Our final day here and we managed to track down this Mustang 1965 Fastback full shell. We were impressed with it we may be investigating this further 🙂 We will be back in the UK soon.
Its just as busy as yesterday and we have looking around again and found some more interesting cars. We tracked down a few more Mustangs and some other nice Fords. Rather pleased with the car jump though as I wasn’t sure if it would look OK.
Hope to get some more photos soon.
We have been looking forward to the show and we haven’t been disappointed so far. We have of course been around the Mustangs and there are some spectacular examples here. It’s busy as we expected but we have managed to catch up with a few familiar faces.
We hope to have more pictures soon.
I wonder what the lag is like on this Turbo?
Great idea run flat tyres – will they take over?
I have heard of a bike chain – but this?
A car show is not a car show without a little burnin’ rubber
This year is no exception to our annual visit to the SEMA show in Las Vegas we look forward to this show. This event is a “Trade” only show for new products, cars, tools & demonstrations etc. We get to meet some great new people each year and get to try out their latest innovations along with just about anything auto trade related. We get to see some new Mustang parts as well, we may be adding new lines to our stock as a result of the people we meet, we just don’t know and that’s the great thing about this show.
If you are lucky enough to get to go there please catch up with me to say “Hi”. We are hoping to post a few pictures on the blog from the SEMA show to keep you up to date what is going on, that all depends on the technology working of course. We hope all will be back to normal in the UK from the 10th November. In the mean time I will have a limited access to email while I am at SEMA for any urgent issues that can’t wait till then. Thanks for you patience in the mean time.
For more details on the SEMA show, their website is here: http://www.semashow.com/the-sema-show
This morning was an unexpected nice surprise, reading the blog stuff (when we can that is), before I got into work. Our blog has been nominated for an award after a short space of time we have been up and running! We are a little taken aback as we never expected to get an award. Our blog is very much business related with an old school personal touch added. I would like to thank Debbie Nuessle from http://hoodscoop03.com/ for the kind words on her blog and the thought for us on this side of the “Pond”.
The rules are this;
1. Display the award logo on your blog.
2. Link back to the person who nominated you.
3. Nominate 10 others you see as having an impact on your WordPress experience and family
4. Let your 10 Family members know you have awarded them
5. That is it. Just please pick 10 people who have taken you as a friend, and spread the love
Some people don’t take the awards some do, there is no offence taken if you don’t acknowledge, at least we show some appreciation. So here is where I hit a problem; the blogs I would nominate some have already been nominated. We don’t have time to follow many blogs as much as we would like to, but here is our list in no particular order:
1) Mart – http://onemanandhismustang.com/ – some great posts and walkthroughs of his restoration ’66 coupe.
2) http://garglinggas.com/ – a good all-round petrol head blog
3) http://autothing.wordpress.com/ – another petrol head blog
4) http://smilespermiles.wordpress.com/ – yep, another petrol head blog
5) http://minimemotors.wordpress.com/ – guess what – another petrol head blog
6) http://ronscubadiver.wordpress.com/ – photographic site with some great pics.
Thanks again to Debbie for the nomination who also gets our vote., you’re more than welcome to visit us for a tour!
Those who visit our blog and website know the huge amount of stock we hold for these classic cars. New items are made and we get a supply of them, they then sometimes stop production again for a while and the parts become difficult to get for a while. We have been reliably informed that these companies make a batch of parts at a time when the demand is there to save their costs. this approach is fair enough and makes economic sense, but doesn’t always help the stockists or the customers, so we get our hands on what we can. However our web page takes a little time to get the correct catalogue part numbers, pictures and prices on the order pages so you can buy them online. As a result we are now going to try a process to help out. Where a new stock line that comes in that is worth the special mention, we will post it on this blog FIRST! Of course we are not talking about posting every nut, bolt and clip we get in, that would mean we would be posting everyday if we did. The more significant items we would choose would be such things like radiators, brake boosters, steering racks, glass, lights, engines, panels, bespoke parts etc.
What we hope to achieve here is the rapid response to our stock which you can call and ask for details on delivery and prices. It may take a week or two before the same items appear on our online stock pages. We hope this new process will move us with the times and as a result will appear on our Facebook pages and Twitter too so you won’t miss out. We will also post them under our (new) title menu called “New Stock Parts”, these will be small pages of photos (just unboxed or unwrapped) along with a quick description within their categories, we may have to add more categories of course in order to help you find them. If there is anything you want us to announce to the world just drop us an email and we will see what we can do for you. Customers may be on the lookout for particular items and this would mean you don’t have to wait as long for new parts. We shall see how it goes!
We had a large order arrive this week and we now have some new lines in stock, some are on a trial basis to see how they sell others will be our regular lines.
These radiators are top quality with the original look of the rounded top. We have also got a more basic model in as part of the range.
These quality sumps have arrived at long last and we now have them in stock in Ford blue, black and bare metal. We also got a supply of some high performance oil sumps which have the oil compartmentalized to avoid oil pick up failure.
A selection of third-party dual reservoirs have arrived, these are in full chrome finish, or the option of the see through plastic top like modern-day spec vehicles. A couple of these have already gone from our stock!
These gearboxes have been reconditioned to our highest standards, with new machined replacement parts inside that allow the gears to be fully aligned for that smooth gear change you expect as if fresh from the factory. We have fitted a number of these units now and everyone of them has been spot on with no issues at all. We also have the fully reconditioned torque converters as well to go with these gearboxes. Fantastic product for a very (very) reasonable cost.
