Shankle

["Watry, Andrew (LNG-MBC)" <Andrew.Watry@domain.elided>]

Back in the Alfa parts dark ages (1975-76) when I got started being messed
up on these cars (date your own dark ages by when you got started), in
California Shankle was pretty much the only game in town for Alfa parts,
other than the dealer, and really the only game in town for performance
parts and technical information.  There were a few other sources nationally
we knew of, including Bobcor, and maybe Ereminas, but this was pre-internet
days by a longshot and all the Alfa people I knew in San Diego and LA at the
time who did their own work got their parts from Shankle, not from the
dealer.

Shankle offered a whole host of regular replacement parts, plus hop-up stuff
like springs, cams, shocks, appearance stuff, racing stuff, and
modifications for problem areas like the Sure Start, the gas pedal
modification, and the like.  Say what you like about the quality of some of
the engineered stuff, but to many of us they were the only game in town for
a lot of these parts.  They were out in the San Fernando Valley then,
variously in Chatsworth, Van Nuys, and then finally in north Glendale once
they got absorbed by Alfa Ricambi, and then the resulting ASG later.  I
couldn't any longer say exactly what years those things happened.

Remember the old red Shankle catalog?  It was a dream book in those days.
How many times can you read the same cam specs?  Very many, as it turns out.
As a teenager, I pored over it night after night, a freshly minted
California driver with a Fiat 850 Coupe and high hopes ...

Is John Shankle around anymore?  I still have the "Shankle 1976 Champion"
sticker on my toolbox.

Andrew Watry
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