January 2000 Archives

I pulled the engine apart today. 2 connecting rod bearings where spun and most of the rest of them were warn down the to copper. The main bearings where fine. The other wierd thing was all but 1 of the top compression rings where broken and fell out as I pulled the pistons from the block. I don't know what would cause that sort of wide spread breakage. The cylinder walls seem ok. The pistons were very worn and still stock. I verified that I have a Cobra Jet block and crank shaft, for what it's worth.

I also pulled the pedal box and break booster ... what a pain in the ass. It took me more time to pull out that stuff then pulling the engine. Anyway the only thing left to pull now is the suspension. I took the measurements to build a dolly to put the car on for body work and painting.

Engine and transaxle come out today. I was able to do it in 2 hours. One hour better then last time ;) This time I didn't pull the exhaust out and left the motor mounts in the car but removed the mounts from the block. This worked fine except I forgot to pull the oil filter first. This hit the exhaust manifold keeping the engine from coming out.

We have a chainfall in our shop that is directly over the car hoists. This works out pretty good for the pantera. I have really gotten the hang of standing on the tranaxle to balance the engine while using the chainfall to lift the engine out. But when it's time to get off of the transaxle I ussually need a hand.

I pulled off the valve covers and intake manifold and found water inside the engine. Draining the oil I found more water in the oil pan. The water was clean not antifreeze. After removing the heads we found all cylinders and pistons to be clean and no water in the cylinders. The going theory at this point is the water came in from rain down the carb and air cleaner. The air cleaner I was using had an open top with just a foam element.

The block is going to get sonic tested and magnafluxed anyway so I will check for cracks just in case. The heads I have aren't going to get used so even if they are cracked which it doesn't look like then I am not to concerned about them. My A3 heads are on there way and I should have them next week. I still need to locate a manifold for them. I hope to find the A331 manifold or a dual plane that fits the high port heads.

Tomorrow I will disassemble the bottom end of the engine. I expect to find a very loose wrist pin somewhere or broken piston skirt or wrist pin. We did hear knocking in the engine so I expect to find the source of the knocking tomorrow. The top end of the motor looked great. ( It should It's all brand new )

On other fronts I have decided to not put the bumpers back on the car after the body work. So I will ask the body man to fill the bolt hols for me and plan on not putting anything on the back of the car where the bumpers were. The front of the car needs blinkers that used to be held by the bumpers. I will install the behind the screen blinkers. The front of the car needs more cleanup work to run without bumpers. There are two indents in the front that allowed the blinkers in the bumpers to rest in. These indents will need to be filled. Without out chrome on the front it may look funny. I think I would like to install two small round driving lights on either side right below the area of the old blinkers. That would add some detail to the front. And unlike the bumpers that were there the lights would be functional. Bill H. who is on the board of POCA has a car that has lights setup like this. I sent him an email asking about what kind of lights they were and where he got them.

Today was the interior. I wanted to make sure that I properly documented all of the wiring connections for the dash so I first took pictures of all wiring connections then sketched all wiring connections. Lastly I taped each guage wire bundle together with masking tape and labeled it. That should allow me to put everything back where it came.

The wiring harness itself was pretty clean. There was a stereo power connection added and a digital clock connection. Unfortunately the clock is mounted into the dash above the glove box. The person who installed it just cut a rectangular hole in the dash. I am not sure what to do about it. I may be able to fill it with an emblem attached to a plate.

The dash was attached be several screws with spacers. The screws are located underneath, very high, next to the windshield. You have to remove the speedo and tach to get to them on the drivers side. I also dropped the steering column to make access easier. It helps having a removable steering wheel here.

We then removed the heater/condenser assembly. The unit is very heavy. I was suprised to see two squirrel cages with one motor driving them. This seems overkill but works pretty well. I might replace the motor if there is any indication of wear. If the heater core is aluminum I will replace that as well. You cant trust aluminum heater cores.

I also landed a pair of A3 SVO heads for the motor. I got mine from a man in Florida for $2000. They are bare heads still in the box. A good find but a little pricy. They are getting harder to find.

Over the weekend I stared pulling apart the front end of the car. This included lights, radiator, headlight motor, and grill work. Really pretty easy stuff. I made sure to take pictures of the wiring diagrams for the fans and the headlight motors.

