Tag: garage

Classic Adverts

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Many moons ago….

When I left school I took a four-year apprenticeship in Lithographic Proofing, that was hand feed pre-production runs of no more than twelve copies. Sadly that trade died with the onslaught of computers. As a result of my proud trade that took me years to master, I have seen the usual adverts for hair products, cigarettes,  perfume, vinyl record sleeves, video cases, jewellery, auction houses promotional posters, books and various posters. Some of them never went to press but most did. The advantage is that I still have some of those posters for Rolls Royce, Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, Jimmy Dean, Ayrton Senna, Mac Trucks, Ford etc. I mention the background history for a reason, I have always loved rare posters and photos and kept what interested me especially the cars stuff as I have always been a petrol head since I can remember. Why, I’m not sure, I was aways considered the black sheep of the family because of it as everybody else liked football (soccer). From those early days I had my bedroom wall covered in the posters of cars and some I put in frames. A few days ago I wasn’t feeling too good, so I was hunting around on the net for images of rare Mustangs. Yeah, I found some good pics, but what caught my eye was these old adverts that Ford came up with for their Mustangs. I’m not sure with all the politically correct brigade out there now that they could get away with some of them today. What struck me was the way that the times have changed, “featuring all vinyl interiors” and the like. I just had to share these, due to the age and perhaps not so good scans of them they are difficult to read, but you get the idea though. I did try and get better copies but without much luck. Perhaps a little self-indulgent on my part, but hopefully they can be appreciated for what they are, a little piece of history of a great car. I wonder if anybody can remember these adverts at the time and maybe had them on their walls. I am also looking to do my garage up with some old vintage metal signs, you know the sort, Champion, Michelin, Ford,  Shell, Esso etc, I just have to keep my eyes open in the antique shops, but I havn’t had much luck so far. I hope you like them as much aa I do.

Please “Like” my Facebook page or follow me on Twitter if you enjoyed them.

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Sunshine brings a smile

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What a day! The sun was out and I was out – in the man cave and then the garage!

The predicted snow didn’t arrive, and I can’t say I was disappointed, but I was smiling. There was blue sky, the birds were singing and there was a beautiful sound of a 80 toothed Snap On ratchet hard at work!  I decided to remove the Brake Drum and backing plate to get it cleaned up ready for the new parts. I have taken lots of pictures and quick step by step process of what I have done. I was not to happy this morning though, I heard the postman, I run to the door and got a bill. Not the hammer I’m, just a bill. I was going to give somebody grief on Monday morning, but changed my mind and brought the day forward to today. I called the company, polite – but the bloke was not the shiniest spanner in the tool box should I say. Anyway, I explained the hammer hadn’t turned up and I was expecting it two days ago. He looked on his system and found that my hammer was awaiting a restock. They never emailed me to tell it was out of stock, to make it worse he couldn’t tell me when it was going to be back in stock either. Their advertising states, always in stock – Failed, they also say next day delivery – Failed. So I suggested that he should give me a refund as I aint happy. Fair enough the refund came through about an hour later, but I am looking forward to giving some negative feedback, oh yes! So as the wife was going out she asked if there was anything I needed as I think she felt sorry for me. To which you can probably guess the response – a hammer? We phoned a local company that specialises in tools, they had some in stock which I duly reserved. The wife picked it up and brought it back after her shopping. It was also cheaper than eBay! I got it in my hand about 1/2 hour  before I actually needed it. Perfect timing. The smile just got bigger.

The Brake unit removal was a good piece of work today, The whole brake unit is now in my man cave ready to be cleaned. If you want to know what a fully rusted set of drum brakes looks like on a 66 Mustang click here, or go to the Photos section/Wheels & Brakes. This was Part 1 to remove the drum, Part 2 will be to remove the old bits and clean, finally part three will be the rebuild and refit.

What shall I do tomorrow? I reckon if the weather is nice I may finish of the Brake booster ready to refit, if it’s not I will clean the first part of the drum up. I just can’t plan anything thing with this weather. According to the news on this side of the “pond” the USA is getting battered by snow. Is it really as bad as they say?

removing the cotter pin
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This weather is doing my head in

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The weekend is upon us again, and I hacked off with the weather, again!

We are predicted snow yet again, ok it was fun for a few days but not any more. The country grinds to a halt and the food goes up in price. It never goes down in the summer though, funny that. Petrol goes up, the oil companies make billions and the complain they are hard up, yeah right.