We recently found a few more pictures of work that we done a short time before this blog was thought of or born that we thought we had lost. We decided to share the pictures we have with you even though we don’t have the full before and after set. But you do get to see the idea of what we achieved anyway.
It’s a problem for the very early cars that have a rusty cowl, ’64 – ’66 had theirs welded in place. The later years you could remove a bit easier. With the earlier years there are two things you could do; Hope it stays OK or do what we do here at Mustang Maniac. We have now perfected a good technique to get the old cowl out, replace it with the treated and repaired original, or fit a new one as the case may be. The original bodywork is refitted without damage.
1) We take everything of at the front of the car to fully expose the top grill and cowl that is welded on.
2) We then remove the welding and take of the grill without damaging it
Cowling removed from the car with the grill back on top for reference.
3) Two options here now is to either replace with a new unit or repair and treat the old cowl ready to be put back in.
4) The underside of the cowl was sprayed while off the car to match the bodywork paint.
5) We put the cowl back on the car and re-weld it back in place. The remaining area is masked off and the primer is applied.
6) We allow to dry fully and then apply the top coats as required to match the original bodywork colour.
7) Once dry and cured, we then put the wipers back in and all the under dash equipment.
8) Last step is the top grill is put back on, welded and covered as the original was. This is followed by the fenders and the hood etc. which are all re-aligned back into their correct positions.
This cost-effective repair that we achieve without the re-painting the outside is worth the effort and costs involved. It’s not the easiest of jobs, but it’s worth doing if you have cowl leaking issues etc.
One of the great products we recommend and use is Evans Coolants. We had a large stock of the Classic Coolant for our Mustangs and the feedback is fantastic on how it works. We have been getting more and more enquiries about the other Evans products and as a result we are now stocking them, straight out of the box! What ever your needs we have it – or we can get it.
Quick Links: We have attached the quick links for the products information and the PDF of the leaflet download here:
Evans Waterless Coolant Page click here
Evans Waterless Coolant brochure PDF download click here
After a little wait we have got our custom designed and bespoke engine mounts finished and sent back to us from our supplier. As a result we were able to fit them and mount the engine properly for the first time. The engine dropped in almost perfectly with only a tiny adjustment for the perfect fit we were after. The Engine is now sitting where we expected it to be, with definite locations we can now make the bespoke air intake plate that will allow the hood to close properly. Even with the big bulge on the hood there is only just enough room. The intakes made for a fairly unusual picture, almost as if this beast is watching us!
The engine itself we mounted close to the firewall as possible to get the weight of the engine just behind the front wheel axles as it were. The weight distribution was a consideration when this car was in the development stages. The fire wall was moved backwards and the tunnel had to be re-engineered to take the transmission and the engine.
The measurements for cooling now mean that we had to take a small cut out from each side of the chassis to allow the radiator to fit correctly as shown by the arrow here.
Radiator cut out
The pedal proved to be a little bit of a challenge as the standard fittings would not fit obviously. To get round this and to fit the customer we built a custom mount for the pedal. The floor was also covered in sound proofing, heat shrunk in place to the floor as well as the fire wall. Final tidy up and sound proofing will be done once the brake and clutch pedal goes in.
The steering column had to made to fit the new rack and pinion steering control. The UV joint and steering column mounting are all bespoke. We went for the smooth engine bay look, so we filled the chassis fronts in under the fire wall to make it a smooth finish, (see arrow).
The upright metal posts are still in place just in case we have to lift the engine out for some unknown reason. Due to the tight fitting of engine to the engine bay, we only want to do this the once.
The final part was the transmission. As we already cut the bespoke holes for the shifter this mounted pretty well and married up cleanly.
The rest of the updates can be found under the Customer Cars – Project Eleanor or click here for the link
We also have for sale a 1966 Coupe that has just arrived over from the states.
There were a couple of close guesses for a vent, but nobody managed to get the correct year, so here is the answer…
Sometimes we have to swap the cars around and make spaces for the cars to be worked on, this week was no different. The weather was not to bad so we decided to get a last clean in before they went back into their winter homes. We might even sell one or two. After we washed them, we lined ’em up and we shoot ’em – with a camera of course.
While washing the cars we decided to have another little fun competition again. See if you can guess the car this belongs too. Don’t bother searching the pictures above as some of our cars are not in the pictures. I would like to think we have made it a little harder this time as our friends across the pond nailed it pretty quickly last time.
The prize for the winner? A mention on our blog and the bragging rights to say you got it first.
Good luck.
We like to think of ourselves here as more than just a bunch of guys who fix or maintain your Mustang. We have an area which has progressed into much more than we first envisaged. We had an area where we keep some of our favorite cars such as the Indianapolis Pace Car and the Factory GT in a controlled environment. This was then added to with a couple of seats from cars obviously. Then came a bar, jukebox, fruit machine, Harley Davidson, PC’s, kitchen area for teas and coffee etc etc. In fact the guys took it over as their own relaxing area when they wanted to use it. I’m still not sure how this happened to be honest, but we don’t mind really. We sometimes use it as a comfortable relax area for customers when they want to talk to us about their requirements for their car’s repairs, purchases or servicing. We like our little area so much we now look out for extra little additions, such as genuine neon signs, memorabilia or anything that takes our fancy. Tip for you; If you want the comfortable arm-chair you got to be quick and get in first!
Pop down to visit us and see what we can do for you and your Mustang.
Mustang Maniac 
