Maverick Mike from the Maverick forum told us about a gathering in Somerset, KY in July. Fellow Maverick lovers get together and show off their pride and joys or projects in the works and yuk it up about Maverick life. Unfortunately, I couldn’t go, but Momma and Pop were able to hit it and represent for me and Mavis. Although I’ve given some of the forum guys a little shit, it’s all in jest because car people really truly care about other car people. They want to help with advice, share stories and tips and generally support the passion. The P’s said that all of the folks at the gathering could not have been nicer.
Maverick Mike with his ’72 Mav which he has driven as fast as 117mph (so far).
Car shows and gatherings are also great places to find that ever elusive part you’re looking for. Pop met a great guy named Tony Rahm. Tony is known for having a lot of parts stashed away in his wood shop, so Pop mentioned that Mavis had come with pins to hold the hood down but no hood latch. He gave him his card and asked Tony to let him know if he ever came across one, that we’d buy it. Later in the day Tony approached Pop with, guess what, an upper hood latch. Said he had to go by his shop anyway and handed it to him. Pop took out his wallet asking what he wanted for it and Tony told him to put it away. He wasn’t going to take any money for it. That’s just good peeps.
Pop, Tony and the hood latch. Tony, you’re a gem, thank you!!
More pics from the Maverick gathering:
Forum member Frank’s ’73 Grabber is named Patches, due to the fact that he has pieced the body together and has yet to paint the thing.
Patches was honored with its pic on this years t shirt. Something I aspire to.
The closest thing to Mavis. Four lug wheels, and a 200ci Inline 6.
Not much has been changed since the factory, but for the custom wheels and color.
I’m here in KY for a couple weeks and we were all over the Cadiz Cruz-In, a local car show the first Saturday of every month. Pop and I continue to wring our hands over our brake situation and the fact that we absolutely cannot find a larger drum brake for the rear axle than the dinky, unsafe 9” drums (that we threw away…don’t want to talk about it). Giving up on drums entirely, we now find ourselves looking for discs for the back.
We finally, FINALLY thought we had found a disc brake kit that would work for Mavis. All of the dimensions were right but for one. It’s called the ‘flange offset’ and it’s kicking our asses. The kit calls for an offset of 2.8 inches, ours is 2. It makes absolutely no sense why our 8” differential doesn’t have what everyone is saying all of the other 8” back ends have, a 2.8” flange offset, but it doesn’t. Word on the street is that back in the day, Ford factories would switch up parts depending on what they had laying around. So discovering that your old Ford has a slightly different part than other Fords of the same year is not uncommon. (I recently learned the Henry Ford would use wood from shipping crates as the floor boards for his Model-T’s. Great reuse of materials, but unfortunately doesn’t make him any less of a dick.)
So, circling back to the car show and why all of this is important. We think one of our only hopes is to find a 7.25” Ford differential as we have come to believe that it will have axles with the 2.8″ flange offset we so desperately need. (It also needs to have the right length and spline count.) Now, you can’t just order up a 7.25″ Ford backend, no one makes this shit anymore. You have to find it, or rather search for it in salvage yards, in barns and overgrown backyards, through car forums, or, in some cases, on a car just about ready to get crushed in a scrap yard. We heard from our buddy Curt that he had seen a Maverick at the local metal recycle yard, so we hauled ass over there, only to find that it had been crushed only days earlier.
Pop looking at a pile of scrap crap where an old Mav once sat, perhaps trying to will it back.
There was only one Mustang at the Cadiz car show that night, and we asked the owner straight up if he had or had a line on old Ford rear ends. He said no, but that his friend “right here” just pulled one out of a Mustang days before. His friend Marty proceeded to pull out his phone and show us a 4 lug backend. Said he had no use for it and that it was a…wait for it…7.25″. Holy crap.
Marty said he’d call us to set up a time we could come get it for $100. We may have the ultimate solution if everything measures up. We could have either beautiful, safe disc brakes on Mavis’s original 8” back end, or, we may have a 150 pound piece of scrap metal. And that’s only IF he calls us. Our back brake dilemma has come down to one question:
Is Mustang Marty Miller a man of his word?
5 DAYS LATER
Aaaaaaand, yes! Marty Miller IS a man of his word! He called and we swung by his place to pick up the back end. Paid him the $100, exchanged contact info and took a look at his project car, a ’65 Mustang fastback. (Which means the back of the hood slopes down into the end of the ‘trunk.’)
I hate to say it, but once we got it home and pulled everything apart, we found that the offset was exactly the same as ours. Long story short, it won’t work for the disc brakes we wanted. But Marty proved again that car folks are good folks and at least we’ve made a new friend out of the deal.
So, we’re going back to basics and shit-canning the rear disc brake idea. We’ve already found another set of 9″ rear drum brakes through a friend of Pop’s, Mark, another car guy. I think we are both almost relieved to come to a final decision about the back brakes and move on.
Pop my Ride 