Recently in Fuel Category

Ever since I've owned the car I always thought why would DeTomaso put one big 21gallon fuel tank behind the drivers seat? Most of the time if your driving alone the weight on that side of the car will be more then the other, and at 8lbs per gallon 20gallons of gas is like having another driver on your lap.

Just got back from the most dramatic race we ever had out in Ely. This time we left the family at home, it was my brother-in-law Nick, our fellow pantera owner Ritch, and myself. We left on Thursday night late and got into Ely about 8am in the morning. After registering, eating, and getting quick nap we cleaned up the car and participated in the Ely parade. All the locals come out for the event and line up the streets. Unfortunately there is no burnouts allowed despite the crowd begging for us to do so. Afterwards we had a lot of fun at the Big 4 partying it up with all the guys.

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.

I haven't done to much work on the car lately. Brigitte and just had our
son Ronan.

We did sign up for the Vegas fun rally this year and plan on attending with the whole family. Part of that plan includes buying a towing rig to tow the Pantera in style. I also signed up for the track event, so I will see you all there.

A few items worth noting on the Pantera. I did remove the radiator and
flush it out. I also removed the air conditioning condensor from the front
of it as well. I also cut out the lower valance where wire grid pattern
used to reside when it was stock. All these changes again made the
cooling system more efficient. During a 65 degree ambient temperature day I
will idle at 150 degrees. I think I got all my cooling issues sorted.

The other change I made was for the carb. I have been fighting that Holley
4779 750 double pumper for quite some time. I did some more noodeling on
the situation and decided that I don't have a vaccum problem. The problem
is the car runs too rich at idle because I have to expose too much of the
idle transfer slot to get it to run. This is caused by low vaccum at idle
and a lopey cam. The solution is to dril 1/16 inch holes in each of the
butterflies in the base plate. This allows more air into the carb when the
plates are closed ( at idle ) and less fuel. This brings back the
adjustability of the idle mixture screws and improves vaccum by 4 or 5 lbs
of vaccum. Therefore I was able to increase my power valve to a #5 and that
improved fuel flow at power conditions. The change worked, the car behaves
much better and faster! I will try to write up my carb expierences for
others to learn from in the near future.

I picked up my upholstered interior and the powder coated trim this week. I
have finished putting the trim on and one of the door panels is installed.
It came out pretty nice. However it does need some detail added to it so I
ordered some carbon fiber composite sheets which I can cut into a "swash"
and put on the door as the newer style interior is done on the pantera.

I change the jets in the carb back up to 70 primary and 76 secondary. While
driving to the mustang club event I was having problems with backfiring
when the secondaries kicked in and lean surging. However the carb still
idles so rich that it will tear your eyes.

Next on the list is to install the speedo cable, new half shafts, clean up
some more interior, and other cosmetic issues. I am also going to try and
put some mileage on the car as well.

With the help of Kurt Byrnes I was able to adjust my carb properly. I was
running way to high of a power valve which was causing the car to run rich
at all times. This in turn was preventing me from running the right jets.
After a re-jet and power valve change I took the car out for a spin. The
difference is like night and day. I can really tell now that the car has
some serious power. I also gathered the parts for the powder coaters and
did some more wiring in the car. However after a weekend of fun with the
car last night I went to move it into the garage and it failed to start.
The ignition was not working. I will have to check the Electromotive sensor
to see if there are any issues.

 

The wiring harness goes in this weekend. In preparation I bought the gauge panel to match the dash. This is the horizontal layout guages with horizontal radio. I also purchsed the updated switches that go into the console. Considering the fuel inlet system, I wanted to upgrade it BEFORE I put the new motor in. I also wanted to leave the option of going to a electric fuel pump in the future. So I had a new fuel inlet sytem made up which I hope will work. I have stainless pipe that is -10 and -6 sizes mounted with AN flares to AN bulkhead 90 degree fittings. The idea is I will run the straight pipe to the bottom of the tank. I had a fabrication shop build a 1/4" aluminum plate that the bulkhead fittings bolt into and then the two pipes are braced together with joining stainless peices down the length of the pipe. This is WAY overbuilt, I should have no problems with this. The parts cost about $80 and the labor was bout $100. I also included a shot of the steering wheel.

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.

 

Just one day after getting the car back on the road, we ran into another problem. After the long drive the previous day, the next morning I opened up the garage to discover a large puddle of gasoline under the passenger side of the car. The gas tank had developed a leak.

As you all know in order to replace the gas tank you need to remove the engine. So this project of replacing the gas tank also prompted us to "freshenup" the engine as well.

Budget wise the long term plan for this car was to keep it on the road until may of 2000 when we could start a full restoration. Knowing that I would be rebuilding the engine in may anyway, I could leave out some essential rebuilding items ... or so I thought.

So the plan, ( at the time, it has since changed ), is to replace the fuel tank, intake manifold, carb, camshaft, oil pump, oil pan, push rods, and rocker arms. This supposedly would get the car back on the road and last until may of 2000 when we do the restoration.

Sounds great in theory :)