Maier's 66 Mustang Goes From Racecar to Family Car
 

The Blue 66’ Mustang that has been an icon of Maier Racing was a wedding gift from Mike Maier to his wife, Brianne back in 2005. What started as a fairly stock mustang with a 289, 4 speed, 9 inch rear end, and Maier fiberglass exploded into something that they would have never expected. This car became the test bed for many of Mike’s suspension ideas. In its full race trim this car was fitted with a Roush Yates engine and transmission making about 825 horsepower and 550 ft-lbs of torque, full Maier Front Coilover kit, and finally the Maier 3 link Extreme Rear Suspension.

This car has been to tons of autocrosses and even a few trackdays and performed awesome! Now what we want to do is show that our suspension system is not only a great system to put on your autocross or track car but is also great for street driving. In the next few weeks we will show the progression of Ol’ Blue from a top autocross contender to the family car which will take Mike, Brianne, and their 2 young kids from Livermore, Ca to Portola, Ca which is in the mountains North West of Lake Tahoe. Surprisingly the car will only need a few small modifications which will be outlined in the next few weeks and finally we will document the trip up north and finish at the August Goodguys Carshow in Pleasanton.

Since the Roush Yates motor blew up a few months ago we have since had a stock 302 motor in the car. To get it ready for Mike’s trip we are going to do the following;

• Install the heater core (since we will really need it in August)
• Do some maintenance on our C&R Radiator
• Change out our rockers for smoother ride
• Change from the JRI shocks with the Maier Race valving to the Maier Street valving
• Install a Wilwood street brake pad compound
• Install Billy Boat Mufflers (Mike likes loud things but the kids need to sleep)
Without further a due we will start with Ol’ Blue in autocross form.

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Photo Courtesy of Alvin Cheng

very cool. I cant wait for more pics

This is going to be cool. I subscribed to the thread.

Sorry to hear about the Roush motor Mike!


Will be fun to follow along!

Today Mike headed over to see his good buddy Jerry at ABC Mustangs in Hayward, Ca. Jerry is one of those stand up guys that will never treat you wrong. In 2012 when Mike’s flywheel broke right before the SCCA Solo Nationals Jerry took his flywheel off of his personal Cougar just so Mike was able to compete, that’s what kind of person Jerry is. Along with Jerry’s great personality he is also an encyclopedia of knowledge; being in the business since the 60s, Jerry knows everything and anything when it comes to early model Mustangs, Cougars, and Falcons. Not only does he have the information you need but his shop is also honey hole full of vintage parts. Give Jerry a call at (510)-886-8264 and he will either have the parts that you need or might know where you can find them
When Mike needed the heater core for the 66 he knew that Jerry was the man to go to. Mike headed over and saw Jerry this morning and got not only the core he needed but a good story to go along with it!

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One of Jerry’s shelves of vintage parts
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Original GT350 Rear End
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One of Jerry’s many beautiful cars; Ford GT40
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No!!!! Say it isn't so.....oh well move forward, its had its fun in the sun.


Is this Mikes brother?

It is only temporarily being changed to a traveling form. Another Roush motor is currently being assembled to be put back into the car.

My name is Vince, I'm one of the newer guys at the shop. Either myself or one of the other guys here will be posting.

Very cool... can't wait for the 2nd coming of Roush Yates thunder...

:bigun2:

I meet Mike and saw the mustang at the goodguys in scottsdale in march, and Mike is not easy on the old girl! It will be interesting to see how it works for street use.


Mike

subscribed, The guys over at Maier have been a pleasure to deal with over the years!!

This should be cool!

As someone who has driven the car in both race trim (with and without Yates motor) and street trim I can testify that it doesn't take much to change back and forth. And, while race trim is in the stiffer side its still comfortable on the street.

Mike, Justin, Jonathon and the boys at the shop are good people. Jerry @ ABC Mustang will forget more about the Mustang than most people will ever know...

