A couple of weekends have gone by where I have not worked on my car. So much so that I have had comments like “Are you feeling OK” or “Are you getting withdrawal symptoms?” Last weekend was the Enfield Pageant where I took some photos on a previous post, the week before it was a logistical car issue I couldn’t get down there. Anyway, over the weekend I went down to see the guys at Mustang Maniac and got some cleaning up work done on the underside and some more on the tunnel area. In other words, the bits I missed that needed the clean up weren’t worth taking a picture of as it wasn’t to exciting to look at, just sheets of metal with a little rusty paint in the corner. Not boring from my point of view of course, but from a photo and a post point of view it could be. Now the panels are clean enough, they are now at an acceptable standard to Adam to move on to the next stage. We are hoping to take the car of the spit and put her on the jig next week to start on some of the removal of the bad bits of chassis and adding the good bits. But, things can change quite quickly so I will have to wait and see. I will definitely post some pictures on here when that all happens. This could be an exciting stage of the project if all goes to plan.

Yesterday I started a clean-up of the hand brake, parking brake, emergency brake or secondary brake depending who you talk to. It wasn’t too bad to look at but I managed to free it up a while ago. So while the car is in bits – all the way down to the nuts and bolts, I decided to refurbish it properly. Same ol’ story of paint stripper, de-rust, mask up and spray. I stripped the whole thing down by removing the pin and retaining clip, remove the wire it’s pretty much there.

before the clean up

The only part I have to think about was the mini fire that had melted the back of the handle. I used progressively finer grades of sand paper to get it smooth again. I can’t go to far otherwise it will get thin and crack. But, it has all come up pretty well and will look good under the dash now.

All I need to do is work out the colour for the lettering of the lever. Red, white or leave it black. Any ideas for the colour? I shall reassemble this and post a pic of the final version next week.

I need to make an apology now as I had been told that the link to the Batmobile article wasn’t working. So I have re-done it with a couple of extra facts and dimensions about the car. It should be fine now, I think. Let me know if there are any more issues with it again.

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Articles – Original Batmobile 1966 or click here.

Photo Menu – Inside The Car Hand Brake Refurbishment or click here

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Enfield 24 – 26th May 2014

This weekend I was not down at he garages of Mustang Maniac but I made a visit to the Enfield Pageant where I went along to see the set of cars they had there. I was surprised that they took the UBB (ultimate Bad Boy) 1000bhp Mustang there, it was raining and they told me it was quite a handful in the wet! I wanted to get some spray paints and look for anything unusual for the garage or man cave. There was some metal garage signs that I liked the look off but my wallet had very stressful time while I was thinking about it, needless to say the purchase was not made. It seems that the these shows are becoming more of a family thing with fun fairs, garden stalls, toy stalls etc. Obviously they are there in case the rest of the family get board while the petrol head of the family has a fix on all the stalls there. Everything from engines and gear boxes to bulbs individually laid out in trays. Due to the weather the waterproof clothing stall done a few brisk sales for some reason. The down side was there wasn’t a huge amount of cars there to start with due to the rain. As it brightened up there were more cars to see as they were nursed out of the warm garages. The theme this year was the First and Second World Wars. The exhibits proved popular, at one point it was difficult to get into, I suspect that had a lot to do with the weather. The war tent had a rare Vauxhall war car and was the first time I have seen the Vauxhall emblem in 3d as it were.

The tent next to the War Exhibition was an American themed idea, there was a great Rock & Roll group there banging out some hits as well as some classic American icons. The Oldsmobile even had a propeller on the back, not sure what that was all about. anybody in the USA help with that one?

Outside there was a lot more cars and lined up made a good looking row.

There was a rare car there that I had never heard of before,”Murena”. So the story goes, there was a couple of very rich guys who got together to make a sports estate car, no rear seats required as it was just so they could go fishing and hunting with space for their equipment. It was said they liked sports cars but they weren’t practical. So they built their own. Oh to be rich!

Mustang Maniac’s cars were out in force, and I can see they have lots more of their own cars on their blog page. I sat with the guys for a while during the rain storms and enjoyed the company. Thanks Guys.

The British cars were there too but in limited numbers at one point. Even took a picture of the only Stag I could see there for Stag Owners Club, who have a blog here http://stagownersclub.wordpress.com/ Why do I mention these guys? If I hadn’t of bought a Mustang I would have gone for a Triumph Stag as a restoration project. But, it turned out I have Mustang Muscle cars burning in my veins.

More American cars splattered around the field, This huge Greyhound Truck was bigger than I had ever dreamed of, the brown rat rod was painted like that and was quite sound metal wise.

TV Stars; The hugely popular “Only Fools and Horses” comedy show had one of the original Reliant (3 wheelers) there.

The other classic is the original 1966 Batmobile, there were three fibreglass models made of the original and I believe this is one of those from the London Transport Museum. I have added an article on this car as it was Ford based Lincoln Futura concept car with a 390Cid Ford v8 engine.

The whole day was summed up for me in this one photo. The guy has a classic rover estate which was the first one I had seen, he was walking back to his car carrying another rear wing for the one that has gone rotten beyond repair so he was saying. The classic car got a badly needed part. For me that is what these shows are all about. I was really pleased for this guy.

My final thoughts for the day was little disappointing as it was wet at times and the owners of the classic cars looked like they didn’t want to get them wet. that itself did mean that cars were little limited for choice. I did hear that Saturday was a better day and Sunday was not so good. It was a shame there was not more, but I would think twice about taking mine down there in the wet I must admit.