Things have got to the point now that Mustang Maniac is not taking on any new customers for restoration work, we were fully booked for the next two years, we are now fully booked up for the next three years, absolutely unbelievable. We appreciate that we are lucky in that respect and we can’t complain of course. We have had to make some tuff decisions as a result.

Our predictions of sheet metal going up in value has come true, it hasn’t just gone up – in fact it’s rocketed up. We have enough sheet metal for our booked in projects, and keeping that in mind Mustang Maniac may not be selling sheet metal panels at all for the next year or so. Even Adam’s ‘contacts’ can’t get him any more supplies for the time being. It must be bad!

We have advised some potentially new customers who have asked for our sheet metal (and nothing else), to refer back to their normal suppliers as we can’t help them out at the moment. Virtually all of them have responded with; “They don’t have any in stock and we’ve heard that you have some”. Although this is true, these potential customers have even been cheeky enough (not the word(s) Adam used by the way), to ask for our trade discount, even though we know that they’re not trade. They even want to buy our sheet metal at the ‘pre shortage’ prices, as if they are doing us a favour. So Adam’s response was quite predictable, “Nope, we don’t have any sheet metal for sale as we need to look after our loyal and regular customers first.” Which is a very fair point. All of a sudden when people can’t get the parts where they normally go – our prices aren’t so bad after all!

We have to buy, ship, pay taxes, import duty, then transport to our yard, sort, store and make our small percentage profit on the parts. To sell at a loss doesn’t make any sense to us or anybody with a business brain. In the yard at lunch times we have had many conversations along the lines of; ‘what is going on with the world that this is becoming the normal attitude of customers dictating the terms of availability and what they are willing to buy it at’? We don’t go into Tesco’s, Sainsbury’s or Walmart and say we will give you £100 for that 65″ Plasma TV as you have a pile of them over there.

Park & Pic

The ‘Sheleanor project has been completed and the car is now moving on her own again. We are still waiting for the lower lights due to the lack of lorry drivers or whatever the excuse is this week.

We think the car looks great especially with the LED stock look sequential lights. Lets hope the owner has a lot of fun with her.

This car was “Eleanored” with our very own molds, if you are interested email us for more information.

Customer Cars

We talked about a project with no name on the last post, well Yogi has now given that project a name, “Metal Mayhem”.

Work has continued and the work has started to take shape at the front with a few bits of metal from our stock.

The inner sills are cut and patch panels fabricated into place ready for the floor.

The missing parts of the body to floor sections are replaced and repaired.

Floor and seat base are welded together then the edges bare metalled ready for the welding.

Our custom light weight rolling jig is the perfect starting point to assemble the panels with clamps and the odd tack weld. The front rails are treated inside and mounted to the jig and the rest of the panels are bolted on.

Yogi puts the fenders on just for now to make sure that the gaps will be correct from the measurements we have. Bolting on the bits where we can and aligning up. We won’t be giving away many of our secrets obviously.

We will be bringing you more on this project as there is plenty to do still.

Take Care & Keep Safe!