Six Of One, Half A Dozen Of The Other

Today we are announcing the annual Mustang Maniac Christmas Holiday break dates, where we will be closed. The closures will include the main offices being closed as well as our WebShop. The closures will mean that there will be no daily dispatches during that time. The closures are as follows:

20th December from 4pm

7th January 9am

Although the Christmas Holiday break is a complete shut down, there may be very limited support via email, but that will depend on the signal while Adam is away. You can of course still purchase our gift vouchers which are now purchased online where they can be printed at home without having to wait for delivery. Click on the images below to go straight to our WebShop to purchase what you need. These are a perfect way to buy the Mustang enthusiast in your life an option to buy what they need once we re-open in the near year.

Please make sure that purchase any items you may need over the Christmas Break in plenty of time to avoid disappointment.

There is a well known saying in the UK as ‘Six of one, half a dozen of the other’. The meaning is; two alternatives are equivalent or indifferent; it doesn’t matter which one we choose. In this case we have two engines, both are indeed inline six pots, but they couldn’t be further apart.

The first is a standard I6 going back into our 1965 Falcon shop truck. The engine has been rebuilt, but the carb is going to be replaced with a fuel injection alternative. Our engineering department have made a bespoke intake for the throttle body. As far as we know this will also be a first, but don’t worry will be bringing you build as we get round to it.

Now, the other I6 is Adam’s little project which will be a bit of a monster in his fastback. We are being a little bit vague for a reason, which will become clearer nearer the time. We have given a few hints in the past, but we will give you a few more pictures as a tease.

The other ‘little’ bolt on bits which we have been shown before;

The project is moving along as put the rear end back together, we now have the diff and fuel tank in place which will be a non standard option for what we have in mind. At the front end a little bit more pipe work is required. We have lost count of the number of times the engine and the bolt ons have been in and out again as we take measurements for engineering to fabricate for us.

The breathed on I6 for this fastback needs to have some front end bespoke work for the steering, which we won’t be showing just yet, but we will when the time is right. Watch this space!

With all the power on tap we will have, we also need to be able to stop. We have a little bit of an upgrade there too, we need to make a couple of little ‘mods’ for what we want and the look we are after. But nothing we haven’t dealt with before.

Back to the Christmas Holiday break, we would like to thank you for your understanding. As we said earlier, please make sure you place your order in with plenty of time to allow us to dispatch the order and allowing for the inevitable busy postage services during this time of year.

Posted in Brake Kits, Classic Cars, Mustang, Our Cars, Parts, postage, projects, Sales, Webshop | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Something A Bit Different

This year’s Classic Car Show at the Birmingham NEC is held next week on the 8 – 10th November. We have been asked if we would like to show a car or two, so we thought why not. Rather than taking our much loved ’66 Hertz Shelby or our ‘64.5 Official Pace Car or our Shelby American’s (one of one) test car, we decided to take a couple of cars to the show that are different. There are usually the later model Mustangs or the classics, nothing really in between, until this year that is.

We have dusted of a couple of our own cars that should spark some debate at least, a Mustang II and a Fox Body. Not the most popular era of Mustangs, but these are few and far between, and are now starting to ask for some decent money for good examples.

Up first we have the 1978 Mustang II in yellow, the car has had a little pampering as it was tucked up in the forgotten corner of our yard. The paint may have looked a little tired, but the original interior has stood up very well to the test of time. Here the half and half cleaning step to see the before and after progress.

A little later is our 1989 Fox Body convertible. This car has always been a love it or hate it Mustang. Again it was in the other corner of our yard and cleaned up very well.

We had some perished and cracked rubber belts so Adam has them in stock and were replaced before firing up the engine. It took a couple of attempts after the fuel was drained and swapped out.

The original interior on this Fox has stood the test of time and looks almost showroom fresh. Dusty, needs a vacuum, but it will clean up very nicely and you won’t see a much better example than this.

These two ladies will be on the Mustang Owners stand, they’re not for sale. But, if you was to make a sensible offer to tempt Adam, they could be yours. Pop over to the Mustang Owners Stand and say hello.

