Original yellow?

Pantera yellow. Most of the original colors are just a little unique to the Pantera.

Alejandro said it was his favorite Pantera color.

That's interesting, Daniel. Yellow is an unusual colour for a GT5. It became more common again in the GT5-S and 90 Si, but I'm not aware of many yelow GT5 Panteras. In fact, off hand, I can't think of another one besides yours. #9350 is the only yellow car I have a record of between 1978 and 1985, and it is a GTS.

So how are you doing with your car? How do you like it so far?

Peter,
I love the car, I have to tell you it is as much fun to drive as the Boxer, actually it's easier to drive and as much fun. I drove it this past Friday down town, down the main drag, A 20 something year old in a nicely hot rodded rice rocket pulled up next to me @ 35mph with his girlfriend hanging out the window taking pictures with a large 35mm or equiv. digital. They drove in front, rear, sides, all angles taking pictures, I cant say that has happened in the Boxer.
Not more than a hour later coming home a WXR or whatever those rocket suburu's are, pull's along the side of me launching his turbo charged watchamacallit. I floored it in first gear, a first gear race ( city street), blew his doors off! He came along my side and yelled!
What the hell is that!? I chuckled, yelled back what it was and he still looked confused, said goodbye and drove home. Yah, it was great. A This event "allegedly" occured if my wife asks.
Regarding yellow, I will keep trying to contact the previous owner to confirm, and of course keep taking more of the car apart.
I have been talking to MME about building a fun motor,as I like to call it. Take the # match and pickle it like the TA, build the fun engine and drive the daylights out of it, something with 450+hp.
Any suggestions how to confirm the color, assuming the previous owner doesn't respond?
Thanks
Daniel

Daniel:

The body colour tag, which is a sticker, was affixed to the front of the car under the front trunk lid near the driver's side hinge. However, since your car has been repainted, it's almost certain the body shop will not have taken the trouble to remove and replace the decal.

One way to know for sure is to get the build sheet from the factory. I've been trying to get mine for a couple of years with no success, but maybe you will have better luck.

I'm glad to hear you are finding out what many or most of us GT5 guys on the PIBB already know; the car creates a sensation wherever it goes. I see you are also finding out how impossible it is to resist the temptation to upgrade the motor. My one suggestion is to talk to the guys at MME again, and ask how much it would cost to get you to about 550hp. These days it is not difficult to get a naturally aspirated, streetable, reliable 550hp+ stroker that will not overheat or cause other problems. I have two reasons for suggesting this. First, in the greater scheme of things, a 550hp motor will not cost all that much more than a 450hp one (I will leave the exercise of justifying this to your wife to you). Second, at 550hp your power-to-weight ratio will exceed all but that of the carbon fiber hyper-cars. This means you can run with the big dogs.

As a final note, you can take comfort that a GT5 does not require a lot of upgrades to handle a 550hp motor as long as it is in overall sound mechanical condition. The cooling system and brakes are entirely up to the task already, so just make sure you have your U-joints inspected carefully and you should be ready to go. The one upgrade you may want to consider is a chassis stiffening kit so you don't twist and crack your body.

Also, and regardless of how much horsepower you intend to run, be sure to do something about the lower rear control arm attachment points. They are notorious weak spots in late model Panteras like ours. Finally, you may want to consider modifications to allow you to dial in more caster to reduce or eliminate the tramlining inherent in all the wide body Panteras(I'm running 4.2 degrees and plan to increase that to 5.5 degrees). If you want some more information on any of this, let me know.

- Peter

Peter,
Thanks for all the info. Yes, I'm very interested in all the above. I already have installed the fluidyne aluminim radiator but need to do the lay down conversion so the new fans will fit. My u-joints look like they have been upgraded. Seems they got a lot of parts from Hall...big bore headers etc. How would I be able to tell if its there upgrade axel and u-joints? and which body stiffing brand to you feel works and fits the best? Definetly want more info on rear control arms and alignment, not familiar with tramlining, what exactly is it? Thanks for your help.
Daniel
PS your right, 550hp sounds better! I surely will not tell the wife, what engine?

Peter,
I was wondering, the yellow GTS, was it in california?
I was at Concourse Italiano last year and there was one with a black wing driving down the main street. By no means a show car, it definetly had been driven a lot. Same one?
Daniel

The yellow car I was thinking of was #9350, a 1985 Pantera GTS belonging to Patrick Schmit of Paris, France:

OK. I'll start with the rear frame rail weakness at the A-arm attachment point. To do this, I will quote from Mike Drew's comments to the e-mail forum back on March 13, 2002:

Hi guys,

I had a fantastic time hanging out in Michigan Ohio with Gary Roys and other
club members and forum dudes Bob Timma, John Christian and Kirk Evans.

