What Have I learned?

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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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Taking Some Good Advice

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Firstly I would like to wish you all a very Happy New Year. Over Christmas I have been working hard to get the odd parts of my suspension cleaned up, sprayed, painted or treated all ready to go back into the car. I have asked Mustang Maniac for some advice at this point. The question was around the new car paint with old untested parts. The simple answer was almost immediate “Easy – replace the major components such as the top and bottom control arms of the suspension”. The reason is that everything bolts to those major parts such as the suspension and steering, so any wear and tear or damage to those critical parts would mean having to take everything back off and replace those components, which in turn could potentially damage the paint with a unnecessary mechanical task that could result from a slip. So, the advice was given and the advice well and truly taken, Thanks Yogi and Adam on that one. I will replace the top and lower suspension arms, I will refurbish the smaller easy access parts that bolt to it. This would cause much less disruption and you are guaranteed to have tight tolerances where it counts at the very base level. I suppose the analogy scenarios would be the building a house on sand, or making a boat hull out of untreated soft wood. They would look good for a short while but be useless.

So what have I been up to? Well that would be the tie rods, ball joints, steering box, spindles etc. Once completed i have wrapped them all up in bubble wrap ready to take down the Mustang Maniac ready to go back on the car.

Spindles:

These spindles were seriously gunged up and caked in some serious grime, it took plenty of scraping and wire wheel work to get back down to the original metal. Paint on underseal and paint again that was chipped warranted the work. The final stage was coat of satin underhood black spray to take the shine of the spindles.

Steering Box:

The steering box needed a bit more work for some contrast work. Again this was pretty rusted up with hardly any protective paint in place, it being the paint was all going to have to come of along with the rust. I could see the original tag on the box and was keen to keep this and see what it said. A good dig around with the various old screw drivers I have to get into all the nooks and crannies that have almost 50 years of grim all over them.

orig tab cleaned up

With the box back to bare metal and degreased it was time to mask up and get painting. The box was going to be in a semi gloss black with the end cap plate in silver and the bolts in black for some contrast.

The completed article looks pretty good with the tag back in place and the silver end cap.

Tie Rods:

The next part of the front end was the tie rods that were well and truly corroded up and seized. I took the left and right hand sides apart which are different in design. The left side was so seized into the adjustment section I had to get my blow lamp out and heat it up red hot and tap it free. It eventually came free and needed a lot of cleaning. each of the ball joints were solid, so they were soaked in Gibbs Brand and tapped on wood to move them. Little by little they started to free up, fresh grease was added and worked free.

Left side tie rods.

Left side masked up and sprayed with satin black and silver contrast for detail all ready for assembly.

Right side tie rods,

You can see that the adjustment tube is a different design and less substantial.

Right side sprayed up ready for assembly.

Before I took these apart I carefully measured the positions of each of the track rods in the adjustments. I wound them back into place and only gently nipped them into place. They will need to be adjusted properly when on the car anyway.

The finished articles side by side completed.

Those of you sharp-eyed will notice the rubber covers are now missing from the ball joints. There is a good reason for that as you can see from the picture. I need new ones!

My identity crisis:

I was going to leave this post on a good high note but it seems that the gravity and little logo I was using is also being used by another company, who I am not going to mention. Not that I wanted to change my identity but I have modified it, and replaced it with my new design. The changes are subtle, colour balance, drop shadows, vignette, more chrome of the pony etc. but, the main difference is that the background colour has gone from a royal blue to a Acapulco blue now the same as my car. Hopefully this now looks a little more antique as it were. There is the copyright now applied to it in white type to show that this is my work and I have also added an invisible watermark hidden within the picture itself. The only trouble is that my YouTube videos will still have the old style on them. Going forward it will be the new style. I intend to change my header at a later date to my car with some fancy photo of some sort.

New year and a new logo to go with it? I want to be a different entity to any company out there as this is a unique blog.

The comparison of my old identity on the left and the NEW design on the right:

old style

NEW design

Please let me know what you think by clicking on the poll below;

Should I keep the new design or go back to my old identity?

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Open and Shut Case

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A great weekend for weather and lots got done on the car. To start with I finished replacing the other door hinge pins and re-aligned the doors again. After that I adjusted the hand brake so it now works properly instead of dragging just a little bit! I replaced the steering ram rubber gator that was split and ripped in half. Then on top of all that – I treated the inside under dash with a little more anti-rust treatment. I have placed all the pictures for the hinge pin replacement in the “Photo Menu – Bodywork Section” or click here for the link. Again all these things you will not see but have to be done. I just thought I would share this picture of Mustang with virtually no body work that is totally open the elements, hence the good weather means a day of this sort of thing!