Enough off me being grumpy, I can’t roll it out of the garage if it snows or rains, but on the other hand, I can work in the garage out of the rain. It just goes to show how spoilt you can get in any situation. A couple of months ago I had to stand out in the rain to do anything on the car, now I can stand in the dry and do it, and I moan again. I’m lucky I have somewhere to put my car and I must keep that in mind. I am luckier than a lot of others, I own a classic Mustang and it’s in my garage.

What do I do this weekend? It’s to cold to spray anything again, unless we have a major breakthrough of sun, according to my weather apps that is just not gonna happen. I may do a bit on my blog if its to bad, and catch up on a review or two. I do need to get my brakes drums off and measure the shoes, this is holding me up to get things moving. Once these are a confirmed size I will order them and get them fitted along with the  I hope to use my new tools and see if they do make the job easier. I feel a review coming on for these tools what ever happens. Speaking of tools, I ordered a copper hammer with first class post delivery from eBay, that was on Tuesday this week. Guess what? It ain’t turned up, and this man is not amused. I do suspect that Monday some poor person is going to have a bad morning once they pick the phone up if it’s not delivered tomorrow. If we don’t complain to these people they get complacent, and it becomes the norm. I’m looking forward to the weekend itself, it’s just a shame its not nicer weather.

Frost Auto Restoration Techniques have put a link to my Dinitrol 6030 review. I’m well pleased with that of course, hopefully it will expand my visitors and followers too.

You get a link to their site here or go to http://www.frost.co.uk

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Snowed in (again)

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Losing valuable Mustang time.

Another weekend with rubbish weather. It’s snowing pretty hard today so there is no way I was going to get to do any thing either on the car or in the man cave. I wanted to get that wheel off and get the slow puncture fixed. I could push her out to get access to the wheel, the problem would be trying to push her back in again in the snow. One false slip and the trunk would have a new rear spoiler in the shape of my two front teeth. Not good!

I did get out to the man cave for a little while to have a tidy up again. I decided to have a rearrangement of my tool chest with the new tools I got for Christmas. They all have a new home now and lined up like soldiers. Am I the only sad person that does this to make their tool box nice and neat, or do I need help? While in my man cave I noticed some birds looking for food and not having much luck. I must admit I tend to spoil my little feathered friends, I do an extra slice of toast in the mornings and break it up for them if I have toast before I go to work. Given the choice of plain bread or toasted, the toasted bits always goes first. As it was so cold I came in and done a couple of slices of toast, broke it up and put it on the bird table for them. It soon went, I do worry about them, as we have this little understanding, I feed them and they don’t try and use my cars for the local avian cesspit, sometimes they breach this understanding, so the next day they go hungry, they know the rules!

As I couldn’t do much I decided to finish up my heater plenum work write-up. I had taken some photos but that was before I decided that I was going to do this blog. The pictures still shows what a bad way it was in and then the finished results. You can see the process and why I had to do it all under the “Photos, Heater Core Issues & Repairs” or click here for a quick link. There is also a mini review in there for the heater case seal kit.

Lets hope the weather improves so I can get out there and do some worthwhile work on my car again. If I hadn’t of got my Coupe in the garage when I did it may have looked something like this!

The fact I have posted for the third time this weekend shows just how frustrated I am, in an automotive way of course.

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The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

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The good, 

As I have cleaned out the garage to my car in stuff has been moved from there into my man cave. Now my man cave is 10 x 8 foot so it’s not to bad size wise. The down side is it has rapidly filled up with stuff I didn’t want in there, garden tools, seat cushions for our swing seat, hose pipes, ladders etc. I appreciate we have to store them somewhere as a compromise for my Mustang taking over the garage. Over Christmas I was treated to my front and rear bumpers. They were stored safe and sound in the garage. As we moved stuff out and dumped stuff the bumpers were moved to the shed, aka – man cave. This wasn’t a problem until A) I wanted to work in there but there isn’t room to stand. B) the bad weather arrived.

