An Important Week For The World

Posted on January 22, 2017 by Mustang Maniac

Seeing a heading like that you thought we were going to be talking about politics! Nope, something just as important if you are a Petrol Head or Gear Head. We are fully aware that a new President has been sworn into the Oval Office, however we don’t want to be drawn into any mass debates about politics. However all we will say that one of our friends from the USA has sent us something which relates to the occasion. When the dust has settled we may well post the picture, or if we get a request to do so (it can be shown on a family blog, don’t worry) in the mean time. So what will be talking about on this week’s blog that is just as important? Cars, in particular a new model Mustang that’s what. 🙂

News of the 2018 Mustang

Ford would like to focus on the new tech adorning the 2018 Mustang, which includes a huge new information screen and a lot of driver-assistance technology. Mustang enthusiasts are more interested about what’s going on under the hood. Now that Ford had broken the performance barrier with the last-generation Mustang’s new chassis, most of us want to see what’s new in handling as well. This should make pony car fans happy.

Under the hood, Ford has simplified the 2018 Mustang’s engine offerings to just two options: the four and an eight-cylinder, both have had their transmissions tweaked that go with each option. The four-cylinder is the already-proven 2.3-ltr EcoBoost engine which showed up in the last generation and as a replacement for the 3.7ltr V6 before it. This iteration of the engine gets a tweak to improve torque output, although Ford has yet to tell everybody just how much that is. We’re also told that the big 5.0-ltr V8 has also been reworked with promises of more power and higher revolutions compared to the previous GT, mainly thanks to a new fuel injection system. The V8 is now a dual-fuel, high-pressure direct-injected engine with low-pressure port fuel injectors. This improvement increases fuel burn through better atomisation in the cylinder bores. The manual transmission has a modified twin-disc clutch through a dual-mass flywheel to increase the torque delivery capability while improving clutch movement. In other words, it makes it more difficult to “burn” the clutch during performance shifting. Pretty standard by most of the cars today to be honest. The automatic transmission now offered for the 2018 Ford Mustang is a new 10-speed tuned to the Mustang’s performance needs. This transmission goes with Ford’s other introductions of high-gear transmissions for performance vehicles like the Raptor pickup truck. Ford is promising faster shift times, better low-speed response rates, and more efficiency with this transmission, which replaces the six-speed automatic offered in the previous Mustang. Steering wheel shift paddles are offered as complements to this automatic transmission.

Underneath the engine is a more refined chassis. The last-generation Mustang saw the advent of an independent rear suspension for the first time in this pony car. Ford has taken that set-up a step further with a new cross-axis joint and improved shock absorbers and sway bars on all models to improve ride and lateral stiffness for the curves. A new option is the “MagneRide” dampers, which allows damper adjustment to further stiffen or loosen the ride quality as the driver wishes. This is expected to be sold as part of the “Performance Package” for the new ponies. Ford also focus on the release of new technology, not just engines. Ford is now offering a 12-inch LCD screen to compliment the dashboard and part of the new instrument cluster. Ford is touting this new screen as the centrepiece that allows the driver to fully customise what’s being shown in the instrument cluster and driver information screens. The driver can also control some of the engine’s sound – or at least how much of it is piped into the cockpit. As with previous generations of the Mustang, the V6 engine’s sound can be created through the speaker system to give it a more robust, muscular track. The GT model has an active valve exhaust system that produces authentic sound that can be controlled by the onboard computer. Driver-assist technology is also at the forefront of this new Mustang. In addition to adaptive cruise control and active braking for crash mitigation, the new models also have options for Pre-Collision Assistant with pedestrian detection, lane-departure warnings, lane-keeping assist, and more.

If you ever fall asleep driving a Mustang (which we doubt very much), Ford’s Driver Alert System is now also an option if you are worried about the car being boring. Infotainment which is the latest Ford SYNC Connect is available to the Mustang range for the first time. The is a pretty cool option that allows the Ford Pass smart phone app to access the car remotely for remote start, door lock/unlock, and a lot more.

The most obvious changes are the cosmetic uplifts, offering a more athletic look with a lower hood and updated aerodynamics all of which are a progression from the current model. This does come at the expense of the grille, which is now narrower and more Focus-like than previously seen on the Mustangs. Standard LED lighting all around the car, while the current models rear tail lights remain largely unchanged still giving the nod to the early classic Mustangs.

