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;

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. Adam is now spending more of his time fixing, restoring, collecting, delivering and buying cars.
  5. 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.
  6. No more messing around taking payments over the phone, the WebShop is fully automated.
  7. Order your parts where ever you are, sitting on a bus, train, or in a cafe having a coffee.
  8. 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.

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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;

  1. Make arrangements to call in and pick it up from our office.
  2. Make your own arrangements to have the parts collected and delivered to your location of choice.
  3. 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 
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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.

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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.

enfpag119It 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.

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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.

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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.

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

Posted in Customers' Cars, News, Our Cars, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 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.

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(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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

stash

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?

falcwheels1Adam 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.

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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 , , , , , , , , , , , | 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.

FrenchHome

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.)

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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 , , , , , , , , | 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.”

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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 , , , , , , , , , | 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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With the correct engine mount in place, things fitted correctly and the problems went away. All that aggravation to save £5.

Original As It gets:

Lastly we have here a couple of pics of a car that is so original it still has the stamp on the paint work from the factory fifty-one years ago.

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Not only that, the chassis still has the factory chalk marks on it.

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Something tells us that this car hasn’t been driven through a puddle, let alone seen a cleaning sponge.

Just Incredible!

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Tight Fit

Posted on April 17, 2016 by Mustang Maniac

We pick up this week straight away with our customer’s cars and a resurrection of the project ’70 fastback with work being undertaken ready for the rear quarter panels to go back on. As Yogi has the new doors in place while the old rear quarters were in place we had a solid template to work from in order to align the “B” Pillars up correctly. A gap critical part of the process that has to be right first time.

With some clamps in place the pillars can be spot welded fully into place properly once Yogi was happy with the gaps. This is a slow time-consuming process to make sure the door opens and closes consistently before the final welding up. Rumour has it Yogi missed a tea break! With that the rear quarters were dry fitted and aligned up with the rear light panels and the B pillars. This can take hours and hours, as a tiny adjustment at one end will be a big adjustment at the other end of such a large panel. Tweaks to the panels and how they fit is normal, this is where the skill and experience of Yogi comes into its own.
rusty101With everything in place after a whole day it was all welded into place which just left the prep work for the rear quarters. Blocking down and filler work to make the insides ready for paint before being assembled onto the car.
rusty102

French Convertible:

The last few posts has seen the new engine being readied for fitting back into the car. The final prep for the water and oil ways were made and double checking of the timing chain and cams etc. Not that we need to of course, it’s just a habit we have to crank by hand to make sure everything will be as it should.

The polished inlet manifold is fitted and torqued down into place and finally the coated headers are dry fitted to make sure that all the bolts are fine to be tightened up. Nothing worse than struggling with the engine in the engine bay with little room to work in.
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With everything checked and the headers removed again the engine was lowered into place and attached the engine mounts.

The headers were lifted into place and bolted on properly. We knew this was going to be a tight fit and we weren’t wrong.

With the engine set in place the gearbox was a straight forward lift into place and bolt up. The hand brake and other hardware was also fitted into place.

Speaking of rumours it has been said that somebody took a picture of Yogi working on a carb in the other work-shop that was apparently having trouble with the jetting.
monkey

Only Joking Yogi! (We hope this doesn’t upset the Yogi Fan Club)

We had to study the above pic a while before we realised it was indeed a fake pic sent to us. How did we know it’s not our Yogi? Simple – It’s not a Snap-On wrench being used. Ahem – Moving swiftly on.
Where Adam is currently on a short break it has been said that the beers were free. Needless to say the afore-mentioned hospitality has been taken full advantage of so we hear.
hols

Pups:

We have a couple of great pics of the pups where Enos and PJ wanted to say hello.

Enos
Enos & PJ

WebShop:

The feedback from last weeks WebShop update has been very positive and we are pleased with the responses from existing customers as well as general comments. Please let us know if you have any ideas how we can improve your Mustang Maniac experience with us.

Hope you liked the post as much as Daisy did!

smile2

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New & Improved WebShop

Posted on April 11, 2016 by Mustang Maniac

At Mustang Maniac we not only pride ourselves on the highest quality of work available for your Mustang, but we also pride ourselves on the fact that if you want a part for your car, we have got it IN STOCK. As such our online ordering service, our “WebShop” has progressed much more quickly than we expected, with many requests to stock other later model Mustang parts now as well. We do hold a few of the standard parts for the late Mustangs, but even this has outgrown what we normally stock now. As a result due to popular demand we are expanding our stock range, all fifty years in fact in the near future. Quite what we need to stock for demand, what the common parts are such as the service items etc. we will have to work out. Our WebShop has now been improved with some changesd to the new interface which should make it easier to find what you need for what year of Mustang you have. Our normal huge supply of Classic Mustang parts has and always will be our priority and maxed out where we can. The later models will be added to on a weekly or even a daily basis so keep checking back. If you can’t find what you are looking for, firstly email Adam via the WebShop for a request, or call the office. We could well be stocking parts requested by you, our customers. Please just let us know what you want.

