We decided to let the public into the inner secrets of Mustang Maniac body shop, (before you ask, no it’s not Yogi’s body we will be exposing). For the later cars this particular job is a bit more straight forward, but not so easy for the early cars of ’64 – ’66 for the same job. We are going to show you most of the process on the ’71 Mach how we replace the rotted out cowl section.

Yogi has been taking the front of the car apart and has been waiting for the sprayed cowl to come back. This is the first glimpse of the colour this car will be finished in. We coated all the nearby areas in Red Oxide while it was all exposed as well as the bottom of cowl sections.

The lower cowl was located in its correct position to make sure any final adjustments were made prior to any welding.

The top sections are then also positioned and final adjustments made before the welding starts.

The welding was then finished up and ground down which then enabled the rest of the front inner panels to be fully welded into position and yet more seam sealing to be done.

The fender to cowl extensions were in a pretty poor shape, these vital little sections also give strength to the front of the car. They were shot blasted to see the exact level of rust damage and the old rotten parts cut away ready for the new repair plates to be welded back into place.

in place with the rotted section showing

The repair plates are cut and profiled then welded into place with final shaping to follow the correct contours. The standard Red Oxide paint was of course applied before fitting.

The final fittings and adjustments made before the welding into place.

That’s all there is to it, but don’t say that to Yogi though!

Customers Cars

Next up was the old friend, the previously rusty ’70 fastback where work was being done on the back of a car. You may remember the post “Yogi Takes on Rust Worm”. This car needed a complete rear end rebuild due to the rust not to mention the rodent encampments, we have now got back to work on her again. Here we have the old chassis drop downs completely replaced and the new panels treated to a generous coating of Red Oxide and seam sealer before being welded back into place.

The contoured trunk section was too rotten to put back in place, so we needed to have a new panel which needed to have the final shaping adjustments before being welded into place with the chassis rail drop downs.

With the trunk drop down panel in place we could get the final parts of the floor panel in place inside the car.

Just in case you forgot what it looked like before:

The YFC

Ok, we have had requests for more puppy pics and a request for more Yogi Fan Club pics. As we have had lots of pup pics recently we thought it was time for the bear. This was taken after he ventured out of his cave, down to his favorite feeding ground after hunting out his meal. Some witnesses at the time said that he likes his steak “so rare it’s still running away from him”!

Thanks for the emails, keep them coming. 🙂

Cartoons

We have some very kind customers who drop us off some great gifts, and these two hand drawn, framed cartoons were no exception. They are now hanging in the office for all to enjoy. A big thanks to yet another “happy Mustang Maniac customer” as he wanted to be known who had taken a number of hours to create these for us.

Thank You.