Pantera 06927

Rob,

What is the story with the horseshoe sculptures? I love found-object welded works.

Larry

I searched Oz for a decent Testa and couldnt find one so I went to UK and bought it. That sculpture is in a small town called Heydon in Norfolk. Apparently after the Crusades, my family owned a castle near there and this village supported the castle.

Those sculptures are outside the local blacksmith shop in the village. Look great don't they?

Did you look thru the technical pages Larry.

There's a bit of info there on how to fix these Italian beasts as well.

They are prone to all sorts of issues, but it's been fun learning how to fix them.

And now I start all over again with the elder cousin!! Glutten for punishment I think.

Here's my renovated suspension components all ready to go back together.

And a couple of issues I discovered along the way.

The lower front control arm has been pressed and assembled from two components. It's then been welded together but the seams between the pressing can catch and hold a lot of road debris, which stays wet and can cause cancer in these areas.

If you ever strip these down, pay particular attention to these areas. Get them really clean, sandblast, scratch, do whatever, but get the crud out of these seams. Then treat them with a rust converter product like ferrite tannate solution before you paint them.

I'm actually going to use a grey coloured mastic filler over the paint and carefully apply it OVER these gaps to stop the crap getting in there in the future.

I scratched it out as best as I could, even getting a box cutter blade down in there. Then I heated them in the oven for an hour to ensure that any residual moisture had been dried up.

Once that was done, I treated all of these seam gaps with the rust converter.

Another spot is under the edges where the ball join mounts.

And into this gap also:

Robert,

Do your front lower a-arms have the sway bar mount brace?

John

Yes John, you can see them in the first image above where I have all the bits laid out on the ground.

They don't show in that pic as they are on the underside of the a-arms. I was just curious if you had them.

I see that you have a nice ding in the rear lower a-arm. I have a similar one on one of mine. It was probably from some tire jockey in the early days.

I also went through the same scraping and cleaning on my front lower a-arms. That area trapped a lot of dirt and gravel.

John

Sorry John, you were refering to the brace not just the mount.

Yes, mine have the brace exactly as you have pictured, and damn hard to clean and paint behind it I found.

I wrote to Precision Performance yesterday and had a reply straight back from Bob.

Most interesting, quoted below for the information of anyone looking for axles.

"We have been doing this since 1977. These other people keep trying to change whet has always worked. The axels we make press into your bearings like they are suppose to. They never did from the Factory or from all the others made. I guess they never figured it out.

So here you go 1.575 +.0008-0 That means 2000 press on to the bearing, any more and its to big to press apart later.

If you get this kind from any one else you still get them from me as I'm the manufacturer of almost all parts made.

Pantera by Wilkinson has them made in China and they are too small and spin."

Looking at their website, (http://precisionproformance.com/sc2014.htm) they say that the axles are 4340 billet steel, and can be supplied as stand alone axles @$375 USD per axle or complete kits with bearings, spacer and nuts @ $475 USD per axle.

Has anybody here used or have experience with the precision performance axles. All the answers appear to be right, but I'd like some feedback before I drop $1100 Ozzies in the hole!

I have used them on customer's cars. They are very nice.
Ron

I had a reply from Steve Wilkinson today. As you guys said, he was in Italy at the factory.

"LET TALK ABOUT YOUR AXLE PROBLEM! FIRST OFF LET ME STRAIGHTEN THINGS OUT ON DETOMASO MAKING THE AXLES THE WRONG SIZE. ALL THE AXLES THAT CAME IN THE PANTERA WERE THE RIGHT SIZE. FORD MADE A RUN OF AXLES IN 1972 THAT WERE UNDER SIZE BY .002. THEY WERE STILL OK TO RUN BUT YOU HAD TO INCREASE TORQUE ON THE NUT TO 420 LBS. WE STILL USE THE TORQUE OF 420 LBS ON THE NEW AXLES TODAY. YES, YOU SHOULD USE NEW AXLES THE DOUBLE BEARING AND A SHORT SPACER. THERE IS NO MOD. THAT HAS TO BE DONE TO INSTALL THE DOUBLE BEARING."

So still no confirmation of the finished sizing of a Wilkinson axle but I've replied and asked again as the last thing I want to do is have a set of axles sent to the other side of the World only to find that they are either undersized to fit the bearing correctly, or worse, have some taper to them.

This research takes such a long time. Poor old car is missing out on a run of Autumn 27 - 30 degree glorious days. Bugger!

Still haven't recieved my front upper control arms from Johnny Wood either. He posted them ages ago, bloody volcanoes!

My Percision Proformance axles arrived today. They look pretty darn nice. Looks like the rebuild can commence now. My repaired shcokers also arrived back from Aldans.

What a great bunch of guys. They found that two shockers had issues which thye felt related to manufacturing, so they replaced them. The other two had worn (actually bent) shafts in them so they fully rebuilt them with all new parts internally, charged me $100 and sent them back again. Fantastic service and highly recomended.

Question: What would cause three shocker shafts to become bent?

quote:

What would cause three shocker shafts to become bent?

Hard contact with curbs, trees, rocks.....???

Or terrible manufacturer quality control?

Larry

What about using tired or too weak rated springs so they are allowed to bottom out?

What spring rates are you using?

Aldan's are 'Hot Rod' shocks and IMO not really meant for anything much more than your local cruise in.

Julian

I rolled the old shocker shafts on a laminated board and the bend is just discernable.

The car originally had 350 / 550 springs when the shockers were fitted, but were changed in 2007 to 400 / 650 springs. Maybe the original springs bottomed out sometime?

Aldan have set up the replacement/rebuilt shcoks to an 'S' sprecification. This is a road/rally spec with much firmer valving than previously.

Hopefully these will be better and I might gain a better opinion than Julian's. I'll let you all know.

Hi guys, I've put the front end back together with Johnny's arms and it all looks great.

Went to make a start on the rear end tonight and noticed the MIN THICK 17.5 on the rear rotors.

Mine appear to be in nice conditon, virtually no scoring at all, and measure up to 17.82mm.

Can anybody tell me what the thickness is for a new set of rear rotors? This axle replacement is quite a big job, and I don't want to have to do it again if I find out that I'm really close to min thickness on the rotors with barely one skim left in them.

My fronts measure up 20.38mm but I can
t see any MIN THICK writing on the fronts so I'm not sure what's good and what's bad for the front.

So I've put the rear on hold until I sort out the thickness issue. Besides, it's too cold in the shed these last few nights anyway.