A week of ’66s

Posted on October 26, 2014 by Mustang Maniac

This week has produced a mini fleet of ’66 cars to us that are in need of various amounts of work, a project car or just simple MOT’s. Most weeks we have a mixture of classic years, some weeks we have all fast backs or coupes, but not to many weeks where they are all the same year. We have a lot of cars here to be worked on at the moment and we are on course to keep up with work load. We are fortunate that we have some really great customers who understand the unexpected complications that can arise from restoration work that can delay completion times due to the extra work required.

We had a very nice silver Coupe that has a factory fitted rare front bench seat option. Yes we know it has leaves on it and we will clean it off as we have with the others due to the recent high winds in the UK.

Among the crop of ’66’s we have here a rare fully optioned car from the factory, it even has a custom colour for the year which was owned by a famous actress just before her sad passing in the late 60’s, the car also has a great proof of  provenance to go with it of course. Unfortunately the car does need a fair amount of work to get the car back to it’s former glory, but as we well know here at Mustang Maniac it can be done as it’s pretty solid on the chassis underneath. The car should make some very good money once it’s completed if it was ever to come up for sale.

Customer Cars:

The Alpha Red convertible has moved along again and we now have the completed engine and the exhaust fitted up, it need a little work to make it fit nicely but she does sound very nice as a result.

’66 Coupe full restoration is now ready for paint. The hard work on the hood has turned out to be lot of work in vain. when the hood was fitted back to the headlight buckets the leading edge has been bent down, not enough to notice. when laid down. We could adjust it to fit the front but the gaps we wrong up the sides of the fenders. I difficult decision but the hood was given some adjustments to try and pull it back into shape, but it wasn’t having any of it and distorted the rest of the hood, so it had to be  a new hood when you are restoring to this level.

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Ford’s Rare “Launch Stock”

Posted on October 26, 2014 by Mustang Maniac

We mentioned in a previous post September 14, 2014  about the nice blue 64 1/2 convertible used by Ford Motor Company on their stand at the Goodwood Revival. So we decided to dedicate this post to a beautiful and important car recently entrusted to us.

setting up
open day

The car was here for its annual check up and some TLC that only we know how to provide. The reason this is an important car is due to a number of reasons; It’s a rare D Code convertible built on April 16 1964 – the day before the official Mustang launch half a century ago.  The build date, unusual colour and options point to it probably being built as a ‘company order’ where Ford District offices ordered a small number of cars before launch – they call these cars ‘launch stock’.  It would then have been sent to a dealer to be sold. This car was built for the Chicago office (code 41). It’s believed that Ford only made 200 Pagoda Green D code convertibles with standard white trim. Pagoda Green was only used on Mustangs for only the first few months of production when it was replaced by the very similar Tropical Turquoise in July 1964. The car looks to be pretty original and while it has clearly had some work over its 50 years, most of the original features are still there – dynamo, fixed passenger seat, low mounted horns, road draft engine venting etc. It also has a factory power top, rally pac and centre console fitted options.

The car is owned by a retired Ford Motor Company Director who tells us he spent a lot of time researching who he would be happy to have looking after his car. He started buying some parts from us and was really surprised that we had most of what he wanted in stock. After popping in and seeing how we work, he was very happy to entrust us with his car – and Ford delivered it straight from Goodwood to our workshops.

As we have been trusted to give the car a good look over and do what is required to keep this little lady in peak condition. the car had creaking front suspension, a few oil leaks, dodgy quarter windows and was maybe wasn’t running as well as it should be.

The owner wanted us to give the car a thorough ‘once over’, but also to have the front control arms replaced (the originals did not have grease points) and for the car to get a full steering geometry check and adjust, our geometry kit makes short work of the process and the difference of a properly set up steering can make is amazing. The steering idler had a small amount of play and was replaced to help with the geometry. A power steering pipe leak was replaced at the same time. A full list of other jobs that included new exhaust hangers – the owner is still keen to keep the factory single exhaust system even though it’s very quiet. We also fixed the various quarter window winding problems, adjusted the roof and bled and adjusted the brakes.