A late announcement as we prepared this article was the new rag top or convertible model. Not much as been mentioned about it apart from the few pics. But, we don’t care its a convertible Mustang!

When do we expect to see this car? we will have to wait until the third quarter of this year! Base models expected to be around £32,000 in the UK.

Customer Cars

Lime ’72 Mach1

The car is being put back together are good speed. The engine was put back into the engine bay and the slow tedious task of wiring back up gets undertaken.

The interior has started to take shape with the dash being fitted up and some of the fittings going back into place.

The underside of the car has now been finished apart from the usual alignment and final tweaks of course. The underside is not as pretty as a full restoration, but the parts are good and there is no need to change them unless they are worn or damaged. The car isn’t going to be put into any concourse shows so Paul is happy to keep it as original as possible. We can’t argue with that either.

We did have to change the oil sump so that has had a little treat of some bling!

Gulf Stream Aqua’ 65 Coupe

We have an update on the progress of Lances paint damaged car. The paint is coming off and the imperfections slowly being addressed.

Ford Escort Mk1

We have had a very unusual car come into us which is this left hand drive 1973 Ford Escort 1100XL originally built in Germany. The car was fully restored in Serbia with the glass out, new interior, and a full engine rebuild which has only done 50 miles since then. The car has just been MOT’s this week for another year of nostalgic driving. Why do we mention this – ’cause it’s for sale!

DeAgostini Shelby GT500 1:8th Model

The first delivery of 2017 from DeAgostini brings us issues are 57 – 60.

Part 57:

This issue is a the rear seat back that will screw to the shelf from the last issue. Just press the two parts together and they will snap into place. Tiny screws again for the hinge, but they look good.

the completed shelf seat lays onto the back of the rear section. There is a notch in the lower sides of the rear panels which will take the hinge pin.

Part 58:

This is a duplication of the previous issue Part 53 for the lower side trim.

The tricky part here is to get the rear seat/shelf to stay in place while you screw it together. A downside here is that the plastic has bowed outwards slightly and the tolerance for the hinge pins into the trims means it pops out a few times. We suspect that when it all bolts to the car it will all tighten back up again.

pin can pop out of the side trim

Part 59:

This is a duplicate of the Part 54 for the top rear trim. Getting everything to align while trying to screw it together was a little bit of a mission though.

These pics are of the three positions of the rear seat/shelf being moved.

Part 60:

This issue was a real fiddle with the rear harness belts. The first job is to fit the under dash heater box with two screws.

There are to roller blocks that are mirror images of each other. This image in the magazine was not brilliant but there is a “R” and “L” on each roller if you get stuck. The seat belts have to be threaded into the slots of each roller and the metal part of the hinge lays in place to allow a small screw into the top roll cage fitting. This is repeated for both sides. Depending how OCD you want to be about this, but look at which way the belts will show, specially at the outer side of the belts near the floor. The could be the lapped over material showing if you get it around the wrong way, will it show? I doubt it, but we made sure the glued section was at the back of the belt and not seen from the front.

The roll cage is clipped into the lower rear trim and a small screw holds it in place. The bottom sections of the of the belts are slotted into the base of the floor section. They recommend to use small pliers or tweezers. We found it easier to get the fitting part of the way through the slots and then gently press it through with a small flat screwdriver. The choice is yours of course. From the other side the metal fastener will clip over a pin to hold it in place. Another down point here. We found that these pins were a little short and didn’t have a nice click into place feel.

We made a decision here to place a tiny drop of super glue onto the pin with the fastener to make sure it stayed in place on all the seat belt anchor points.

The finished article is pretty good detail but takes a little while to get it all in place.

For the total build so far see the menu above of click here for the hyper link.

See – no politics!

Posted in 1:8th Scale Model, Articles, Cars For Sale, Customers' Cars | Tagged 1:8th Scale, 2018 Mustang, DeAgostini, Escort Mk1, gt500, Mach1, Mustang, Mustang Maniac, Pony car, Shelby | 1 Comment

A Costly Chip

Posted on January 15, 2017 by Mustang Maniac

We will start straight away with the cars this week and not a single mention of the snow, except we just have to say that the hype wasn’t really worth it in the South East of the UK. We even had one of our guys snowed in, so he says. We need a your opinion on the photographic evidence supplied!

