WebShop & Parts Updates

The Mustang Maniac yard is taking on a restructure moving things around to make space for storage and new locations for the parts stores. We are still busy with customer cars for servicing and completion of a project car for a customer.

We have some important updates to announce regarding our WebShop which has been requested by a few customers. We have listened and started the process for one of them and the other we have tidied up. Both can be found under the “Parts/Spares” heading and were looking to add these sections to main heading shortly too.

This section has been tidied up and looks cleaner.

This has been around for a while and proves to be popular, we have made it a bit easier to navigate around. This page could change on an hourly basis depending on what Adam’s decides.

“Cars For Sale”

We are excited to announce a brand new section requested by a couple of our customers,called “Cars For Sale” also can be found under the “Parts/Spares” heading. This page is not just for our cars, but also customer’s cars looking for a premium location for a targeted audience looking to buy Mustangs. We are not responsible for the cars themselves, we are just facilitating a hosting area where their cars can be advertised via our WebShop. We pass the details of buyers to the sellers and let them take the discussions over.

If you want to know more about this service, contact us at sales@mustangmaniac.co.uk

This section has only been live for a very short while and already a couple of cars have been sold.

One of the cars for sale is this Thomas Crown Affair featuring Pierce Brosnan prop car.

A description from the for sale page with a link here.

The car Starts, Runs and Stops. UNREGISTERED . Wanna have a Thomas Crown Affair tribute car! Then this is for you.

Shelby style convertible with a 302 V8 engine, 8” rear, C4 gearbox, No Rear Seats! fibreglass rear seat deck, fibreglass hood and trunk, flared arches and torque thrust wheels. Doors will open but have been screwed shut with chequer plate for strength. Grey aftermarket leather seats and sports steering wheel.

This vehicle is UNREGISTERED and was a 1967 mustang, 2 door coupe, 6 cylinder, that has been converted to make the prop car above, 

We do have the original USA title certificate for the car if you want to register it, tax has been paid but we do not have the Nova title .

So either use as a perfectly good PROP car for your business or advertising gimmick car, or even register and rebuild. Will have to be trailered away from SG11.

Come and have a look and you could build a Thomas crown affair car, Or advertise your Classic Car garage in Style.

Many more pics and videos if needed, ramps on site if you wish to see the underneath.

Here it is in our ménage at the back of the yard.

We do have the hood which is stored in the workshop after we took it of to work on the engine.

Contact us for more information about this or any of our other cars for sale.

We have also started to post little Mustang Maniac snippets on Instagram and Facebook so watch out for those updates too.

A decision has been made not to stock some parts. The reason is that a few parts from a supplier are not meeting our high quality control standards, as a result we a not stocking some of those items going forward. That will continue to be the case until their quality of parts improves or we find alternative suppliers for these parts. In the mean time we apologise if those parts suddenly stop being available. However, current stock of these items are fine and we are happy to still them. The latest batch has already been returned back to the supplier for them to investigate or at least provide an explanation of the issues we have reported. Our reputation is based on quality of our parts and that remains a priority for our customers.

Some of the more obscure parts are going through the non manufacturing cycle and starting to become difficult to get hold of again and sadly remain out of stock on our WebShop. We continue to strive and source these parts so we can keep our stock levels at reasonable levels.

We are continuing with the rebuild projects to clean up our selection of original carbs and parts that we have in stock. If you are looking for these original parts with full restoration drop us a line for prices.

As soon as we make space in the yard, Adam proceeds to fill those gaps with more cars which adds to the diverse selection of his fleet with this LPG power Ute from Australia. He has also bought a matching saloon in the same colour, as one is obviously not enough. Adam absolutely loves these cars and could well be one his daily vehicles. Practicality, comfort and cheap to run.

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C Series Sandwich

“What’s better than one C Series Truck?” That was the question Adam posed to us in the office of Mustang Maniac. Quite a random question as we stared a little confused, he then said “Three of ’em!” He showed us a photo of the yard from the weekend where he had parked up his latest acquisitions!

Not only has Adam already got a flat bed which he has had for quite a while now. There is another one with a Falcon on the back ready to be off-loaded. Another great looking car that he has picked up from somewhere unspecified. A great truck with a great looking car on the back.

Sandwiched between the two flat beds is his latest project, a Fire Truck.

You have to admit he’s right on this one, they do look great parked up together a truck from each decade, 1963, 1974 and a 1980.

Let put that into perspective a bit; 1980 doesn’t seem that long ago, right? The 1980 truck came out just thirty five years after the end of the Second World War. 1980 has a longer elapsed time span to todays date, some forty five years later! If that doesn’t make you feel old, try this; the 1980 truck was made three years before the first commercially available mobile phone was released in 1983 – Motorola DynaTAC 8000X.

Editor’s Note:

Some of my first mobile phones are now on display in museums! I’ve even got some of these in a box in my loft (‘attic’ for our USA friends).

