until someone proves us wrong) that the "Sun Gleam" addition to the Viking Blue paint scheme
is the addition of pearl. And likely because the car looks a bit lighter than factory Viking Blue, it was white
pearl. Below is our final test.


Believe me I know you can not sell anything from photos especially on a computer from one screen setting to the next so at this point it is more of a gut feeling than anything else. Not to mention I like it....so there you have it! LOL!

 

Also check out that steering wheel! Yep there it is...LOL. You know I hate to say it since I have very nice in dash Holman and Moody tach but I may have to wire around it mount and old school unit on the Dash...???

 

Well that was quick. I am just sitting here thinking about the tach on the dash and looking at old photos of the original car and as usual I suddenly have a bug up my backside to make it happen. I start looking for old school tachs etc. knowing full well there is a brand new Holman Moody unit ready to slip in a pre-drilled hole in the dash.

I am not finding a unit that has the old school look I want but I happen to come across chrome gauge cups and DUH!
So I just snagged this little beauty this morning from Auto Meter. We shall drop the Holman Moody unit in it and screw that sucker right to the dash! What a great morning!

 

Your guys need to read up on the history of metalflake. The first reported use of flake was in 1960 as detailed in this story. https://kustomrama.com/wiki/Metalflake

Roo

 

Yes you are correct. I should have been more specific about what I posted. I spent quite a bit of time with the Roth Flake guys during the Starbird Show and subsequently talked with their supplier an old school California paint producer etc. They asked several questions about the cars. The first being, did I think they ran the cars down to a custom shop for a killer respray (meaning Barris/Winfield etc.). I said absolutely not. They had no budget what so ever for either car. I am 100 percent positive they chose Viking Blue because that was the left over paint from the original road race team cars.

With that being said, all involved agreed 1964 was too early for your "average" paint shop or paint guy to have had experience with heavy flake work. That is what I should have said and very specific for these two cars in question, not the custom car industry at the time. Hope that clears it up.

But that was a very cool article on the history of flake...thanks for posting it rooman!

 

You do know that Dean Jeffries did a lot of work for Shelby? In fact he painted the very first Cobra about 5 times while Shel was letting the magazine people drive it. It was pearl yellow initially (possibly due to Dean Moon's involvement in the project) and then red, blue etc so that it looked as if Shelby had a bunch of cars. As for "the average" paint shop guy, the first hot rod flake job was done by Scritch who was not even a painter. I did my first flake job in about 67/8 and that was on the other side of the planet. There were lots of drag race cars with flake from the early 60's on.

Roo

 

Metallic paint on a Cobra, maybe, but not metalflake, you might as well put shag carpet in it. I'm still proposing the top to be painted a different color than the body, regardless.

 

Understood. And yes I have read all about Jeffries efforts to create a fleet out of one car...LOL Very cool part of the whole Cobra story. But these two cars in question were from the wrong side of the street. They were from the street going guys and Shelby wanted nothing to do with them. They literally had to beg, barrow or steal any parts for these cars they needed. They would not have even painted the first one if they had not had to do some extensive body work on the rear wheel wells to accommodate the slicks. The second car in a few photos appears to have some heavier flake in it but those photos are all of the car a much darker blue than the Viking etc. As it stands, the factory Viking blue has metallic in it.

 

Shelby American had a painter on staff of their own very soon as most chassis required body and or paint repair after being shipped from England. You can call colors he sprayed, especially on race cars, by any name you like but that didn't mean they matched any other vehicle paint code. Cars were painted based on desired appearance, a little darker, a little lighter, more poly, less poly, .... you get the idea.



Attached is a close up of paint applied to CSX2019, the first factory Dragonsnake, in 1964.





How about metal flake? Two production street cars are well documented in the Registry. One was painted a candy metal flake red and used as company car. Another was painted candy metal flake blue. When the blue car was being restored they found enough over spray in enough places to get a great match.



CSX2000, the prototype type Cobra only had three finishes in the 1960s: bare aluminum, Dean’s deep yellow, and a deep blue similar to AC Cars ‘medium blue’ but custom mixed. CSX2000 was not painted blue until at least the end of summer 1963 as in the summer of 1963 the car was photographed from many angles besides a latest specification street roadster in white. I got my first in person look at CSX2000 in 1978 at SAAC 3. The car was in old blue paint and the under coat below it was yellow and under that aluminum anywhere stone chips or other minor damage had occurred.

This image was provided by Cobra owner Jim Sfetko of some minor damage to the coachwork of CSX2000 before it was cleaned up and detailed in the modern era. Just two top coat colors.



The from many angle side by side comparisons highlighted many of the differences between the prototype and the time of the photo session production cars. There is usually a collection of those comparison images stored on the “The images in this set are drawn from the Dave Friedman collection held at the Benson Ford Research Center.” site. This morning I only saw this one posted.



https://www.flickr.com/photos/thehenryford/6925748179/in/album-72157629443596499/



Dan

 

That wheel (as all of them) was installed by AC Cars. The worm & sector steering cars used a wheel like you pictured on the early dragonsnake (CSX2019) When the cars changed to rack & pinion steering the wheel changed to the one pictured on the 427 drag car. That wheel was used until the end of production of all Cobras.

 

Why use these tags? It's not a car produced by AC Cars Ltd.