We start this week with a cautionary note to continue on with the electrical theme from the previous post. This time it wasn’t a modification, more a case of some damage limitation. There’s an old saying that says ‘It’s volt that jolt, mills that kill!’ We will explain more a little further down. This nice rare coloured coupe came in and was reported that it had some ‘electrical issues’ should we say. We investigated and found that the battery had shorted out and was getting very warm, not only that, a wire had burnt through. All of which could lead to a electrical failure as in this case, possibly leading to a fire or worse case; lethal exposure.

The heavy gauge wires were just wrapped in coloured insulating tape, which in this case didn’t insulate enough, handling these wires could kill you or us. Use the correct wires for the job intended, if you are uncertain about what you are doing, please leave it to the professionals. That’s all we can say, we see it often and sometimes we are amazed these cars still keep working.

(On a personal note; A very close friend of mine had a brother who had an accident while he was working under the hood of a car, he touched a wire while trying to start the car. The resulting shock caused his body to spasm violently. That spasm caused him to smash his head onto the hood and cracked his open skull. He died from the head wound, burns and organ while in a comma a couple of days later. He had just turned into his forties.)

Back to the little saying about volts and amps;  it would seem that a shock of 10,000 volts would be more deadly than 100 volts. But this isn’t so! Individuals have been electrocuted by appliances using ordinary house currents of 110 / 240 volts and by electrical apparatus in industry using as little as 42 volts direct current. The real measure of a shock’s intensity lies in the amount of current (amperes) forced though the body, and not the voltage. Any electrical device used on a house wiring circuit can, under certain conditions, transmit a fatal current.

While any amount of current over 10 milliamps (0.01 amp) is capable of producing painful to severe shock, currents between 100 and 200 mA (0.1 to 0.2 amp) are lethal. Currents above 200 milliamps (0.2 amp), while producing severe burns and unconsciousness, do not usually cause death if the victim is given immediate attention. Resuscitation, consisting of artificial respiration will usually revive the victim.  After a person is knocked out by an electrical shock it is impossible to tell how much current has passed through the vital organs of his body.

The point of all this is simple, if you don’t know what you are doing, please leave it to the professionals as we said above. The modern day car batteries for these early Mustangs easily produce 600amps to well over 800amps on cranking. We found this little chart to put this into perspective.

Customers Cars:

Austin Collins had brought his ’67 convertible into us for a few little bits to be done.

First up was a general tune up; timings and that elusive dark art of carburetor settings.

Next up was a little internal TLC, the rear trims needed replacements each side.

Still on the interior, Austin had seen on our little ol’ blog where we previously made some upgrades to bring these old Mustangs into the modern era. Hardly anybody uses the lighter socket these days and it’s a bit of a waste of space, unless you smoke in the car of course. With so much of the modern day connectivity using USB, such as after market SatNav, phones, music players etc. we stock these upgrades as standard now. We replace the lighter socket with a new modern and dual functional fitting. Hidden out of sight it still looks stock and doesn’t ruin the old school look. As a side note the voltage readings can also give you an idea of any potential electrical issues.

The Yogi Mach1

Yogi recently posted this on social media of his new updated engine with the 950cfm carb.

We we have a few more of the engine being built.

We are so looking forward to giving this a good thrashing down our little test route we use, only to 30mph and 70mph of course. 😉