We have tried to keep the look and feel of the old WebShop in place for familiarity while introducing the new functionality too.

Here we have the main menu tweaked with the cars by year which will take you to sub menus for their corresponding parts as normal.

NewWebShop

If you’re not sure of the year we have a visual guide here now too.

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Here is the tweaked scroll down menu if you know the parts you are after or you can still click on the menu on the left at the top to save scrolling.

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Please let us know how it looks, or how we can improve our WebShop. Once again we have listened to what our loyal customers require as well as listening to our future customers too. Thank you for all your feed back.

The Web site is still the same as always below or click anywhere it says “WebShop“:

WebShop – https://mustangmaniac.co.uk/

A Custom Logo has Been Created to Celebrate 50 Years of Mustang

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Building Blocks

Posted on April 10, 2016 by Mustang Maniac

The week started with some excellent news that the engine we wanted has now turned up for the French Convertible. The requirement was to have at least 350bhp from the unit. So we duly complied and came up with 390bhp verified by the Dyno print out. The engine was to be black so we again worked our magic to use our top quality engine enamel paint to change the colour, once we had masked the areas off first of course.

frenchengine

With the pain left to dry in the warm sun we could remove the masking and Yogi fitted the new water pump once the paint had cured a little.

We are pleased with how this turned out so far and should look great with the other parts we have lined up for her. Now we have the main building block for the car we can start to assemble the power train back into the car which will be a big leap forward in achieving our goal of trying to get this lady ready to go to the ball.

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Our Cars:

We also had our Paul “The Paint” turn up in his truck to collect the engine and gearbox for his Mach1 that would be cleaned and painted to his own colour scheme, once we get that back we should be able to get it ready to go back into his car. The week was turning into a week of engine blocks being readied for fitting.

Models:

When the early Mustangs were produced they also made a scaled “dealer” issue only model of the cars. These were not designed to be around for fifty odd years and as such have become extremely collectible. We have been donated a mint condition model in its pristine box as well.

dealermodel3

Everything here at Mustang Maniac is for sale, providing you have the money of course, but we suspect that this particular car will stay in Adams ever-growing and very rare Ford memorabilia cupboard.

“Ford Facts”

1) The only car that Jim Morrison, legendary Doors singer, ever owned was a 1967 Shelby GT 500.

2) Chevrolet actually used a Ford SuperDuty to set up their Chevy Truck display at the Texas State Fair in 2012.

3) Fords signature blue oval logo was not introduced until 4 years after the company had already been in production.

fordlogo

4) Ford Chairman Bill Ford, currently owns the first Ford vehicle ever sold in 1903.

5) Bio-fuel: not a new thing as the Ford model T was designed from the start to run on both petroleum and ethanol – which could be produced using potatoes, wood chips and other bio materials.

6) Both Henry Fords liked things to be uniform – not only in production and vehicle terms but in other key areas. Wherever Ford operates across the world there tends to be a standard style. This is clearly demonstrated by the appearance of Ford Motor Company’s US and UK HQs. While the UK building is much smaller, it looks almost identical to the US headquarters in Dearborn Michigan. During the 60s and 70s both had executive floors at the top which were serviced by their own lifts and had thicker carpet and wood panelled walls. Both buildings had apartments for VIPs to stay overnight and heliports. Onsite at both locations there were a cinema, banking facilities, hairdressing, a full medical facility with company doctors and other medical staff along with huge dining/catering facilities (in the early years the management ate separately but as times change so the dining facilities have been merged to reflect the modern ‘team’ approach).

 

Thanks as ever to Gary for the great facts.

DeAgostini GT500

We have had another batch of the DeAgostini GT500 model arrive issues six to nine.

Issue six sees the most intricate part yet which is the rear exhaust system. Once completed this section will need to be stored carefully.

Issues seven and eight feature the other front wheel and braking mechanism was originally in a single issue, number two. As this has been done before it only took a couple of minutes to complete.

Issue nine gives us a nother large body panel in the shape of the left hand door which required the mirror and the door handle to be fitted.

shelby1-8th 37

We have updated the assembly page click here for the quick link or cut and past this link. https://mustangmaniac.org/shelby-gt500-18th-scale-model/

Food For Thought:

Saturday Adam decided to take a few of us out for a quick bite to eat. This wasn’t a quick pub lunch, this was an American diner called “Arnolds” in Hoddesdon. The food was fantastic and the four off us walked away feeling rather full. Classic food, classic style environment to eat in and the staff were very nice as too, what more can you ask for?

Adam seemed distracted and staring into space for a few seconds, we had a look to see just what it was he was looking at, we should have know better. 😀

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Thanks for the diner Adam.

Posted in 1:8th Scale Model, Customers' Cars, Ford Facts, Our Cars | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment