A lot of customers bling their cars up and add chrome, polished steel, superb paint jobs and anything that makes them look good and different from the rest. But, I believe we have the ultimate bling part. This is a Genuine Limited Edition Ford part, a 24 caret Gold plated Pony for a ’64 – ’67 Corral. We have sold a couple and only have two left, once they are gone – they are gone! Call us for prices as this isn’t on the WebShop at the moment.
A few customers like to take a little guided tour of our cars, garages, parts stores, and of course have a cup of tea with us in the club house. Our guard dogs are on patrol of the yard 24/7 for obvious security reasons. Some customers don’t mind the dogs when they are being shown around, or they are with one of the guys. Off course we do put them away into their pens if people are uncomfortable with them being around, not everybody likes dogs as much as ponies (Mustang style of course). The point here is that a customer decided we needed another dog to add to our pack. This one is a little stony faced though, its temporary home is outside the main office, were not sure how the dogs will take to it though!
The Cars:
The jobs for this week have been completed and we have done a complete engine strip down and rebuild of this 1964 1/2 260. The engine was not in the best of health should we say. (We did take some photo’s, but haven’t got round to editing those yet). The oil ways were blocked with fifty years of gunge and muck, valve seats all clogged etc etc. At one point we had to use a long drill very carefully in the pipes to clear them out, it was that bad. The original oil pressure was not good as a result of the blockages as you can imagine. However, we rebuilt it, set the valve clearances properly as they were way out originally, timed it, tuned it and run it for a while. Now she purrs like a kitten and the hot starting issues have gone away. It also helps to have the heater pipes routed close to the choke mechanism where they are supposed to be on this model of carb, to stop the choke closing up again. While we were at it we gave her a bit of clean up too.
We have even managed to do a little work on a customers car in order to make his to make his life a little easier and speed things up a bit for him as he is doing a lot of the labour himself. He wants a polished stainless steel export brace fitted so we removed the original shock tower bracket so it looks right and sits correctly and not just bent out of the way as some cars tend to be. To remove the spot welds we went old school, small pilot hole then drill out the top part of the weld to weaken it. A few small spot of weld for the holes and grind down and she will be as good as new and nobody will notice.
There was also the issue of the handbrake cable bracket that was pop riveted in the wrong place as the original had pulled out of the floor. It should of had a plate welded where the original mount was and then the bracket welded onto the plate. From the pictures below you can see the original hole was left open and the incorrect place where the bracket was.
The main workshop was looking a bit tired on the inside so it has been given a little face lift, new panels for the internal walls and insulation, and the floor has been re-levelled and painted. The guys were saying they wanted a few little creature comforts, so I put up a replacement dash and wired a the radio up for them, now they can listen to the radio or a tape as they work, they even store the tapes in the glove box as well. New lights around the side make working on the ramps easier and give a consistent shadow free light. We have purchased a couple of new items as well to go in the renovated shed. A new oil changer, a new air jack we are trying out at the moment and a new air compressor with coiled hose.
No sooner had we fitted out the workshop and made space we moved a couple of the cars inside that were waiting for collection. Its amazing how much space you can claim back by adding a few shelves and storage units. Where we had a space for two cars previously, we now have four on the floor. We can now do tracking and geometry in here as well as the geo workshop. Everybody is happy, we just got to replace the old pictures and signs we had up. It does seem funny to have blank walls again though.
WebShop: www.mustangmaniac.co.uk