Enough of the weather and on with the cars as promised.

Gulf Stream Aqua’ 65 Coupe

We had some sad news regarding one of our good friend’s car. Now any petrol head will sympathise with this next picture, this is like chipping a chunk of a Ming dynasty vase to antique collector. It was done by just catching the door his bench in the garage by parking a little out of place to where he normally parks.

We heard his pained screams from the next village, for any classic car owner this is a major issue. So much so, that trying to correct the problem and then another small problem while he was at it has made matters worse. Yes this can be filled and resprayed, but a difficult decision was made for a new coat of paint, selling a spare kidney to pay for it. The small area on top of the wing was a tiny spot which now looks like a moon crater that now matches the Grand Canyon sized chip on the door paint.

touched in paint

To keep costs reasonable, the owner was to strip the car down, ready for the trip to the paint shop where she would get coats of the same colour. We won’t mention any names of course, but Lance wasn’t happy with some of the other little bits of the body work as it was playing havoc with his OCD, for those reasons he decided to freshen the whole car up again. This all seems a little strange if you ask us, as last year Lance updated the inside of the car with new sound proofing, and red oxide and new custom-made seat covers!

The front left headlight bucket assembly fender extension didn’t fit as well as it could have done, so he got a new one, another good excuse to re-paint the car.

The door cards were to be removed, glass trim, bumpers, along with any window felts, rubber fittings, all so that they could be ready for masking up. A few more areas under the chrome trim needed to be corrected which he wasn’t aware of at the time. The damaged front wing was removed to fix a small hole in the upper cowl which was then red oxide paint to protect it all.

Now that the car is in the body shop, the real nice paint has all but gone.

We shall bring you some more updates as we get the car back, which should be around March time, just in time for car show season. We would like to make a little observation here; we think that this is the first paint job and partial restoration update on a Mustang by stealth. Was the chip an accident??? We’re not so sure now, just saying!

Lime ’72 Mach1

Our very own painter has brought his car back to us after it’s respray. Our task is to put it all back together again. Luckily this wasn’t a full strip down, so it’s case of replacing the damaged or rotten parts, such as the top dash pad etc. to make it road legal again.

A quick refresh of what she did look like:

Yogi and Paul started to put the outside trim back in place .

Engine is ready to go back into the engine bay.

engine bay

Inside the car the dash is the first place to start and soon starts to take shape.

behind the centre dash

behind the dash

With the main labour intensive part of the dash done it was time for the seats.

Again we will bring you more on the rebuild of the Mach1 as we go along.

WebShop

We have a new Limited Edition T-shirt arrived back us. Muscle car owners take pride in the fact they have a powerful cars, for those of us that believe that occasional burn out (in a controlled environment of course), leaving trails of those all important black lines of rubber on the road which goes to prove that point, we have just the T-shirt for you. Mustang Maniac cars and parts are “Born to Perform”.

Posted in Car Shows, Customers' Cars, Sales, Webshop | Tagged gulf stream aqua, Mach1, Mustang, Mustang Maniac, snow, WebShop | 5 Comments

Start Of A New Year

Posted on January 8, 2017 by Mustang Maniac

First of all we would like to wish you all a Happy New Year as this is our first post of the year. Before we get asked again, no we didn’t make any new year resolutions. Over the Holidays we worked hard by making good headway into our stock take. As yet we haven’t finished it all as we need yet more space. The stock levels are pretty accurate compared to the online ordering system. The only thing is that we found lots more stuff we had forgotten about and not as yet on the WebShop, we have stored those lost parts in our new custom-made area, which was another job we hadn’t planned on at the end of last year. The new year for us is nothing different from the old year, the cars we had a couple of weeks ago are still there in the same state that we left them. So let’s get on with the updates for you.

Customers Cars:

We have a 1963 Ford Falcon Sedan Delivery 144CiD three on a tree, which required a little work in order for her to be ready for her MOT so she can get back on the road. As the car has sat in and around the yard nearly for three years we finally got the go ahead to work on her. This is rare example and you certainly don’t see many of them around now days.