Thanks to Lance who has gone above and beyond to make these cars look good enough to be shown again. Barn find? Not quite, but we did find a couple of different cars for the show. Thoughts on the middle year Mustangs?

Posted in car show, Car Shows, Cars For Sale, Classic Cars, For Sale, Mustang, Our Cars, Restoration, Video | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Still Going Strong

Contrary to some social media speculation – Mustang Maniac is still here, going strong and serving our loyal customers as we have done for years. The only thing is that we are still very busy and we are now having to be particularly picky about the cars we service and restore. There is a waiting list for us to service and look after many cars and we have had to disappoint some customers on time delays before we get to see their cars in our workshops. We won’t say it will take two weeks and still have your car six months later. We would rather get the cars in, work on them turn them around back to the customer in the time scales we predict. The customer car storage is a premium for us now, so we are operating little and often to keep focused on the cars we have in the workshops. Our yard has taken on some massive changes over the last couple of months with one of our workshops in the process of being relocated as we need the space for easier access. Our WebShop is growing and diversifying in the number of parts and type of cars we are now holding stock for. We will have an amazing upgrade to the WebShop pages we are looking to bring to live soon. As far as we know, what we have in development will be a real first on the internet for such a project. It was complicated behind the scenes researching the various oddities as nothing was definitive from many different sources. We now believe what our media team has compiled is something unique with their relentless quest for that all important accurate data. We will bring you more on that once we have our website gurus work out how to best create what we want on our WebShop pages.

We mentioned many posts ago about the dangers of of using the nasty ethanol fuel that our government are forcing us to use. It’s rubbish fuel, cheap supermarket fuel is not the same as premium refined fuel. Cheap high ethanol fuel will damage your car unless you take precautions. The major precaution? Don’t use it. Use the best fuel you can, you car will thank you for it so will your wallet in the long run. We could say nothing and just let our customers buy lots of fuel parts as a result. That’s not us, we want to help you, our customers with the best common sense advice where we can.

With that in mind, a car had been sitting unused for a while and the car wouldn’t run. This is a great car and well looked after, other than the fuel itself. We took a sample from the fuel tank and could tell by the smell without even looking at the sample it was bad fuel and gone ‘off’.

We took a deeper dive into the carb and it was evident that it was going to need some man hours. The carb was taken apart and the fuel in the float bowl was same as the fuel tank as you would expect.

The fuel had corroded and blocked some of the delicate parts. The rebuild kit has rubbers, gaskets and everything you need to get it back to together again. The car needed a full clean and descale of all loose debris before we could even start the rebuild. A good few hours later the car was bolted back to the engine, plumbed in and some proper fuel primed in. With such a strip down the air/fuel mixtures and idles needed to be reset. The dark art of carb tuning with a screwdriver, a human ear and a test drive is what is needed on these beautiful cars. After the initial calibrations and setup we left the car for at least a day and half for cold start, this was the result from that cold start. No pre-warming or pre-starting for this video, a genuine cold start.

The car starts and now runs so much better. However, in this case the customer was lucky as sometimes the ethanol corrosion is so bad that the carb is beyond repair. If that’s the case then you are talking a good few hard earned pound notes for a new one, depending on wallet and options for the replacement.

The car now runs as good as it looks.

We have been working on a development project on an older car before we transfer what we have learned onto the final project car. That’s the advantage of having many cars at various stages of restoration to choose from. Here is a teaser of what we are doing.

The best bit? If you know, then you know!

It will be a while before we get this project to where it needs to be. But, it will be coming to street near you!

We are keeping our stocks to the max where we can. We have been noticing that some parts are now becoming difficult to get hold of again and almost back to Covid type levels of stock. Not ideal obviously, but the prices have shot up as a result. We are holding some of those hard to get parts in stock, no doubt once those parts are replenished from back dated stock prices will have to reflect that.

