What noise?

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!