The brake rear cylinders had corroded and leaked so needed to be changed as the first job, followed by a full brake adjust and bleed. The engine didn’t run very well at all when she arrived and we narrowed it down to the worn carb. First up was a new battery to turn the car over. We replaced the old carb with an Autolite part and fired her up. She started well and we could check for other issues, the most obvious now being the exhaust manifold blowing.

This was replaced easy enough without breaking any bolts which was a big bonus on a job like this. After she was put back together we could do a preliminary carb air/fuel setup ready for a road test.

We checked under the car and found that the rear exhaust had been “repaired” a few times before. It’s certainly not pretty, but it’s still holding up, for now.

The road test was great for the brakes and manifold, but wasn’t so good for the erratic engine running. We suspect that the car just needs to settle down again, it could even be simply a gone off batch of fuel. We will need to go over the fuel, throttle travel, idle, full timing & mixture settings to make her run right again. It’s not far away, just not how we want it to run. A few more miles on her first after the laid up spell before we adjust anything to much at this point.

Chris’ Mustang Project.

Chris has been working hard over the Christmas break to get the front of his car ready for some new metal and prep what he has to protect it from the elements. We see the inside of the engine has been completed and looks good now with the coats of Red Oxide.

Work has started on the upper cowl and B pillar areas.

Other News:

We have been sent a video of the differences between the USA and European spec Mustangs. I looks like we are definitely getting a raw deal in the UK! Hope you enjoy the video, not sure where it’s come from, but its a good video.

DeAgostini Shelby 1:8th Model Update

We had a delivery between Christmas and the New Year so we done a little indoor car building. The issues are 53 – 56 and have been updated on the build model page we are doing, also on the main menu, or click here for the link.

Part 53:

We continue with the inside theme with the first of the rear trim sections which comes in two parts, this being the first. There are two simple parts to screw to the trim, the courtesy light and the latch. With those in place a further three screws holds it onto the floor pan we have been building up over the last few issues.

Part 54:

This issue has the upper part to be attached to the previous lower section. The trim is a single piece with three screws to the rear, of which one is a lot smaller than the other two towards the front of the trim.

Part 55:

This was a single piece to be fitted to the left rear trim and under the rear floor pan. You can see that part has rounded fittings which push into the both the upper and lower parts of the rear trim. We were frustrated here as the parts didn’t align correctly and took a little bending to push them into the holes. Once they were in place a simple three screws to hold it firmly at the underside of the floor pan.

Part 56:

This part we liked a lot. The fold down shelf has a hinge and this is replicated in metal with very nice detail. There are chrome coloured screws to match the metal hinge which is located by a very slightly of set centre screw and will only fit one way. Once the hinge has been screwed on there is nowhere to attach it at the moment. These hinge screws are really tiny and we hope you have a nice set of screw drivers to cope. We found that our magnetised smaller driver fitted perfectly and made life a lot easier to attach the hinge.

A big thanks to everybody who has emailed us to say they enjoyed the Las Vegas / SEMA trip from last year. It seems as though you enjoyed it as much as we did. We take on board that there was a lot of pictures, but we think it was worth the larger posts. One final note – in these cold weather spells make sure you check your anti-freeze!

Posted in 1:8th Scale Model, Blog, Customers' Cars, Travel, Webshop | Tagged 1:8th Scale, DeAgostini, Falcon, Falcon Sedan Delivery, Las Vegas, Mustang, Mustang Maniac, red oxide, SEMA, Shelby, stock taking, WebShop | 2 Comments

A Seasonal Poem

Posted on December 25, 2016 by Mustang Maniac

Happy Xmas & New Year,

see you soon. 😃

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Mustang, Mustang Maniac, poem, SEMA | Leave a comment

Las Vegas – SEMA 2016 Day 4 (Part 2 of 2)

Posted on December 21, 2016 by Mustang Maniac

Friday 4th November 2016. The last post for our SEMA 2016 tour and we have a few (OK. quite a few) pics of the SEMA Cruise. The vehicles all drive out from the halls to their collection trucks or just drive them to where they are kept. These fantastic looking cars on the stand with all that polished chrome drive past you so you can hear them as well. The marshals are pretty keen to stop any burn outs or erratic driving should we say. But, there is nothing to stop them revving the engines and pulling away quickly should we say! Chris and Mart stayed for a couple of hours to watch the cruise, it can go on for four or five hours. We tried to grab a varied selection of cars and trucks, so it’s enough of our words and on with the cruise:

Chris and Mart walked back to the house where they meet up with the rest of the guys before setting out for the evening. On the way they called into a shopping mall and was met with a busy Voting station.