Maier Racing on Big Muscle

Today we made some progress on Ol’ Blue. First up was to change the brake pads to a compound that was more suited for street driving. One of our favorite things about the Wilwood product is how easy it is to upgrade. With many other brake kits if you want to upgrade you’re required to buy an entirely new kit. With Wilwood many of their parts are cross compatible and you can upgrade by switching out just one part.

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Also on schedule was finishing the heater core assembly. With all the parts that we needed in hand, a small bit of fiberglass to repair the box, the heater is ready to go into Ol’ blue.

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After all the abuse that we put our Speedway housing through and a 500 mile trip ahead of us we thought it might be a good idea to do some basic maintenance. We called up Speedway Engineering and they were able to get new bearing and seals shipped to the shop.

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:thumbsup:

Today we pulled apart Maier's Extreme Rear Suspension package to change the JRi shock valving and rocker ratio for a softer ride.

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With the shocks and rockers being mounted in the trunk area removal simple and requires only a few tools.

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Below is the image of the rocker that will be replaced with a replacement which has a different motion ratio. The different motion ratio will cause the car to be slightly underdamped, giving the cars ride a more "plush" feel which will allow the passengers to stay comfortable.

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An image of our JRi Shock before it is disassembled.

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Mike beginning the disassembly of the shock to change its internal valving.

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The shock body is now removed from the rest of the shock.

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Measureing and changing the shim stack to change the characteristics of the dampening. Once again the goal is to get a smoother riding car so the cars valving reflects a softer ride.

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The street rocker being placed in the trunk of the car.
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One of the main changes we did to the valving of ol' blue was to replace the shim on the bottom with the shim on the top. This will initially give the car a much better ride over potholes and other rough sections of the road.
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And finally the last step was to put the shock on the dyno and confirm that we received the results that we are looking for.

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Cool stuff Maier gang !

Cool to see a Roehrig in a shop.. ups the class factor for sure. Great stuff!

Well this weekend was a bit interesting. Mike Maier, who is usually pretty good about getting things figured out quickly, met his maker; electrical wiring...well that and spelling. The prior system of ol' blue consisted of the hot wire of the fan going directly to the battery and the ground wire running with a dash mounted switch that was sent to ground. To Mike's great surprise the wires decided to smoke a bit and the switch got a little warm. (well actually pretty hot) After deciding we had to change the system out we called our good buddies over at C&R Radiators who hooked us up with the wiring we needed to get it done right.

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Once the box arrived he thought he was going to have it pretty easy and just plug everything in and be ready to go. Not!! According to Mike the night went a bit like this. After staring at the parts for a while and trying to determine what this black box is and how to hook it up and plugging things into the wrong spot, it still didn't work. Mike took a bit of a breather and came back to it and after a while it finally worked. Who knew what he did, but he got it installed and working. Monday morning he is telling us guys in the shop about it and well we kinda laughed and said, "Dude can't you hook up a relay?" Well obviously Mike can design and fabricate super cool suspension systems but can't hook up a relay.

Ever had one of those moments where a super difficult issue you have is very oblivious to everyone else?

Well now that wiring is done the only thing that we got left to do is change out the mufflers so we would be deaf by the time we got to our destination. After pulling out the existing mufflers and grabbing our quieter Billy Boat Mufflers we had to do some light fab work to get them to fit and stay there. next few photos you can see the final installation.

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Well today was the big day to head north 300 miles with ol' blue. Mike was in the shop late last night finishing up the mufflers and doing some final preparation on the car to make sure nothing went wrong. After packing the bags and loading the car Mike, Brianne, Micki, Lilly, & Andy (the dog) got into the car and headed off!

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The first stop that the crew had to make was for some fuel. Mike had never really noticed what kind of mileage Ol' Blue got and was very surprised that he got about 16.5 MPG with 3.5 gears and a 4 speed. Who knew he could travel in style using the same amount of gas as the expedition!

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The second stop that they made was for a bit of lunch at the coveted La Placita in Citrus Heights, Ca (Sacramento). Mike says, "Patrick burrito, here we come!"

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After a few more hours the family finally arrives in Portola and took a quick stop at the local frosty for some icecream. I hope the kids' hands were clean getting back into the car!

