1955 Ford Thunderbird # P5FH173000
1955 FORD THUNDERBIRD
# P5FH173000
In the fall of 1990, Doane Spencer decided to completely dismantle his personal 1955 Ford Thunderbird. He was a lifelong Ford fan and when the two seater, Thunderbird came out in late 1954, he purchased a brand new example in black, with a 3 speed gearbox. He immediately began modifying the engine suspension, bodywork, seating, etc. Soon his close friend, Lynn Wineland, acquired a twin Thunderbird and began to modify his as well.
The two very talented engineers brought subtle changes to one car that would then carryover to the other ones 'bird.
Lynn's car then took an entirely new direction, becoming the subject of a "How to" styling project reported at length over a period of several issues of Car Craft Magazine. Lynn's modifications dealt more with styling. Doane continued to modify his Thunderbird, largely seeking ways to make it quicker. He took the car to Bonneville twice in near street trim, turning 149.53 mph in 1961, and 166 mph in 1966.
As was the case with everything Doane owned and drove, he basically used the Thunderbird as a "weapon." He loved to roam the highways, running down prey of any sort.
Doane was the ultimate automotive street fighter. He ran the wheels off the car. There wasn't a Corvette in the valley that could touch it.
Through the '60's, Doane worked for Chick Vandergriff at Hollywood Sports Cars. The first road racing car he built there was the famous Hollywood Sports Car's MGB. It was incredibly fast and was literally unbeatable.
The Rootes Group in Great Britain took note of the astounding performance of the MGB. Rootes approached Hollywood Sports Cars to have Doane Spencer oversee the development of a road racing Sunbeam Tiger. The result was the legendary Hollywood Sports Car Tiger, prepared by Doane and driven by Jim Adams. Six out of the seven times that the Spencer Tiger ran against the Shelby 289 Cobras, it beat them.
From there Doane went on to develop and build his famous DeKon Monza and any number of Shelby cars. In the very late sixties and early seventies, he worked for Chris Cord and Steve Earle preparing the Ferrari 612 Can Am car.
When Steve Earle and Chris Cord bought and campaigned the 1970 Ferrari 512 #1040, Doane prepared the car, and was their team manager. Doane executed some dramatic chassis changes in the car, resulting in an impressive improvement in handling.
That Ferrari 512, #1040, went on to become the famous Penske White Sunoco car driven by Mark Donohue and David Hobbs. Doane often worked with Traco Engineering on the 512 Ferrari engines throughout the 1971 season, dialing in final power gains.
In the eighties, he tired of the Southern California rat race and moved to the small coastal town of Cayucos, California, where he opened a small shop and began to work on projects of his choosing.
In late 1989, he designed and executed an optimal independent rear suspension sub frame, primarily for use in his Thunderbird. Through the live axle chassis had served him well and was totally set up, the car was getting long in the tooth after 30 plus years of hard running. As the quintessential, restless, hot rod engineer, Doane had to push on, try something new.
Doane had also become involved in building stunningly powerful 5 liter Ford engines; and he decided he would yank the highly tuned and modified Y-block engine out of the bird in favor of a 305 small block Ford. So, during much of 1990 and 1991 he began to tear the Thunderbird straight down to the ground, and build a "new" Thunderbird right from scratch.
Both Bob Morris and Jim O'Mahoney were great devotees of all things Spencer. In fact, after being turned down flat by Spencer, Morris had gone to Don Thelan of Buffalo Motor Cars to have a duplicate built of Doane's original 1932 highboy.
Morris and O'Mahoney were in Doane's Cayucos shop often as they could never get enough of taking in the comings and goings in his place.
As the Thunderbird was being dismantled, O'Mahoney kept an eye on the fact that a great deal of the valuable original components were being tossed in a heap at the back of the shop.
O'Mahoney told Doane: "You can't just throw all that away, there's a long history to your car".
Doane replied that history was yesterday's news, and he would have no part in keeping anything for posterity's sake.
O'Mahoney sat Doane down and proposed that Doane take the valuable pieces that he was discarding and rebuild, for Jim, the "original" car just as it was.
Doane agreed to the idea, warning O'Mahoney that it would be built "ten tenths" and that it would be expensive. He further wanted no time constraints.
Original items of note that went into the O'Mahoney car included: the frame, the original Ford Motor Company "Eskimo Bear" heavy duty dual outlet radiator (less than a dozen made in '57 for the Grand National stock cars), Windshield with Bonneville 1961 "Safety Inspected" sticker, very rare '57 Ford Spicer Limited Slip differential, all of the rear suspension, all of the front suspension, the T-10 four speed close ratio gearbox, Stewart Warner gauges and the wild Y-block engine, Jaeger 8 day clock, the '66 Porsche seats, Nardi steering wheel, dual master cylinder setup, the reversed bumpers, the 15x5 V2" 1956 Halibrand knock off sand cast magnesium wheels, the finned Lincoln Pan American Racing brakes, the 1961 Bonneville timing tag,and on and on.