After we had all meet up again back at the house it was time to grab our last taste of nightlife in Las Vegas. Adam had arranged to meet some family for a get together over a beer. Then it was off for a proper steak, or should we say a side of a cow!

Our final pic here is Yogi looking over the Bellagio water fountains. We asked him what he was thinking, “I was just thinking what an amazing trip it has been” he replied.

We can’t improve on his thoughts and agree with him one hundred percent. It was indeed an amazing trip in more ways than one. All six of us never had a cross word spoken, we laughed all the time, the ripping into each other style of banter was just how it should be, we enjoyed the SEMA show obviously along with the other attractions we visited. This trip for many reasons will stay with us for such awesome memories.

Thanks to Adam for making it all happen, from the rest of the Mustang Maniac crew.

Thank you for following our journey to Las Vegas.

Same again next year? Oh, yeah!

Posted in Car Shows, Photos, SEMA, Travel | Tagged 72oz steak, Bellagio, Las Vegas, Mustang, Mustang Maniac, SEMA, SEMA 2016, SEMA Cruise, Yogi | Leave a comment

Taking Stock Of Christmas

Posted on December 18, 2016 by Mustang Maniac

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.

Posted in News, Restoration, Webshop | Tagged Adam, Boris, Christmas, Las Vegas, Mustang, Mustang Maniac, Pop Rivet Convertible, stock taking, WebShop, Yogi | 2 Comments

Las Vegas – SEMA 2016 Day 4 (Part 1 of 2)

Posted on December 17, 2016 by Mustang Maniac

Friday 4th November 2016. This was our last day at SEMA Show and we just didn’t know where the time had gone. We called it our double marathon. Why? By the time the four days at SEMA and our 6 days in total at Las Vegas, we had walked just a little of fifty-three Miles according to the step counts on our phones. Some were a little more and some were a little less but the average seemed to be fifty-three miles. Just wandering around you wouldn’t have thought it possible. That just gives you an idea of how big the scale of the show is. Of course we walked up and down the Las Vegas strips a few times and walked to and from parking, it’s still a huge amount of miles. Back to the show where we walked around the last hall and back outside to make sure we hadn’t missed any bits.de.

With the vast majority of the inside done we moved outside to the area we hadn’t yet seen and got our first glimpse of the stands for the SEMA Cruise later in the evening.

We even caught up with a well known face from the Fast & Furious films, Sung Kang. He was doin a little promo work for a stand.

Our Last post for SEMA 2016 will be the SEMA Cruise, what did we think of it? Here’s a clue from Mart & Chris.

Keep an eye out for the Cruise post which will have quite a few picture on there, not to many words we hope. 🙂

Posted in Car Shows, SEMA, Travel | Tagged concept car, Ferrari, Las Vegas, Mustang, Mustang Maniac, SEMA, SEMA 2016, SEMA Cruise, Sung Kang | 3 Comments

Shelby American Full Factory Tour

Posted on December 14, 2016 by Mustang Maniac

Friday 4th November 2016. It’s SEMA 2016 last day for us at the show, but before we picked up where we left off at SEMA, there was a trip back to the Shelby Heritage Center to be had where a full, unprecedented all access tour was coming our way. As this is a large post with lots of pictures, it’s well worth scrolling through to the end as these rare behind the scenes pics have not been in the public eye – until now!!!!

We arrived early before the doors opened at nine sharp. As a group we were hanging around by the side roller door of the factory waiting for our guide, we could already see some rather nice cars parked inside. Adam had arranged to meet with Shelby American Inc’s Director of Production and R&D, he is also their Chief Test Driver; Vince LaViolette. Vince was going to be our very own personal guide.