Many hands make light work is the age old saying and that is true down at the Mustang Maniac’s stores. Last weekend we had a couple of our loyal customers with us who came down for nothing more than a chat. They voluntarily got involved in sorting out some stock with us which was greatly appreciated. In return they earned their cups of tea. All these boxes had the smaller items such as gauges, switches, fixings, handles, cables (some of which have been on back order for six months), linkages, engine bay items, engine parts; gaskets, valves, fuel parts, brakes etc. along with the usual service parts. From the photo at the bottom, we don’t buy one or two items, we tend to buy the batch available at the time. Splash guards anybody?

The engineering stores have looked a little empty of late as some stock of the C4 gearboxes has gone for a full rebuild. The first of which has arrived back to us. After being mechanically rebuilt, we then tidy them up, tag them and store them. Not a cheap hobby of course, but if you want a date correct C4 gearbox which has been rebuilt correctly by skilled engineers. You can got to other experts of course, or get one from us with peace of mind. Providing Adam will sell you one in the first place.

We shall continue to post repairs of some customer cars and our own projects when we get round to them hopefully once a month.

We are not slowing down or shutting shop despite what is being said, we are just focusing a bit more on other things. In fact our parts side is busier than ever.

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First Off The Line

We have to start this post of with a Happy 61st Birthday to the Mustang for the 17th April 1964 World Trade Fair launch in New York, now also known as ‘Mustang Day’. After six decades the Ford Mustang is still going as strong as ever. The word Mustang still evokes an era of American Muscle Cars that probably will never be seen again with all the Lithium dug being dug up for the soulless electric cars that are starting to clog the roads. The parts are pretty much all still available, we stock them and love to see these stunning classic cars on the road and we aim to facilitate that with our extensive stock availability.

We thought we would mention that today is also Easter Sunday and we should celebrate the traditional UK festivities which are being increasingly suppressed by our own government. Also we can’t ignore the over indulgence of the chocolate Easter eggs. Do you know where the Easter Egg symbolism comes from?

The Easter eggs tradition stems from a blend of ancient pagan and Christian beliefs, with eggs symbolizing new life and rebirth. In ancient cultures, eggs were associated with spring and fertility. Early Christians adopted the egg symbolism linking it to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. 

As Mustang Maniac is taking a new direction we thought it was very fitting to post today. Not uniquely from a religious point of view, but from the new new direction and rebirth of Mustang Maniac.

What can be sweeter than a chocolate Mustang, apart from the real thing of course?

We posted previously about our Carburettor rebuilds and refurbishment skills. We posted some picture that we quickly took down. Not that was anything wrong with the pictures but we didn’t give the concept of the before and after. We aim to rectify that today for you.

We are going to do a side by side comparison where we can and then the finished article. There were bits missing, which needed to be replaced, seals and gaskets needing replacing and of course the plating.

The carb was setup to original Ford specs, but like all things carb related, they do need to be optimised to the car and bedded in. No two carbs are exactly the same on similar engines, such as wear and tear, timing, performance upgrades, even a dirty air filter can make a difference.

This carburettor will be up for sale very soon in the WebShop. Carburettor setup and tuning is a dark art which is becoming more of a specilised skill as us old school mechanics die out. We of course retain that knowledge and we won’t be passing our years and years of knowledge for that level of detail out to the new kids on the block ‘specialists’. No laptop can be plugged into these mechanical carbs to help you out, so experience and knowledge is all you can rely on. We think we have earned that right to be protective of our knowledge to be honest.

To finish up with another sweet ride.

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New Directions

For the last six months or so Adam and his team have been looking at Mustang Maniac’s future. Adam has decided he is getting older, so things need to change. Over those many meeting hours and lots of tea and Jaffa cakes being consumed, some very difficult decisions have finally been made; which we can now share with you.

What has prompted the decisions?

Over the last couple of years Mustang Maniac have become increasingly involved with work to repair and restoration jobs from other Mustang ‘specialists’ in order to get the cars where they should be. This has been a source of frustration for a while, but it has kept us busy. The frustration arose not from that stream of work coming into the workshops, but more of our frustration for the customers we then deal with. Understandably these customers aren’t very happy for being out of pocket for yet more repairs from us, more to the point they become disillusioned with their cars, which also makes us sad as they are great cars.

In a nut shell; we will not be taking on full restoration projects after we complete the ones we have in the pipeline.

What will happen to Mustang Maniac?

We’re still here and we’re not going away. We have repurposed the workshops and now have just the one large dedicated to our customers Mustangs, and now another general purpose one.

What does this mean for our long standing and loyal customers?

We will continue to maintain and look after their cars for the foreseeable future.

What will happen to Mustang Maniac parts store?

We will continue to sell the parts and continue to be the primary source of Mustang parts in the UK. In fact we are expanding our product lines to incorporate more Falcon parts and some Ford Transit parts too. We will continue to stock a massive amount of parts, for those really obscure parts that don’t sell, we won’t stock them of the shelf. But we will obtain them via special orders on our WebShop.

What will happen to the Mustang Maniac collection of cars?

