Reply to "Fall Pantera Run"

David:

I had a look at some of the pictures of your car that I have saved, and you are right that my mount is different from yours. I also looked at some other photos of late model cars and found that sometime in the late ‘80s DeTomaso started occasionally mounting the mirrors lower down on the door as on my car (on both GT5s and GT5-Ss). Why, I don’t know because I think there is much more rigidity for the mount at the top of the door. On the side, the metal panel flexes which allows for much more vibration. In my case, we tried welding on a large backing plate, but that has not helped.

I know you have tucked your baby away for the season, but if you happen to get an opportunity I'd be grateful if you could shoot me some photos of your lock washer and rubber washer solution. I'm having trouble visualizing it. If I can't solve this problem, I will have to take the original mirrors off, fill in the hole, repaint the door and install a glue-on set onto the quarter window. I don’t want to do that unless I absolutely have to.

As for the question about the half-shafts, I apologize for having created confusion with my poor choice of words. We did not swap the half shafts from left to right. We simply flipped or reversed each one. My half shafts are the factory originals.

BTW, thanks for the tip about the convex mirrors. I will definitely add them to my car.

While looking at the photos of your car, David, I noticed you have a slick crankcase breather/PCV system installed. My motor came from PI Motorsports with only a couple of breather filters for the valve covers, which then proceeded to puke oil. True, the oil dripping on the headers created a nice smoke screen to hide me from any pursuing law enforcement authorities, and the coat of oil and oily grime all over the motor, transaxle and rear of the car will prevent rust, but I still think maybe this is not such a great idea... So where can I get a setup like yours?

- Peter