Category: Car

For A Good Cause

Earlier in the year I submitted a photo to ‘Frost Restoration’ Who were running a competition for a calendar. Frost is a company who offer all sorts of tools and sundries for car restoration projects and maintenance. Before you ask; no I’m not on any sort of commission or retainer. Yes, I have used their services a number of times in the past where they have provided me with excellent service. Anyway back to the photo I submitted. The mini competition was for a charity calendar that Frost produce in aid of a good cause ‘Rosemere Cancer Foundation’. If you win – the prize was to be in the calendar, simple as that. I’d forgotten about it until I was contacted a few weeks ago about winning a place in the calendar. I’ve been waiting for the calendar to be released before I actually got too excited about it. Well it’s now available here if you wanted to by one, or click on the top image.

I made it into the calendar for the month of September 2022

I have bought two copies of the calendar to help support a worthwhile cause. A great present for a classic car fan and helps a good cause in the process. (No I’m not selling them.)

This picture was taken a couple of years ago before I swapped my registration plate over to 1966 OX.

For Sale..

When it rains at a car show I often get asked a question, where did you get that cowl cover?

This got me to thinking; could I even get to sell some for a little pocket money?

I looked into sourcing the materials and got to work on the design.

A few months later, I’ve now just had my first small batch of some rather cool covers. These covers provide an answer for the age old ’64 – ’66 classic Mustangs problem; rusting cowls!

The vents under the windscreen are responsible for a fresh air feed into the cabin. Unfortunately it’s also a place where water can pool up if the drain points are blocked. Eventually you will get a foot shower of leaks when it rains.

How do I know? Simple, this was my car!

There are various fixes on the market like solid screw on covers which are expensive, can crack and they can even leak when the foam seals fail. The most common sort are the screw in Scott Drake style plastic covers. I personally think that they spoil the clean lines of these cars and they also say; ‘I have a leaky cowl.’

My solution is simple and different; it’s a magnetic cowl cover. I currently have a few of both styles in stock; black carbon and plain gloss white. The white style you can add your own stickers or vinyl wraps.

These covers aren’t designed to be a permanent fix for the problem, they are there to protect your car from water or other undesirable debris like leaves entering into the cowl space. Once in this space it’s almost impossible to clean them out. These magnetic covers are placed on the vents in seconds and removed when protection is no longer required. This allows the fresh air back into the car. The magnetic backing conforms to the contours of the cowl forming a nice seal. I always use my magnetic cowl cover when washing my car, just to be on the safe side.

When you have finished with the magnetic cowl cover, just dry them with a wipe over, then stick them somewhere flat. I store mine inside the truck, stuck on the inside of the rear quarter where it’s a flat surface. It’s out of the way and easy to grab when you need it also keeping the magnetic material working too.

Other covers can be square cut with no cut out for the wiper arm as it’s cheaper obviously. My covers are cut to the contour of the cowl’s sweeping lines along with the wiper cut out. If you want to move the cover, lift up and reposition, don’t drag it!

For more information on the product click on the for sale menu or click here for the link. Or email me on the “Contact Me” menu on the mail heading.

Ideal for simply washing the car, or for getting caught out in the rain at a car show, like me – many a time. These covers make great presents for the ’64 to ’66 Mustang owners from £21.50 to £24.00 (inc P&P), for the standard UK postcodes. Ask for details on other regions.

My Webpage

My menu heading on the webpage have been a bit of a pain recently and causes errors when I try to save them for increasing the drop down list for ease of browsing. After more calls to WordPress they advised I list the heading and make a submenu page. I have taken that a step further to make it easier on the eye.

I have started to list the pages for the sub menus which is now an on going project. I will slowly work my way through most of them to make them all similar.

When you click on the new worded sub menu, it will take you to a page where all the pages are now shown with a picture and description. I think it works, but any feedback would for the new style would be a help to me whether it’s good or bad.

Hope you are looking forward to the Holidays, I know I’m looking forward to the time off more than anything else.