The project was slow getting underway ....
But then, Doane landed on a direction that would bring real excitement to the effort.
The long distance road races had always been a fascination for him back to the point of wanting to prepare and run his '32 Highboy in the early Carrera Pan American road races! Doane was fascinated with the opportunity to build O'Mahoney's Thunderbird as a true road racer.Spencer had researched the fact that a 1955 Thunderbird had finished quite well in the 1957 Mille Miglia, (see magazine photo, enclosed ..). He knew he could build the O'Mahoney 'bird to be an enormously capable runner, not only in the Mille Miglia, but any of the thousand mile events throughout the world.
Through the years, Spencer's road racers were legendary and Doane's interest in this project gained a keen edge. He went over the project again with O'Mahoney, this time spelling out the fact that he wanted to slant the project straight toward the creation of a really capable road racer. He fully expected O'Mahoney to run the Thunderbird in the Retro Mille Miglia.
O'Mahoney signed on. He acquired a 16,000 mile black, stick shift Thunderbird from the original owner family in Santa Barbara, and delivered the car to Doane's shop in late 1990.
The entire automobile was, and remains, completely free of any accident damage, or corrosion of any kind! The project, once underway, became more and more appealing to Doane as he would be able to build the O'Mahoney Thunderbird on an "open ticket", implementing a great deal of the road racing knowledge he'd gained through the years.
The suspension corners from Doane's car were rebuilt, completely reconfigured, and installed. Massive ball joints were installed, and the frame components were "continuously" welded for additional strengthening. The finned Lincoln Pan American brakes were rebuilt and installed as were the original sand-cast Halibrand knockoff wheels, circa 1956.
The very rare '57 Ford Spicer limited slip was rebuilt and installed, with 3:42 gears.
The Super T-10 close ratio transmission was gone through and a double disc, heavy duty McCleod clutch qssembly installed.
The Y-block engine was torn down to the bare block, and the block itself was completely de-burred. The block was bored .080, the crank was stroked V4", magnafluxed, and rebalanced. The result brought the engine displacement to 322 cubic inches.
Heavy duty ARP head studs, and main bearing cap studs were fitted.
The lightweight rods were fitted with Spencer designed Arias pistons, resulting in a compression ratio of 11.2 to 1! The earn-specifications were laid out by Doane, and he ground the camshaft. At this point, I'll quote directly from Spencer's data sheet: ..."Camshaft lift: .560 at the valve, duration: 300 degrees @ .012, Spencer machined rocker arms out of nodular iron. Valve springs: Diamond, 115 pounds pressure at the valve seats. Three springs per valve! Titanium spring retainers."
New cylinder heads were obtained, as Doane wanted to put his latest modifications into the valve configurations. Never one to be intimidated, he radically changed the valve angles and stagger on both the intakes and exhausts. The valves themselves, thought ultra light were "dinner plates" in surface area. The cylinder heads were further modified to accept coolant inlets directly into both heads from the racing "Eskimo Bear" Ford racing radiator.
Again his Stats: ..."Valves: TRW, 2 inch intake, exhaust: 1 5/8 inch in AUS stainless. Guides moved toward the exhaust ports, .080. "Pushrod hole filled, and moved away from port!!"
These modifications were insanely bold, but he obviously knew precisely what he was doing. A '57 Ford intake manifold was heavily modified, changing the runners, and being set up to accept two Holley 450 CFMcarburetors.
A Holley NASCARracing ignition system with a mechanical tach drive was fitted. All of the components were assembled and a high output external Mellings oil pump installed along with a lightweight "button" flywheel. Spencer fabricated, and installed a six quart sump.
Amazing details emerged in the final assembly. A graceful chromed brass "fuel equalizer" plenum bubble was installed in the fuel line to assure equal flow to the 2 four barrels. The throttle linkage was constructed superbly with Heim joints throughout.
Doane machined a finned aluminum "valley tray" for the top of the block, and in a few hours one morning, he hand hammered, in aluminum, the fabulous air intake.
And finally, he fabricated the exhaust headers and collector box. The headers come off the heads at 1 5/8 inches and through superb "feather" welding, swell to 1 3/4 inches, each leading to the collector boxes at the trailing edge of both front fender wheel houses. The welds are imperceptible.
Finally, Doane found the torque of the engine so great, that he engineered a Heim jointed stabilizer arm that allowed torque twist to a point.
