Ford sells a 'street rod' water pump that's 2-1/4" shorter than a stock 351-C water pump. It's supposed to be for a 351-W but with a few simple changes, I found it fits a Cleveland as well. Haven't run it since it's now on my Fontana, which needs a few thousand dollars more for a crank, pistons & rods.
I also found the whole powertrain can be moved rearward in a Pantera by 1-1/2 " with little effort and no ill effect on handling. I was able to do this in 2010 by redrilling the upper motor mounts and bending a shallow 'S' into the ZF rear mount tabs. Beyond 1-1/2" back, the front sump of the oil pan hits the under-engine crossmember, causing even more issues. But that mod was more than enough to add a flat firewall access door and a 'big cap' distributor. There are POCA articles & photos on both these mods in the Archives.
JT, no one said anything about Tom Tjaarda who did the body and interior. As we all know, Gianpaulo Dallara designed the Pantera chassis following his design of the 1969 DeTomaso F-2 racer. Using the much wider & heavier Ricardo transaxle will cause problems with a stock rear subframe since that tranny has been found to not fit between stock rear rails. Widening the rails relocates the lower rear a-arm pickup points, altering Dallara's carefully balanced Pantera geometry. Raising the Ricardo makes the C/G even worse. So it appears they decided to solve these problems by building their own frame to accommodate. Any idea what famous designer did the work, or is it an experiment?
Seems strange since an existing 6-speed ZF from RBT as proposed for the 1st Ford GT would be a bolt-in and a stock shifter would work. I wonder how the "custom" car will handle; Dallara has made quite a nice living designing well handling performance car chassis over the last 50+ years, including most of the Indycars. Dallara has a shop in Indianapolis as well as the original in Italy for 'local' work on F-2 & F-3, and some of the E-race series. I think Andretti Racing uses them on its e-racers.