Our attention turned to the engine with a compression test, reset of the timing, a vacuum leak and also sorted out a number of ‘interesting’ repairs that had been carried out in the US during the cars early years, such as a wrong carb gasket, badly adjusted tappets to name a few, again all of which we sorted out.

It’s important to remember that while everyone sees the real value of these classic cars now, early Mustangs were just ‘old cars’ in the US for much of the seventies and eighties. Nowadays the value of these “old” Mustangs relies heavily on originality and how carefully any repairs are carried out to the car.

The owner of this car visited us a couple of times this month to discuss the work she may need and each time we talked through what we thought would be required – the owner has been very happy to just let us get on with it as the car needs to be “right”, while retaining as much of its originality as possible, which we are obviously all in favour of. So, after nearly a month of being with us, she is finished and the owner came over this week to collect it. After a decent test drive we are all really pleased at how much the car has improved. A lot of relatively small things have been fixed and added together they make the car much more useable. While our customer has clearly been around old and new cars all his life, he needed someone to give sensible and knowledgeable advice on what his car needed and in his own words:

“While the car drove ok and I am happy to do some of the maintenance and repair work myself – I started out as a commercial vehicle mechanic, I really needed someone who could be trusted to give it a thorough once over. After looking around at various Mustang providers I chose Adam and the team because they really impressed me with their understanding of these cars and the way they treat their customers. After seeing how they have carefully and sympathetically gone about transforming my car, I am delighted”

So yet another happy customer!

For us, it was a great opportunity to work on this important early car which also has some very close connections to Ford Motor Company. It’s good that we now have this owner as a regular Mustang Maniac customer and that will get to see this car again each year helping to keep it looking and driving as she should. Our appreciation to the owner for passing on his knowledge on these very early rare cars, there is very little – if any documentation from those early years unfortunately.

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Questions & Answers

Posted on October 18, 2014 by Mustang Maniac

First of all we would like to apologise for no posts over the recent few weeks and we would like to thank our customers that have emailed us; Yes we are fine, Yes the blog is still here and will continue to be updated as normal. We had a short (much-needed) break a few weeks ago and we have been trying to catch up ever since! Simple as that, sometimes the seven days a week is quite a lot and something has to give in the name of rest and sanity, but we have found some time and have done a quick update to show we are still here.

This week we have been pleased with the fact that we have had a couple of customers come to us for advice on their cars. The first was a 1970 Coupe that has been self converted to a right hand drive. A nicely done piece of work and the paint job looks great and very unique. The owner is quite rightly proud of his accomplishment for a not so easy conversion at the best of times. We have seen a few examples where the right hand drive conversions look pretty sub standard should we say and it tends to ruin the look of the car, this example proves to be an exception to that rule.

The second was a ’66 Coupe that the owner wanted our opinion on how their car drove on the road. A nice looking car and to bad at all compared to some of the cars we have had to sort out in the past.

It was fortunate that both these cars came in to us during a quite time so we could spend some quality time with the owners. We would like to think that we consider ourselves to be very honest and we will tell you what needs to be done, if anything at all. We will give you options with the minimum work that needs to be done or the full monty based on our very high standards depending on your budget of course. No pushy sales from us just facts and figures that you need to hear in order to make your mind up.

The ’66 nut and bolt restoration is going well with pretty much all the metal work now completed and she is in bare metal apart from the new panels that have been fitted. It has been a long labour intensive job to get tot this point and will soon be of to paint once the preliminary filler work has been completed.

 Other News:

Our WebShop has now started to take the majority of our parts ordering which is much more efficient for the customers and our dispatch process. Of course you can still pop in and buy direct from our stores and we will be happy to help out with any question at the time.

Hopefully we will be back to normal with our posts again and thanks for your on-going support.

 

 

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Shiny & Not So Shiny

Posted on September 21, 2014 by Mustang Maniac

The last two weeks we have posted about car shows and not to much of our own cars. So it’s back to normal this week to let you know what we have been up to. A couple of cars have been collected and a couple have arrived. We posted last week about the Goodwood light blue convertible that was on display. We now have that car back with us to receive a little TLC and her annual once over, we will get some pics of that soon for you, just a little late for this post. Just a little information – that car was made just three days before the launch of the first Mustang and she is still pretty much original!

