New shocks

Speak with Scott from SACC. He is a site sponsor and knows Panteras and shocks.
BTW, What you are describing can be a symptom of badly worn out and sticky shocks. If you are planning on doing high speed runs, choose your shocks wisely. A firm mid-speed shock setting isn’t necessarily going to give you a harsh ride.

Don't know if you use Koni's on your car , but all the Koni's witch  into the past are rebuild into the USA have bad  internal quality parts .

Simon

FWIW I'm using QA1 on all my cars for many years/miles, currently single adjustable ~$250 a corner or double adjustable for ~$340

Purchased my shocks from Pantera Performance.   They are adjustable and the car has a nice ride quality.  I am very happy with them.

Donny, 'hard riding' shocks may simply be competition-type units or heavy-duty springs that are adjusted too stiff for your liking. Is there a name stamped or a decal on yours? What color are the shock bodies?

Koni and Bilstein are two popular makers, and the early 'black' Ariston shocks on some '71 Panteras were also adjustable for compression damping. It may be that you don't need the expense and complication of changing to new shocks if yours are adjustable.

Here they are.

BTW look at where my half shaft bolts are, should the nuts go to the inside?

I recently installed these:
https://www.saccrestorations.n...e-performance-shock/

300 pound front, 450 rear.

And am very pleased with them. Install on the rears took some time because you need to flatten the mounting tabs:


Note the preload setting is way too low in this picture. If you want me to measure how I ended up, let me know.
Scott is great to deal with.

From your photo, I can't tell what kind of shocks you have, but stock springs weren't chromed.   

No on the nut placement- yours are fine as is. Its easier to install the bolts with nuts on the inside but you can't torque the nuts effectively in that position. Positioned like you have them, you can use a socket wrench and get them good & tight. Even slight looseness in only one nut can cause weird vibrations during hard acceleration.

And when you take the halfshafts off, the bolts will stay in position so that's 16 more pieces that are harder to misplace. Nice clean engine bay.

Thanks Mr.Boss and where and how much are the Ridetech shocks?

SACC
$1500 shipped plus INCLUDING CA. tax.

Contact SACC for Ridetech shocks. Scott knows what fits P-cars. You can go to the top of the page and click on the banner.

I still need to do mine but I'd expect that Scott should be able to give you a pretty close approximation to the ride height setting out of the box.

The Panteras are not going to vary much as far as corner weights and tire ride heights go. The strut and spring weights are known already.

To me, the only decision ride height wise is whether or not to use the US height or the Euro heights?

Our roads here generally are better but here we have to deal with more obstructions like manhole covers projecting too much and non-pitched entrances to places like parking garages and gas stations, not to mention the pot holes that are now appearing all over from the winters freeze/thaw cycles.

Arte the ride hights ( front) not to do with the hight from the headights ?

thats why stock shocks use big spacers between spring and bottum from the shock ?

and this  was the reason the later US Mangusta's have pop up headlights ?

Simon

Back in the '70s, the U.S DOT had mandatory headlight height and bumper height requirements- especially in California. So Ford/DeTomaso used ride height spacers to comply. Now 50 years on, they have other things to occupy their time.

The Pantera Owners Manual has ride height specs listed and where you measure them from. For better high speed aerodynamics, I use a 2 degree nose-down attitude instead of the original perfectly horizontal spec. Works even with a Revson front spoiler.