The primary purpose for the trip was to travel to Kirk Evans' shop, do some
destructive testing on early and late Pantera chassis rails and determine
once and for all if there is a significant design problem. While there is
plenty of anecdotal evidence supporting the contention that late-model
chassis is dramatically under-engineered, particularly in the rear lower
control arm mounts (recall that several of us have experienced separation of
the a-arm mounts from the chassis, most notably Charlie McCall), some owners
of later cars are especially sensitive to the criticisms heaped upon these
cars by the Pantera vendors who work on them every day. They cite an overall
improvement in development, comfort, and build quality and have big problems
with people levelling accusations of structural inferiority upon their cars
without any proof.

Well, here is your proof.

Gary Roys' GT5-S (recently sold) was up on jackstands in Kirk's shop, minus
any suspension, so it was a simple matter to bust out the Tool of Justice and
ziz some sheetmetal away to peer inside and see what is going on. Kirk
happened to have a pair of 1971 chassis frame rails literally lying around
which provided an excellent side-by-side comparison.

A peek inside the absolutely rust-free GT5-S chassis was somewhat horrifying.
Kirk has spent more time than just about anybody dismantling and
reassembling early Pantera chassis, but I believe that he hasn't really done
too much with the late cars other than import them and sell them. He
expressed considerable surprise at the comparative lack of spot welds on the
chassis rail, and the hokey tack welds used to join the two halves together
at the bottom. Upon opening the rail up, there was no visible reinforcement
except the tube, which he was able to move around by hand. He agreed that
this was grossly inadequate for the task at hand.

A comparison with the 1971 chassis rail showed that somebody was on the ball
back then--a second layer of sheet metal encompasses the inside of the frame
rail and has a good 20 or so spot welds to keep it in place. Inside the
frame rail is an extremely complex reinforcement structure formed from sheet
metal bent into an M shape and placed on end.

Bottom line--in this area, early cars strong, late cars weak to the point of
being dangerous. If he hasn't already done so, I'll let Kirk provide a more
expert design analysis, comparison and contrast. He told me he plans to
engineer a simple bolt-on or weld-on sheetmetal cover (similar to that used
on the early cars) which he will sell at cost to any owner of a post-Ford
Pantera.

One side note--both structures feature internal reinforcement of one type or
another that would be virtually impossible to deform simply by
over-tightening the nuts which secure the yokes to the chassis rails. There
has long been speculation that the several failures reported on the GT5-era ca
rs were caused by over-tightening, but that no longer seems to be a valid
theory.

Detailed photos and further analysis at

http://members.aol.com/panterachassisrails.jpg

Thanks to Kirk and Gary for helping settle this issue and hopefully solving
this potentially dangerous problem!

Mike

The above link no longer works, so if you want photos to go along with Mike's comments, I can e-mail them to you. The simple fix on my car was to use the side mounting plate of my lower rear chassis brace as a giant washer/frame rail reinforcement to distribute the loads from the two lower A-arm bolts. Mine was a custom brace, so before you buy a chassis reinforcement kit from a vendor you should ensure that it will work the same as mine.

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.

Absolutely Peter!!

Getting all that caster sure made driving my car a lot less "constrictive."

I guess you know which two things I am referring to that used to constrict every time the car suddenly darted off on its own at high speed.

Pat's solution is well developed for sure. Alhough I have heard of others who have achieved more caster with using different methods.

I can't turn my car with 3-1/2 degrees without power steering.
How do you intend to steer with 5?

Are all the roads strait in Canada? How do you turn around and come home?

PanteraDoug:

I'm very sorry you are having that problem. I suggest you try testosterone supplements and some time in the gym.

...or just go a little faster!

Peter,
great info....yes I would love to see some photo's or any info on the rear frame. Tramlining, I know exactly what your talking about! Holy crap! I have definetly felt what you're talking about especially braking from 100+ to 10mph, the car tracks poorley and unpredictable, I guess I have called it tracking. Odd, same era car, my boxer could care less...100, 150, 165, or hard breaking, it stays like it's on rails. I want to put on the wide rims from Pantera East, will this increase the problem?
Thanks again for all your time and help.
Daniel

Oh yeh,
that is not the same car, My mistake, I saw a yellow GT5-S not a GTS, it was definetly a real steal flared car with a black wing.
I will look closer at my headers, if I have 1 7/8 or 2" tubes, I have to assume the collectors are at least 3" so pipes back would need to be changed. I'll dig for more details.
thanks again
Daniel

#9457 - 1986 Pantera GT5-S - Bruce Adair, San Francisco, USA

I guess memory is not the first thing to go, crap!
That looks like it! The City, my old stomping grounds.
Daniel