I had trouble believing that the bar that rotates the headlight assembly up and down didn't come out of the car. My bar is fairly stiff to move and needs to be cleaned up and have the plastic bushings replaced. I guess I will have to fudge up while still in the car. If anybody has hints on getting the thing out and back in, I would love to hear it.

I also started getting prices for all the metal parts I need for the car. I need to put together all the parts to supply to the body man.

Still looking for SVO heads. If anybody has any I would appreciate you dropping me an email.

Power Heads -- Your Only Source for CNC Ported Factory Heads. I found this link today. They have a set of ported aussie 2V heads complete for $975. That is pretty cheap. If you were going to rebuild your 4V heads this would be a good  way to go.

We are almost upto date folks. The backlog of information is almost finished. So the car is back on the road and we celebrated by getting a G-Tech to see if we could measure some power. We still had the problem of the car dying when coming to a stop after a hard acceleration. The reason is because when you apply the brakes you lose some vaccum. Since the engine only had 3.5 Hg applying the brakes lost all vaccum and the engine dies. So we were messing about with some more carb settings trying to get it dialed in a little better when we noticed a faint knocking.

What's that a knock? Oh shit, valve train, not a rod too quiet. Wrist pin. DOH! The bottom end is giving up. Sigh.

So we decide we need to rebuild the bottom end of the engine, and we should have done that anyway. But I knew that I would have to pull the car apart in May anyway. So I talked to my accountant, ( wife ), and we go over what would be required to build the engine. Well best case senario dreamland, lets see fontana block, svo heads ... $10k. Worse case senario spend about $2,500 to rebuild it.

But honey can't we just start the restoration now so I don't have to keep pulling this car apart? Well we went over our long term $ goals and short term needs and actually came up with the money to start the restoration. So now I have $ to complete the body work. And by the time that is complete I will need have another installment to finish the engine properly.

So now I am putting together a plan to get the necessary body work done. I do have some rust problems on this pantera, here is the short list;

Inner and Outer rocker panel replacement, both sides
45 degree Hall vents for the hood
Rear quarter panel patches above rocker panels
Sunken battery box installed
Front valance replaced
Fix up front fenders, small rust spot, fender rolled for 17" tires
Roll bar installed and painted
Flush mount windshield kit installed
Stress cracks fixed
Floor pan crack fixed
Wheel tower brace cleaned up and reinforced, both sides
Install rear louver vent panel
Install lower air dam

Well that's a start, if any of you have suggestions please email me. I have a body guy setup already I just need to disassemble the car and get it media blasted. Yeehaw!

Over the course of several weekends I reassembled the motor with all parts listed. I then used centari to paint the engine. I used a yellow that is a close match to the color which the exterior will eventually be. Yes I will paint my car yellow. Here is my logic, when you think of italian cars you think of these colors, black, yellow, white, and red. Of these colors black is eliminated bacause it hard to maintain. Red is too common and most variations of this paint have oxidation tendancies. That leaves white and yellow. White is a nice color but I don't think it has any richness. At least not like yellow. Ahh ... the eternal debate.

Anyhow I installed the new clutch mated the ZF and dropped the motor in. It really is straight forward. I have worked on many american cars, this was my first italian. The hardest part about installing the motor is getting all of the cooling hoses hooked up. There isn't much space and the hoses are tight. It took me a good two hours to get the lines in place.

First attempt at firing the engine resulted in a backfire. After careful thought I realized that I had the firing order incorrect. The reason is I am not used to working on ford engines where the cylinder numbering is up and down rather then back and forth. GM folks will know what I am talking about. By the way I purchased some very nice plug wires from Champion. They are 8mm wires for truck use with headers. The have METAL yes METAL protectors over the plug boot. They are about $80 but they are the best wire set I know of.

With that problem resolved I was able to get the engine fired up properly. Much to my suprise there was a lot of exhaust noise. I don't mean tailpipe noise. I used the stock ehaust gaskets that came in the kit. They were the wrong gaskets. The header gaskets where not sealing at all. I immediately placed an order with Jegs for the MrGasket UltraSeal Premium part #5932. This was the advice from the list. These gaskets took care of the problem.