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T Park Lock

I was going to post all about my second to last car show, but I have some exciting news where I have teamed up with Mustang Maniac which I can share with you today. (I have been given permission to use their photos and video.)

Mustang Maniac has developed a replacement standard “T handle” shift lock for the early Mustangs ’64 to ’73.

It’s called the “T Park Lock”

The handle is designed to be a direct replacement part of the original T handle, but will retain that all important stock look. The lock works by putting the shifter into ‘Park’ and simply pressing in the button on the right of the handle. This locks the black button on the left from being depressed and so you can’t move the gear stick into any drivable position and the gearbox stays locked in ‘park’. Simple, but effective. Anything we can do to slow or prevent our precious cars being stolen is worth it. For a relatively small amount it think it’s a must have purchase to be honest.

With the lock in place nobody will really notice any difference from the stock T handle.

When the handle is unlocked the barrel will spring out and stop. With the lock disengaged the chrome of the handle continues on to the lock barrel itself.

When you have unlocked and removed the key (optional to remove the key), you just shift as normal, if you do press the button in while going along, you can still shift to neutral when convenient to unlock again. Or if you prefer drive with the key in the lock simply unlock again when you need to.

The lock comes supplied with two keys and as are unique to that lock, none of the that one key fits all the locks the same!

To fit the lock it’s a two minute job, remove the old handle, replace it with this one and tighten into place. For added security you can place a small drop of glue onto the grub screw to stop it being removed via the allen key. No garage fees to fit, or maintenance. Fit and click.

I have personally been using the prototype of the product for the last few months and it works flawlessly. To see it in action the Mustang Maniac guys put up a video of the lock in action.

I will be selling these and can be purchased here.

You can also see the link under my “For Sale” heading in the top menu bar.

OR copy and paste this link into your browser: T Park Lock – One Man And His Mustang

If you need any further details, help or questions, just leave a comment or contact me.

Park up & Lock up!

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Pro Shoot – Cambridge

I mentioned a couple of post ago while I was at the Culford car show I got talking to a photographer who wanted to use my car as part of his port folio. I agreed as he would also send me the photos to use too. I got them a few days ago and I’ve just got round to posting them up.

We agreed to meet up early in the morning when the sky would be moody and even more important, it wasn’t due to rain. I was to arrive at Cambridge before six in the morning or earlier if possible. That meant I had to get up at four in the morning as I had to get some fuel on the way. The best part was our two little dogs decided that they wanted to get me up at half twelve and then again at two in the morning. So when the alarm went off I was literally running on a couple of hours sleep. So it wasn’t just the sky that was moody! I was Mr bear with a sore head who had also sat on a cactus. As the sun started to creep up and I arrived at Steve’s house well before six, all was good again. I gave him a quick call and he came out straight away and we drove of to the little lane to catch the sky and ambient light just about a mile away.

The road was a single track road which gets busier than you would expect. On a couple of occasions I had to move the car out the way. People were very patient with us and we got a thumbs up or ‘OK’ hand signals now and again.

I’m so happy to share these pictures with you which were taken last week in Cambridge by a self employed pro photographer called Steve Armon. He has a great Instagram account called “trigpointpictures” where you can see a lot of his work, and not forgetting his website where you can book his services www.trigpointpictures.com. His accounts have some amazing and very varied pictures which are well worth checking out, and they include my car. Before you ask – no I’m not being paid by Steve to say these things or on any commission. I wanted to give him a shout out in these difficult times as he has done my car proud and me very happy. don’t forget to mention me when you discuss your photo requirements, so he knows where his traffic is coming from.

these are most of his pictures and they are amazing, I haven’t even managed to pick a favourite yet as I love them all. I think this first one has to be up there though.

We did a few drive-by to get some movement in the pictures.

I parked up and we took a few interior shots.

I opened up the whole car for a unusual set of photo’s that you don’t see very often.

We decided to do a few under hood shots.

