Georgia Classic Fords

Most Shelbys and Clones use a rear deck lid that has holes for fastening the rear letters. Unfortunately, on this 1968 Fastback, the rear deck lid is 30+ years old and the holes long covered. We scoured the Internet and found no resources for a template or even measurements on how to place the letters.

In the end, we found pictures of a half-dozen or so Shelbys and came up with a system for mounting the Scott Drake stick-on letters – S8MS-16606-S.

We found our letters were not of uniform size. This means if you measure and try to calculate spacing, it will be off if you don’t adjust for letter spacing. Since the letters are different, it’s never going to be exactly right, but you’ll probably want to space the smaller letter(s) slightly more to make sure the lettering is centered best on the deck lid.

Our system essentially consists of placing a horizontal strip of tape to mark a level bottom for all of the letters, follow by vertical pieces of tape to mark the inner and outer edges of each letter. Once you’ve done this, observed from a distance, and measured twice, actually placing each letter is very easy.

1. Apply painter’s tape across the rear deck lid 70 millimeters from the bottom. Being off a millimeter or two is not going to be noticeable, but this should approximately center your letters vertically.

2. Align the inside edges of the H and B with the inside edge of the actual light panel. Place painter’s tape on this line to align the H and B. Hold the letters up, mark the width of the letter, and place another strip of painters tape to mark the outer edge of the H and B.

3. From there, measure 73.7 millimeters from the inner edge of the B to the outer edge of the L and place a strip of painter’s tape. This is unique for this installation because the L is 1mm narrower than the other letters, thus we increased the spacing to make up for it.

4. Measure 72.7 millimeters from the inner edge of the H to the outer edge of the E. Place a strip of painter’s tape.

5. Place the E and L letters in their locations, mark the inner edges, and place painter’s tape there.

6. Measure 72.7 millimeters from the outer edge of the B and H and mark and place tape for the inner edge of the S and Y, respectively.

7. Put the S and Y letters in place and mark the outer edge location with painter’s tape.

8. Measure the distance from the outer edge of the S and the outer edge of the Y to the edge of the deck lid. Here’s where you may need to start playing some if your letter width is off and compromise on letter spacing for centering across the deck lid. Remember, nobody is going to notice even 2 or 3 millimeters of difference as long as your letters are in the same horizontal plane and roughly perpendicular to the deck lid lower edge. We tweaked our spacing on the smaller letters (mostly the L) and ended up with the outer edges being 37.5 centimeters from the deck lid edge.

9. Once you are happy with your spacing, tape the letters in place and step back for a close look. Observe how the letters line up with the taillights and the gas cap specifically and make sure the sides are symmetric.

Here’s what ours looked like:

10. Take the letters off, remove the backing, and very carefully stick them to the deck lid. Line the letter up horizontally first, then use the lower edge and carefully align it to the tape, then push the rest of the letter down. Apply almost no pressure at first, make sure you like the position of the letter and then apply heavy pressure. You can tweak the letters before applying heavy pressure, but after that, you’re stuck.

Here’s the result. Sorry for the bad picture, but light was fading. I’ll replace it as soon as I can, as the angle can make it look off center, but it’s definitely not.