Recently in Body Category

Getting ready for the Pantera Fun Rally this year, I have created graphics
for the car and had them cut and installed by Jim Wood of Tracy. I used
the colors of the DeTomaso logo and created a vintage looking gumball with
flames. The car looks better in person then the pictures. I will be
sporting the graphics at the Vegas track event and Nevada Open Road Race in
May. See you there.

A couple of car changes lately. I bought the Vader rear deck lid lift
system. It uses a sprung hinge instead of the gas shocks. This is a good
investment considering that the gas shocks only last about 3 years before
the stop keeping your lid up. The install was easy, the product was well
represented. I am very happy.

The second change is my carb. I went from a 750 double pumper holley to a
850 carb from Quick Fuel. It has wedge stops for the floats for hard
cornering, slight glasses for fuel levels, adjustable idle air bleeds, a
proform body, a heavy duty baseplate, CNC metering blocks and lots of other
trick parts. The car runs like a bat outta hell now, no changes to the carb
setup. I gave them my specs and the carb was right on the money.

My brother in-law took his son ( my nephew ) out for a spin in the pantera.
He of course loved the ride, despite the look on his face!

Also if you want to know what your pantera looks like with graphics or
stripes, try mocking it up in masking tape!

We had a great time at the PCNC tech session on saturday. Ken Green met up
with me and we had spirited drive over to Roger & Pam's house. We were one
of the early birds and got started right away on installing my air dam.

The air dam didn't quite fit right. Basically it turned out too deep. So it
would sit out from the valance about 1/2 inch or sit flush against the
valance and we would have to cut off the ends at the wheel well to fit it
properly. We voted for the latter. So we first drilled the holes for the
valance and mounted it there. That gave us a reference for how much we had
to cut off on either end. Then first with a hack saw and later with the
bench grinder we smooth over the ends. I have been told there are better
fitting version out there, but I am happy with the results.

The car is painted as off yesterday! We had an old friend paint the car who is a fulltime painter with 10 years expierence, he said it was the hardest car he has ever painted! The DuPont three stage paint was very thin. The base coat is like water and very white in color. The mid coat privides a deep mustard tint with pearl and metallic flakes. The final coat is the indestructable DuPount clear coat. The diffuculty in painting was due to the nature of the paint, the lines of the car, and the height. It was a little too high on the homemade dolly to make painting comfortable.

All week I have been working late to get the car wet sanded with 400 for the paint job. I am a little worried that the door jams will not come out the same color as the exterior. The exterior was first coated with something like a tinted sealer to provide uniform color, however the jams were not. We will see on monday when we can roll the car out into the sunlight and pull the masking tape off. The car took seven hours to paint not including the masking and prepping we did. There is a very slight orange peel but its very reasonable. Every car has to be color sanded and buffed, we will make preperations for that task.

News on other fronts, I have sent all my motor parts to Al Liest who has built a lot of motors for the pantera crowd. He also is a member of NorCal Pantera Club and owns a pantera. I know the motor is in good hands. I have also collected all the suspension parts I believe I'm going to need. Either this week or next weekend I will have the car towed to my house where I can start the assembly.

Oddly enough the day the car was painted was also my wedding anniversary! This car has been a relationship of the marriage degree. I would be lying if I said it wasn't the cause of some friction in my relationship with my wife as well. However we were both very happy to see it painted and the progress we have made in the last two months has been great. I have owned this car for almost three years now.  Most of those three years the car has been undrivable in various stages of restoration. I know I still have a large amount of work to do but there is defintely a new energy in the air after car gets painted. The fun part of putting all the nice parts on and seeing the metal shell actually become a car, is about to begin.

If any of you are keeping track of the numbers here is the tally of time and money that it took to get the shell to this stage; 8 hours of paint work, $400. Over 10 gallons of painting material, $650. 100 hours of blocking and sanding and shaping, $5,795.  8 months of metal work, rust repair, and panel replacement, $6,000. There was one year of non-activity which accounts for the long timeframe. Despite the large numbers I got a really good deal on paint, retail would have been $1,000, and all the labor that was done on the car was outside legitimate "body shops". Three different people worked on the body of this car, painter Mark Kallagher, body man Cliff Sniatowski, metal worker Jimmy Stix. All of these folks worked on this car put an amazing amount of time into the car.  Most everybody that comes in contact with the car falls in love with it which helps. But most of the folks that worked on this car say they would not do it again. The pantera is a lot of work. Not only must you find somebody with the artistic talent it takes to work on this car but also the patience and persevernce. Thank you all. If anybody would like to contact these individuals please send me an email, they all are located near the Bay Area California.

