Pantera 04042 restoration

Rob, Enjoy the journey. I am just wrapping up my forth Pantera restoration. Learn something every time and eventually, I'll get it right. It is great your daughter is interested in participating. Great knowledge transfer.

Congratulations on getting starred Rob. I wish you the best and hope you are able to maintain the momentum of the restoration.

Mark

Rob, congrats on the resto, good to have you here. You are so fortunate to have a daughter help out! Keep us posted!

Hi guys,
Thanks for the warm welcome.
Yes, I truly appreciate the fact that my younger daughter enjoys my car hobby as much as she does. I love spending the time with her.

I got back from Germany last night and am heading out to the garage now. Hoping to keep the momentum ;-)

OK, so managed to get about 5 hours in on Sat and another 5 on Sunday. Made some good headway, resulting in a lot of parts now on the floor. The bad news....I broke the original windshield pulling it out. Damn..damn...damn... I was pulling it like I have so many others, by flipping the lip back while someone applies steady pressure, but the gasket was being stubborn. I should have stopped and cut the gasket, but instead I asked my daughter to push a little harder. Those dance legs of hers are a bit stronger than anticipated. Really a shame as it was in nice shape. Anyone have a windshield....??

Anyway...once I stopped crying I got back to it. The interior is now just about gutted, and the front trunk/radiator area are stripped. I think the toughest part of the job so far was pulling the wire harness. The casing was about as flexible as petrified wood. I think I'll have to cut it all off and tape wrap when it's time for reassembly. At this point, all that's left is the front suspension, headliner, and door window mechanisms.






Hopefully will be fully disassembled and heading for media blasting next Sat.

Can anyone give guidance on how to get the side windows and mechanisms apart. I was looking them over and don't see an obvious method. Thanks...

Perhaps you can be more specific. Based on what you have accomplished, it would seem that you have the acumen to extract the main side window apparatus. Glass removal is two nuts and rubber protected bolts and it pulls up and exit the rail toward the inside of the car. Start with it 3/4 down. Pretty easy.

The front side windows are held in by the vertical trim that is removable after finding the screw, in the upper door trim behind the seal, that holds that piece of trim in place. The fastener is right behind where the vertical trim meets the upper horizontal trim. With the trim gone, slide the 1/4 window back and out.

The question that you should be asking is "Do I remove the trim?" I have removed the trim on every restoration except the last when it was attached so tightly, it was on the threshold of damaging it in removal. I managed on piece off and it had a minor warp after the exercise. That scared me. I surrendered and left the remaining trim in place. Fortunately, the piece I removed went back on looking perfect. But, the experience gave me religion.

Kirk Evans informed me that he never removes the trim. I never appreciated that until now.

Let me know if I missed your question

John Taphorn

would the trim screw be item 50
http://www.panteraparts.com/im...9DoorsandRelated.pdf
would the bolt 54 at the bottom of the vertical trim help

I can't tell from the pic if item 50 is the fastener. Yes, you are correct about 54

53 is the screw that John is referring to . 50 is the small trim screw for the inside trim piece that runs down the inside of the A post of the door.

Ron

HI guys,
Thanks for the info. I'll poke at it a little more. My reason for wanting to remove the trim is that I am bringing the chassis in for media blasting. I was considering leaving the trim on and protecting with duct tape, but that just feels wrong. I feel like to "do it right" it needs to be fully disassembled. Am I being too anal?

One big question I have... is about Ron's avatar.... That's a funny lookin Pantera man. Is that a left over pic from some other forum...just spit ballin of course...

Rob, my preference is to remove the trim as well. I suppose that I should have qualified my previous remarks. All the trim attached to the chassis comes off very easy as it is attached by rivets. Also, the lower door outside window trim adjacent to the door skin is a definite removal as it is held on by screws that also hold the cat wiskers.

The challenging trim surrounds the rest of the door window frame and is pressed on both the
inside and outside. This is the delicate stuff that can be stretched and damaged when removing it.

As I mentioned before, my experiences, prior to last, was that I was able to carefully work it off w/o issue. Frankly, others had told me what a bear it is to remove and that had never been my experience. That is until my last project - it did not want to come off. I ended up taping it over. It would present a problem if your intention is to powder coat them. Then, I have my fingers crossed that the pressed on door trim removes easily. Let us know how it works out.

Rob; This is Pantera 3639 where we have both posted our vehicles in the tear down/rebuild stages. I, too, wanted to remove the window trim; however, as you will notice in my picture of "ready for paint" the windows are taped over with tape and cardboard for the very reason JTpantera points out - the trim is press fitted and the experienced fabrication shop doing the work on my car forewarned me that more damage could be done attempting to take the trim off vs. cutting a fine line where the trim meets the paint. Therefore, the trim remains intact. The car was bead blasted with the doors off and double taped, being careful not to "blast" the window trim area. Everything seems to be OK.

Hi guys,
Thanks for the insights. I was looking it over and considering the windshield "incident", simply decided not to make my life more difficult just for the principle of wanting to "fully" disassemble the car. The car is so rust free, that I'm really not worried about any hidden nastiness lurking under the trim.

On Friday night I finished the dis assembly. Sat morning I dropped it off at the media blaster. I should be picking it up this coming Sat morning. I'll post pics when I pick her up.

Thanks again for the help.

Hi guys,
Quick status update...
Picked the car up from the media blaster. Very pleased with the job and not too much ugly uncovered. Did find some light body damage left front corner and some corrosion at the radiator support (known) and lower rear corners of door jams. They will need some surgery to get them right, as the previous repair work was beyond crappy.

Decided to build a temporary wall in the shop to keep the heat, dust, paint stink in the shop. Seems to work great so far...we'll see if I can make it through the winter w/o poking a hole in it while moving stuff around...



















First task now is to get the chassis cleaned up. I've spent about 4 hours so far trying to get the insides of the frame sections cleaned out. I've collected about 3 gallons of media in the shop vac so far.

Car really really looks clean of corrosion damage. That's a nice foundation to work from. Time to spray DP90

Nice big garage Rob. Looks like you'll be warm and cozy while you work away. Some long nights ahead!

Mark

quote:

Originally posted by Mark Charlton:
Nice big garage Rob. Looks like you'll be warm and cozy while you work away. Some long nights ahead!

Mark

My thoughts exactly. The car is nice, but I really like is the size of that garage

Wow Rob...how long ago did you start this? I would swear I just saw pics of the motor coming out? The progress is amazing! By next week we'll see painting and reassembly started? Send your daughter over to my place... I need some of that progress!

Nice work Rob! Lots of action in a short time. We're following your progress, so keep the info and pics coming. Wish I was there!

Yeah, nothing like having the kids along! How do you get the older one interested?