Restoration of #2695

Engine bay is being smoothed. Unused factory cutouts are welded over.

The headlight buckets were not media blasted and were still painted. While stripping the paint and preparing these I found that the car was originally blue and then became black.

Test fitting front bumpers.

Test fitting rear bumpers.

Here are some of the bondo tools utilized including a pneumatic gun and cartridges by 3M. The body shop up in Seattle completed about half the bondo and it was up to me to do the remainder. And the engine bay used a lot of bondo. The 3M gun became my new best friend for this effort. The electric sander pictured in the bottom left is used to flatten the bondo during its green state, intentionally clogging the sand paper. The air file (belt sander) gets into tight places.

The stock 351C crankshaft was offset ground resulting in 377 cubic inches. Domed pistons were used and the result was very high compression that is not compatible with today's ordinary pump gas. Clay Smith Engineering (Mr. Horsepower) ordered new dished piston to reduce the compression. The dome of pistons that came with the car were the inverse of the dish that you see here.

Engine block back from Clay Smith Engineering after blue printing.

Engine block being built up.

Closed chambered D0AE cylinder heads with stainless steel valves. This picture is before Clay Smith Engineering blue printed the heads. Their objective was to eliminate stuck valves due to the higher combustion chamber temperatures with today's ordinary pump gas.

Valve cover removed to adjust lash for the solid lifers. Temporary exhaust manifold is installed.

9 quart oil pan for Pantera by Kevco. Clay Smith Engineering blue printed the high volume oil pump for the engine to this pan.

Engine on a test stand in the garage. It survived the initial startup and cam break in. What a relief. I changed the oil and filter after about 30 minutes. It was run for a total of about 4 hours during which ignition timing and manifold vacuum at idle were fine tuned.

Front hub

Rear carrier. It was powder coated blue when I got it, along with all of the control arms and hub component. I had it all stripped to bare metal and then powder coated all pieces gun metal grey using the setup in my garage. The powder coating was relatively easy because once the parts where stripped they were back to a sand blasted finish.

Rear hub and suspension.

Rear hub mocked up.

Project when I brought it home a year and three months ago.

I will post more pictures as this progresses.

Hi All,

Thanks for the encouragement.

Peter, regarding dual bearings in the rear, I will be continuing with the stock configuration based on feedback from one of our vendors.

Jan, the car will probably be painted in Rosso Corsa. The body will be stock with chrome bumpers and shiny stainless trim. Wheels will be Campy clones painted to look stock. The interior will also be stock. The engine bay will depart from stock and be finished in car color with a polished ZF, polished intake manifold, and some other polished components, similar to the engine bay on my 1971 Pantera.

The picture below shows the roof finished and ready for paint.

The metal near the bottom of the rear crossmember was bent in several places from jacking up the car. The metal was straightened and the crossmember was smoothed. Also added a jack plate to prevent bending the metal again. The jack plate is 1/2" x 2/12" billet aluminum and fits well under the cross member, and is slightly thicker than the lip on the crossmember that is prone to damage.

Coolant tubes being mocked up on the bottom of the car.

Steve

Your lower roof line seems a bit skewed to the north on the decklid end starting in the middle of the rear side glass. Not to late to perfect. The line should fade away about flush with the end of the trim. Here is a pic

This effort was interrupted by two other Pantera projects.  It has regained momentum and the car is now on a rotisserie at Panteras By Wilkinson.  The color is Guards Red.

good to see progressing.   please continue the Post

Beautiful!  

As a Porsche guy as well, I give the Guards Red two thumbs up!

Thats a fantastic choice for the pantera. 

I really like the grey suspension components as well. 

Please keep us posted

Looks great!

Thank you for your responses.  The car is moving forward and here are some pictures from today.  They have to wait for the paint to cure before sanding and buffing.  It may be hard to see in the pictures but orange peel is forming as the clear coat cures.  When the time has come the orange peel will be sanded flat and then polished.