Rusty bucket

More progress is being made on the rusty bucket. I say that with the upmost sincerity. The driver side cab section is complete. The door has been mounted and all panels roughly shaped in. On the drivers side the inner, middle, and outer rocker panels were replaced, plus the floorboard. Also the door jam had to be fabricated and a small section of the rear quarter right in front of the rear tire. Additionally the firewall was replaced. The firewall wasn't really rusty but I wanted a stronger piece of metal there then originally came in the car.

So work has now started on the passenger side which is in much better condition then the drivers. The inner and middle rocker are salvagable. I already have a new outer rocker to replace the old rusty, foam filled one that is on the car. This side of the car actually had mud, dirt, and debris in the rocker panel and was still WET! Debris enters throught the hole in the rear of the rocker where the air conditioning lines go and floods the rocker. Its only a matter of time before enough silt gets into the rocker to plug the drain holes. A better design would be to route the air conditioning lines going into the rocker from the bottom up, not the top down.

These next pictures show the new floorboards and the new firewall. The floorpans are dropped floor pans but I wanted to be able to move the seat forwards and backwards so the floorboards are only slightly recessed.

There has been some talk on the pantera email list lately about saving rusty pantera's. I am guilty of purchasing a project but that was what I was looking for. A potential owner must be aware that these thirty year old cars are almost always in need of work. How much work your willing to do the car, and how much of a project you are willing to tolerate should be your guiding factors in making your purchasing decision. You can see my archives for the story of this car. For the medium level of rust on the car it was still a $17,000 car. Even after a year of ownership and all the work I have put into it I still believe it was worth $15,000.