Early 60's FED

[my80malibu]

I have a question's about Early 60's dragster's. What type of sicks would likely have been used during that time. Pie Crust, or Smooth sided,wide, or Narrow. what color would the Scatter shield be and what was the Materials likely made from Mounting Plate, Scatter shield, drive line cover/ coupling ?

[Ace-Garageguy]

This 1960 DragMaster "kit" is pretty typical of the period. You see the slicks are fairly wide piecrusts.

The gearbox, next to the block to the right, appears to be a simple in / out or 2-speed unit, probably an aluminum housing. The old cast-iron '39 Ford 3-speed top-shift boxes were still being run as well, and beefier LaSalle and Packard boxes, but some cars ran no gearbox at all. The driveline appears to be a shortened closed-style Ford shaft, with only a front universal, chrome plated.

The adapter to mount the gearbox to the engine is also aluminum, to the left of the headers in the foreground, but to the right of the headers is a fabricated steel scattershield, which could be chromed or painted. This design gets sandwiched between the adapter and the trans, and also serves as the rear engine mounts. Some clutch scattershields also had a front plate that bolted to the block as well. (Note: There were some aluminum bellhousings approved by NHRA as scattershields, but they tended to be very thick in order to offer protection similar to the steel ones. I've also seen cast-steel, but if you go with the fabricated-steel look as in the photo, you can't go wrong.)

You'll see there's also a chromed, fabricated-steel scattershield for the quickchange rear end, which uses narrowed '32 -'48 Ford axle bells (chromed in this shot). Narrowed production-car and light truck rear ends were common too.

Early fabricated scattershields could look crude, but if the welding was good and the design intelligent, they afforded decent protection from exploding clutches and flywheels.

Around the mid-'60s, Lakewood (and later Ansen, who had been making cast housings, and others) introduced the one-piece (sometimes referred to as "hydroformed") scattershield design, made out of 1/4 inch steel plate. The "hydroforming" process that made these deeply-drawn shapes possible, IIRC, was an offshoot of aerospace technology. The technique makes it possible to form metal in ways either extremely difficult or impossible with other pressing methods.

Edited August 11, 2014 by Ace-Garageguy