The Pantera had been washed and waxed recently, but to no avail (actually that almost ruined my trip, more on that later!). We ran through some heavy rain, and the car was dirtier than I’ve ever seen it before. Polished wheels, exhaust and valve covers were unrecognizable. We got to the ferry, got on board and then I was happy I never got around to giving it a new paint job (more on that thought later!). I was parked in the middle lane, surrounded by tourists with no clue, who seemed to think that fenders are for leaning your door against, while you get your oversize frame squeezed into the car. Obesity is indeed a worry. Nothing major happened though, besides school children taking pictures. We went up for a relaxed lunch, if I had had a paint job I cared about, I couldn’t have done that (I would have to eat those words, more on that later).
Off the ferry, rain was gone for now, and it was getting hot. When nearing Hamburg it was around 30C. No problem, A/C worked of course, would never drive south without A/C working. Queues through Hamburg are always either a pain or a major pain. They have now decided to build another Autobahn crossing the Elb further North, but since that will be 8-9 years into the future, we couldn’t wait for that. So, into the queue. Semi-tough this time, about 45-60 minutes stop and go. So how would that work out? 30C, stop and go, a 600 HP heater right behind my back and a carburetor idling at low vacuum due to the cam-profile from hell this engine has? It seemed to work fine, no overheating with both fans running, and A/C did its part, not really cold, but comfortable. And idle was fine. No sign of distress. Until… When we got through the queue it was time to get a move on. But when finally being able to rev it a bit, it totally died. I was in the left lane naturally and people accelerating all around me (reminds me of my experience in my Longchamp 3 years ago, of course a DeTomaso is in the left lane, come hell or high water), but fortunately there was road works to the left of me, I could dart through pillars into that lane. I let off the throttle, and it could idle, and then a bit more power. But accelerating to get up to speed I couldn’t. We drove slowly a bit, and our road works lane was about to end, so I had to get out in traffic. And older guy in a Mercedes let us out. We drove half speed for a while, then turned off at a Parkplatz, and the Mercedes followed us. Turns out he was a Testarossa owner, wanted to let me know that he had seen a plate fly out from under the car. I never found out what he meant, nothing was missing on my car. And frankly, I’ve never put much credence to things being said by people owning a Testarossa, IMHO the ultimate “look at me, I don’t have a clue”-car. We let it cool for ten minutes, then started it and revved it among the parked tourists. It did lose power at high rpm, but not as bad. We decided to drive on at let it get back to normal temperatures.
A story like that is best when it has a certain layout. Problem experienced, problem diagnosed, problem fixed. However I still don’t know for sure what caused it. I think either vapor lock or ignition module overheating, and my money is on the first of the two. Can that be avoided? Maybe. But putting 600HP of engine heat into a car in 30C start stop traffic for almost an hour and with a carb on top, is asking for trouble. However, it didn’t happen again on this trip.
Driving again, building confidence for every km. Until the next little incident which turned out to be a potentially lethal physics lesson relearned. I had just filled it with gas, a little more than I used to do before I converted to outside filler, and drove to park for some refreshments etc. When parked I saw that fuel was pouring out of it, in front of the left rear wheel, where the tank and fuel pump is. And the thousand degrees hot headers of course. Out of the car, get the fire extinguisher, and hopefully I just overfilled or something so it would stop running out now. Plenty of non-useful spectator comments, and few (Danes by coincidence) offered advice and tools. But the fuel kept pouring out, by now it must have been around 5 liters. Stuck my head in to have a look, it was pouring 3 inches from the headers. Looked under the car, couldn’t see a leak in the tank or the outlet which is at the bottom. I pulled on the overflow hose, and yes that changed the rate of fuel coming out. Pulled the hose up from between the tank and the ss tank cover, and the pouring stopped. Apparently the capillary effect had been shown in practice, and I was later told by members of the Pantera community that I was not the first to try this. When we remove the round overflow canister on the other side of the engine compartment and let the hose hang down, if we then fill up so fuel runs out, the capillary effect can empty the tank. Don’t say that nothing you learned in school had value. Capillary effect, lifting a box without hurting your back, drinking and sweet talking girls really has been useful later in life…
So with one to two total losses of power and one potential all engulfing fire sorted out, we drove on. At this time the wife thought it had been a little too eventful, and I understand. So from that on my answer to any car related question was: “Nothing to worry about”.
The rest of day one was rather uneventful, till we reached Blankenheim where we met up with Janne and Johanna from Finland, Thomas and Espen from Sweden/Norway and Kristian/Trine and Erling/Lone from Denmark. By the way, this would be as good a time as any to sort out once and for all, which country had most participants. Denmark of course (per capita), three Panteras present, which is almost half the club. But who’s counting?
The evening ended in the bar (add that sentence to any day of this summary), a few kill stories and then to bed.Below: my car and Kristian's trailer. And no, they never met up!