To finish up I love this picture of me in the car looking back at Steve in the rear view mirror.

An hour or so later we had finished and I dropped Steve back home and took a leisurely drive home. Parked the car in the garage, took myself into the house and plonked myself on the sofa for some much needed shut eye. I need to mention that the dogs were fast asleep until I got back in, the tables had turned in my favour now. But, not for long as my little guy jumped up on me for a cuddle there we stayed for the next couple of hours. What a great way to start a day.

The photo’s are a bit out of sequence from the day itself where I thought that I would try to group them up. I have also taken some of my own pictures at the same time as Steve trying to learn from him. Obviously they aren’t as good as his pics, but I will post some of mine up soon. There again I sort of expected that his would be so much better than mine as I only have a smart phone, Steve had a big camera with all sorts of bolt on bits and pieces which were all way beyond me! My idea of an ‘F-Stop’ is to shout out ‘F-ing stop’ to somebody I think might crash into me. Apparently it’s not the same thing. 😉

Thanks again to Steve from ‘trigpointpictures’ we had a great morning.

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What Have I learned?

This post is more about my blog/website itself, and not just my car. Although there are some photo’s I have messed around with at the end (with a quick vote for fun), which I quite liked messing around with.

I’m asking for a little feedback to see to see if what I experienced was the ‘norm’ or not. Did I almost sell out? Did anybody notice?

A couple of weeks ago I was contacted by a marketing company about my site, they wanted to advertise on my pages. That company was “Infolinks”.

Now don’t get me wrong, they first sent me a nice email, where they asked if they could could book some time in with me to discuss a potentially good money making offer. All very professional and above board. I had to check for scams; were they legit, will it cost me anything?

I did my homework on them, all was good from what I could see. Promising start.

I responded back to agree to a meeting which was arranged via google calendar. Bang on time the next day I was called and we started to have a nice chat. He liked my site (I guessed that was standard patter), and saw a good potential to get me some extra money. They had even set a ‘budget aside ready for me’. With the average daily hits I was getting I was told that the advertising would get me $15 to $20 a day. That is a good amount to me for a niche audience like mine to be fair. That type of (proposed) money would come in handy to pay for my hosting, domain mapping and WordPress plan etc. I agreed to their proposals and within hours I was sent login details and everything I needed to get me going.

Setting it up was all straight forward enough, plugins and some little behind the scenes config and it was ready to rock. I decided I would try it for couple weeks straight and run their ads to see what the revenue would be like; in that time over 5,500 were ‘served’ on my unsuspecting readers and followers. After those two weeks I earnt a massive $3.21, that’s somewhat short of the $$ per day I was going to be getting. 🙁

I currently use WordPress ads and that pays for most of the hosting etc. I did check on my pages from a different IP Addresses to see what was going on. I didn’t like the intrusive load of ads from the start and thought it would settle down. It didn’t So I stopped it over the weekend.

My question to my fellow bloggers; did I get greedy or was I just naive and sold a story?

I learned that my readers and first time visitors experience of my pages is more important than a few cents. If I have to be a little out of pocket each year – then so be it. I’m Sorry if my temporary ads made my little ol’ blog unpleasant for you.

My Car Pictures:

OK, back to what I do know, my car. From the last show Culford I took a few pictures at the front of the building. I decided to have a little play around with some effects. It took me a while, but I learned just how easy it is to really mess up a good picture.

Here are my attempts at something arty, see what you think.

The original

Sepia

Artwork

Faded

Sepia with coloured Car

I decided to have a little poll to make it easier as I haven’t had a good ol’ vote for a while.

I have some amazing photo’s coming soon which I can’t wait to share with you, watch this space, hopefully at the weekend for a post. Although I have a car show Saturday + Sunday so not sure when I will get time to do it. This time last year I was scratching around for something to post about.

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Culford Car Show 2021 (part 2)

This is the second part of the Culford Car Show from 18th July this year. As I left the show I managed to take this picture without any photobombing of other cars or people wandering into shot as a lot of the cars had already left for home and I found a little open space.