Everyone on the Maier team would like to thank our friends and supporters for following the transformation of the ol' blue. To complete the trip we will be at the Good Guys Car Show in Pleasanton, Ca this weekend (Aug 23-25) and will be offering 15% off any Maier Suspension product. The offer is only valid at the show so please come by and say hi!

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JUST KIDDING!!!
Who really wants just a street car anyway?
While in Scottsdale, Az during the Goodguys Autocross Finals Mike Maier tried hard to make sure that the 302 did not come back in one piece. He needed a little more leverage for his wife, Brianne to allow him to get the Roush-Yates Nationwide motor back in Ol' Blue. Luckily for Mike, something in the motor was causing the water temp to sky rocket between runs. Maybe it was just a head gasket but... Wink wink nod nod we are sure it was catastrophic and there was no fixing it, so the big motor was of coarse the only realistic option. Right? Well at least that is what he told his wife.
While the motor is out you just gotta do some safety things like a Wilwood hanging pedal assembly. Every safe grocery getter has a cool.. I mean safe Wilwood pedal assembly. So we are in the process of changing a bit of the firewall so we can mount aluminum billet firewall plate. Beyond the safety aspect, this is gonna be awesome. Just saying!

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:thumbsup: :lmao:

Pretty cool.:thumbsup:

Kool! Because it needed a little more (okay - A LOT) more motor...


It did sound pretty "rattley" at Scottsdale.... So glad this decision was made. :thumbsup:

I like the "excuses I mean reasons" for the change. Cant say I havent done that before myself.

Cool.

What kind of support did you add to the upper control arm mounting that allowed you to remove that lower portion of the shock tower? I need to do the same.

Sweet!

GrabberGT. If I remember correctly there is a 1/4 inch plate stitch welded to the top of the frame rail, 1/2 plate to mount the control arms that have gussets at the ends. It also has the same extensions that convertibles have towards the top of the fender coming off the firewall.

Call the shop and Mike cane explain if I don't make sense.

This was posted on their facebook page some time ago.

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That doesnt look too hard

I'll give him a call as I get closer to making a change. There are some good photos there to reference.

Thanks

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short spindle!

Proof of life. Mike got the big motor back in and fired up with the help of a few friends.

So what's the story on all this late night thrashing last week and a new suspension setup?

This is cool, the more you can drive them the better!

Wonder how wide of a front tire you can fit with the new suspension design?

I spoke to mike this weekend and im pretty sure the new suspension was designed to fit larger engines. From what I understand, Mike had to cut up his previous design to fit the roush motor which threw off some of the geometry. According to him, the new suspension was designed to allow coyote motors and offer an alternative to some of the questionable mustang II kits. I got a ride along around the goodguys track this weekend, the car was absolutely planted. Seems to work, as his times we're the fastest.

Hey there guys, Mike here. Thanks for all the interest in the car. Yes we have had some skunk works going on around the shop. We have been learning a lot about the coupe over the last several years. Every thing from good to bad. The bad is from me not being able to leave well enough alone and continuing to tweak things. The good is tweaking to a point that we have learned what creates specific characteristics within suspension designs. The previous gentlemen was correct, the system on the coupe was not any longer a fair representation of the original upper coil over design due to the Roush motor. So we went out on a limb and created some thing that could potentially be a competitor to the other complete front suspension kits on the market. It also needed to fit a big motor as well. Most of all the parts have to perform better than all the rest of the companies. So... We had an opportunity to pull the motor before a stretch of events that we could start testing against relevant competition. We also thought that if we were going to go to Arizona for the Goodguys event at the end of the year we better sort some things out to make the most of the situation. Long story short, we were busting but at the shop trying to get that thing done last week. You know the standard nothing in the front of the car, motor suspension and all that stuff four days before the event. Thanks to all the nuts around the shop that helped out. Also major props to Craig Johnson, that guy was a major part of this front end. He and the all the others are awesome.

Mike Maier

I just want to know if you guys replaced that worn out old steering box. I imagine not having as much steering wheel free play as your grandmother's old Camry might make it easier to go fast(er).