A few more other guests joined had by now joined our little group, thinking this was a way in. However, once the introductions had been completed with Vince we were shown in, some random other people followed us. Vince asked if they were with us and we of course said no. With that Vince advised them that we were on a private tour and that they should wait outside. The first thing to see was lines of post ramps, all with cars in various states of their build along with the sheer scale of the factory.

Behind us stood a very rare original GT40 owned by Bob Bondurant this was his personal car, and what a car it is too. In 1965 Bob won the FIA Manufacturers’ World Championship for Shelby American and Ford, winning seven out of ten races against the class dominating Ferrari 250 GTOs in Europe. Bob is also known for being a driving instructor to actors James Garner, Paul Newman, Clint Eastwood, Robert Wagner and Tim Allen, Tom Cruise and Nicolas Cage to name a few.

We were taken down the ramps and shown each of the cars in detail, and what they (Shelby) do to them to make them a “Shelby”. If you thought it was “scoops and stickers” then you are so far from the truth. The cars are ducted, cooled, tweaked, upgraded etc. but we will go into that a little later.

The cars have to be registered when they arrive at Shelby in order for the work to be done. The stock parts are removed from the car ready for the Shelby parts. This car below was going back to Australia as a rare right hand drive Shelby version. The little blue stickers on and around the car are where the body shop checks for damage, and what needs to be touched up after the series of complex engineering work has been completed.

Moving further on there was works race cars, replica GT40’s and Cobras of course.

We got up close to a Cobra being assembled. All the racks that hold the parts are covered so they don’t even put the smallest of marks on them, such is the level of care and detail.

The Cobra was waiting for the engine to be fitted and Vince explained the quality control that it all goes through before it even gets near the car.

Moving round to the back of the factory, are the little seen areas of the body assembly. There is a huge storage area off to the side where the parts from the new cars that were removed are stored before the new bespoke Shelby parts are fitted to the car. Some of these “spare” parts are sold on or maybe modified as required.

The car’s brakes and suspension having their upgrades fitted.

The very back of the workshop well away from the public gaze is the body paint and prep areas, the light booths will show any imperfections for the paint to be fixed.

We mentioned earlier on that the cars are all ducted and vented etc. The hoods are designed to cool the engine as every 100deg saved from the hot running engines will give around 4obhp, that’s A staggering figure just for cooling. The engines can run hot to about 400deg, but with the Shelby ducting designs this can be reduced to around 260deg, that’s why the venting is so important and the simple (in principle) way to obtain more power. This also applies to the brakes, there are cooling ducts under the cars to make sure the brake temperatures do not go out of tolerance no matter what the style of driving. The fabrication area is where each car has its own bespoke bodywork fitted or panels made for the car. Vince showed us the process for the carbon fibre and the fibreglass made on site, quite literally everything is hand finished to an impeccable standard.

Vince explains and shows us why all the little fins and ducts are there along with the benefits they produce. Nothing on a Shelby is just for show when it comes to the panels & bodywork.

Vince and Yogi discuss the finer points of body styling with Shelby’s best.

We emerged from the body shop out into the main factory area again, here more cars were being finished and some more new parts storage.

Vince explained that every single car is given a thorough road test adjusted and tested again. Vince gave us an example of one particular car even had a tiny break wobble at the rear at high-speed braking. The problem was tracked down to the position of the rear calipers being to high. A new design and fabrication was made to the calipers to re-position them, just to stop that issue that any mere mortal wouldn’t even detect, but they are there. If you think that the Shelby cars are expensive – now you know they are cheap considering what you get and what goes on behind the scenes to make your car the best it can be.

The suspension handling is set up to the tires and their pressures when testing as on this 1000bhp just back from an initial test run. So when the owners change the wheels, tires or stance, they are undoing all that fine tuning and hours of testing done by professionals.

We walked up to the cleaning area passing more completed cars and a trucks, vince, Yogi and Adam leading the way.

The obligatory photo shoot with Mustang Maniac’s core personnel and Vince.

The crew; Gary, Jason,Yogi, Vince, Adam and Mart.

We mentioned in an earlier post that you can sign the walls of the Shelby American Factory, which we obviously did a few days ago in the public area. This time Adam wanted to do something a little different, so the idea was born to draw around Adam and we all sign inside with a message.