I was back on the road again! Except the engine was running WAY too rich and the idle was unsteady and inconsistent. After running the engine at speed and the coming to a stop the engine would die. DOH! Time to get out the Holley book and play with the carb. More to come ...

So everything peachie then? Well sort of. The car didn't make any power unless you got the engine up to 4500 rpm. There was extreme amounts of blow by past the rings. The bottom end was tired, and I am trying to get the thing to turn high rpms. It is probably just matter of time when the bottom end grenades. As long as it can last until May when I have to pull it out again and the restoration can begin.

I did have some difficulties during this time, which resulted in two towings of the car. I had just left a restuarant for dinner and was driving a friend around in the car. He loved the car by the way. We were racing around on Hwy 1 near Soquel. I dropped the friend off and met up with my wife and we started heading up the hill back home. I pulled to the light and stopped, the car died. I then restarted the car and proceeded to continue. As I started up the hill the car's accelerator stopped responding. Hmmm, out of gas? No ... the car dies. Try to restart and the engine fires then dies. Definitely a fuel problem. But I have a brand new Holley fuel pump.

So I have the car towed to the garage. I pull off the inlet line to the fuel pump from the gastank and find that I could not blow into it or suck into it! Oh great the fuel line is blocked! What! It's a remanufactured tank from Hall, how could there be shit in it. I used the compresser to blow air back through the line which frees the blockage. I then put the lines back on the pump and run the car.

Ok I don't know what's in the tank but I better get something to fix it cause I an NOT pulling that freaking tank and motor again! So I go down the the auto store and get some of the ether gas additive that eats stuff out of your fuel system. Ok everything cool now. Should I go for a ride? Hmmm ... I pull out onto the freeway, ( the only proper way to test a pantera ) and the car immediately stumbles. DOH! Luckily there was a tow truck on the side of the road fixing a flat for somebody. I pull right behind him and get a tow back to the shop.

So Nick, ( my brother in law mechanic ) mentions that we should drain the tank and take a look inside to see if we could notice any material. Hmmm, ok that's better the pulling the engine again. So over the course of the next week the guys at my shop steal all of my premium/ether gas from the tank. The next weekend I shoved a rag into the tank and mopped up the remaining gas. After adjusting the light and laying myself ontop of the engine to crane my neck, I see the problem. Bloated pieces of silicon sealer were laying in the bottom of the tank!

What silicon sealer bloated with gas? How in the hell ... I didn't ... Hall didn't ... DOH! Well it turned out that I bought a 90 degree filler neck from Hall to put onto the tank to make filling easier. When I did so I used just a little bit of sealer on the filler neck gasket. This sealer squeezed out from underneath the filler neck and into the tank where it promptly swelled to three times it's size, so it could black my fuel line.

We eventually used a compressed air driven pump that is used to spray solvent on things to suck up the bits of silicon. I would have used a vaccum but sparks and gas fumes ... well it would have been interesting to watch the vaccum to explode but nobody would hold the flashlight for me :)

Ok, that fixed we are done!

It's true that Holley carbs only run well at full throttle. Due to the way too aggressive cam and the single plane intake my engine sounded like a Nascar engine. It was scary. It would go to 7000 rpm in a hurry. I but it would go higher but the fragile lower end would not be able to take it for long.

After careful diagnosis it looked like power valve was constantly open on the carb. We checked vaccum and found that for this cam we had only 3.5 Hg. What! Normal cars have 6-12 Hg. Ok so I was on crack when I made the camshaft selection. Oh man I don't want to replace the camshaft right now. So we tried to get it to run properly. We replaced the 7.5 Hg power valve with a 2.5 Hg, the lowest you can get for a Holley and the car didn't run so rich at idle anymore.

We had another problem. The idle mixture screws didn't seem to work properly when adjusted. I don't remember who told us but we were told to bump up the secondary set idle screw which will open up the secondaries at idle! This will allow the primary idle circuits to be turned down alowing a smooth consistent idle ... what do you know this shit really works!

At this point we have a good running car at idle and at speed. We still had to play around with the main metering jets to get a proper mixture at speed. We settled on #65 primary jet and #71 secondary jet. I could be a little lean but it's close.

Yeah we are done ... button her up ... lets go for a ride.