Posted in Customers' Cars, Mustang, Our Cars, Parts, projects, Restoration, Video, Webshop | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Mustang Owners Club Annual Show 2024

The Mustang Owners Club of Great Britain host a show each year where lots of cars attend from all over the counties. This year was an important date as it was the 60th anniversary of the launch of the Mustang. The show was held not far from us at Meldreth in Cambridgeshire. We had a number of customers who would be attending. The weather didn’t look promising early morning, but it was forecast no rain after nine in the morning. The gates to the show were due to open at ten so many of the expected cars did turn up. We arrived a little bit later than expected, in convoy with Lance in his GT350 and Adam with his ’73 convertible. The show did have good attendance and the weather held off all day just as predicted. There was some awesome cars there, a number of which were our customers and projects we had worked on.

Although we were on the last line as we arrived, more followed us in throughout the day. What we have for this post is a collection of the cars together and particular ones that took our fancy. That way we keep the size of the post down and try to show all of the cars. In no particular order;

There was a number of trophies up for grabs for various age ranges of cars. The judging is quite thorough and Concours style marking. In other words you start of with 100 points and they knock marks off when something isn’t right or just dirty.

There was a good selection of cars to be judged from all generations. The presentation was due to take place at three in the afternoon.

One of our loyal customers entered his car and won the 1964 – 1968 Concours trophy. Well done, Mart from onemanandhismustang.com

We had a great day, spoke to lots of people, had a few offers from the convertible, but not in the ball park it should be. They seemed to be tyre kickers just chancing their luck with Adam for a deal. Adam has said many times before; ‘I will make a deal with anybody – as long as the money is right’.

Posted in Car Shows, Cars For Sale, Classic Cars, Customers' Cars, Mustang, Our Cars, Photos, Sales | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Enfield Pageant Of Motoring 2024

This time last year we were told that the Enfield Pageant of Motoring was going to be the last one. But this year it was on again. Many car enthusiasts were going to vote with their wheels and not turn up due to the ridiculous charges just to drive to a car show, then paying £10 per car to get in. The ULEZ (Ultra Low Emission Zone at £12.50 per day) and the Congestion charge at £15 per day, was not applicable to cars over forty years old. That would have been a total of £37.50 to get into the show which is a ridiculous amount of money for anybody. We were pleased to see that the show was well supported with a huge selection of cars were there again this year as they were exempt.

There was a huge turn out on the field and a customer volunteered to take some photo’s for us, we did say to take pictures of the Mustangs and some nice Americana. In the excitement of the second day we forgot to look for another ‘volunteer’ to take some pictures for us. So we only have have the pictures from Saturday.

A few customers cars turned up early and we went for an all you can eat breakfast at the Toby Carvery on the corner. When we got back we were pleased to see that there was more car customer’s cars parked up. Adam had his red ’73 convertible (which is up for sale), his F350 flat bed truck, his Turquoise Falcon and an electric buggy. The reason for the buggy is that one of our good customers had an operation on their knee and wouldn’t be able to walk around the show. Adam wanted to help out and decided to take the road legal buggy for him, but we think it was an excuse for Adam to go buzzing around the field looking for bargains!

The ’73 convertible below is up for sale, if you are interested get in contact with us, it could be yours!

We even had an imposter in form of a rather nice Pontiac GTO.

Adam looked relaxed in the sun and was enjoying the day.

Other Mustangs around the show, the classics first;

There was some nice newer models;

Some UK ‘fast Fords’ as they were known;

Some rare Crayford Cortinas and a few rather nice UK Fords;

Then we took a selection of photos of some nice American cars;

We’ve had a good couple of days at the show, but we are thinking that this year is the last Mustang Maniac pitch at the show! Unless Adam changes his mind that is, but he quite sure this was the last show.

Thanks to Mart from onemanandhismustang.com for sharing a selection of his photos with us.

Finally, a big thanks to everybody who turned up to say hello to us and again made it a nice couple of days. Adam got some new customers and spoke to many friends and loyal customers.

Posted in Car Shows, Cars For Sale, Classic Cars, Customers' Cars, Mustang Maniac, Our Cars, Photos | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments

The Mouse Goes Home

We have completed the restoration of the ‘Mouse Mustang’ and we have to say it came out well. Headliners are always a pain to get right and require some patience to stretch and hold in place until the material settles down. We have a little trick to speed things up a bit but we won’t be sharing all our little secrets on here.