Gary is quite a talented cartoonist and we put him on the spot to replicate our business card logo. We even stuck that business card in Adams silhouetted hand. What did we write? Just a message to the Shelby Factory and Cleo Shelby too from yesterdays catch up with her.

As Vince said, “there are no stickers or scoops here.”

For over two hours of Vince’s valuable time he answered our barrage of questions and showed us everything. As with most very busy people he was due at a meeting, we said our thanks and Vince departed leaving us to make our way back to the factory museum and shop. We of course took another look at the cars which are out of reach of the general public.

Then Chris and Mart took a Shelby for a spin! (OK, they just sat in it!)

That was our tour over; a rare, unique and personal guided tour around the whole of the Shelby factory. We weren’t allowed to take photo’s in couple of places, such as Vince’s own R & D area and another fabrication process area for obvious reasons. However, we were given that full unprecedented access and shown everything no stone unturned. Vince even showed us what he was working on for the 2017 Mustang in that R&D area! Not bad for a “small time parts dealer” as Adam said again.

That leaves us to say a huge thanks from all of us at Mustang Maniac to the Shelby Heritage Center and Vince LaViolette for giving us the top-level VIP treatment for the morning. An incredible insight to one of the worlds most famous names in the automotive market.

Posted in Articles, SEMA, Travel | Tagged Bob Bondurant, Cleo Shelby, Cobra, FIA, GT40, Mustang, Mustang Maniac, SEMA, SEMA 2016, Shelby, Shelby American Inc., Shelby Heritage Center, Vince LaViolette | 2 Comments

Out Of Ideas?

Posted on December 13, 2016 by Mustang Maniac

We’ve had a customer in the office today who wanted some parts and paid his account. As he and Adam loaded them into his van his lovely wife then asked “What else can I buy him for Christmas?” She was unsure what to buy and didn’t want to get the wrong thing. Simple – our Mustang Maniac Vouchers! She wasn’t aware that we sold them. Now we are not going to say how many she bought, but we will say that her husband is going to have a great Christmas when he opens them up! So it’s not to late to pop in and get some, or order them on the WebShop, click here for the link. This gave us an idea for this quick reactive post to help out any “Mustang Wives” out there who need an idea. Also the a great subtle hint to pass this link to your loved ones 😉

They come in £10 or £20 denominations

Perfect for stocking fillers too.

If your out of ideas, we have an answer.

Posted in Sales, Webshop | Tagged Christmas, Gift Vouchers, Mustang, Mustang Maniac, Mustang Maniac Vouchers, WebShop | 2 Comments

A Restoration First?

Posted on December 11, 2016 by Mustang Maniac

While we have been busy posting about our SEMA 2016 trip, there has been a few changes going on behind the scenes. We have removed the “graveyard” where the old cars awaiting our magical touches. And will be replaced with a “little project” Adam has in mind. Those cars will now be going into storage in the big shed for now. Yogi realising that these will be coming his way soon!

We are still planning on posting the SEMA 2016 day four as well as the Shelby Heritage Museum tour we promised you over the coming week. We had taken almost nine hundred pictures that day and we still need to sort out the better pics to upload for you.

A first for the Restoration industry?

So back to the what we do best, showing you what we do. As we like to think we are pretty unique we have made some serious decisions while we were in Las Vegas over a beer or two. We currently have our Mustang Maniac Forum that is popular, but it has started to die down. This is not unique to our forum though, it’s happened to a lot of other forums too. The mobile phone is the communication device for emails, photo’s and keeping up with the world on the go. So logging into a forum with passwords on a mobile, leaving a reply, then waiting for a response all takes just to long in this busy world of ours. So we had an idea and are very excited it, that idea has taken off very well with a small “trial” invited group of members.

We have created a Facebook Chat group called “Mustang Maniacs“.