So in the minus 300c or what ever it is outside and snowing, I decided I needed to sort the bumpers out. Earlier in the week I purchased a set of six wall mounted screws £1.57 from eBay that hold bikes etc. bargain. I have 3 bumpers now, the original, which has virtually no chrome, rusted and pitted. Then the two replacements for Christmas, front and rear. I drilled the holes where the bolts go and screwed them in the wall. Lifted the bumpers onto the hooks, job done. They have plenty of room and don’t need tying as the hooked end holds them in place. Now they will be dry and out of harms way. 🙂

The Bad,

While I was at it I thought I would check the transmission leak. Although it has definitely slowed down,  there was about a desert spoon full in the drip tray. This sort of put me in a not so good mood shall we say. I could go and tweak a bit more to see if that helps. Perhaps her nose runs like mine does when I am freezin’ my dip stick off. I’m not to sure what to do about it now, if anybody has any ideas give me a mail or post a reply here. I have a direct email now which is under the Home button. I will have to put her back on axle stands and have a good look again. I got a Blue Point inspection mirror & magnetic pick up set so I will use those to a better effect I think when the weather goes back to normal and not arctic. Also my left front slow puncture has gone down again, I guess I will sort that out when she is back on axle stands 🙁

The Ugly,

The weather is certainly ugly, tiny flurries of snow all day, but nothing major yet. That is to come tonight. Anyway, as I was putting the brackets on the wall a neighbour was walking past with his wife and their old-timer of a dog who didn’t seem phased by the cold at all. The guy stopped to look at my car and started asking me questions about her. I love talking about it so we struck a good conversation up. He told me while he was in France a couple of weeks ago for a wedding, the groom turned up in a 66 fastback which was his fathers pride and joy. He told me that it was the first time he really heard one for real and has since fell in love with the v8’s. How nice was that from a real nice bloke too. The flip side of that was another woman who was going out came past, she couldn’t help but stare at us and gave me the most filthy and ugly look, just like a mole that had  burrowed its way into a sewage farm! What was that all about and why? 👿

Once I got back to my man cave I tidied up and made space again. Now that I can work in there again, I just need to work out a way to sneak the garden tools into the utility room and hope the wife won’t spot them, yeah right! If I did that I reckon I might get a rake stuffed somewhere that the sun don’t shine. Perhaps that not such a good idea after all, reason being I am after some wheel cylinders next. Lol.

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Snug in the garage

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The weather has taken a mental turn for the worst.

I tried to get a train this morning and nothing running, so I came home and worked from there. Before I done that I had to check on my car to make everything was OK. I opened the garage and I swear I saw her shivering in the cold, to be exact that was -9deg C, to be fair it was more like teeth chattering, sorry, crashing together rapidly that gave the illusion of everything moving. That temperature is mental cold for round here, and I can’t remember the last time it was this cold. I am a little worried, in my shed there are two chrome bumpers I got for Christmas and I don’t want them ruined due to the freezing temperatures. To help with that, I ordered some hooks for bikes to be mounted on the wall but I will use them to store the bumpers on. Looks like the bumpers will be a bit big for them though, as they are only going to be on there temporally, I will tie them to make sure they don’t come off. This weekend I will put the hooks up as a number one priority. While I was in the garage I checked the fluid leaks under the car, nothing so far. Brilliant, but as its so cold everything could have shrunk and there is no gaps to leak from. Fingers crossed and I will double check the weekend. We are expecting blizzards this weekend and 10 inches of snow so I have been told. Will it be that heavy? Only time will tell if I will be able to open the garage door or not. I can’t begin to tell you how pleased I am that she is tucked away in the garage before this lot hit us and ground the country to stand still.

I have also added my review of the Draper 5 piece circlip pliers. You can find them under the tool review button, or click here to go straight there.

Drive carefully

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Still excited?

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Oh yes, so I just had to share another photo with you.

As you can see from my previous post it was a big day for me on Saturday, it was the very first time I had sat in my car with the wheels moving. OK, so the car was being pushed, but I still had to steer it! (Let me have my moments to dream for a while.)

As I am still chuffed my car is in the garage, I thought I would share this picture of me sitting on the floor of the car as the seat has been taken out. Why no seat? The seat base had collapsed, so my mate Will made a good job of repairing the seat frame for me, it’s now waiting to be re-upholstered. Anyway, what you can’t see is that damn great stupid grin I have on my face 😀

I enjoyed it so much, it brought memories back to me of my first pedal car as a kid. I was excited then, just as I was on Saturday. The only difference this time is that, my metal pedal car looked like my Mustang when I finished with it, but the Mustang will look like the pedal car when I got it; All nice and shiny, like new and ready to hit the road. Not that I was on the road at that age, if you get where I’m coming from that is.

As promised, the car turning wheels with me in it for the very first time.

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Moving Home

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My car comes home!

This a wordy looking post but I think it’s worth the read for the fun and games we had!

My car has been down the drive just round the corner from me, where it has remained for the last year and a bit, I can work as and when I wanted to on it so there was no real issues.

