Mustang Maniac is back to normal, well as normal as it can be, as I’m back from my Route 66 journey across the USA,  and I’m still a bit jet lagged. It got to Saturday and we thought it would be a quiet day, but nope, it was one of the busiest days of the week for customers. At one point it was standing room only in the office which was a lot of fun. We had Martin who picked up his Bullitt green fastback after her yearly MOT, general service and lube service. We also had a another regular customer turn up with his ’67 Convertible that he has been using to cruise around Europe. To be honest we couldn’t think of a better way to do it either. While they were away recently the brake pedal was fine then there would be no servo with brake pedal travel. This ended up making the braking a bit interesting sometimes, the car would stop, but you need to be aware there could be no assistance from the servo. Another thing was that the driver side sill trim started to come away, then the demist pipe came away from the fitting under the dash for the windscreen. As a temporary measure, Duct Tape was used to fix the trim in place and hold the pipe to the underside of the dash. Derek didn’t mind us pulling his leg a bit by calling his car the Duct Tape Mustang. We have had the “Mastic Mustang”, “Rust in Piece” now we have “Duct Tape Mustang”. Joking aside what Derek had done was fine as a work around as it was not an important or safety related fix to the car. It will be simple to fix those parts though you can’t see the temporary repairs. They are still holding up fine.

As for the brakes Yogi started the initial investigation on Saturday and found that the servo was playing up. We are also looking at a potential issue around the plumbing of the brakes that we want to make sure is all OK too.

We would like to offer a piece of advice for everybody who may be looking to start their own mechanical repairs, prompted by Derek and his Duct Tape. Print this out and take it with you for a quick handy reference guide. 😀

Rust In Piece

The Convertible is coming along very nicely now as we have had the rocker covers and the air intake back from being sprayed their correct colours for the time. The rear seats are back in, the original centre console is back in as well as the carpet. It won’t be long before we geo set up the car and road test it for a while before we hand it back.

Question Time

Recently we had a car that was supposed to of have a rebuilt 289cid engine. The owner managed to get the car to us saying it rattles like mad and there is no power. We started it and shut it down straight away. The car sounded like somebody had put a handful of marbles in a tin can and was shaking it. We knew it was a strip down job to start with. We found out that the rebuild had not even cleaned the oil tubes to the top of the engine with no oil pressure, thus the hydraulic tappets cam followers severely worn as well as everything else that was in a bad way, now junk. We have here just one of the cam followers that should be flat and smooth at the top, they were all like this.

“Click Here” for the answer to see just how many miles this car has done on the rebuild.

Acapulco Coupe

The coupe has had a lot of work done to the gearbox and to get it ready to go back into the car. New seals, filter, sump pan and gaskets. Me and Mart cleaned up the flex plate and sprayed it, not that you will see it, but it’s all in the detail. We done a dry fitting without the engine plate to make sure all was OK before the final fitting.

We then removed flex plate, fitted the engine plate and refitted the flex plate and tightened it all up. We fitted in the torque converter into the bell housing and mounted the gearbox to the engine.

Tightening the bolts securely.

Gearbox mounted to the engine and the mounting brackets all in place.

The last part was to fit the prop shaft to the gearbox and the rear diff. And yes the Prop is white!