From there you can see some real-time updates from us along with updates from other members of the group. Now this group is going to be all about Mustangs or Fords, so there is none of this “I’m popping out for a pint of milk” rubbish. However if you said “I’m going out in my Mustang to an event” – that’s a whole new conversation to be had. We have now opened this up this new group to everybody to upload their car pictures, stories for others to comment on or just to read what we and others are up to. If you have a question – members from the Mustang Maniac forum may have that answer for you, on the group now. If you have a technical sales question; we still request you email adam@mustangmaniac.co.uk for further details as normal, we won’t be doing business on the group. There are moderators who will be keeping an eye on things too, so keep it nice and no moaning, or you could find yourself blocked. To show this all in action we had a three-way example view. We had to get a customer’s car out from storage to be moved to the panel shop. Lance “live” streamed the move to the Mustang Maniacs Group, we also took pictures of the live streaming in progress for the blog here. Filming the filming if you like.

The car being moved.

Lance filming and the live stream

The live feed as it happened

Click here to see the full live feed, or copy this to your browser – https://www.facebook.com/lance.barrington/videos/10154775131952418/

With the car moved into the workshop Yogi took a selfie for the group:

What was he looking at?

So we hope you can see how want it to work, a snapshot in time of Mustang Maniacs, and like minded people. We want people to interact with us, we shall try to post and upload where we can. Of course you can post your own pics and comment on others as you see fit. Remember; banter is good, moaning and insults are not. Show us your projects, tell us your thoughts, ask us what we think, send us a message, anything car related.

Let us know what you think.

So how many other car restorations out there show you what they do as it happens? Of course the blog is here to stay, and it will continue to give a little more in-depth behind the scenes as we always do. For a quick moment in time or chat with us and other members; join us at Mustang Maniacs! That leads us very nicely into the next section:

Customer’s Cars:

’67 Convertible Full Restoration

This is a new project that the Yogi will be starting soon. It’s a ’67 289cid Convertible, which needs some serious attention. We aim to bring this project to you step by step as you would expect. This is the car that was moved in the live stream from above.

We are looking for a nickname for this car now. Perhaps the owner Mark may have an idea for us?

Mach1

The ’69 with the new front end has been taken off the jig after Yogi had welded the new panels back in place. The car was moved to Yogi ‘s work shop (Yogi says that’s an upgrade for a car accommodation), where the work can be continued under the car. The underside will need to be rubbed down in order for the final welding to be completed. The rubbing down and grinding work can be heard going on in the background of the live video we mentioned above.

The new front looks great and won’t be long before she is off to paint.

Chris’s Coupe

The last few weekends since Chris has got back from Vegas he has been working hard to get his car ready for some metal work and body prep. Chris had stripped and rubbed the inside of the engine bay down and has started to paint it. Being in the storage shed Chris had a flood light on the engine bay. from a distance it looked like a little star shining down on him!

We suspect that the complete engine bay will be done by the end of the day (Saturday). A good start and there is nothing like seeing your first coats of paint going on the car. It transforms the whole car from a work in progress to a restoration under way.

News:

Adam like to keep an eye on things for sale and see what the Mustang Market is up to. On this occasion he contact a guy who was selling an engine. The story is that the previous owner took it out of a car and nobody knows much about the engine. Adam was sent a few photo’s and bought it straight away. Why, because he knew this was “special” to the other blocks that come up for sale. The chrome rocker covers were rusty as was the sump. No problems there as they can be replaced. But taking the rocker covers of the engine, Adam’s suspicions were correct. He had found a little diamond in the rough. Adam and Yogi

What we have here is a brand new block with a very nice set of GT40P heads on it.

The guys continued to strip the rest of it apart to see what was going on.

This was a new rebuilt engine and the cylinders still had the honing marks on them. The timing chain was new as were the valves, cam and the cam rollers.

What did Adam think? Well, they say a picture speaks a thousand words. Speaking of thousands; Adam reckons the work that had gone into the engine and the use of Ford stamped parts, “You can easily add a nought to what I paid for this engine, bargain!” Shame that luck didn’t run with him on the card tables at Las Vegas!

Adam pointed out the differences on the heads and how he spotted it. The GT40P heads needed better springs to make use of the valve openings depending on cam and the larger exhaust porting. Headers will need to be specific GT40P fits. The headers are right up there with the fabled “HiPo” units, apart from modern alloy heads this is about as good as it got. But a lot of people want originality and more power. What we have here is both.

Next week we intend to be concluding our SEMA 2016 posts.