They are staying. But, Adam might part with one or three if the money was right. We will let you know as and when (if) this happens.

WE would like to thank those customers who have had their cars restored with us and hope they continue to enjoy them for many years to come.

What will happen to the blog?

It will still be here giving our readers and followers updates on some repairs we undertake. The main focus will be on informing you of new parts in the WebShop and other things we get up to, such as car shows or business updates.

WE are now starting to restore original Mustang parts, things like Engines, gearboxes, carburetors and so on. There seems to be a shortage for the original parts so we are going to rectify that, well that’s the plan.

We have started with a Ford 2100 carb where it has been stripped down, totally cleaned and new repair kits fitted where needed like seals, gaskets, jets, electro plating to look as good as new etc. The costs of the parts will reflect the amount of time we have put into each part. they may well differ for similar parts side by side, if we spent 4 hours on one and 2 hours on another there will be difference.

For those customers who want direct replacements as good as new at a reasonable prices, then this is the way to go.

The ’65 Falcon has had some more fettling in our ‘bling bay’. The rear parcel shelf has been custom colour coded to the car.

We have a nice 1970 vinyl roof coupe in for some tweaks which we have now completed.

We installed a center consul hump hugger which looks amazing in the car.

Adam is here checking things over before giving the final sign off.

To re-iterate: We are still here as Mustang Maniac as you know and love, it’s certainly NOT ‘over and out’, just a change in direction. We will be having those promised updates to the WebShop soon, but the database has turned into a monster with the changes we wanted, and needs moving (or some other technical explanation that went over our heads, hence the delay.

Thank you for your understanding. If you need to have work done or a project please email us on the email below and we will get back to you as soon as possible.

sales@mustangmaniac.co.uk

We can then advise you on what we can, will or won’t be undertaking once we have cleared out current customers projects and obligations.

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Tidy Up

We last posted towards the end of last year and had every intention to post just after the new year. However, things changed pretty quickly and we embarked on a many new projects behind the scenes that have taken up a lot of our time. We have revamped the workshops, we have moved things around in our yard which means it was all hands to the pump to get it all done.

On our technology side we are working heavily behind the scenes on the Mustang Maniac WebShop pages, they have received a new look and will be getting even more tweaks shortly. We think we now have a cleaner, fresher and faster loading home page.

We’re trying to make it easier to navigate the whole parts listing after some customer feedbacks, this was one such comment; ‘There is so much stuff and parts, I don’t know where to find it all’, which we are pleased to have been bought to our attention. There are now new sections for the various year of Mustangs, once selected the various parts listings can be found there, it’s not perfect yet, but we are getting there. We now have a dedicated Sales section which will change very regularly, sometimes by the hour, once it’s gone – it’s gone! We now have a huge sidebar that has been tidied up as well, but it still needs more work to categorise for easier navigation all of which will be coming soon. The search function is also looking for a few tweaks too.

The special update that we promised a while ago is still going to happen, very soon. We had put the change into pilot environment and encountered an abnormality. Many guest to our site may not even notice, but we weren’t happy with it. As a result the simple change (or so we thought) has unexpectedly taken additional months (literally) of development. We’re sure what we are planning will be an absolute first anywhere. We can’t wait to share it with you, after what will be nearly a years worth of work for research, creating new databases, actual proof on concept and of course making those all those components work on the website, all in a simple and easy to use process. It may not look much when you see it. but behind the scenes a lot is going on.

A customer has a very nice 1965 Falcon which needed some Mustang Maniac fettling and was bought into us for our special unmatched know how.

Under the hood a fair bit of work has taken place. The engine was cleaned up to get a good base for a fresh coat of paint. A new distributor replaced the old worn out one, new HT leads, a change of air pan and filter, and a pair of nice new rocker covers were fitted. With so many ignition parts being changed a carb mixture tune up as well as timing are a must to ensure smooth running.

The we fitted a battery isolator, replaced some tired nuts and bolts. We changed out the rocker covers for some nice new, yet subtle covers.

Bodywork was fine, but there was a report of wind whistling when getting up to speed. This was down to the windows not being aligned correctly and needed some adjusting. The door strips were also replaced to help with the wind noise and sealing from the elements.

We added some sound proofing and compartment separator card to the trunk.

The stock radio is getting some fancy internal upgrades for Bluetooth and DAB functionalities which we can organise for some customers. This retains the original look with the modern functions. It’s not the cheapest of ways to upgrade the sound system, but it does retrain that all important originality.

Perhaps one of the best features of the Falcon?

All parts are straight of our extensively stocked shelves, not just the usual parts many people tend to stock, but the hard to get and not often sold parts. If you want anything and everything for your Mustang or Falcon, your one stop WebShop is all you need.

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Merry Christmas From Mustang Maniac

From all of us at Mustang Maniac, we would like to wish all our friends and loyal customers, a very Merry Christmas & Happy New year. Thank you for your support.

We will be back the first full week in the new year 2025 to dispatch your orders.

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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?

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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.

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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