What can be better than a ’68 390 Fastback in Green? Not much!

You can always send us a pic of your car parked outside the Mustang Maniac offices and we will post it up for you. You would get to be the lead car on the blogpost too.

After the Easter break we had a few packages to go out on the Tuesday. Although we did post some out on the Saturday prior as a good customer wanted a special delivery of his parts next day. He didn’t mind paying the additional charges that were incurred, as it he realised it’s the price you just have to pay. These pictures show the bulk of the two days orders, after most of the smaller parts had already been loaded onto the Parcel Force van.

We do have other projects on the go, but we can’t bring them to you in full just yet. But a sneak peak of what Adam has in mind as well as the workshop! Again this is another one of those – ‘If you know, then you know’ type of photos. Don’t worry all will be revealed once we get this project going.

Posted in Customers' Cars, Mustang, Mustang Maniac, Park & Pic | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Things Are Changing

Our last post was a couple of months ago, since then we have been receiving regular emails to ask if we are still open. Yes we are, the WebShop has not changed apart from the extra stock lines now in place, so you can still order 24 – 7. You can still order your Mustang/Falcon/Transit parts exactly as before. We have even added a new section called ‘Sale Items‘ that are there for clearance. These are unique sales and once they are gone then they are gone. There is anything from 1964 to 2024, items may change everyday, so keep popping back for a bargain. If you see it and want it, buy it – don’t wait.

https://mustangmaniac.co.uk/parts/Sale_Items/65

Things have been very busy and as far the blog goes there wasn’t much to report before we get things finalised. We are still working on cars, we are still fully booked so we are being very selective about what we are doing and when as a result. Just because we haven’t posted for a while – don’t worry as the biggest Mustang parts supplier is still here.

Changes are happening within the Mustang Maniac yard and a there are a few projects we have plans for, we can’t divulge details just yet though, so it’s a case of watch this space. We can give a little teaser or two of what we have coming.

If you know, then you know!

If you need to contact us then the email: sales@mustangmaniac.co.uk is still your best bet and we will do our best to get back to you as soon as we can.

Posted in Blog, Mustang, Mustang Maniac, Parts, projects, Repairs, Sales, Webshop | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Seasons Greetings 2023

We would like to thank all our loyal customers for their support throughout this year.

From all us here at Mustang Maniac; we wish you all a Happy Holidays, fantastic Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Posted in Uncategorized, Webshop | Tagged , , , , , , | 4 Comments

The Mouse Mustang

We have number of updates for you this week including another new vehicle for Adam which he is thoroughly enjoying, a new customer project we have started, some new stock and a very special find by Adam in one of his storage areas. Mustang Maniac has now started to branch out into other stock areas as well as Mustangs. We are stocking much more Falcon parts and now a new range of commercial ‘Ford Transit Custom Service Parts’ which we will go into a little later in the post.

We like to try and give our project cars a little nickname, such as the memorable Mastic Mustang and The Onion. We have this latest fairly short project which has been named ‘The Mouse Mustang’. It has nothing to do with Walt Disney before you say it!

The car has been outside and hadn’t had much attention until the owner went to open the door. There was a tell ‘tale’ (forgive the pun) odour. Yep, a mouse had gotten into the car. We put a trap down inside the car so we could catch the squatter mouse and evict it. We soon caught the culprit overnight with a little lure of cheese. thinking that was it we put the trap back down just to make sure all was good before we started work properly on the car. However, the next day another critter was captured, now believing there would be more than just the one. We got another trap fearing the worst that there was a populated live nest to deal with. Again, the next day both traps had captured more of them. This carried on for over a week. We lost count after a dozen or so little pests were caught. Once there was a period of a couple of days where no more were caught and we could get into the car and see what was going on. We changed bait to make sure they hadn’t gotten wise to our antics. We have to be careful not to introduce them to our premises as we could have similar issues in other cars we have stored.