We have been doing some work on the Alfa red convertible and fitted some of special serpentine eight ridge pulleys to this super shiny engine. You won’t be able to get these pulleys of the shelf in a lot of places as we have a little arrangement with the supplier. The metalic red of this car and the polished metalwork make a big contrast and it works well. This also has the Pertronix distributer fitted with the electronic points replacement kit. It shouldn’t be to long before we fire this 300bhp unit up in the car and not on our test rig. The car has also had an auto gearbox fitted.

The ’66 Coupe bare metal restoration has come on leaps and bounds over the last couple of weeks. So much so that the car has been taken of the jig and mounted on the trolley to be moved around the panel shop while other work is going on. The paint stripping has been going well on all the panels, trunk and roof, but the results weren’t ideal. The left side door was stripped down and found to have been in a minor prang and filled with copious amounts of filler. The filler was so thick towards the front of the door that some of the door contours were almost disappearing. The metal had been pulled out but was stretched too much and it was only the filler that was holding the door skin tight on the door, so we were going to re-skin it. Once the door was taken apart the internal supports were also bent and rust had taken hold at the bottom leaving some screwdriver sized holes, especially after we poked the very thin metal. So it was a new door unfortunately.

The rear quarters have been sprayed, fitted, leaded and filled. The left fender had seen it’s fair share of filler and the metal stretch and “would pop in and out as it was pressed, again not ideal and the decision was taken to also replace the fender.

old fender with plenty of filler
new door & fender
new fender
quarters fitted

The other panels were OK, but again needed some metalwork wonders worked on them before refitting. The right side door needed to be cleaned up without chemicals and has been lightly shot blasted to keep the original textured door look.

roof
light shot blasted

The car is only a short time away from final paint prep.

News:

We have never really been active on the Mustang Owners Club of GB, there are others who voice for us and recommend our services so thank you. But like all these things we are moving with the times and we are now on the forum under “mustang maniac”, who would have guessed that one? If you visit the forum please drop by and say hello or friend us.

Don’t forget Herbie’s Bar & Grill next week 28th Sept 2014 for a meet and meat day.

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Revivals

Posted on September 14, 2014 by Mustang Maniac

Goodwood 2014

There are some things you can revive and some you can’t, which I will get onto a little later. But first we had a good trip to Goodwood’s Revival and some great cars and some good racing. We of course were pleased to see many Mustangs racing and on display. Goodwood had a recreation of the Earls Court building front where they housed some cars on show old and new next to each other. There was this very nice convertible baby blue Mustang who is also a customer of ours, next to the new 2015 Mustang which we have already had the pleasure of seeing up close and personal.

open day

There were obviously other stands there from different manufacturers there, but only a few caught our eye. There was also outside features and attractions, there were even visitors dressed in period costume which was quite nice to see.

But Goodwood is renowned for its racing. We have a few pictures here of some of the cars we liked, which just happened to be Fords. Rowen Atkinson (a well known British comedian), had an accident in his Ford Falcon Sprint which he mashed up pretty good unfortunately. Lets hope it’s back on the track soon.

How not to drive a C4 transmission

As I mentioned at the beginning some things you can revive and some you just can’t, this example may be falling into the latter category. We are often asked to work our magic on things which we do on most occasion, however there are some things we just can’t repair, sometimes new parts are the only way to go. This pump from the front of C4 auto gearbox is damaged badly. The worst part is that not only has some of the pump gearing been damaged but a couple of the gear’s teeth are still missing as we haven’t found them, yet. There is no way of telling exactly just how much damage has been done or even if it can be rescued at all until it has been taken apart. How did it happen? We’re not sure the full truth will never be known, but we have seen similar results to this this in another gearbox. The gearboxes are generally pretty solid, but this damage can happen when you give the engine a boot full of revs and slam the shifter into “Drive”, or keep your foot on the brake while revving the engine while in drive. Trying to do a burn out maybe? As you can see, this is not going to be cheap repair even if it can be repaired.

Tip:

Don’t rev the engine and slam the car into drive – it won’t like it. Trust us!

