Tach

Pal, you badly need to get a schematic for your car! All Pantera vendors plus POCA & PI have nice big laminated ones for sale cheaply. Screwing around any car without one is like trying to cook dinner blindfolded IMHO. OK; there are two wires out of the distributor. One is blue/black and it goes to the coil. It also'tees' to the tach near the firewall. I'm quite surprised the car still runs, as you now have a loose connection somewhere if the tach jumps.

I cleaned things up where the wires connect, and now my tach is ok. For some reason I am hearing some ticking in the engine that I did not notice before. The car runs great, so I am not too concerned, but am not sure why I am suddenly hearing this. Maybe my hearing got better or I am having some kind of valve clanking?

I just discovered that the valves (or something) begins making noise only after about 10 minutes of warm up. When I changed the oil, I put in the same Castrol 20/50, but this time put in 1/2 Qt slick 50, and used a CarCuest (wicks?) #85515 oil filter instead of the usual Fram PH8A. They say these wicks filters filter better, but I wonder if it is starving the engine of oil (too much filtration possible, or the small amount of slick 50 (Xmas present) has anythign to do with it? Things were ok until I tried to do the old Pantera good, by changing oil & filter.

And guess what, some small degree of bouncing tach is back.

20W50 is a heavy oil for this time of year, and additives make the viscosity even higher. If you're very sure the dipstick is the correct length in your car (see the TSPs for details), continue to drive it but not at 6000 rpm. Additives are invariably unstable and will deteriorate quickly. So if the noise fades, don't use the additive any more... In winter I recommend 10W30. If you're concerned about the filter, go to select 'oil filter study' and read all 19 pgs of this excellent privately done test.

Whats a TSP?