Reply to "Ricardo"

Mark,

Don't get me wrong, I admire what you are doing with the FGT motor and transaxle and follow your updates rigorously. I'm sure you will achieve your goals for a light clutch and smooth shift, but I wonder if you will lose much of the uniqueness that is a Pantera in the first place? As they say we are a diverse group and each to his own.

If money is no object you can achieve whatever your heart desires. But in general the later posts here sounded more like dropping a Ricardo in was driven by the fact a recon transaxle was cheap now and about the same as a ZF. That may be so for a bare Ricardo, but I undertsand the unique starter motor to go with it is $800 alone. With the expense of the mods required for a transaxle swap to a Ricardo there are other equally good options one shoudl be at least considering out there. For example you can get a Gearfox or numerous other equally suitable transaxles that likely won't require such extensive mods to the subframe. Personally at that level of expenditure I'd go fully sequential, but then again if I was spending that sort of money personally I'd have bought the rest of the FGT too.

My personal experience with cable shifters is they are finicky and a PITA. The cables stretch and give a very different feel/feedback when hot and cold. Ford seem to have the best I've come across, but will all that transcend across to the Pantera?

FWIW I'm currently looking at the Mastershift system, that converts a ZF or any cable shift to a semi sequential. You can have a conventioanl bump gear selector or a paddle shifter.


http://mastershift.com/new-str...manual.html#proddesc


Cheers,
Julian