Healthy pump from a C4

A very badly damaged

back of the C4
healthy pump right
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Buntingford 2014

Posted on September 7, 2014 by Mustang Maniac

Update 8th September 2014.

Thanks to everybody who pointed out that its 2014 and not 2015. Well spotted, you can take your pick from the excuses.  A)  it was deliberate of course to make sure you were reading it, or b) was it late in the evening. 🙂

The week has gone pretty quickly and we have been looking forward to a car show a nearby town Buntigford. Each year they block both ends of the main high street off and allow cars to park all the way up and let people wander around. We past two bands and solo a singer. We past a couple of pubs that looked very inviting. We have a number of pictures that we have taken and posted below. But before that we wanted to share a little snapshot of a couple of cars that we lined up ready for some of quality workmanship we have been become recognised for.

We thought the pic with a little tweak looks very retro!

all3

The pictures taken here were only a selection of the many we had taken, so have gone for an older theme and split them into smaller sections.

The big cars

Very old:

 Best of the rest:

It was a busy show and looks like everybody enjoyed it, we’re looking forward to next year already.

bunt57

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A Little Fun…

Posted on August 31, 2014 by Mustang Maniac

At long last we have managed to deliver some cars out and make space to get our project ’65 convertible back on the ramps we started a while ago. We have now fitted the new rear axle and springs with a little detailing of course. The front brakes have now been fully fitted and the final link ups for the Borgeson Steering conversion kit. The nice thing about this Borgeson conversion is that it looks almost stock and they handle close enough to a rack and pinion you will get without the rack itself.

front disc conversion
Borgeson
Borgeson
underside of Borgeson
new axle
new springs

We have been asked to install a sound system into a car which has caused problems. Not for anything component wise, but the fact the engine has a wonderful sound and bark to it that the sound system couldn’t be heard. That was cured by putting in some serious speakers front and back with a pre-amp to be installed. To do the job properly the dash has had to come out in order for the wire routing. But it will all be worth it as he will certainly be able to hear it now!

Customers Cars:

’65 Coupe

One of the nicer jobs we have is detail the engine for our customers. A good friend and customer of ours brought his  Gulf STream coloured ’65 down to us to have a little work done. We replaced the air filter and rocker covers, rerouted the HT leads, added a Monte Carlo bar and few other little bits.

gulf3

We have the before and after comparison here.

gulf1

The other extra little bits was the front disc brake change. There was already a disc conversion which used the old Granada set up. Lance the owner of this lovely Coupe wanted to have a better look to the car so we obliged with a custom set of callipers and discs for these classic Mustangs. The main difference here is that these brakes have the full face contact to the discs and they are located at the front of the discs and not rear like the Granada set up. We have a before and after shots here.

Granda discs
Bespoke
outside

’66 Coupe restoration 

We have also been doing a little work on the ’66 Coupe restoration that has needed a little more work than we expected. Once we removed the old lower cowl we could see the dash had gone very thin and rusty at the bottom. We decided to replace the complete dash section brazing it in place along with the lower cowl. We prepped the lower cowl and painted it ready for the upper cowl section once it had dried.

primer
lower cowl top coat
upper cowl

 Services:

We have a new toy! This is our new AirCon service unit. We usually get somebody in to do our aircon work so now we have the training and the tools to do the job. Drop in if you Mustang needs a little top up, probably a bit late now for our UK summer though.

aircon

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We’re The Good Guys!

Posted on August 25, 2014 by Mustang Maniac

Recently, like the day before, we were asked if we could make a 5oth wedding anniversary that little bit special and provide a car to take them to their venue. Of course we thought 50th anniversary for the Mustang too, so why not. We started to dust off the Shelby as you do, but got told that was not what they had in mind. They would like a “little style and class”, we agreed so we continued to clean the Shelby. Apparently this was wrong, then came the subtle hint, “They were thinking more along the lines of a Rolls Royce!” Yeah, we can do that. So we cleaned the roller and got her ready for the evenings chauffeuring, slightly disgruntled we put the Shelby away again. No sooner had we cleaned the Roller than our resident mouser jumped onto the warm bonnet and proceeded to make herself comfortable! We know these Rollers per like a kitten but….