If you aren't aware the links on the right hand side of the page are links to the history of this pantera log. You can trace this log all the way back to Jan of 2000 when the restoration was begining. Time to reflect and contemplate the future! Vrooooooooooom!!!

Last month when I went to the Precision Proformance BBQ I took several pictures that I wanted to share with you all ...

See the car has paint on it .. well some of it. We are making lots of progress now. Even after all the metal work had been done which took over 6 months, we still are putting many hours in the car to get the body straight. We have over 80 hours into it and may reach 90 after all is said and done. I ran into Cliff ( the body man ) from a mutual friend. After a few discussions and looking at his beautifully restored Healy 3000 we decided to proceed and have him get the car prepped for paint.

I just spent the weekend driving down to LA for the Precision Proformance BBQ. My father was on his way down to LA for his own reason and I tagged along to bring my ZF to Bob and pick up some other parts they had ready for me. I have most of my components for the suspension, including adjustable rear upper a-arms, busing kits, 1" sway bars all the way around, sphere bar sway bar bushings, solid axles, Precision Proformance 3-way adjustable shocks, 700lb rear springs and 450lb front springs, stainless steel bolt kit for suspension, and 4 piston caliper NASCAR brake kit from Precision Proformance. I am sure I am missing things from this list.

Just finishing up the blocking now. The body lines are getting cleaned up and the car is getting primered and ready for paint. It's been a long road. Six months of solid body work. It has been a year since I had the car media blasted. It was september of 99 when I bought the car. I am really excited that the body work is done. This is definitely one of the more time consuming parts of the restoration.

Almost done! The hood scoops and battery box are in and flush mount windshield is almost finished. We are still about two or three weeks away from paint. I looked at several pictures of this type of hood scoop installed. There seemed to be two ways one way with the outer most edge of the scoop parallel with the hood line ( or hood/fender seam ). The other way with the front of the scoop parallel with the front hood line. There is only about ten degrees of difference between the two positions. It seemed that the former positioning was the most comonly used. Therefore that is the way we went. The outer edge of the scoop lines up and is parallel with the hood/fender seam.

The flush mount window kit has turned out to be more work then originally thought. You get six pieces a pair for each side of the window and a pair for the top of the window. However you don't get pieces for the bottom of the window. My body man made a bottom piece to move the windshield up slightly to achieve the proper gap between the window and the window fram so that the seal will fit between the frame and window. The lower portion of the window frame was rusted as well so it was better to replace it. It is a lot of work to hand form those pieces.

Winding down on the body work. Here are photos of the passenger side marker light section and the completed front valance. I chose not to put the screen back into the valance. I don't think this screen is necessary for cooling and seems like it might help divert from under the car without the screen. Also leaving the screen out of the valance makes it a much sturdier piece.

Next on the list is the hood scoops, the battery box, and the flush mount window kit. That will complete the body work and then I need to prep it for paint. I will try to remove most of the undercoating and clean up the fender wells for re-coating. Also the engine bay needs some cleaning and the body needs some more block work to be perfect.

I can't wait to get it painted. It seems once its out of paint then I have so much more work to do. But I know that that type of work goes faster then waiting for body work. The hardest part is going to be funding all of the new parts that I hope to get for it.

I also found another manifold for my engine combination. I got a Roush A351 on the way. This one is new and hasn't been ported. I had the seller take measurements for me to make sure, and it looks good. I now have 3 intake manifolds, an A331 for 9.2" deck height a Roush A331 for 9.2" deck height and now this A351 for a 9.5" deck height. As I wanted the A351 because I hope to use an SVO block. It's nice to have options and the intake is the hardest part to find these beatiful A3 heads.