Happy New Year 2022! Last year was not as (blog-wise) productive as I had hoped. So, I won’t make any promises in January that I won’t be able to keep. I can, however, share with you my plans and the strategy I would like to employ. I can give you some updates about my 66 coupe which previous article goes back to April 2021 (read “The Mustang blows its fifty-fifth candle!“)…
As you may have noticed, I’ve been very little present on the blog these last months. The reasons are various, and for once, they were not (just) about my professional activity. No, in 2021, I devoted myself to another passion of mine: writing. I produced two manuscripts (and three-quarters of a third). I enjoy writing, I love it. But boy, does it take time to do it right! One of the books I wrote is mainly about my last trip to the United States, while the other two are fictions. Anyway, that’s not the point here, but I thought I had to share my apologies with you for not posting last year. Let’s hope I don’t have any excuse for 2022 and I can indulge in writing posts as regularly as I want!
The other reason I’ve been taking some time away from my blog is because I’ve temporarily stepped away from the Mustang world. Mine had been stalled for a few months (or rather years!). I had finally decided, almost two years ago, to let it to a recognized professional located in Beaujolais. The idea was to have him finish the small latent things (review the brakes and start the engine, from my point of view) in the proper way. After months of waiting and shifts in the schedule, it’s one rainy day in July 2021 that my coupe left the garage on a trailer. After a thorough analysis in the specialist’s workshop, the verdict was in… A lot of things needed to be done for maximum reliability, safety and to be able to enjoy the Mustang again. Imagine a cool winter morning, you get out from under your cozy comforter and you go to take your shower, you are half asleep and you find yourself under the cold water in a fraction of a second. Well, that’s exactly how I felt when I realized how much work needed to be done on the Mustang.
The pill eventually passed, but not without some pain. The braking system was completely revised for more safety, the few persistent leaks (drive shaft, rear axle) were corrected, the rear brake hose was fixed in the right place, the engine accessories were repositioned for a perfect accessory belt alignment, etc. Today, the main difficulty (apart from the suffering of my bank account) is an order that has been stuck in the US for more than a month (first in Las Vegas, now in Los Angeles). But let’s be confident, it will eventually happen, and operations can resume with, among other things, the change of the dashboard wiring harness (the only one that hasn’t been changed yet) and the replacement of the pedal board (which had been cobbled together).
Until now, I was hoping to get my coupe back in the spring. The future will tell us if this is the case. I will keep you informed with some pictures of the work and the final result (I can’t wait!).
In the meantime, I have some ideas for the blog. Without dedicating my days to it, I would like to give back a rhythm in the publication of my articles. Of course, this will be done through the main section of the site, the meetings section. Every year, I tell myself that I would publish at least one post per month, and every year, it’s a failure. So, I’m going to prepare a few and try, once again, to take up the challenge (if we start on a calendar year, we can consider that it starts rather badly…). So, if you own a Mustang and you want to share your story, please go to this form. I will then quickly contact you! The other sections of the blog are on break and I don’t have any specific idea to feed them soon. However, I would like to make two series of posts, with a publication at regular intervals over a season or a year. My two projects are firstly a fiction I started to write in relation with the Mustang while the second one is related to the story of the total restoration of a 67 convertible… I won’t tell you more about it. I hope to have one of these two ideas completed by at least 2022.
I think I’ve covered everything in this January article, which is a bit longer than usual. I’d also like to take this opportunity to thank Aymeric (@arcueid) who spends a lot of time proofreading most of the English translations of the texts I write. And yes, I intend to continue to produce the posts in both languages, it’s an enriching exercise for me. I am planning, as I did last year, to carry out a “lightning raid” to put online the translations of all the articles published before this initiative (and there is a lot of work to do!).
Anyway, I leave you with a song that is very dear to my heart (it reminds me of my first road trip to the US, even if it was in a Chrysler, but it was fun!)