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Hi all. Been working on my Pantera pretty hard lately, preparing for the new interior and exterior. This weekend I finished up the door electronics. First on the list was a remote door popper kit. This lets me open the Pantera doors with one click on a remote. Each door has its own button on the remote. I no longer use the exterior door handles (the holes will be welded in when it comes time to paint the car), and more importantly, I don't have to lock and unlock the doors with a key. Yay! Welcome to the new millenium!

I also tossed the stock window gear in favor of Vader Performance's new window regulator system. It was spendy, but installation couldn't have been more simple and the results are awesome. The windows are super quiet and go up and down quick.

Not sure how much you'll be able to make out from the pic, but the door popper selenoid is bolted on to the two pieces of black flat bar. The interior door handle and the door popper selenoid attach to the door latch mechanism with cables. Works like a charm!

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I ordered the kit from Summit Racing ($199). ELI-99800


Everything would have fit just fine with the stock window hardware btw. I didn't need the Vader Window Regulator kit to make room, it was just handy to do them both at the same time.

I bought that Summit kit in particular because I like the brand and it included a set of emergency release cables as well. The selenoids have 50 lbs. of pulling power which is overkill for the Pantera. 35 lbs. would have been plenty, perhaps even 15 lbs, but it looks like Electric Life doesn't use smaller selenoids in most of their kits. I didn't use some of the items in the kit, so it might be possible to pick up only what you need and save some money. I'd have to tally it up though.

To install in the Pantera I first removed the metal rod that connects the interior door handle to the door latch. This leaves holes at both ends which you can now use to mount cables. One cable goes from the selenoid to the door latch, the other goes from the interior door handle to the same door latch (replacing the metal rod that was removed).

I decided to mount the selenoid down low towards the front of each door. This keeps the weight low where you want it, and it also keeps the cable almost perfectly in-line with the door handle and latch. I bought a piece of steel flatbar at Low's, measured and cut a couple strips for each door. Drilled two holes in each for the selenoid bracket. Bolted them together and welded to the door as seen in the pic below. I did make slight modifications to the kit's bracket to buy myself a little extra clearance for the window.

Once the selenoids are mounted and the cables are attached, all that I needed to do was wire them up to the control module. The module appears to be part of an alarm system, and as such, most of the wiring that you see in the top pic is not needed. Not sure if you could actually finish wiring everything else up and have a full alarm system or not. For the door poppers, you only need a ground and permanant hot connected to the module. There are a couple relays that need to be hooked up that send a power wire to each of the selenoids.

The selenoids ground through the mounting bracket, so the only wiring there is to connect a power wire.

I'm not using the door thrusters as the weather stripping pops the door out far enough to grab the inside of the door.

I looped into the other cables with the emergency release cable, and weaved the other end through the doorjam and out the inner front fender through the hole in the firewall that the radio antenna wire escapes through. If I ever don't have power (or leave my keys inside the car), I can still pull that hidden cable to get into the car.

So now when I walk up to the car I hit button 1 on the controller and the driver's door pops open. If I have a passanger, I also hit button 2 on the controller. Buttons 3 and 4 could be used for anything else. I don't have mine hooked up to anything yet, but was thinking about buying a couple more selenoids and hooking up the hood and decklid.

Here are a couple more pics showing the mounted selenoid and two cables attached to the door latch. I'll shoot some more if you're interested in seeing anything specific.

Oh, now I don't need an interior door lock either (the one that comes through the top of the interior door panel) so I removed mine and will weld up the hold before we put the new door panel on.


Looks great! Richard Barkley's Pantera was my inspiration so I too went this route last summer. Filled in the holes for the door handles for a nice clean look. I ended up going with a separate receiver/transmitter for each door, in case one zapped out, I could always use the other. The spare relays on Moseley's relay kit finally came in handy.
I am sure that you don't need me to point out anything to you BUT there is a difference between a "customized" car and an "updated" car.

I admit that the shved handles on a Pantera are a nice touch but I think you cross over at that point as opposed to a flared fender car which many would consider an "updated" car.

Customized cars in my experience are next to impossible to sell for anything resembling even a stock car price.

Someone is going to take a big hit on it. Just my one cents. I'mtwo poor for two cents. This is still better then no sense at all?
quote:
Originally posted by lmguy:
visited your web page and also like the gaugue up grade you did.

Did the spedo and tach installation require alot of mods to fit the dash?


Almost none at all. Had to make the holes slightly bigger. Those inner rings are plastic, so it was easy to do with a box cutter. Trimmed maybe a sixteenth of an inch all around the hole to make the new ones fit. Oh, I also installed a digital speedo output from the ZF so I could I could run Autometer's digital speedometer and ditch the speedometer cable.

There are some detailed instructions over at Pantera Pace.
quote:
Originally posted by jeff6559:
I may have mentioned this before but here it is again.

Tom Tjaarda said he never designed door handles on his cars. He liked the cleaner look.

I agree, no script, no bumpers, no wipas, no front turn signals, no door handles...nice & clean is the way to go. At least until the local gum shoe comes sniffin around. Nice looking yellow Pant.
Great looking setup...thanks for giving us more ideas on projects for the car. A couple suggestions (from my boat rigging days), you might want to put more than one cable swedge to hold your cables to the stock door latch mechanism, also to make sure that the cable doesn't become chaffed and break over time you might want to add a thimble to the cable...you can buy them at West Marine...it slips into the loop of the cable and keeps you cable form breaking down, nylon or metal thimbles for that size cable are no more than $1-1.50 apiece...here's a link


http://www.westmarine.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Sit...l_2&ddkey=SiteSearch
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