Maier's 66 Mustang Goes From Racecar to Family Car

[67XR7]

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

[sixnina]

This should be cool!

[chetly]

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...

[chetly]

Maier Racing on Big Muscle

[Maier]

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.




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.





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.

[coolwelder62]

[Maier]

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



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



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.



An image of our JRi Shock before it is disassembled.



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




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





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.





The street rocker being placed in the trunk of the car.


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.


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.

[Ron Sutton]

Cool stuff Maier gang !

[frojoe]

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

[Maier]

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.



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?