The entire project took close to two years, and costed out well into six figures.
Doane broke the car in over several weeks and deemed it quicker than his had ever been.
He told me at lunch one afternoon when I'd gone to visit him, that he'd had a replica Cobra in his shop with a side oiler 427. On a back road near Cayucos, the 'bird walloped the Cobra up to 120 mph.
O'Mahoney took delivery, and almost as quickly as he did, I began to earnestly attempt to buy it from him. "Rod and Custom" magazine showed a glimpse of the car in April of '92, on page 39, at the Santa Barbara concours. At that point, it was close to completion.
Then in April of '93, the car showed up on the cover of Rod & Custom alongside Bob Morris' '32 roadster. An extensive article was written by Gray Baskerville. (Enclosed.)
It was also featured in a full page color spread in Hot Rod Magazine's upcoming Swimsuit Issue. (Enclosed.)
As soon as the Rod & Custom "Cover" issue came out on the newsstands, I began to bear down on O'Mahoney to sell the car.
Spencer had told me that it might be a good time to pursue. I flew to Santa Barbara and met with O'Mahoney. I couldn't believe it when he fired the engine. It was like lighting off a top fuel car.
O'Mahoney drove me along some winding roads in the Santa Barbara area. The car was wildly powerful, but O'Mahoney could manage it. I went home; two weeks later we struck a deal and the car was shipped to me in Philadelphia. I drove the car out of the transporter and determined four items.
The carbs were jetted for Bonneville, the cam was wild beyond words, the distributor advance curve was nearly vertical, and the clutch package was needlessly savage.
In Philadelphia, I was fortunate to have a young engine man named Jim Garttmeyer, whose brain was able to quickly sort out what Spencer was all about in building this engine for maximum power.
"Sensibility be damned." Said Garttmeyer!
Mcleod assembled another clutch package and after literally weeks and weeks of fine tuning, Jim Garttmeyer had the engine tuned perfectly. You could actually move away from a traffic light without the car first falling on its nose and then scorching out from under you.
Proper Goodyear Eagle tires were fitted, the wheels brought to a proper color, and I began to experience one of the most remarkable automobiles I've ever owned.
The Thunderbird's engine spun like a turbine, was stupendously powerful, and pulled straight from the bottom. The redline was set at 8000 RPMand the engine had been spun to 10,000 on one occasion (not on my watch!) with no ill consequences.
The handling was astoundingly good, being virtually neutral any bit of edging out was easily corrected with just a touch of throttle.
On the road occasionally, at speed, I might get a Porsche, Corvette, etc. coming up to fool with me. Almost regardless of what gear I was in, the merest touch of the throttle would result in the victim diminishing to a dot in my rearview mirror.
To, hopefully, put this Thunderbird into perspective; allow me to relate an incident that took place roughly a year into my ownership.
I started the Thunderbird in my garage one afternoon and could hear a very slight, but steady "click" in the motor. A long screwdriver at the ear revealed it was coming from the second cylinder on the right bank. I shipped the car to Richard Robinson in Huntington Valley, Pennsylvania. He had seen the car a number of times at events and was highly impressed with Doane's work.
I further chose Dick as he had a great deal of active history preparing both GM and Ford racing engines. He was responsible for several very rare, very esoteric vintage racing Corvettes.
He carefully disassembled the engine to remove the right cylinder head. The valves were so large that the seats were nearly siamesed.
A metallurgic failure in the exhaust valve seat had cracked it. Andalusia Speed Shop effected the valve seat replacement.
Andalusia had been doing auto racing machine work since the early fifties. When Dick returned to collect the cylinder head, the shop foreman said to him: "I don't know who did these heads, but the guy's a genius, and he's got balls of iron!"
Dick carefully reassembled the engine and then he had an opportunity to drive the 'bird himself.
When I went to pick the car up, he related his drive to "To put it simply", he said, "that bird is as quick as an L-88".
He could not get over the staggering power that was coming out of 322 cubic inches! Dick comes to Hershey each year and always asks about the car.
The car has given me many, many years of pleasure, has been to a great many events, shows, etc., has won lots and lots of awards, trophies, etc. and has always remained a bulletproof runner.
I've always marveled at the number of people, everywhere, who really appreciate the car; somehow they know it's a very slick piece....
The car now needs to be in the hands of a capable owner who will enter the car in the "thousand mile" events and run the wheels off it.
Thanks for making your way through this masterpiece of bloviation! I've attempted to bring a great deal of the car to you in this album.
In the flesh, the car masquerades behind a thin veil of civlity. With the slightest prodding, its wicked reality quickly surfaces ....
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Unauthorized reproduction and/or publication without the written consent of Kirk F. White is a violation of applicable laws.
