Creature Comforts

Posted on June 26, 2016 by Mustang Maniac

At Mustang Maniac we aim to bring you a level of calmness after a week of political unrest which should make you chill and forget it all. We have a quite a few pictures this week for you, not so many words and a special promotion at the end of the post. Yep, Adam has yet another freebie for his customers that will come in handy for everybody, honestly it will. The refurbished storage barn of Adam’s has now started to fill up, another project car has moved in next to Chris’s also on a rotisserie. There is a side bet on which project car will get done first, but don’t tell Chris! 😉

Customer Cars

The Mach1 rebuild has had her rear end back on a while ago which looks pretty good and the owner is more than happy with the progress. He was also down on Saturday morning with us to help dismantle the front of the car so we can get the engine out with the gearbox all in one go next week. But, first that means disconnecting the engine from the car which is the pipes, wires, mechanical bits etc. So the first pic we have the hood on and then a few pictures of the progress as it goes along. The air-con unit is a huge weight to be added to the car, we are pretty certain that it won’t be going back on again as far as we know.

Here the air-con unit and brackets are removed and carefully stored. The carb was taken off and ready for the lift plate to go on to pull the big ol’ engine out.

There was an issue with the fittings on the pipes, they were so rusted in that undoing the bolts sheared the heads off. Plan B was called into action, cut a couple of perished bits out of the away, just for now until we can get to them properly with the engine out.

With all the pipes and connections removed the engine is ready to be lifted out.

Yogi was talking through the process with the owner on what needed to be done at various points. The next stage was bit daunting, but logical when thinking about it. You don’t often get to see the dash coming out of a Mach1 so here we are, the process. There are a number of screws that need to be undone to slide the dash pad off, which was in surprising good condition and will clean up good as new we are sure. However, as always there is one screw that didn’t want to play ball. The owner spend a fair amount of time getting various drills to drill the head of so the dash could be removed. It’s amazing how a single screw can literally screw up your time scales. If we were going to replace the dash it would be no problem of course as it would just be ripped off. But, you just can’t do that when the part(s) are good and will be reused. Pulling the dash out we found (here comes the tenuous link to the title) the third rodent nest, but this time with no dead animal.

We are now certain that there will be no more places for the little creatures to hide as that is now all metal exposed. The smell was a little “off” should we say, but the clean up revealed some very interesting points.

The nest was made from the dash insulation padding as we see a few times on old stored up cars. The rodents had not touched a single wire. The owner is a seriously lucky guy in that respect, not a single tooth mark on anything, amazing! The other surprising point was the cowl section. We often see cars that are rusty the cowl will rot out regardless of the model of car, it’s a pretty much a dead cert and we were ready to see daylight. Nope, it’s rock solid and almost factory fresh. We couldn’t believe it, considering some of the other rust damage to the car the most obvious and most hidden part was absolutely fine. Again it’s about time the owner had a break on this car, the result of which has saved a serious amount of work by not having to swap it all out. The driver side needed to come out for some “homework” to be cleaned up. The plastic is brittle with age and needs a bit of TLC when removing, which is where this type of work can keep the costs down by doing this yourself. Did you know that the Mach1 was the first to use a printed circuit board for the dash? Once the dash was pulled forward we could see the back of the cluster in all it’s glory.

It looks there has been a minor repair to the dash, but nothing we haven’t seen before and in fact this was a pretty neat repair with the jump wire and labelled up nicely. The metal work at the back of the dash once it was all pulled out was also in fantastic shape. A real result.

The radio/8 track was last hing out from the dash (for now), again a little know how by Yogi got it out within a few seconds, the owner had taken a little and not got that far being very careful not to damage the sides or the unit. It’s always that much easier when you know how.

A good days work by the owner. 🙂

Return of FatAss

Nope this the name that the other half of the Bully Brothers has called his car which has fat tyres and rear stance that demands a second look.

But the reason this little lady was in for was some new back-end lights. Yogi has his lights done a little while ago and of course the two cars need to match. These after market smoke lenses add something very different, especially when they match the truck spoiler. A very simple update and a big change to look at. What do you think?

Before and After, what you see here is a beautiful FatAss! Before you ask the colour, it was mixed especially for this car and was called “Dragons Blood”, a unique car colour that suits it perfectly.

’69 Convertible Springs

Once of the very common changes we make are the rear springs. It’s not to often we see a ’69 convertible in for a change of springs that still has the original part number on them. After decades of use they only needed changing now.

Promotion

Adam has had an incredibly handy promotional item made up for a give away. These are portable battery chargers for a mobile phone. How many times have you gone round a car show taken lots of pictures to find out your battery is almost flat? Yep, we all have seen a low warning on our phones, this 5v 2600mAh booster will top up your phone. It’s a solid plastic car with a single cable that charges one end in, and boost the other end out. When being charged the red LED will flash, when boosting the phone the Blue LED will be on. Not just for car shows, but anywhere you need a little extra power, holidays, day out, streaming, low signal areas draining your battery, camping etc. The best bit? It has your favourite Mustang supplier logo on it.

How do you get one of these battery boosters?

Simple, just order over £300 of anything from Mustang Maniac online, put a note on the order form that you want a booster and it’s all yours, while stocks last that is. Already just under fifty have been sent out from the batch. If you want to buy one, email Adam and I dare say he might sell you one. He don’t know this bit has been put on the blog, yet!

Forum

As it’s car season we want to see some pics of your pride and joy on our forum. Not just that if you have questions you can ask the Mustang Gurus on there too. They will answer and they are nice guys, honestly. click here for the link or cut and past this into your browser:

https://mustangmaniac.co.uk/forum/

The forum is for members only, it takes only a valid email address to join for FREE, then you have access to some of the best Mustang Maniac minds out there. The membership stops lots of undesirables post spam, moaning or posting rubbish on there. Buy, sell, meetings, parts info its all there for you.

Coming Soon:

We are looking to do a series of one to one’s with Mustang Maniac, asking the guys about them and their cars. We have a VERY special article coming up with Adam talking about the car that started the whole Mustang Maniac empire. The car? It was called “Enos 2”. This was the original restoration decades ago before pretty much anybody else was doing it to this level of workmanship. It’s going to be a fascinating insight.