But, my best efforts are not as good as some. I mentioned at the end of the last post that I met an interesting guy and we had a quick chat. It turns out that Steve Armon is a photographer who wants to take some pictures of my car for his ever growing portfolio. He has posted three pictures of my car along with some others on his Instagram account ‘trigpointpictures’. Stop by and say I sent you. Here are those pics he kindly sent to me and I just love them. Thanks Steve for the permission to use them.

Back to the show where I was wandering around still, and a reminder of the beautiful location first;

The cars, again in no particular order;

There was a hot rod section that i spent a little time hanging around for some obvious reasons. That Plymouth Super Bee was something else!

There was a Ferrari club there with some rather unusual examples there.

The award to the biggest set of rear wheels goes to;

At the front of the school;

Back up the other side of the grounds on my way back to the car.

Then I spotted this little animal, these rare MG Metro 6R4’s were in the Group B rally class. They were banned as they and cars like them at the time were often classed as ‘to fast to race’ in the 1980’s.

It was really hot to say the least and to eventually sit back under the trees and chat to the guys next to me was a very welcome relief along with the litre of water that I downed almost in one! The trip home had the manual air conditioning on full. The windows wound right down! Another wonderful trip through the country side with nothing but a v8 for company and have it barking at me when I occasionally pressed the loud pedal!

I hope you liked the pics as much as I liked the show itself.

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Bearing Up

This year I have taken my car out for a couple of shows and I have developed a rather annoying squeak from the drivers side front wheel. I have taken the wheel of and greased everything that had a nipple on it. I squirted, white grease, silicon spray, Würth Water Dispersant, WD40 everywhere I could. Nothing. It was still there.

I spoke to Adam a couple of times about it and he advised me to bring it down and he would have a look at it. So I did just that.

The photo’s in this post I’m using have been given to me by Mustang Maniac and saved me taking the pictures; big thanks to Mustang Maniac for that. They told me they were probably going to use them this weekend. It looks like they beat me to it by posting first. So we have a little overlap although they have a couple of different pictures on their post.

Adam was walking to the yard and heard the squeak as I was turning into the yard’s driveway. I explained that I think the steering doesn’t feel right either. He listened intently and promptly jumped in my car and took it for a test drive up the road.

We swapped places for the driving seat as Adam need to swap a few cars around in order to get a clear run for my car onto the ramps in his workshop and I drove it in. Reinforcements arrived in the form of Yogi who had emerged from his workshop to help out with the diagnostics which is a two man job.

First thing they noticed was that the idler arm had some play. It looked like that over time standing in my garage the rubber had perished and broken down when the car came out for some shows this year.

You can see them when compared just how much the old one had broken down. The new one is on the left of each picture.

The guys checked everything else over on the suspension and I received my bollocking for a couple of other nuts that were loose. 🤦🏻‍♂️ Probably down to the play in the idler arm making things worse. Adam and Yogi both worked up and down under the car to check everything was tightened up as it should be. A couple of rear axle nuts were not as tight as they should be and Adam again tightened them up. I would like to say that in my self defence Adam does have a two foot long Snap On 1/2″ fitting breaker bar, to make sure things were properly tight.

They fitted the new idler arm and checked that the the locating bracket had no play with the arm fitted in place. Once they were happy I was sent out on another road test. Both Adam and Yogi told me that the steering would feel very different. The picture below is the new idler arm being fitted before full greasing.

I got out the main gate and and immediately the car felt different. I couldn’t believe just how bad it had gotten over a course of couple of years. You just get used to it and think no more of it.

I turned back into the yard happy, the squeak was still there, although not as bad now. Straight back onto the ramps and up in the air again. The guys decided that the wheel was to come off and have a look. They did all sorts of play checks and listened to the rotor spinning.

