Pantera #3124 - on ebay, selling by BHCC - weird turbo?

When I saw it, I immediately thought of the setups I saw in the 70's. Matter of fact, 5177 had a very similair arrangement.

collage is the BHCC's "weird turbo"

The early (late 70s) Buick Regal Turbo engines used a remote manifold setup as well.

http://buickturboregal.com/wp-...e-3.8-V6-Turbo-3.jpg

I have Never seen a turbo setup like this one before.
Dont looks like a good solution.
Anybody know if it Works?



Kjeld

this draw-through setup is functionally similar to my gone-but-not-forgotten 1979 turbo Mustang. boost is limited because you can only compress fuel/air mixtures so far and there is no potential for inter cooling that I can see in this setup. Also, the turbo and that pipe that crosses over the transaxle throw a LOT of heat and I don't see room for any heat shielding.

I bought 5177 with the turbo installed

I never got around to experimenting with 5177, but one of my thoughts was water injection to drop the charge temp and reduce chance of pre-combustion.

If you notice the "barn find" does have sometype of injection. given the two hoses I would guess N2O/fuel.

when the builder disassembled 5177's engine his comments were the heads were "trash" in that the chambers had been opened to drop the CR below 7:1

Links to pages on sales web sites don't last forever, so for posterity I am including this picture.

Beverly Hills Car Club claims the VIN number is 8635 .... if so I assume they are referring to chassis number 8635. A chassis number in the 8000 range means it is without question a renumbered Pantera. Therefore we may never know what the cars original VIN number was.

However, from the pictures it appears to have originally been a Pre-L Pantera. It has Pre-L front bumpers mounted, it has holes drilled in the rear valence for Pre-L chrome bumpers, and it has cut-outs for US side marker lights. The doors have rectangular cut-outs for the door lever mechanism, so I would assume the original chassis number of this Pantera fell between 1383 and 4268.

In regards to the turbo charger, it appears to be the old system developed by AK Miller for the Pantera. See page 122 of Pat Ganahl's book named "Ford Performance", published by SA Design in 1979. The round chrome gizmo attached to the carb mounting pad of the intake manifold is identical.

Mind Train also sold a turbo system for the Pantera in the 1970s. I'm not sure which was first.

In that era I would see a 351C turbo set-up and wonder to myself "who in the hell needs a turbo when the engine will make 440 bhp naturally aspirated?".

Frankly my opinion hasn't changed during the ensuing 40 years.

I think that the hoses coming back from the block heater spigots (my assumption) to the bottom of the intake manifold are interesting.

IMHO, they might be useful for the first 5 minutes of warm-up, and then be a power-robber (by heating the intake charge) the rest of the time.

I am assuming they are water hoses, because of the hose coupler on the tube, like a radiator flush port.

Rocky

quote:

Originally posted by George P:
Beverly Hills Car Club claims the VIN number is 8635 .... if so I assume they are referring to chassis number 8635. A chassis number in the 8000 range means it is without question a renumbered Pantera. Therefore we may never know what the cars original VIN number was.

I think this is a ploy to make it more difficult for folks like us to publicly comment on the car and history from registry information etc. I have seen it a number of times from BHCC now, #8635 is simply a stock number. The VIN is as you state probably much earlier and probably benign in history, just not being made publicly available.

I know the car... I bought & sold it three different times back in the day when it was a nice car. Should have asked me, lol. 3124 It'll sell.