I am going to have a little rant now; If I offend anybody it’s obviously not you that I am referring too. There are a very small percentage of lorry drivers out there who drive dangerously and think they own the road. Before any lorry drivers start getting on their high horse let me explain. The vast majority of lorry drivers are great drivers, it’s a difficult job I appreciate that, it takes a lot of skill and I dare say can be quite boring driving hundreds of miles on motorways all day and night. But boredom is one of the things I want to investigate here. I have to use a main dual carriageway road to get home. To get onto that road it’s via a main down ramp onto the main road with a little slip road. This week coming home there was not many cars on the road and it was just getting dusk, I was on the slip road accelerating up to speed and the lorry was coming up beside me, I was indicating and my lights were on, his were not I might add. Now he didn’t move over to allow me out, there were no other cars the other side of him. He just sat beside me until I almost run out of slip road, I even hooted at him, in the end I had to break and let him past. I should have swerved as soon as I could, that way I would have been in front of him, but that is not nice etiquette for the road. When I pulled out from behind him, still there are no cars close by. I gave him some horn treatment to express my displeasure and indicated via a hand gesture it was not a kind thing, or accepted thing to do. What did he do? Yep, horn back at me, flashing his lights and then started swerving in both lanes! He left his lights on full beam even though other cars were flashing him coming the other way. What was that all about? Now this has happened to me in the past as well and I get really annoyed about it. OK, so it not usually as bad as this performance from this individual who has an IQ the size of his wheel radius, but the not letting me out part I mean is just pathetic. There is a new law that has been passed in the UK that makes it illegal to tailgate now. But, when In slow-moving traffic the lorries sit so far up my ass I get imprints of the number plate on the back of my seat, it’s dangerous so back off! So I have a few points to make 1) My brakes are better than yours for stopping quickly. 2) If you have to stop that quickly the trailer will be out of control and cause an accident. 3) If you don’t react quickly enough you will slam into me, causing an accident. 4) If your tired and don’t notice the traffic you will have an accident. 5) Your forty or forty-four ton lorries will pulverize anything that they hit when you have an accident. 6) You don’t have to swerve out at the last-minute to overtake another lorry that will take you ten minutes to get past, just because you are going a quarter of a mile an hour faster. 7) If my car misfires and slows suddenly you will go into the back of me and cause an accident, probably killing me. Get my point here? Do these bad lorry drivers play these games to give them something to do? I know for a fact that lorry drivers do not want to change gear or slow down, a good friend of mine is a lorry driver and he has told me this many times as it effects the mpg figures. He also admits that there are some very poor drivers out there that give them all bad names. Most of the time if I am slowing to turn off I will flash the lorry in to allow him in front of me, to which I get a thank you back. That is how it should be. But, why do these people do it and make life dangerous? There are eighteen gears in most lorries, if you don’t want to change gear – don’t be a lorry driver. If you want to play life and death – join the army. There are always reports of lorries killing people in accidents, just as there are cars killing people. But with that amount of vehicle and weight, the consequences are that much more dangerous and carnage usually follows. Please give as car drivers a little room, your lorry is not a weapon. I do all I can do avoid you guys and let you get on with your jobs. Don’t get me wrong, there are thousands of lorry drivers out there who are great drivers, let me out fine and I have no issues what so ever. Perhaps the drivers I have issues with are non-UK drivers and their standards are not up to the UK standards. I don’t know, but I am sick of having to play “Road Roulette” with lorries. Apologies to all the good lorry drivers out there, but I just had to get it off my chest. Yes, car drivers are probably just as bad and it could be said about them too. Rant over.

As a result of this I am thinking is it just me? I have created a little poll to get your opinions. Please vote, nothing but the percentages will be displayed.

Quick links:

Door Hinge Pin Replacement – Photos – Bodywork Section – Door Hinge Replacement, or click here.

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New and improved poll!

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I have on my other pages “Forums and Discussions” pictures of Mustangs throughout the decades. The page has had a bit of interest but not much in the way of comments so far. I was asked if I can add a poll instead of leaving a comment. Your wish is my command! The improved part? The poll now has pictures added to see what you are voting for. The fact that there are bigger versions above doesn’t matter because they are worth looking at again anyway. I have added those same pictures from the sister forum pages onto the Poll menu just to the right, or click here to vote.

Hope you like the pictures as well as voting for your favourite model Mustang. Who will be the most popular?

Vote and find out 🙂

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