A decision was made fairly quickly. Yogi dropped the outer bearing out to check the look and feel of it. He wasn’t happy with it. Yogi then cleaned it up and Adam had a second look under the big lighted magnifying lens on his bench, nothing visibly wrong with it to look at. He stuck the bearing on his fingers and felt it, spinning it fast, slow and twisting it etc. Adam said “although it looks fine, I just don’t like how it feels, nope, I’m not happy with it”. With that he went of to the shop to go and get a new one.

In the mean time Yogi cleaned up the track of the bearing and made sure it wasn’t damaged by scoring or pitting. Luckily for me it was OK. The inner bearing was still fully packed. While we waited Yogi then proceeded to grease everything he could see, upper arms, lower arms, steering, bushes the lot.

Adam returned with the new bearing repeating his feel tests as he walked back to the ramps. “That’s better” he announced handing it over to Yogi. He repacked the new bearing with grease, rechecked it and fitted it back into the hub and adjusted it up correctly. He then replaced the retaining washer, split pin and the bearing cap. The wheel was put back on and retested for play and feel before letting the car back down.

I was then sent back out on the second test run to see how it was. I arrived back with a smile as big as my front grill. The noise had gone. Sorted 👍

Before I set off for my run I was told that if all was OK, to park out the front of the offices. Which I duly did as i was now well chuffed. They asked me if it was OK to use on the their blog posts. Of course I had not objections at all, they then took a number of pics of my car for their ‘Park & Pic’ section on their forth coming blog. Www.mustangmaniac.org

I love this picture as there is an early Falcon convertible, which of course was the Mustang’s immediate predecessor that shares the same chassis as First Gen Mustangs, and also a later Mustang all in one shot.

I sat in the offices with Adam and we had cup of tea, well he did and I had a cold can of pop. We put the world to rights, sorted out the bill before I left for home. The journey home was a pleasure until it started to rain. I was not impressed that my car had now gotten wet of course. But, considering the car was now in a another league, I wouldn’t mind.

I arrived home some hour and half later after filling with fuel (again). I just had to clean my car before I put her away and cover her up. I then plugged in the battery maintenance unit to keep the battery in tip top performance.

Again a huge thanks to Mustang Maniac (Adam & Yogi) for fitting me in and sending me home all on the same day. That is what I call “proper customer service.”

Before I sign off I just need to wish my friends on the other side of the pond;

Happy Independence Day.

Have a great day and have a beer for me. 🙂

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2021 Off To A Bad Start

Over the course of the Holidays and various forms of tiered forms of lock down that nobody really adhered to, I took my Mustang out. Now to be within to rules I took the car out to place where I could exercise after parking the car up. It just so happens that the car was parked in a pretty good place to take some photos while I was out exercising. There was nobody about, the odd car now and again going past, that was about it.

The garage was opened and the dust cover removed and placed on top of my tool chests. Excited to see the car after a number of weeks I got in and started the car, well tried to start it. The car was turning over fine but it didn’t fire up. I opened the hood and had a general look round under there. Fuel filter, yep fuel in there. I took the air filter off and checked the carb was squirting fuel, yep it was. After putting the bits back on I jumped in the car thinking it was just standing time issues. Turning the key the car started to turn over again, still but no fire up. Now I could smell fuel quite strongly, so I decided to leave it for a few minutes with the hood up to evaporate the fuel a bit. As it was getting late in the afternoon it was worth one more try before I give up and look at it properly another day. Third time lucky? She again spun over the crank slowed down and “BANG”. The backfire sounded like a grenade going off in my garage which made my ears ring, timing was obviously out to ignite at the wrong time. The car was running now a few seconds of really rough idle then it settled down to a smoother choke running. I backed the car out OK and drove of fine. However, there is a lot more to this story a little later…

The pictures:

I parked up and took some pictures before my little walk somewhere different. It just so happened where I was parked up would make a good backdrop. I took over 200 pics that afternoon, but this little selection are my favourites so far. I even done a black and white variation on a few of them. The pictures are variations on angles and lighting etc.