As I normally do, I lifted the bonnet to make sure everything was OK and I noticed that the Tuff Stuff chrome alternator is not so Tuff after all! The Chrome has a little pitting on it and I ‘aint happy about it to be honest. I am going to review this alternator soon, and I’m not convinced it going to get full marks, or great marks come to that somehow! The damp has started to cause a few issues so we decided that the will have to go in our garage. There wasn’t a great deal in there to be honest just my old stuff from years of collecting rubbish. The charities had a great day as they got books, pictures and old clothes etc. Hopefully they can get some money in for their causes. Anyway, the car was taken of the axle stands and lowered down, left side tyre has a slow puncture that I will have to sort out. A friend of mine Pete came round in his new car which he has only had for a few days and offered to tow her round to my garage. The reason we decided that it should be towed is because the drive is on a slope and there was no way that with me in the car doing the hard work of driving, (OK, steering the car) that the two hired hands were going to push it without booking a visit to the hospital emergency unit to have a couple of hernias sorted out. Mark was playing lookout to start with to make sure that any would be Nigel Mansell wouldn’t meet two and half ton of American Muscle in the middle of the road. After pulling her to the top there is a slight dip down to the road, bearing in mind I have no brakes at the moment so everything had to be done with care and be legal to push it the rest of the way. We managed to stop the Mustang quite well by using the back of Pete’s nice new shiny new car. Oops! Sorry about that Pete I reckon a bottle of your favourite tipple could be arranged for the trouble. Before you ask yes the car is fully comprehensive insured even though it doesn’t go on the road. I think the fact that I got out to check that there was no damage to my car first was like rubbing salt & vinegar into the wound at the time. The car was not to bad weight wise once we got her rolling of course. As the road is a no-through road we weren’t expecting any traffic, but you can never be too sure. A couple of minutes later we were pushing her onto my drive and into the garage, or so we thought. The garage was wide enough by about 3 inches each side, it will even tighter once the mirrors go on. We managed to push the car in inch by inch, Pete was directing the car to the front, Mark was doin’ the donkey at the back pushing and I was on the wheel now and again sweating buckets panicking that I may just have measured up wrong. Pete found out that car was cold as we pinned him to the wall with the bonnet while trying to clear the trunk into the garage. The garage door was lowered down, very carefully and I have about 4 inches to spare with the door shut. It was close if it was going to go in. There is no way a ’67 on would fit in there. But I was happy, she fits and she is tucked up each night now. Just need to get a nice cloth cover and a heater now to make her snug. Perhaps I should ask the wife if I can have some, perhaps not!! 🙁

So there you have it, my car is at her rightful home at long last, gentlemen I thank you for your help. Ooh, I nearly forgot Staci who collected Mark to take him home before his next shift!

The car was in the garage, so the next thing was to rig up an extension to the solar trickle charger for my battery. (A review for that bit of equipment can be found here.) Hole through the garage wall and it was job done, that’s after we spent after we spent the best part of half an hour looking for the clips to the battery so that we could use a length of good quality speaker cable to extend the wire.

A big day for the man and his Mustang it has to be said. I was out there today having a little fiddle around, as you do of course, to see what the next job is going to be. I have a feeling it will be to revisit some of the work I have already done. Such is life, but she is home! 

The next installment I doubt will be as long.

Handin’ out the orders
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Coming Home & Christmas Poll Results?

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Things have been busy over the Christmas and the New Year holidays.

Most of last week the garage has been emptied and space has been made to get my classic home. I have measured the space and it’s gonna be TIGHT. The weather is bad and the damp is causing issues on the work I have done so far,  so some of the work on the polished steel needs to be done again. Not best pleased but that’s what happens when it’s outside. Hopefully it will be in the dry and will be lot happier. I will be able to work on it in the garage till late as there is a light. Not much room around her but I will have to get her mobile and be able to move her in and out of the garage on her own.  Saturday will be a busy mental day. Will I get her in? I will let you know!

Gonna be tight!

Christmas Poll Results:

This make very interesting reading, OK so it’s not a massive countrywide or worldwide poll, its only the people who voted. The holiday is supposed to be the celebrating the Birth of Christ, but it has become so commercialised and the world we live in has become so stressful, are these results unexpected?

I was surprised a little but not shocked. I will let you make your own minds up!

Time of Work = 38%

Being with Friends and Family = 25%

Giving & Receiving Presents = 25%

Food & Drink = 13%

Religious Celebrations = 0% 

Thanks to all those that took time to vote. I will leave the best looking Mustang running as there is no need for a time limit along with the best car chase ever.

Keep up the New Year resolutions – or have they all been dumped already? 🙁

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