Reply to "10Qt pan oil volume"

Horace, there have been several problems with the 'simple' steel Pantera dipstick & pan over the years. The stock 351-C dipstick was originally quite short- having been meant for a front-engine Fairlane or Galaxie. So as-installed in a Pantera, one had to open the rear trunk, remove the engine screen, grope around down in front of the (hot?) engine for the invisible stick, or with an assistant, remove the bulkhead upholstery & engine access cover and finally pull the stick out for a reading. Returning the stick to the invisible guide tube in the block was even more fun, even with help.

So Ford found owners were not checking oil and engine returns for running with no or low oil were climbing by early '72, Ford modified the OEM stick for Panteras by cutting it in two and brazing a section of spring wire in the length. Then they made a new top section guide tube that bolted on to one of the rocker cover bolts. A TSB (Bulletin 1 Article 4, May 1972) was issued to dealers describing the mod.

The modded-stock Pantera dipstick was done in bulk by an unknown contractor (cheaply & in a hurry), and some were done to the wrong length, then put in Ford boxes for sale. Enough were done wrong to warrant a second TSB (Bulletin 5 Article 34, March 1973) warning Pantera dealers of the problems and giving an illustration of an exact length and how & where to measure it (38" stop-thimble-to-tip, NOT the overall length from outside the looped handle to tip).

In addition, some possibly poorly-done braze-joints cracked over the years and owners who noticed it repaired them to the wrong length- usually too short. I heard of one stick in the S.F Bay Area that was so short, it overfilled the crankcase in a rebuilt motor by 6 qts in a STOCK pan! Oil came out of every seal & gasket in the poor motor while running.... Welding the stick also didn't work because the hard spring steel cracks from weld-heat stress.

Finally, a few owners on both sides of the Atlantic, thinking "this is an Italian-made car, the oil volume must be in liters", used the correct dipstick to add 5 LITERS of oil. This only overfilled the crankcases by 1/4 qt or so (1 liter = 1.056 qt)- not enough to cause damage.

Mike Cook, a Bonneville racer that once worked for Gary Hall, found by using plexiglas rocker covers that at high rpms, 3 of the 5 available quarts of oil in a stock pan were being pumped up into the rocker covers and because the oil drainback passages in stock heads were small & tended to plug up, that left only 2 qts to fill the block oil passages & filter, at a time when the engine was under max load stress. Again, bearing starvation and damaged engines resulted. So running at least 8 qts of oil in a fully baffled pan (for cornering control) is simply good insurance.