Reply to "Original yellow?"

With respect to the tramlining problem, the car will be a hairy, white-knuckle driving experience because of the 10" wide front tires. Tramlining refers to the car darting left and right unexpectedly as the wide tires try to ride up any ridges in the pavement. To fix it, you need at least 4 degrees caster. I don't think that is possible with just the offset bushings that most vendors sell; modifications to your control arms will be necessary. Just ignore all the BS about scrub radius and added steering effort that will come with the additional caster. If you want easy steering, buy a Buick. Personally I have not noticed any additional steering effort from the modifications on my car, and I would not care if I did. I don't commute with the car. What I care about is that it tracks straight when I am going down the highway at speed.

Deeb and I can get more than 5 degrees on our GT5s because we had Pat Mical modify our control arms to correct their geometry and make them fully adjustable. Pat recommends 4.5 degrees, but I ran 4.2 degrees last year and it was not enough so I am going to try 5.5 degrees this coming season. Other than sending them to Pat, I know of no other way of doing this except maybe springing for custom aluminum billet control arms - and I'm not even sure that the different aluminum ones out there are fully adjustable. The other thing to pay attention to is your toe-in. If you have insufficient caster and your toe-in is toe-out, the car will take you where it wants to go.

Deeb; if you're reading this, back me up here!

Oh, and before I forget, the bump steer tuning on our cars can be inconsistent so you should have that checked out at a reputable and properly equipped shop. The steering rack can be moved using spacers to correct the problem.

- Peter

PS: If you are building a 500hp+ stroker, the Hall exhaust will not work for you. It will choke your engine. You will need a full 3" exhaust. I would personally recommend you talk to Pat Mical about his header, exhaust and crossover package. Others on this forum have praised the quality of his headers in particular, and no one else makes a 3" exhaust for the Pantera (in fact, most of the other vendors will try to tell you it's not possible). This is the system I would have gone with for my car had I known of it at the time.

PPS: I don't know enough about the axle & U-joint upgrade question to give you a proper answer. I have been told that the late model Panteras had half shafts and U-joints capable of handling high horsepower engines, but I replaced mine with Spicers from Precision ProFormance because my U-joints were shot anyway. If your car has already been upgraded, the yokes should be marked "Spicer". Perhaps someone with more knowledge than me can weigh in on this one?

PPPS: I have not forgotten your question about the chassis reinforcement kits, but I have to get back to work now so I'll get to it later.