Posted in Blog, Customers' Cars, Forum, News, Sales, Webshop | Tagged air con, barn, carb, dash pad, Dragons's Blood, instrument cluster, Mach1, Mustang, Mustang Maniac, rodents | 4 Comments

Racking and Racing

Posted on June 19, 2016 by Mustang Maniac

We decided that this week was going to rearrange some cars in Adams refurbished storage shed. The racking was used at another location and has been brought to the yard. the old storage was moved out and the racks put back in place. The cars were allocated their positions for now just to get them out of the elements and back into storage.

We decided to help Chris out with his car to move that in from the elements too and move the car and the rotisserie into the storage shed so it can be worked on out of the rain. Adam mentioned that was all going to go in one go Chris thought he was joking!

But the lorry was bought round and the process to carefully move the car started. The car and rotisserie were carefully pulled onto the back of the truck and driven round to the shed. Chris was happier, perhaps it was relief to see the car back on solid ground again. He didn’t need to worry, we have done this all before.

Customer Cars:

The next victim awaits her turn to go into the panel shop, but that won’t be for a while yet.

’70 Mach1

The car has had its final welding to the rear section and sits on her own chassis now. Yogi then got to work and decided to rip the front of the car off.

Dangerous DIY:

We had a Mustang in that had a self fitted Borgeson steering conversion. The problem was it was leaking fluid and badly but we could find the exact spot. We checked all the seals and pipe fittings and all was in place until we spotted that the Rag Joint was not fitted. Without this flexing joint it causes stress on the main shaft and fractured the metal. From the main pic you can just about make out the hairline crack on the shaft. For steering this is critical and would potentially cause an accident. The shaft is filled with fluid under pressure, we connected it back up just to show you what was happening inside the fittings.

The video here is a only a few seconds long, but you get the idea.

Ford does it again, win at Le Mans 50 years later

Exactly 50 years ago this week Ford shook the European racing world, upending Ferrari’s dominance at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Ford didn’t just win the world’s most prestigious endurance race in 1966, the company swept it, taking 1st, 2nd and 3rd place in a photo finish that remains one of the most vivid images in the history of competitive Motorsports.

Now, five decades later, Ford is back in full factory force, campaigning four Ford GTs (numbers 66, 67, 68 and 69) that share quite a bit with a limited production street machine that select buyers will start being receiving in late 2016, the new GT – powered by the same engine as in the 2015 Mustang. The potential for the race and street car to again be associated with winning Le Mans was almost too much to hope for given this is Ford’s first year back since 1967 (the company won that year, too, and also in ’68 and ’69, but those last two wins were privately campaigned GT40s with no factory support). The last time Ford competed at Le Mans it took three years for the automaker to win, after disappointing results in 1964 and 1965. But the Fords went on to qualify 1st, 2nd, 4th & fifth. The number 68 Ford Chip Ganassi Team USA GT earned pole position with the fastest time in the LM GTE Pro Class, besting the competition from Aston Martin, Chevrolet, Ferrari and Porsche. In fact, the GT’s lap times were so good race organisers penalised the cars with 22 pounds of extra weight for the race, plus a restriction to their turbo boost pressure. Race officials also allowed the Aston Martin and Chevrolet Corvette teams to increase their performance after seeing the qualifying lap times. A penalty on the Ferrari for showing the wrong position number on the digital display on the side of the car too. The same penalty the Ford suffered (and was penalised for) the night before. Like all European racing the finishing order isn’t always as it first appears (again, just like in 1966). But, as of this preparing this blog there’s no conclusion as to where the Ferrari will finish in relation to the Fords. But it’s possible that Ford could get their fabled 1-2-3 finish, again.

The Race:

The 2016 24 Hours of Le Mans probably won’t go down in history as the race’s most exciting start. A downpour just before the flag dropped had the cars starting under caution behind the safety car, though within an hour the track dried and the field ran at full power. The Ford GTs, even with their additional weight penalties and reduced boost were looking good, battling with the Ferrari 488s and Porsche 911s for lead position (except for the 67 car, which had transmission problems just before the race began and ended up over 20 laps behind the others).

Six hours later the story was much the same, with the 66, 68 and 69 cars oscillating between first, second and third place in their class, with only the number 82 Ferrari 488 keeping it interesting. The twin-turbocharged 3.5-liter V6 in the GTs emits quite a distinctive exhaust note as they travel past the stands on the pit straight. It’s not as throaty as the V8-powered Corvette, but also not as whiny as the Ferrari’s V8s and the Porsche’s flat 6s. By midnight, 9 hours after the race started, the number 82 Ferrari is leading the 68 Ford GT, with GT number 69 about a lap back and GT numbers 66 and 67 well off the lead.

The pattern of the 68 Ford GT staying within a minute or less of the 82 Ferrari remained consistent throughout the night and morning. In the middle of the night there was a penalty assessed against the number 68 GT for not displaying the right position number on the car, but the effect of the penalty was made up by the Ford’s performance in short order. Then, at exactly 10:30 a.m., Joey Hand takes the 68 Ford GT past the Ferrari on the Mulsanne Straight and holds its lead through the chicane and front straight, much to the delight of the Ford fans. That was the last lead change for the LM GTE Pro Class. The 68 car remained in front for the rest of the race, with the 69 and 67 car slowly gaining ground on the Ferrari, placing the Fords in 1, 3 and 4 place. Of course the win is great, but there’s no denying how close to a 1-2-3 finish Ford came, exactly 50 years after the first one.

Congratulations to Ford.

Ford Facts:

Henry Ford was great friends with Thomas Edison – who is famous for inventing the long life light bulb. In fact he invented many more things like the phonograph, the movie camera and the sound movie camera (although he preferred silent movies as he was stone deaf).

Henry used to work for Edison in the early years and was greatly encouraged by him to continue his work on the automobile. As a reward for this valuable support, Henry always gave Thomas Edison the first automobile from each new run of production – a Model T, Model A etc ……and a top of the range Lincoln. While Edison preferred to use the Model T throughout his later years, Mrs Edison preferred to be ‘driven in the Lincoln’.

Henry bought a winter house next to the Edison’s home in Ford Myers Florida so they could share each other’s company and ideas while escaping from the cold Detroit winters. After Edison’s death, Henry never went back to his winter house.

