Every year we are spoilt by our customers with gifts along with the odd bottle of drink, and his year has been no different. We have had cases of beers delivered, boxes of wine, a turkey, a “Boris” on a bike and a couple of cartoons, but more about those a little further down in the office news.

Opening Times Of Mustang Maniac over Christmas:

We shall be closing the offices on the 23rd December till the 3rd January 2017. Please note – the phones will be turned off,  if you call there will be no answer. The WebShop WILL be operating as normal for all orders EXCEPT any sheet metal. The reason for the total closure of the offices is that we need to do a major stock take and we will be moving some of the sheet metal around to their new storage locations. Off course some people think it won’t take long to count a few bits as we area a “small time parts dealer”. Obviously the thousands of parts we stock from a single bolt to a complete shell all need to be double checked. The WebShop is correct – if it says it’s in stock; then it’s in stock. Calling us to check will only refer you back to the WebShop. The levels of stock could be holding a dozen items we don’t sell much off and only a few items we lots off. So we want to address those balance for our customers to hold even more of the popular items in stock.

While we are talking about the stock we have started to stock some more of the Falcon parts from our suppliers. So if you see the parts you want, buy them as we have limited stock of the items at the moment. We have lots more parts on order and are just waiting for the deliveries.

Vouchers: 

It seems that a lot of people took our advice and bought some Mustang Maniac vouchers, more so than we expected. In fact we had to have a new batch rush printed to cope with the demand. We now have plenty more in stock and could still be with you by Christmas if you order quickly. Thanks to Lance for replenishing our voucher supplies so quickly for us.

Office News:

We start with the Boris who sits proudly on his motor bike. This was hand painted and customised for us here at Mustang Maniac, Boris refers to a nickname of one of our customers Gary. (It’s a long story that may be told if Adam has the time when you catch up with him next.)

We also had some fantastic cartoon drawn for Adam which features quite heavily the Las Vegas trip and the “Small time parts dealer” references we may have mentioned once or twice. There are a lot of “in-house” jokes there but the moral is so true as it says at the bottom.

Yogi also received his cartoon too, those that know Yogi are fully aware that he likes to tear up the quarter-mile strip now and again, so this was rather fitting for the big bear.

We would like to thank all those who have bought us gifts, an extra big thanks goes out to Gary who has taken time to draw the superb cartoons and customise our “Boris”.

Customers Cars:

We will start with the Mach1 restoration which has now come out from the Yogi workshop and taken the short trip to the paint shop. The panels have all fitted and gapped up correctly to the high Yogi standards. The front of the car sits on a steering dolly, the rear axle is still attached after being rebuilt. Looking forward to seeing this little lady back in colour.

Pop Rivet Convertible. 

Last week we were moving the 67 Convertible into the Panel Shop. We asked for a nick name for the car while she is here being restored to her former beauty. The name has been given “Pop Rivet Convertible”. I’m sure you won’t need us to tell you why when you see the inside up close. Yogi has decided to get adventurous with the camera and has taken a video of the car while he prowls around it. Yes the Yogi speaks on it too.

The car is a little worse than we expected with the previously poor repairs. We are often asked to quote for this type of work to be done. Some people do, we simply won’t until we see what we have to deal with. Giving a quote for worse case scenario is not always the right thing to do as budgets can often change throughout the restoration process. In this case the rear arches didn’t look to bad from the outside, we were expecting a new rear quarters and maybe outside wheel wells, but the whole wheel arches needs replacing due to the soft and thin metal. The guys cut the centre of the panels out to see what was lurking inside. The first pic here shows the rear of the car not looking to bad as we moved it to the panel shop. We suspect that by now you know that we can sort all this out to be as good as new.

The wheel arches show some pop rivets holding it to the quarter panel which has caused some issues.

The front fire wall has been poorly patched and badly welded on top of the old metal with a large gap at the top. We are at a loss as to why it was done like that though. But, it’s looking like the fire wall will need to be replaced depending on what we see after the metal is inspected further around these patches.

The inside floor pans will need to be replaced as a previous repair has been pop riveted sections in place as well as some more suspect welding.

The rear chassis legs have been replaced before and not spot welded in places where would expect them to welded. These will have to be replaced too as the rear suspension holes have gone rusty.

The front will need some work on the front chassis rails too as they have gotten rusty beyond repair, especially on a structural part of the car.

The car will need to go onto our jig and carefully map the measurements out as we can’t be sure the previous chassis repairs were done correctly. Like we said earlier, we have seen worse and we made that good as new. This will be as good as new soon. Then we won’t be able to call her the “Pop Rivet Convertible”, maybe “eye popping convertible” once she’s restored.

Drag Coupe (coming Soon):

We have another project on the go too and we will starting that in the new year. A coupe bought from the USA that needs the Mustang Maniac touch.

Happy Christmas to all our Customers.

Thanks for following us through the year and we will be back with you in the not to distant 2017.