Some PPE was used as we didn’t know just how bad this was going to be when we actually got round to strip out the car. The seats and rear seats were taken out to confirm what we already knew, the carpets and underfloor sound proof were ruined and the smell was a tad unpleasant to say the least.

We could see that the mice had left a mess (literally) under the dash, so we had to dismantle the area as well to see how far the damage has gone. The top of the heater matrix gives you an idea of we found.

We took apart the heater matrix, knowing in the past this has been a good bedding area for the vermin, we weren’t wrong this time.

The headliner was a little bit saggy and we could feel all the nuts and what ever else was stored up there. There was no other option other than to take out the front and rear glass to remove the headliner. It wasn’t good!

The roof needed some treatment before we could even think about replacing the headliner. We started to dismantle the dash to see what was going on behind the gauges. There was some damage to wires, but nowhere near as bad as it could have been, like it could easily have been a new loom type of bad.

The car had to be cleaned and aired to get the smell out of the vehicle before we could even think about replacing anything. The sound proofing for the fire wall is always another source of bedding for the mice and needed to be replaced.

The headliner has to be first fitted in place, left for a while for the creases to fall out the stretched into place. We know a few little tricks to get the headliner to be stretched into place correctly, but we won’t share them with you, but it is a full proof method proven over time.

The floor sound proofing and new carpet now fitted and starting to look a lot better.

We shall bring you more on this project as we progress.

Our shop truck ’65 Falcon Ranchero is starting to get parts restored or replaced once we have inspected them to see if they are good enough to be reused or simply replaced. This all takes time, cleaning, repairing, prep and paint ready for re-fitting.

Once we get the truck back from paint will post some pictures.

We mentioned in the first part of the post that we have been asked if we had ‘other’ Ford parts or be able to get hold of them at least. We are now stocking some ‘Ford Transit Custom Parts‘ on the WebShop.

We are now stocking the common service items, filters, brakes, belts and a few other items like alternators, sensors, timing covers and so on. We will be increasing the stock variety fairly quickly as soon as the deliveries arrive of course. But the process and snow ball effect has been started.

Sheet Metal

We have started to get more sheet metal in, these are the Taiwanese stock and not the inferior Chinese products. These are a nicely finished products and we don’t have issues with fitting them. For the sheet metal this is still only for some trade customers.

The early ’64 1/2 Mustangs had the 260ci v8 small blocks fitted at the time of manufacture. But, did you know that the very early Falcons had a 221ci v8 small blocks?

The engine itself is a rarity as it’s a 3.62ltr compared to the more common replacement 260ci (4.2ltr) of the Mustang ‘Winsor’ power units. The engine has a 3.50 bore “6” spread on a mounting pattern.

Adam found this one at the back of his engine storage shop. The original heads are with the block and Adam has plans to rebuild it. He thought it was ‘just a 260ci’. If you want that concours date correct engine block – here it is. If Adam decides to sell it; get your wallet out quickly, it could be yours.

New Mustang Maniac Vehicle

So what do we have to move all the stock about the yard and the offices? Adam’s new vehicle of course:

It’s fully road legal, and eco friendly to offset the carbon footprint of some of the v8 monsters he has stored and tucked away. If you see it on the roads near the offices, give us a little space, it doesn’t go that fast, but it gets there quickly enough.

Adam did say; “I have done my time picking up engines, gearboxes, heads or what ever and moving them a few feet at a time. Now it’s time to take it a little bit easier. Also I like driving it around!”

We have all had a go in the Greta approved vehicle and really is great fun, but it sounds rubbish, even if you can hear it!

Yes, it’s now December and we can drop the ‘C’ bomb – Christmas. We are now making bespoke t-shirts and mugs to order. Want to put your car on a mug, or somebody else’s mug on a mug for a Christmas stocking filler? Just drop us an email with the picture or any picture you want and we will get it done for you. We have had one customer ask for his dogs to go on the mug for his wife. He ordered the bespoke mug at the same time he bought some Mustang parts. The logic was he didn’t feel so bad about buying all the car parts and he was “thinking of her too!”

Due to popular requests we made our Gift Vouchers available online. Once you have completed your order, please click on; “you can review your order/invoice here“. The vouchers details will be on that document.