We picked up the special couple and took them to where they needed to go and they seemed to enjoyed their evening of luxury travel and chauffer. It was our pleasure to help make their 50th wedding anniversary a memorable one by playing a small part during their celebrations. Just for once, we turned out to be the good guys.

rollerc

Cars:

We have a couple of cars to be collected this week and they have had a little clean and ready for the road.

The ’66 Coupe has had some work done to the rear end and we have been showing of our metalwork skills. The trunk curved plate that leads to the fuel tank was a rusty and pretty thin and any welding wouldn’t have taken to well. We tracked down an old replacement part, but the profile was wrong as it was angular rather than the gentle curve it should be. So we found another part with the correct profile, unpicked the welds and made it all fit together nicely with the other great work being done in the trunk. With the trunk floor sorted properly and looking correct, we started to prep the left side rear quarter panel now all the leading has been removed.

correct profile
old replacement – wrong profile
rear quarter prep

 

 

 

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Problem Solving

Posted on August 17, 2014 by Mustang Maniac

Sometimes we have car that takes a little bit of time to work out what the actual root cause of a problem is and then sort it out. Sometimes we replace the part(s), we can fabricate a bespoke part or we make a modification to fit what is required. Most of the bigger car problems are sorted out with a quick chat or a second opinion over a mug of tea and a biscuit. It’s rare we have a full on team meeting around the engine bay of a car. This pic was a snap shot of the guys having a look for the best way to fix a problem, as there wasn’t even a mug of tea in sight I knew it wasn’t that bad. It turned out to be the best way to make a new part fit and look good. They say two heads are better than one, or a problem shared is a problem halved. In this case it turns out that four heads are better than one.

Problem solving

This week we are pleased to see the return of our Classic Racer back from the dippers and the difference is quite obvious. Nothing is left apart from the good bare metal and the solid welding. This gives us a perfect head start to any work that needs to be done such as replacement welding, replacements panels, start of the under coating or what ever we decide to do first. There have been a few modifications made to this car previously and these will have to be removed and replaced with the correct stock parts again for the series of racing this will be entered back in to. It’s not very often we get a clean canvas to start work on, but it’s worth it. It’s a quick way to get back to the bare metal but the cost has to be considered, or you can do it all by hand the hard way like the ’66 Coupe we also have on the go too.

The fenders and other panels were dipped and in this pic you can see the guys doing a dummy fit of the fender to see what work will be required as a rough guide for time estimates and work load allocation.

postdip5

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Photo Catch Ups

Posted on August 10, 2014 by Mustang Maniac

After last week’s post we have had a few calls to ask questions about the 2015 Mustang, some of course we could answer most we couldn’t, a lot of the questions were for the pictures we didn’t publish. Our promise to Ford was that we would not release them so we haven’t nor can we say too much about the project that Ford and ourselves are involved in, but thanks very much for the interest though. All will be revealed soon enough. To answer a question that was a common theme; Yes, we honestly did like the new 2015 Mustang.

We have a couple of nice pics of a good friend and customer of ours, Steve, who visited the Silverstone Classic during the 25 – 27th July this year. He managed to get his picture taken with Mike Brewer from Wheeler Dealers. We also have a picture of one of the less stressful parts of the day with his classic Mustang. We’re sure he won’t mind us posting a picture of his busy day.

We have a little treat here from Matthew Stack who works for our sister company LAR Traffic Services, he has recently started to take up photography again and has made a couple of visits to us in the recent weeks taking photos, he has kindly sent us some of his work. Let us know what you think by placing a comment and Matthew will see them or we will pass them on to him.


The week has been busy with routine MOT’s to be completed and we have an update on one of our resident cars. We have taken a customers ’66 coupe of the spit and bolted her onto our jig. We have managed to cut the cowling of and replace the right hand side battery panel that was pretty rusty under the poor weld and the front panel that had a broken section for the battery vent grill, after the work by Yogi the panels look like new again.

Pop over to http://onemanandhismustang.com for some more pictures we have taken for him.

We have not had the car back yet from the dipping, when we done we will get some pictures providing we remember to take them. It’s a case of “I thought you had, nope I didn’t take them, I thought you did!” Then the moment is gone.

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