Ford still owns a number of apartments in Florida – used by engineers on vehicle testing assignments – not being able to test during the cold Detroit winter months these apartments save cost over hotel accommodation. The apartments are available to Ford employees and their families to rent during the summer months when no Florida testing takes place.

What’s the connection between Henry Ford and heart transplants?

Henry Ford was great friends with Charles Lindbergh the world-famous aviator and engineer (Henry only ever flew once and Lindbergh was at the controls). so what, you might say? Henry helped Lindbergh in a number of ways through money, sponsorship and other support and also by giving him a new car and caravan to find peace in the countryside when the pressures of the media got to him after his solo Atlantic flight. So what, you say (again)?

Lindbergh was lifetime friends with Alexis Carrel – an eminent French surgeon and medical pioneer (he provided Lindbergh with sanctuary in France when he was mobbed by the media on landing in the Spirit of St Louis). Carrel was struggling to find a way of conducting open heart and other organ surgery due to blood clotting the pump used to by-pass the organ. Lindbergh stepped in and invented, developed and produced a ‘glass’ pump which completely solved the problem of clotting.

Answer – Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh, Alexis Carrel….heart surgery then latterly, transplants made possible by the pump invented by Lindbergh!

Carrel went on to develop life saving procedures for suturing arteries and also pioneered the treatment of open and infected war wounds – saving many lives in both world wars and beyond.

Lindbergh had a troubled life, his oldest son being kidnapped and murdered, he fell out with President Roosevelt over the Second World War and was plagued by the media his whole life.

The car and caravan given to Lindbergh now resides in the Henry Ford Museum along with a replica of the Spirit of St Louis aircraft. The original aircraft is in the Smithsonian Museum.

Coming Soon

Continue reading →

Posted in Articles, Blog, Customers' Cars, Ford Facts, Restoration | Tagged borgeson, Ford, GT40, Le Mans, Mach1, Mustang Maniac, panel shop, Yogi | 2 Comments

Yogi On The Drag

Posted on June 11, 2016 by Mustang Maniac

The last couple of weeks have been busier than usual and it was decided that the guys wanted to go and play. So just what is the best place to go and play? The answer was quite obvious to Yogi, “Santa Pod” drag strip racing for him. So Mustang Maniac went on tour with a few Mustangs.

So Yogi, Paul, Stuart & Claire, Mason, Mart, Sam & Steff all arranged to camp overnight last Saturday night at Santa Pod Classic Ford Show with a “run what you bring”. Yogi wanted to run his Mach1 down the strip after a few changes. The guys arrived in their three Mustangs, Saab and a Vauxhall. They parked up and got the tents up ready for the evening.

With the essentials completed Yogi wasted no time in swapping his rear tyres over for an old set of rims and a some old tyres he found. Yogi drove to the fire up lane and waited for his turn to tear up the strip. Sam, Paul and Stuart pushed the car up until it was almost Yogi’s turn to run, the first of his three runs.

Most of the cars here such as the older Fords have race this, or race that, NOS piped in and turbo’s etc. Yogi is running his car against some of these super fast and highly pampered cars. The results were pretty spectacular for his first run where he was holding back with 12.04 time which was the fastest of the day for a fair while. No added bolt-ons and he was still faster than some of the other dedicated drag racing cars there.

He was fairly pleased with the time since it was the first time he had hit the drag strip for three years, but he was complaining he couldn’t get traction of the line. The second run was against a Subaru turbo rear engine and rear wheel drive dedicated rocket. We tried to do a slow mo shot of this run but it didn’t come out to good. But we will try to sort that out and upload it to our YouTube Channel when we get round to it very soon. Yogi run a red light in his eagerness to get going and you could just see the car loosing all grip and not going anywhere, in true Yogi style his still carried on with a time of 11.4 nevertheless.

The last run was the best of the day and Yogi was blowing the cobwebs out his fur and getting the hang of it. He nailed a 11.01 this time, but was unhappy with the tyres that were now completely shot to bits and gave no traction at all.

In fact the data sheets shows he was wheel spinning up to the 100 feet (or nearly two seconds) marker before he actually hooked up any real power. Yogi said that with decent tyres there was easily another one and half seconds to be found.

We wandered around the fire up lane took a few photo’s of some very nice cars to share with you.

Later in the afternoon it was Fords only racing.

The evening was set with a single can of beer each (yeah right), there was a the drive home the next day to think of too. Just for the Yogi Fan Club we have the following:

Sunday saw many more cars turn up to play and some of the dedicated drag cars that were still not as quick as Yogi’s time set.

Somebody happened to mention that to Yogi and we got this:

The stalls and displays were in full flow with some trailer queens being brought to the show just to show them off.

Racing was pretty spectacular as well with some very nice very fast cars.

Jeff from Taz Racing was there showing them how it should be done. http://www.tazracing.co.uk/ Jeff , Yogi says: Hi!

There was a pretty awesome bit of kit there in the form of Fire Force 3, the worlds fasted jet car. The camera got a bit shaky as people were trying to muscle in and get a good a position as we got to see this car run. It does settle down again though.

It made the run in just a fraction over 5 seconds!

A great time was had by the guys and there was estimated 100,000 people there over the weekend.

Customer Cars:

The ’70 Mach1 has had some serious work done to the rear end now and is looking pretty darn good.

Paul the Paints Mach1 has had a new rear end fitted and is also looking pretty darn good too.

To finish up a pretty big post we have PJ & Enos taking up station in the Yogi cave!

Posted in Customers' Cars, News, Our Cars, Video, YouTube | Tagged 1/4 mile, beer, drag strip, Enos, Fire Force 3, Ford, Mach1, Mustang, Mustang Maniac, NOS, Santa Pod, Yogi | 4 Comments

Moving To All WebShop Ordering

Posted on June 1, 2016 by Mustang Maniac

Over the weekend at the Enfield Pageant we spoke to a lot of customers who came to see us and asked their opinions about the WebShop. With the very positive responses we were getting a decision was made, Mustang Maniac will be moving with the times and the internet age. It is our intention to make your parts ordering as simple and efficient as possible. In order to do that we are going to transition all our sales over to our WebShop ordering service. This is for a number of reasons;

We are increasing our already extensive current Classic Mustang stock levels, as well as stocking some of the more common parts of the recent model Mustangs.
When you click on the WebShop what you see “Currently in stock” that means we have that item on the shelves, no need to call us and check. The stock is instantly updated as soon as any item is purchased. If you ring us to ask if something is in stock, we check the item on the WebShop in exactly the same way as you do.
The WebShop staff does not answer the phone as they are busy getting the daily deliveries ready and organising the stock. If they were to answer the phones, the deliveries could be delayed which isn’t acceptable for our customers. For instance today we have had 274 missed calls and the day isn’t over yet (4.30pm as we start to prepare this post). We missed the calls due to the fact that we had a big container delivery with three fully loaded pallets inside. All of those stock items have to be loaded onto the system to update the availability. Each item is then stored in location which could easily take a couple of days. That’s not an excuse, we are just realistic about the priorities at the time. If you have seen all of our stock locations then you will know what a big undertaking it is.
Adam is now spending more of his time fixing, restoring, collecting, delivering and buying cars.
Customers are ringing to ask how to do repairs and what parts they might need. Obviously this is virtually an impossible question to answer without seeing the car or even seeing the problem. To help with this we recently set up an email service which has been doing very well so far. Adam is often answering the emails in the evenings or where ever he is around the world at the time (literally). Please by all means send in your emails with pictures of the problem and as much detail as possible and we will do our best to get you the parts you need, even if you don’t know what you need. It’s so much easier than trying to explain it on the phone.
No more messing around taking payments over the phone, the WebShop is fully automated.
Order your parts where ever you are, sitting on a bus, train, or in a cafe having a coffee.
Order day or night when it suits you, rather than being tied to our opening hours to place an order.

However, Mustang Maniac fully appreciates that you may not find exactly what you are looking for on the much bigger and new improved WebShop, We are pleased to say that we have also had limited number of the Scott Drake 2016 Retail Catalogues delivered to us this week, so if you wish to order a copy of the catalogue, email us via the WebShop and we will post one out to you while stocks last. The other much quicker alternative is to download the catalogue which will be added to the WebShop as soon as we can get it updated, hopefully by the end of the week. In the meantime you can get it first from our blog and download the PDF from the “Download” menu above, or click the icon below to view the full catalogue PDF. This is a large download of 43mb so please be patient.

The office phones will not be redundant, they will be used for booking in the cars for a service, accident repairs, full restorations or part restorations etc. all of which by their very nature require a conversation prior to the vehicle arriving at the workshops.

We have had some calls to ask about the standard postage charges we use. One example is we were even asked if we can “nip down to the post office and post them to me so it makes it cheaper”. Unfortunately this isn’t a viable option for our business, by the time we drive to the Post Office which is six miles down the road, register the package and pay the postage you would only save about £3. That’s without our time and effort we could be putting too much better use elsewhere and all for a part that costs much less than the cost of the postage.

Most people already know this, we have various options to help out our customers who do not wish to pay the postal charges that we pass on to our customers;

Make arrangements to call in and pick it up from our office.
Make your own arrangements to have the parts collected and delivered to your location of choice.
Rather than ordering the small amounts, order a larger package with couple more parts which would still cost the same, oil filter or spark plugs perhaps?

We are more than happy to do any of the above for you. We are confident that this will make things much easier for you to order what you need, and to get in contact with us. We do listen to you and hope you like the new process as it comes fully into operation. A big thanks to everybody who put up with our questions at the show.

A Mid Week Treat

We had seen this video clip posted on our Facebook page, it’s only a few seconds long but it’s well worth a look. We are sure that you will be singing the song after you have watched it. Janette Semerdjian is Australian and owns this very nice 1965 Coupe which had been converted to a right hand drive.

The pictures were found on 360 Mustang

Posted in Blog, News, Parts, Sales, Webshop | Tagged '65 Coupe, Blog, Facebook, Mustang, Mustang Maniac, Scott Drake, stock, WebShop | 4 Comments

Enfield Pageant of Motoring 2016

Posted on May 30, 2016 by Mustang Maniac

It’s that time of year again when our favorite car show comes around, The Enfield Pageant of Motoring. This show allows us to bring to a selection of cars to the public. We always have a difficult decision on what to bring so we decided on something a little different this time. Adam’s new ’71 Mach1 was going to be bought into the show on the new LAR/SMR truck, parking up next to Adam’s Ranchero truck. The truck is a low entry idea that almost gets the table onto the floor. The maiden voyage was to Enfield with a classic Mustang. We started at silly o’clock in the morning and loaded the Mach1 onto the truck.

We took the big Ford F350 tow truck as well as that always goes down well with the younger visitors. On arrival at the stand we decided to leave the car on the truck and just extend it across the pitch which looked quite amazing.

Yogi had his Mach1 there and then we had some customers who turned up with perfect timing, Ian with his 66 Fastback, Mart with his ’66 Acapulco coupe.

We unpacked the cars and the flags that was sponsored to us by Linards Design Revolution & Print Solutions which was a great new addition to the stand this year. Thanks to Lance for sorting that out for us.

It was time for some breakfast at this point now and we were donated some fantastic sausages be Kelvin from Ellis Butchers in St Albans, they were honestly amazing. Adam started the hospitality suite in full flow with full English fry ups, or sausage sandwiches, all for the Mustang Maniac Customers and staff, the big RV kitchen was going for a while and was just what was needed. Yogi, Paul, Chris, Anne & Paul were among the first to try it out with copious amounts of tea and coffee that was bought into us by visitors.

The next batch of arrivals was the more modern high performance Mustangs that parked at the front of the stand.

The day was chilly to start with, but the rain did come out in the afternoon which again bought with it a new batch of visitors to our stand. It was busy all day long and we were glad to put our feet up in the evening and enjoyed a few very cold drinks that our customers bought in for us.

Adam, Mart and John stayed on site for security saturday night to look after the cars in Mustang Maniacs possession on the stand. Sunday saw another very early start with a swap round of cars. The cars were again parked on the front row with Kent bringing his right hand drive 2016 Mustang providing a great contrast of cars. Yogi, Paul and John stayed Sunday night for the security duties enjoying the chilled contents of the fridge.

With the stand full up to bursting point, John was happy with the parking arrangements and declared it tea time.

The visitors were taking a great interest in the vast selection of cars on display, and were asking to look at the engines bays and inside the cars all day.

With our stand running itself, we took a look around the rest of the show at the auto jumble, and the other stands. There was everything from fuses to flowers, lights to project cars for sale and everything in between.

There was the usual huge American turn out all over different stands around the large field.

There was the very old cars there and some special cars from Beaulieu Motor Museum.

The UK cars were vast and varied and just impossible to show it all. So we just snapped a few of the cars on our wander around the other stands.

There was the fun fair to keep the kids and adults entertained with some very bad driving spotted near the main entrance, but nobody seemed to care for a change. Lets hope they don’t drive like that in their own cars.

We also tried to take a few pictures of the event standing on top of the RV to show the scale of the show.

We would like to say a huge “Thanks” to everybody had generously donated to the Mustang Maniac Pageant Stand. It’s a been a long weekend so if we missed anybody forgive us. Some of the freebies we were donated, show flags, sausages, bacon, cider, Stella Artois, Fosters, Guinness, Jack Daniel’s Whiskey, bottles of soft drinks, cases of soft drinks, bread, muffins, cakes, cookies, snacks, sweets, bottles of water, a new kettle (as the old one had seen better days), teabags, coffee, sugar all of which really helped make it such a great weekend.

Thanks in no particular order:

LAR/SMR for use of the brand new truck that had a first job as a freebie, LAR/SMR staff for their support and transport.

Linards for the new flags, Kelvin – Ellis Butchers, Adam, Jayson, Yogi, Paul, John, Chris, Anne, Lance, Spence, Ian, Roy, Martyn, Mart, Steve, Kent, Dave, Colin, Bruce, David, Danny, Lee, Andrew and anybody else we have missed (sorry, but it has been a long weekend).

Thanks to those who visited the stand, which just leaves us with just one thing to say.

Cheers from Mustang Maniac, thanks for making it a great weekend!

Posted in Customers' Cars, News, Our Cars, Uncategorized | Tagged cider, Ellis Butchers, Enfield 2016, Enfield Pageant of Motoring, Fosters, Guinness, hospitality, Jack Daniel's Whiskey, LAR Traffic Services, Linards, Mach1, Mustang, Mustang Maniac, SMR, Stella Artois, USA cars, Yogi | 8 Comments

Cleaning

Posted on May 22, 2016 by Mustang Maniac

We mentioned last week that we always get busy this time of year due to the show season, so we would like to thank those of you very much who have emailed us and we hope that the response(s) was what you was after. We can see some of the emails have resulted in WebShop purchases, so by the looks of it the system works we are pleased to say. While we are subject of show car season even our very own Yogi has been bitten by the car show bug.

There was even a request for the Yogi fan club to have a picture of him again, (Note: must find the person who started this “Fan Club” thing up and feed them to the dogs). 🙂 Seriously though, we found a picture that we like and decided to post that up just for the Yogi Fan Club.

(Rumour has it that Paul spotted some dust on Yogi’s engine.)

Customers Cars:

French Car:

We have been sent some more pics of the French convertible on the first of a few outings. This day trip needs no introduction as the pics speak for themselves. The car generated a good deal of interest at the event the owner was pleased to tell us.

Big thanks to the owner who kept his promise to send us some pics of the car during her events, please keep them coming.

Patchwork:

A new project in the workshops has been started on to take out the engine and gearbox to see exactly what we are dealing with under the bodywork. She was bought in from the states and has sat in the owners garage for the last three years. Considering the time standing still, the car is not in to bad a shape at all. We are trying to come up with a name for this little lady so we thought “Patchwork”, the reason being the floor pan has had a patchwork of welding done to it and not very well unfortunately. Nothing that concerns us of course as we have done it many times before.

The bodywork is not to bad at all on the upper side and paint looks pretty reasonable too. We were a little surprised when we had a proper look at the floor area, part of it had been cut away around the chassis legs and held in place with few self tap screws. We have seen this before from USA restorations that were done in a hurry. We have arrowed the offending items on the pic below.

The tunnel of the car had been cut about a fair bit in order to make the manual gearbox fit, another good reason to replace the floor pan with fresh clean metal. We shall sort that out properly when we replace it with a C4 gearbox.

The other usual spot for a bit of rust is the inner fender for the battery tray which will also be replaced.

When we moved the car around by hand it was clear that the diff has been locked up or welded up, we will need to investigate how it’s been done properly. The engine runs a little lumpy, but we can soon sort all that out, so we are not to bothered there. So in general it’s not a too bad a looking car at the moment, we have seen a lot worse that’s for sure.

Country Squire:

A few posts ago we mentioned that we had an old Ford Country Squire hat was going to be used as a tow vehicle. Well we right there. John – has now started working on it and got the engine out. A few of the fittings were a little difficult to get out due to age and rust etc, but John got the engine on a pallet without to much trouble.

Secret Stash:

Adam had to go and get some of his new Alloy wheels out of stock in order to send to a customer, so we grabbed a quick pic of the temporary Aladdin’s cave until it’s all moved into their proper storage location.

Speaking of Wheels:

It’s no secret that Adam loves his Ranchero truck and uses it, a lot. While Adam was in the stash area he pulled himself a set of his new Scott Drake 4 stud alloys out to give his Falcon a treat. He likes these new wheels that much, and it’s his truck so why not?

Adam took the old wheels off the car and they are now in storage. As much as we like originality these wheels really do suit the car.

Original As It Gets?

We have some more pics of a car that Adam has stashed away, the car still has the original exhaust from 1965.

Adam Sold A Car:

Yes you did read that right, Adam sold a car and bought a couple more, but we can see his logic there. It was time for a quick blast before she went to her new owenr. Sad to see her go, but even more happy to see his new additions to the Mustang Maniac fleet.

Posted in Cars For Sale, Customers' Cars, Our Cars, Sales, Webshop | Tagged C4 gearbox, Differential, Falcon, floor pan, Ford Country Squire, Ford Ranchero, French, Mustang, Mustang Maniac, Scott Drake, secret stash, Yogi Fan Club | 2 Comments

Swap Out

Posted on May 15, 2016 by Mustang Maniac

We start this post of with a fantastic picture kindly sent to us regarding the “French” car and how she got on going to her new home. The car arrived there with no problems at all and the car just looks amazing against the house too.

We were also asked about the horizontal line on the back window. This is pretty cool idea as that is a join for two pieces of glass. You did read that correctly, the glass actually folds away with the hood. No more crinkled up plastic that fades and cracks that you can’t see out off. The more solid approach gives the hood a fuller look too. (Sorry we forgot to mention that last week, so thanks to Dale for asking us.)

WebShop, Email & Phones Updates:

You may not think so, but the restoration business can be very seasonal. At Mustang Maniac we are subjected to the same influences. We are now in car show season and we get more than average number of cars entering our workshops for check overs and MOT’s etc. So, with all that in mind we are running flat out to look at the cars and get them all ready within the time scales we can comfortably cope with. Sadly on Friday we had an email from a potential customer who wanted to ask us a few questions about a car he wanted to buy, he went on to say you “don’t answer your phones and I wanted to know what to look for”. We will come back to this in a moment.

From Friday morning to mid Saturday morning (less than twenty-four hours), we had 354 unanswered phone calls. We made a difficult decision to turn the phones off so we could work on the cars. We had promised a couple of customers that we would get their cars to them ready for Saturday morning. Now with the best will in the world if we ALL sat in the office to answer the calls we would have still missed some of the calls and the cars would not have been ready. So, we are in a catch twenty-two situation which ever way we go. We have just upgraded the WebShop to show the cars by years and compatible parts which will cross reference all the items we stock. We know this is a big improvement on the old WebShop from the great positive feedback we have been getting.

To get around this we are going to trial our email out hours service, if you need to order a part, but you are not sure what you need; send us an email via the WebShop with a photo of the item and as much detail as you can so we can try and identify it for you. We will then respond back to you when we can to help out. Nobody else as far as we know offers this type of service. We think that is a great compromise rather than trying to talk to us on the phone, again let us know. We managed to answer a few calls early Friday, we was asked by one customer if an item on the WebShop was in stock. We told them to check on-line to see what the stock status was as we were at the workshop at the moment. They informed us they were “looking at it (the WebShop) and it says; In Stock”. There is your answer we responded; “they are in stock”. Our stock control computer is very good, it took a lot of time and effort to get in place as it’s an instant update process. If the last item is sold, the stock is updated instantly on the website, there is no delays, no overnight updates, it’s instant updates because that is what our customers wanted. Turning our phones off will still allow you to order the parts, and the parts should be dispatched same day or the next day depending on the time of the order. Getting back to the first point, we always try to help out our customers and we don’t make promises we can’t keep. But, this person didn’t want to order anything from us, or even book his car in with us, he just wanted to pick our brains on whether the car was any good or not as he couldn’t get hold of his mechanic friend to ask him. We wondered if this guy emailed his “mechanic friend” to say how poor his service was too. We thought his response to us was a little unfair to be honest as we are a trying to maintain our business at the end of the day, not a free advice line. Now onto something much more exciting.

Customers Cars:

We often take cars back to their owners and collect cars when they are non-runners as you would expect. On this occasion we dropped a Ford “LTD” back to the owner and picked up his Oldsmobile 442.

ltd

ltd

442

442

We don’t always work on other makes of car, but sometimes we do. We have agreed to look at the 442 for a service and tune up as we had just done his Ford LTD for him.

Crate Engine Swap Over:

More often than not it’s just simpler to replace a damaged or worn engine with a direct crate engine replacement. Most common of these is the 289/302 engine small block where the dimensions are exactly the same on the outside for both engines.

Here Yogi has taken the old engine out of the ’67 Fastback and mounted onto the stand to remove the parts we will use again.

The new crate engine is painted and fitted on the test rig and given a run before fitting.

Before the engine is mounted back into the car Yogi did his thing with the brake pipes, every car is unique that he does. Yogi often tells us that “his cars are a work of art”, we’re not sure what he had in his tea this morning though, but we can’t argue with that really. We was asked to swap over the shock tower tops to billet, voltage regulator top cover and the brake master cylinder while we were at it too. Relays were mounted for the front lights to the inner fenders and tidied up the wire loom for a much cleaner organised look.

With all the pipes connected the finished article will look like this with the attention to detail that you can only get from Mustang Maniac.

Bolts:

We have had a number of people asking to have a little engine dress up done on their engine bay after we featured this upgrade a while ago now. This is a change from the standard export brace bolts to our own dome headed bolts. The effect is instantly visible and so much neater with a little extra bling. Often the Monte Carlo bar bolts are swapped out too so they match. Here we have Paul who completed the export brace bolts at the back and is in the process of swapping the Monte Carlo bar bolts over.

One of the cars that was being picked up on Saturday morning waiting for her owner, a nice early 260ci.

Posted in Blog, Customers' Cars, News, Parts, Sales, Service, Webshop | Tagged 260ci, brake pipes, crate engine, French, Mustang, Mustang Maniac, WebShop, wire loom, Yogi | 6 Comments

Off She Goes!

Posted on May 8, 2016 by Mustang Maniac

We start with the fantastic news that the French Convertible is finished on time within the very tight time scale we had. We were pushed really hard to get the car ready on time, so it’s a big thanks to Yogi, Paul and Adam who went all out, with long days and extra days work to get her ready and not let our customer down. We are pleased with the results, the short space of time didn’t mean we had to compromise on a standard that only Mustang Maniac will give you for your pride and joy. The customer was very pleased with his partially restored and modified lady, or RestoMod as it seems to be called now days.

Final checks and completed engine bay.

The car was waiting at the front of the offices ready for the owner to collect her. We think the smile here says it all.

Adam has a quick chat with the owner to make sure he is happy and has another quick final check at the same time.

After a busy few weeks she is on her way back to France, we wish her and the proud owner all the best.

A wave goodbye from another happy customer.

We turn the clock back and forwards with this pretty cool article we found.

Special 1965 and 2015 Ford Mustang Combined for Unique Museum Display.

Celebrating 50 years of Innovation.