These vouchers are the perfect way to treat that Mustang mad person to what ever they want to buy. You just can’t go wrong with our vouchers.

Posted in Customers' Cars, dogs, Ford Facts, Memorabilia, Mustang, News, Our Cars, Parts, Repairs, Restoration, Service, sheet metal, Webshop | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Rare Beasts

Last weekend was the annual classic car show at the Birmingham NEC. A highly popular show as ever and the Mustang Owners Club Of Great Britain ‘MOCGB‘ had their popular stand there. To celebrate the upcoming 60th Anniversary of the Ford Mustang the stand was to have something a bit different with them for the weekend. Alongside the super clean and shiny Mustangs there was to be perhaps the dirtiest car there, Adam’s totally original ’66 GT350 Hertz.

The car was taken out from it’s resting place in the yard where it saw daylight for the first time in a few years. This example is unrestored and untouched since it stopped racing.

The car was going to be taken to the show on the back of an LAR lorry, and it certainly wasn’t going to be cleaned, inside or out. The car has only had three owners including Adam and the car has provenance as long as the wheelbase. The documentation is as impressive as the layers of dirt on the car. This is a rare outing for a rare car.

There are ten dogs that patrol around the storage area of this car. Some customers have even said to us that our free roaming guard dogs, who always live outside with their very own weather proof kennels that; “they have a bad attitude problem”. Er, no they don’t! They are doing their job and guarding our yard which they do very, very well! They will bite if you are not with one of us. We have even put up signs to warn people not to go into the yard. That’s why we have the guard dogs, they have an attitude that is ‘zero tolerance of unknown visitors’.

At the show the Hertz was rolled into place in front of the MOCGB stand. The stark contrast of cars through the years made for a great looking stand.

The GT350 got a lot of attention and some even called into question the authenticity. Make no mistake that this IS the real deal. The question often asked is; do you restore it, or do you leave it as it is? For now, it it will stay as it is and that way it has options. Many people asked if it was for sale, it’s not. However, if you have the right amount of money with some pretty deep pockets, then speak to Adam nicely – it just might be!

The Mustangs on the stand were attracting lots of footfall over the three days show as always. The club even got a few new signed up members too.

Thanks to the MOCGB as always for their generous hospitality.

Last week we had a very loyal customer and good friend of ours come to us with his newly acquired purchase a 1966 High Performance ‘K’ code factory GT Belgium export model. That’s not something that you can say everyday, but they do turn up now and again all be it very rarely.

The car has been in storage for the past ten plus years. the car has been previously been restored to high standards and just needs a freshen up. We have been asked to pull the engine and gearbox out of the car as the new owner wants to re-paint the underside with the correct Metuchen red oxide colour. 

The plan with this little lady is to refresh and overhaul what needs to be done once the owner lets us know what they want. Until we have a good look around and inspect the car fully, we won’t know. The pretty bits can all be added at a later date of course, that’s not a priority at this stage. For now, it’s the mechanics that we need to concentrate on such as; brakes, fuel, bushings, steering, springs, electrics etc.

The engine does need some attention to a couple of leaky core plugs, nothing we haven’t seen numerous times before. So while the engine is out, a complete strip down will be done to make sure all is as good as it should be. Then a little paint and the bolt on bits as required.

As we mentioned earlier, the car is a High Performance (HiPo) ‘K’ (vin) code with a four speed manual gearbox, factory GT. The interior has the original deluxe (Pony) interior centre console, rally pac and remote mirror all from the factory. It’s worth noting that no ‘K’ code model had the option of power steering or air conditioning. However with that in mind, this specification would have been one of the most highly optioned Mustangs back in the day. Of all the cars that made, less than three percent of that production model were stamped with the coveted ‘K’ code which make them highly collectable today.

We will of course be bringing you updates on the progress of the car. Know the owner this is going to turn out to be pretty special example of a genuine K code car.

Posted in car show, Car Shows, Classic Cars, Customers' Cars, Mustang, Mustang Maniac, Our Cars, racing, Restoration | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments