THE STORY OF RALPH & HIS 65 GT-350
In His Own Words
Well I was working in the gulf of Mexico for J. Ray Mcdermott and my car career started out in 1963 with my first car. Bought a 1963 Ford Galaxie 500 XL convertible from Dick Bohn Ford in Gretna La. It was white with red interior, It had a 427 engine, two four barrel carbs and a four speed transmission. It was the cats meow. Pretty fast but heavy and 3.50 gears held it back. My neighbor Bobby Laiche who I graduated with had a 1962 Ford Galaxie 500 two door hardtop. It had a 406 engine with three deuces, 4 speed and 4.11 rear end. He would beat me as he was lighter and that 4.11 made it go. Had friends with 426 Hemis, 409 Chevys , 348 Chevys, 440 Dodges. What a time for Muscle Cars!
Well in 1965 I was told by Lucien Palisi that Dick Bohn Ford of Gretna had three GT-350 Mustangs. So I stopped by and was checking them out when I spotted the one on the showroom floor. It was without the two stripes down the middle The two outside had stripes down the middle and Crager Shelby mags. The one inside only had the rocker stripes but had the all fiberglass competition GT-350R hood with screened opening over carb. It had the silver stock 15 inch wheels.They had the hood with the opening over the carburetor and it was plain but sharp. It came without a radio but I had them install one which was an AM radio. It was serial # SMF 5 S 196.
Well I wanted to sit in it and check out the inside. They told me that I had to buy it to sit in it. Well after a day of trying to trade the 427 in on it and financing it we were done at 10 o'clock that night. So they were going to give me one from outside so they didn't have to move cars off of the showroom to get it out. No, I wanted the all fiberglass 350R hood with the screened hole over the carburetor. So late that night I got to sit in the car and drive out of Dick Bohn Ford. But that's after $4,880.09, $1,800 down and $112.57 a month for three years.
Well the first thing I noticed taking off at a good pace, I thought something broke. It was the Detroit locker locking up as it would do from time to time. That mustang would have run circles around the 427. Beat quite a few cars on the street.
Took it to the strip and I think it ran in the high thirteens and fourteens. I was getting beat by corvettes at the drag strip. I was running in E/ sports class. That means you can do anything to your engine. Roller cams, pop up pistons, ported and polished heads, anything on the inside of motor stock on the outside. I installed 4.57 gears to help out but the 2.20 first gear BW T10 was too high to get going. Couldn't compete with full out Corvettes.
OK let's catch up with the Corvettes. Tore engine down. Bored out .10 over with 12.5 to one TRW pistons. M/T forged aluminum full floating rods. Block was deck heighted. One cylinder was sleeved because it was bulged out. That was a problem with 289 thin walls. Crane 308 HI roller cam with rev kit. Pete Jackson double row roller timing gears. Crane aluminum roller rockers. Crane ported, polished and C.C.d heads with valve stud girdle. Schiefer aluminum flywheel and pressure plate. Engine balanced and blueprinted, lined bored and deck heighted by CSI Car Shop inc. Had to use Fel-pro gaskets. Installed 5.43 gears since engine redlined at 10,500 rpm. Spalding dual coil and points flame thrower distributor. I also installed a fiberglass Barris fiberglass spoiler trunk lid and end caps.
OK. Timing gears are thick like stock plastic ones. Hipo 289 gears are thin all steel and has thick cam retainer. So I start things up 1500 rpm to break in and I hear all kinds of rattling noise so I shut it down to see what's what. Check with a few racers and find out that full floated rods need to oil up to quiet down, didn't know that. So I run the engine to break it in and it shuts down on a dime. Somethings really wrong. So I find iut the fuel pump eccentric was rubbing on the timing cover jammed up and broke timing gear pin in camshaft. So pop up pistons hit valves perfectly bending some of the pushrods. So I pulled the engine down to get cam out and can't get broken pin out of it.
So on to plan B. I buy an Iskerdarian full race flat tappet cam. I don't remember which grind I think it was 505 Isky magnum and put it back together. Ran low thirteens with 715 holly. I hadn't received my Smokey Yunick box ram two four setup yet. I ran best time of 12.67. Took my class E/S with 13.01 for World Championship Series races in Laplace La August 11, 1968. A picture of 196 and I were put in the West Bank Guide, Gretna La.
Pin in the roller cam is Rockwell C. It's very hard and I can't get it out. A guy at a machine shop used to be a racer and he E.M.D. ed it out for free. Put it all back together with the 715 holly and ran consistent 12.67 to 12.93, 102 to 109 mph in the quarter mile. This time I had put about $8,500 in the car only to beat two friends of mine, Carl "Pumpkin" Brown and Paul "Termite" Legendre. They called my car The Mystery Mustang because it was in a friend of mine's garage and they didn't know or could see what I was doing to it. Well when the Mystery Mustang came out it beat both of them at the Laplace Dragway not on the street where people cheated but with the timing lights. No excuses for losing on the track.
Well I start getting lower oil pressure and I take the oil pan off and pull a few main caps. I find that the bearings are scored from aluminum shavings from the fuel pump actuator scraping on timing cover and bypassing the oil filter . So I tore the engine down and got a new crank as the old one was shot. Can't be turned down because of too many stress cracks in it from running 10,500 rpms.
So now my Girlfriend becomes motherly and that's the end of the racing. In the meantime I bought another 1965 GT- 350 Serial # SFM 5 S 241 from a fellow New Orleans fireman Norman Davis. Worked twenty years and never ran across him. Come to find out it's a sister to the one that I bought. Go Figure. Couldn't do anything with the Shelbys. I had a family to feed and wound up selling both GT-350s 196 and 241 with all the racing gear to buy a new house. This was around 1975.
People tell me that they would be worth a lot if I had them today. We'll if I still had them I would have had to take care of them for the last 54 years. And would have lost them in Katrina. The real estate that I have acquired over the years amount to more than their worth. I would have to carry insurance and worry about theft and their care. I enjoy talking to Rich Williams who owns 196 now and looking at his pictures of 196 and sharing memories with him. I now have a 2005 Roush Stage Two to enjoy.
Ralph Leland West Jr. AKA BATMAN !!
August 2019
PS
Dick Bohn was taken over by Don Bohn who died and now is Bohn Ford. They have sold some really hot cars over the years. GT 350, GT 500 Cobra Jets, 427 Cobras and so on. They have a new 2019 GT 350 for about $64,000. What a place, check it out.