Reply to "Restoring ’71 Pre-L"

The next task is body stiffening.  There’s several kits out there which I guess are geared at adding rigidity to the frame when you are unable to remove your interior or don’t want to mess with the existing body/paint work.  However, since I’m restoring this car down to its bones, I’ve chosen a different route.  The weak spots on the Pantera, as I’m told and as I’ve read, are not the ladder shaped frame, but rather the cross members fore and aft of the cockpit as well as the poorly sealed seams in the body work as done by Ghia.  I owned a prior Pantera (also a 1971) which cracked (the paint/body work) at the top of the C-pillar after some spirited driving.  Turns out, this is one of the weak body seams where Ghia simply spot welded the roof to the body structure and then filled in the gap with lead/flux.