I thought I'd go ahead and start a thread on our Pantera. We have all these pics on our website, but it's cool to see it all in one thread here on the forums. We never had a plan for the Pantera. Just wanted to have one because they are super cool. What you'll see here, is the evolution of our car. It's not a restoration or planned build. It's simply five years of joyous Pantera ownership.

January 2004, Jaime and I purchase a Pantera after seeing a gathering of them at Peterson Automotove Museum. I knew about them growing up, as my father always lusted over Panteras. But this group got Jaime's heart racing too, and that made it much a much easier sell. We found #3427 in Utah.

March, 2004. Sold the original wheels and tires and bought some used PIMotorsport wheels to hold us over while our Team 3 Wheels were being made.





Found that a little valve under the dash near the heater core had been leaking for years. Tore the carpet up and found an unlpeasant mess.



We sanded all the rust out, treated the metal and sealed it:

April 2004, our Team 3 Wheels and Kumho tires showed up. We repaired a rusty inner wheel housing, replaced two motor mount bolts, put in new wheel bearings, new suspension bushings, added PI Motorsports heavy duty half shafts, added Pantera Performance Koni shocks, a new Holley 650 double pumper, new PIMotorsports clutch master, stainless clutch lines, stainless brake lines and PIMotorsports carbon kevlar brade pads.

Had the Pantera dynoed at Powertrain Dynamics in Huntington Beach. It made 328rwhp. Not bad!

July 2004, installed some Corbeau seats. They looked fantastic but were terriby uncomfortable. lol.



Refinished the trunk area:


Refinished the modified engine cover:


Cleaned the engine compartment up a bit, but it's still nothing pretty:

September 2004: 09/12/04 - The Mallory Unilite module failed on the weekend. We somehow managed to limp the car home, but it wouldn't move from the garage again until a new module was installed. I also installed a new resistor and power filter in an effort to make sure the module wouldn't fail agian. I hasn't failed again, btw, in five years!

It was time for the cooling system to see an overhaul. The Pantera was fine so long as traffic was moving, but given a hot day and bumper to bumper traffic, it would run hot. So we installed an aluminum high flow water pump from Summit, put on all new coolant lines, an aluminum Fluidyne Radiator (made custom brackets to lean the radiator foreward for better airflow and cooling) and duel Flexlite sucker fans. It was a solid two days worth of very hard work, but man did it pay off! I drove it that day for over an hour in high heat, all through town with the air conditioning on and temps never went above 180 degrees (where the thermostat opens). Fantastic!

November 2004: The stock front bumpers are a bit blocky because they house the turn signals. We purchased some new Carbon Fiber front bumpers from PIMotorsports. These aren't made to house turn signals, so their shape is simple and elegant. We installed the PI bumpers, then removed the turn signals from the stock bumpers and mounted them behind the front grill. Jaime fabricated the new brackets, and I welded them in.

We also replaced the side Ghia emblems with correct, OEM Ghia emblems. The real emblems are a little smaller, and look better on the Pantera.

And lastly, Jaime recarpeted the engine cover/trunk liner (I still need to take pictures), while I cleaned and painted the front brake calipers.

January 2005, one year of Pantera ownership: I switched the stock tail lights out for some GroupIV tail lights with blacked out trim. The look is a little smoother.

The carburetor float level was very high for some reason, and a spark plug fouled out. So I adjusted the carb, threw in a new set of plugs, changed the oil and it's running like a champ! I also took my favorite set of pictures of our car.

October, 2005: Replaced all of the gauges in the Pantera with new Autometer Phantom Gauges. Used Autometer's blue LED's to light them. Merged a universal fuel level sender with the stock Pantera fuel sender, and now have a functional gas gauge, yay! Also installed new water temp and oil pressure senders that were included with the gauges.

November 2005: Jaime and I finished the commercial version of the Auger Resources Pantera Shift Boot and short shift knob. I also installed a third brake light on the Pantera. Found this LED brake like on JCWhitney's website. I feel better having an additional brake light up a little higher.

December 2005: We've been working on the interior, and this time we were focusing on the center console. We wanted to design a center console that would have the stereo mounted horizontally and have cooler switches. I handled reworking the fiberglass and the specifics of how everything would fit together and still allow easy access to the backs of the switches and gauges. Jaime took care of the upholstery. I think it came out pretty good. We are still waiting on our switch labels to come in and there are a few things that we will change soon, but it's on the right track.