In Alexandria, Virginia, the National Inventors Hall of Fame Museum (NIHF) will reveal a unique Ford Mustang. The specially built Ford combines a 1965 convertible to a 2015 convertible in a unique side-by-side display that features operating interiors. At the May 4 unveiling ceremony, Ford Motor Company founder Henry Ford will also be highlighted at the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

According to Ford, the split-personality Mustang is part of a new, permanent Intellectual Property Power™ Exhibit at the National Inventors Hall of Fame museum on the United States Patent and Trademark Office Campus in Alexandria, Virginia. The paired convertibles will celebrate the history of Ford Mustang, along with the innovation and technology that has continued for over 50 years. “The intellectual property and illuminates its significance to progress, innovation, and culture in America, as well as how trademarks, patents, and other forms of intellectual property make modern amenities possible,” says Chris Danowski, Ford director of technology commercialization and intellectual property licensing. “The interactive display is designed to highlight the importance of patents and the tremendous march of technology over the decades. It calls out various patents in the current vehicle, as well as those in the original pony car.”

Along with the Mustang, Ford has a rich history in America and has been a leader and innovator in regards to manufacturing, safety and performance. “Ford and its employee volunteers have also been involved for the past 20 years with Camp Invention, a program of NIHF,” added Danowski. “Camp Invention is one of the nation’s premier summer enrichment programs and leverages hands-on activities to promote Science, Technology, Engineering and Math and builds 21st century skills.

“Everything moved so fast in the design and run-up to production of the original Mustang that there were no styling patents issued back then,” Danowski stated. “Now look at the current car; 2015 Mustang Convertible alone was granted 36 styling patents, which ensure the unique look stays with the car. It also has many unique functional patents for things like the airbag structures, 911 Assist and so many other technologies baked right in.” Amazingly, no styling patents existed when the first model was introduced. But by 1965, Mustang over 100 of Ford’s functional patents existed. “Those patents reflect some of the touches customers loved back then, including a rear-seat speaker and a power convertible top. Normal conveniences we now take for granted were also involved, like Patent 3,271,540 – the origin of Ford’s self-canceling turn signal,” says Danowski.

Enthusiasts are the real beneficiaries of the popular design, performance and engineering that’s built into every Ford Mustang. Mustang was actually the very first passenger to have knee airbag system packaged inside the glove box door, with 15 patents granted. Mustang owners also enjoy features such as the electronic line-lock and launch control for drag racing. And here’s something you may not know, Mustang incorporates a patented relief in the seat cushion to allow a wallet or phone in an occupant’s back pocket to protrude further into the seat for more comfort.

The display features 60 percent of each car’s driver compartment in order to showcase the gauge package, center stack and center console. “The left side consists of a reproduction 1965 left-hand-drive Mustang licensed for modern production by Ford and built to the same specifications as the original car—in itself an example of the licensing benefits of intellectual property. The other side is a right-hand-drive 2015 Mustang that is sold in several of the 150 countries where the car is now available,” explained Danowski.

Ford stated that museum visitors are encouraged to sit in either side of the car in order to compare features and styling details. It will be easy to see all the innovation, but the museum added accompanying monitors and over speakers to provide additional information. Visitors to the display will also be able to hear the sounds of the original 1965 Mustang V8 engine and a 2015 Mustang V8 engine at idle.

Photos By: Ford Motor Company Article: Ford 360

Ford Facts

1) Even though Henry Ford won one of the first US car races, it is reported by those who spent time with him that he wasn’t actually very good a driving – frequently bumping into ‘objects’ and ‘people’.
2) Henry Ford hated confrontation and always got one of his executives to fire people…often in very direct ways like removing the victims desk and belongings overnight!
3) When car sales dipped, any sales manager who gave ‘the product’ as the reason, even if it was true, was in big trouble….. Henry Ford always got rid of them.
4) During the 20’s/30’s/40’s Henry Ford and his personal aide Harry Bennett had a safe located in the Rouge experimental labs containing cash. The safe was referred to as ‘the kitty’. The “Kitty” was used by Henry Ford for anything he wanted to do without the hassle of getting Finance or Board approval. Even all those years ago, it mostly contained $4-6 million in cash. The day after Henry’s death, the safe was emptied by the Ford family.
5) During the 30’s rather than Ford having one sales manager looking after car sales, a system of Zone Managers (ZM) was introduced where each ZM was responsible for sales in a distinct area. It proved so successful that the system survives to this day across Ford’s global operation. Anyone wishing to progress to management within Ford must undertake a Zone Manager job at some point early in their career.

Shelby 1:8th Scale Model

The latest issues are parts 10 -13 inclusive. We see a left hand door and left front seat now completed, the right hand door started gets started.

Part 10 & 11

These issues complete the left hand side door, there are some tricky tiny parts to this section. The hinge is added as well as the glass, we decided to fit the hinge first then the glass to make it easier to handle the door.

completed

There is a request to use the screw described as MP06, the pack supplied was MD06. The screws still fitted, but we wish they move away from the description of screws and use the codes on the bags just like they did as the start of the build, it makes life a lot simpler.

Part 12

This issue has the seat base and is a very simple fit of four screws.

Part 13

This is exactly the same as Part 9 only this time its the right hand door.

Click here for the link to the page where we cover the build in a little more detail, or go to the menu at the top of our blog.

Posted in 1:8th Scale Model, Blog, Customers' Cars, Ford Facts, Service | Tagged convertible, crate engine, DeAgostini, engine rebuild, French, gt350, Mustang, Mustang Maniac, Shelby, Yogi | 2 Comments

Mustang Maniac Show Time

Posted on May 2, 2016 by Mustang Maniac

We have had a seriously busy week with lots of things going on, we hope you have set aside a few minutes to go through everything we have here for you. We will start with things closer to home and how they are progressing.

Customers Cars:

The French Convertible

As you probably are aware by now, over the past few weeks we are serious against the clock on this one, the car needs to be out in France for a time trial rally. The car has had engine tuned and timed up, the exhaust needed some adjustments and we are now road testing her getting a few miles to settle her down. The exhaust note is very crisp and responsive and sounds good on full throttle.

We need to make sure everything is done up and settled in, re-using some of the original parts on newer parts can have their own teething problems, but we are ironing those out pretty quickly as we get to them. So Adam being the boss, took her out for the first tentative steps on the road, the geo was re-checked after a few miles on country lanes and little faster roads. Things going to plan and the new white rag top will be going on tomorrow. We hope to have more picks of that being fitted for you soon. Once the roof is on we will again give her a few more miles and see how she feels then.

