PANTERAMERICA

Panteramerica was California based and owned by Barry Gale and Steve Hitter, they were possibly the earliest gray market importers of Panteras.

Alloy Boss 351s were not available as assembled engines as far as I know, but the alloy Cleveland blocks and heads were manufactured for Can Am racing. Dyno Don Nicholson has always been rumored to have ended up with most of the alloy 351C blocks & heads, he used them in his match racing cars. Gary Hall got his hands on some of that stuff eventually, there are a few Panteras out there with alloy Clevelands courtesy of Hall Panteras. I have a friend with a couple of unused pairs of the heads.

Kelly Coffield & Dan Jones have addictions to Ford alloy parts and surely have more info.

-G

Oso, Dan Gurney and company built some aluminum '351C's for racing, too. These blocks were made with very odd-looking 4-bolt main caps; the elongated right sides of the front two caps formed the end plates for a multistage dry-sump pump that was on a very long shaft. The shaft went thru the front of a stock oil pan and was externally driven by a vee-belt pulley off the crank. This was to comply with racing class rules against external pump dry-sump oiling, according to Gurney when I phoned him. Street guys usually cut the extended ears off the front main caps 'cause pump parts were even rarer than the blocks! One showed up at a Nor-Cal chapter meeting years ago for sale, and I caused a minor sensation when I carried it in the restaurant and set it on the head table for examination. It weighed about 80 lbs- an 8.2" deck-height smallblock that could take a 3-1/2" Cleveland crank. Had it been a 'std' 351-C deck-height block, I likely would have bought it. The N Cal owner may still have the thing....

quote:

Originally posted by Cowboy from Hell:
Panteramerica was California based and owned by Barry Gale and Steve Hitter, they were possibly the earliest gray market importers of Panteras.

Alloy Boss 351s were not available as assembled engines as far as I know, but the alloy Cleveland blocks and heads were manufactured for Can Am racing. Dyno Don Nicholson has always been rumored to have ended up with most of the alloy 351C blocks & heads, he used them in his match racing cars. Gary Hall got his hands on some of that stuff eventually, there are a few Panteras out there with alloy Clevelands courtesy of Hall Panteras. I have a friend with a couple of unused pairs of the heads.

Kelly Coffield & Dan Jones have addictions to Ford alloy parts and surely have more info.

-G

I've never had my hands on an alloy SK block. They are rare items and had some extra head bolt provisions among other intesting things. Dan knows of one that had lifter gallery damage and repair. Here's a few pics. I don't think it is available for sale but you'd need to ask Dan.

Kelly

Pic #2

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alloy SK block

OK whats a SK block?

SK was one of the part number prefixes (like XE) used by Ford engineering when assigning part numbers to experimental engineering parts.

Kelly

Barry Gale is/was the Deputy DA in Compton when I last saw him. He is completely out of the Pantera business but has some amazing stories to tell about the time he was the North American rep. for the marque.

I recalled seing aluminum 351C SVO blocks in the Ford Racing catalog in the early 80s. I don't remember if they called the catalog Ford Racing then but I do recall vividly the SVO block and thought then 'wouldn't it be nice to buy one and build it'. But that was also the time of the $800 ZF transaxles but I digress.