Rebuilt Engine

We often get cars in to us for an engine rebuild because they either want to keep the matching numbers on they just need more power etc. So we have decided to let you into a little secret of the behind the scenes pics of our engine re-builders doing what they do best.

Here we check tolerances, replace the old springs and valves.

Pistons along with their rings were replaced and cylinders honed.

Crank, cams and oil pump going back in and sump fitted.

With all the lower end built, the top end of the engine block is assembled, heads, intake, distributor rocker covers etc. A splash of paint and it’s ready to go.

Then it arrives back to us to have it fitted back into the car.

’70 Fastback Restoration

We are now at the stage where the inside colour can go back onto the car. The panels were first etched;

Primers were then sprayed and allowed to cure;

Once the primers were dried then the layers of colour were applied on the inside where the spray gun for the outside paint work wouldn’t normally go, such is our attention to detail.

Car Show time

OK, this is probably the exciting bit now moving away from the cars we are working on back at the workshops. As this is a bank holiday weekend for a change the sun was on Sunday where Duxford Imperial War Museum were holding a “Spring Car Show 2016.” This is a huge event and is not to far away from our workshops so we decided that if the weather was good. The organisation was that the fields were sectioned out for make of cars where they could etc, Mustangs, Lotus, BMW, Mercedes, American private entrants, Japanese cars, Fords, Chryslers etc etc. Well you get the idea anyway. So we will start with the Mustangs of course that was well catered for, everything from Saleen to Shelby and everything in between was there.

We were going to have a pretty good Mustang Maniac turn out, Adam with his KR, Yogi with his ’69, Paul with his rare import ’66 Coupe, Spence with his ’69 convertible and his good lady with another, and Mart with his Acapulco ’66 Coupe all turning up with their cars.

After arriving we decided to go for a brew and something to eat, this just happened to be by the entrance where the cars were being directed to their allocated areas. We hate to think how many cars were there, but we suspect it was in the thousands.

Adam was talking to a few customers on Sunday who caught up with him at the show, in between conversations he was responding to emails. It was a good day and enjoyed by all, the weather was great for once and not a hint of rain. Next Mustang Maniac event – sorry car show, could well be the Enfield Pageant.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Duxford, engine rebuild, KR Mustang, Mustang, Mustang Maniac, primer, self etch primer | 2 Comments

Gentlemen, Start That Engine

Posted on April 24, 2016 by Mustang Maniac

Time is ticking by alarmingly quickly this week as we have been busy getting the “French” car ready for the road. The engine was in last week as you know which was a very tight fit to say the least. Yogi has now wired the front end up in order to start-up from the key. The engine has had some modifications, the first being the heater matrix. As this car will be France the heater will not be needed most of the time. As the hot water flows around the matrix by default, heat in a warm country is not required. Now there is a isolator valve in place to stop the water flow or allow it to work depending on the climate of course. The valve is shown here by the arrow at the back of the engine next to the firewall.

The second is the Holley 670CFM carb that now sits on a high-rise polished intake manifold. This is different from most intakes as the airways are not mounted between the cylinder heads. This means the air can flow over the pipes fully, this allows the air/fuel mix to atomise better before hitting the chambers. In other words, better power. What’s the point of having 400bhp engine when you don’t make the most of that potential power. It’s a little difficult to see from the pictures, but you can see the spaces below the intake. We love the “Made In USA” badge on the intake, nice touch that.

Yogi has done his thing with the pipework (no, not what bears do in woods), he bespoke made the fuel line, and the plug leads. This attention to detail makes for a clean uncluttered engine, allowing the cold airflow over the intake manifold. We are waiting for the air filter which was ordered in, due to the size and limited space clearance under the hood. The engine belts are in place now so the power steering, radiator fan and water pump now work. Due to the hot climate where the car will be kept and used, there was only one option – Evans Waterless Coolant. This pretty much guarantees that there will be no overheating. With the engine in place there was nothing left to do except the fire up. Here we have the very first fire up of the engine. Yes, it will need to have the timing set up, carb balanced and all the other little tweaks we do to make it run right. But, for the first start-up and run we were pleased. Forgive the slightly distorted sound as the car was running with open headers at this point and was a little noisy shall we say. Only a short run and video to make sure the plugs and electronic ignition fires. The Engine has had to have racing spark plugs fitted for the heat and compression.

Here we have some close ups of the carb.

With the engine running we could add the next security mod which was the battery immobiliser which runs from a remote control key fob. With all that done we added the standard decal set for the car, all of a sudden the car looks authentic.

Remote battery immobiliser in place

Of course there is one sticker that everybody wants on their car, our seal of approval.

We’re proud to put our name on it.

Next job was to get rid of the old horns that were in place and didn’t look or sound right, to fix that we added a set of our Concours Correct horns.

old left – concours right

Inside the car the there is the fire extinguisher, and the custom mounted gear lever knob which we had to modify to fit the shifter.

We had Paul “The Paint” turn up on Saturday to give the car a final once over to make sure the paint was spot on, tiny blemishes or imperfections were sorted out in no time at all and a quick mop over of the car was done.

There are a few more things to do on the car before the road test, the prop shaft has been sent away for our custom sizing, the exhausts will be fitted this week, as well as some under-body sealing. The dash needs to be put back in with a KPH speedo now as it will be in France. The convertible roof will be replaced with a new white one, the body decals can be applied now as the car has had a quick polish. With all that done we will put some miles on the clock and make sure we are happy. There will be a few tweaks after she has settled down as we expect. But, we are on schedule to have her ready for the rally in a few weeks. We hope to have a few pics of her in the glorious French country side. (Hint Hint!) 🙂

Parts:

We had a car in this week which had awful vibrations, things didn’t fit correctly after and the engine was sitting at a weird angle under the hood, possible DIY fit, or somebody who doesn’t know what they are doing. The cause was an engine mount that was bought on the cheap and fitted. We seriously don’t recommend buying cheap parts for this very reason. You may save yourself a small amount at the time thinking you got a bargain. But, you end up paying mechanic bills to sort it out and have to buy the correct part again anyway – very much a false economy. From the pictures you can see the differences and understand why we say these things.