zf horsepower limit?

Lets just say that ZF's are mostly used for raod cars and not drag racing .. this is obviuos by the shifter ..your not going to do much power shifting ... second there is a lot of parts ..from heavy axles to CV joints and so on .. but this is no Ford 9" and a top loader ... this is pricey stuff.

Ron

some info,
http://www.panteraclub.com/racing.htm
http://hem.passagen.se/hemipanter/
http://pantera.infopop.cc/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/9550045562...000045535#3000045535
http://pantera.infopop.cc/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/9550045562...330058245#2330058245
I'll probably go with the Mark William's axles when that day come's
Not much on drag racing,but I'm interested!
Let us know what you find.

Mark

The ZF will handle 500HP no problem road racing and general street duty. If you put sticky tires and start droping the clutch hard at 4000 RPM you probably will start having problems with the transaxle.

Most of us Pantera owners try and avoid ZF problems as they are very expensive to repair.

You can run the Pantera at the strip with out damage you just have to ease it off the line and take your time shifting. The Pantera dispite having the mid engine design is not the ideal car for drag racing.

thanks for the links. i have run across the hemipanter website before and there is a ton of good info on there that can be used for any car!
looking to get a pantera and just trying to figure out the weak links. i have seen the costs for new transaxles and even rebuilds, so i figure that is about the last part i want to see go bye-bye on a pantera.
not really looking for a strip dedicated slick equiped car, but i am planning a pretty high hp build and it surely will run the quater a few times for bragging rights.
anything else i should look for? thanks

Just a Pantera with little to no rust

It is said that it was designed to handle the BB. I didn't say that. I think 500hp is about the limit personally. The syncros are just powdered iron don't forget. Just one bad shift and they are just powder.

The most meaningfull information I had seen for the ZF's came from an articles in PI a while back from one of the guys who tracks his car. He was running ZF and 800hp and they were having a hard time keeping gears in it and keeping in reliable for as much as one weekend at the track.

He worked with LB I think it was and they did 2 things.

One is they run a cooler.
Second was they changed fluid after every race.

In doing so they were able to run all season and had not had any failures sense then. I think heat the worst enemy.

powdered metal huh? would of thought bronze for such a costly piece. i mean they have had bronze around since, well, the bronze age, lol.
the car would mostly see only street driving, but would be nice to know it would be able to handle whatever you wanted to toss at it. sounds like a top notch oil and frequent changes does help though. after searching and seeing gears themselves for $1700+ oil changes look like a pretty darn cheap insurance.
in the Z world, the first couple years of 6spd trans were having problems with 3rd and 5th syncros (had to have mine replaced) but the actual trans is very comparable to the supras and vipers with guys running 9 seconds flat with slicks on them. clutches are the expensive part though at $3k+.

is there another donor car that had the same trans or anyone done any type of hybrid trans swap?

There are a few cars that have used the same series ZF as the Pantera. The most popular of the replacement cases come from the BMW M1. As for swaps, there are few that work. They either break or are very expensive.

quote:

Originally posted by overZealous1:
powdered metal huh? would of thought bronze for such a costly piece. i mean they have had bronze around since, well, the bronze age, lol.
the car would mostly see only street driving, but would be nice to know it would be able to handle whatever you wanted to toss at it. sounds like a top notch oil and frequent changes does help though. after searching and seeing gears themselves for $1700+ oil changes look like a pretty darn cheap insurance.
in the Z world, the first couple years of 6spd trans were having problems with 3rd and 5th syncros (had to have mine replaced) but the actual trans is very comparable to the supras and vipers with guys running 9 seconds flat with slicks on them. clutches are the expensive part though at $3k+.

is there another donor car that had the same trans or anyone done any type of hybrid trans swap?

The way I heard it was that it was originally developed for the Ford GT40. When Ford took over the GT40 in '64 or so it had a different transaxle in it. It was not dependable behind the 289 Ford engine.

I read later that when the 427 was being tested in the Mark II that there were durabilaty problems with the ZF and Phil Remington designed a replacement transmission for it, a 4 speed, using the internal components from the Ford T&L "top-loader" transmission and that solved the durabilaty problem.

That transmission would be an alternative to the ZF I'm sure. Considering that Ford only built something like a total of 15 427 cars between the Mark II, the Mark IIb, and the Mark IV, if one could find one of those transaxles I would expect the price of it to be representative of being the transmission of a probably $5 million car.

The durabilaty of the synchros in the ZF can be improved with replacement bronze ones. Steve Wilkinson had them made in bronze and I think he sells them for$150 each.

The only clutch that I heard the HP ratings on for this application was the Centerforce Dual Friction. The hp ratings are not from Centerforce but the racers. It is said that the hp limit of the 11" is about 800hp.

Having said that and having toasted one myself with a 200hp shot of nitrous I think that the functional hp rating should be more like 700hp.

All of these factors combined I, me, can't see what the point is of putting more them about 500hp in this car and much more then 5.7L displacement. You can but you aren't going anyware with it, or at least not very far, for very long without breaking it.

That kind of power just wasn't a consideration way back. Like the wiseass says, "you can lead a horse to water, but that doesn't make him a duck".

Oh, and I just had a recent discusion with Steve Wilkinson about this subject. His view is that the ZF is made just for the Pantera, no other vehicle, GT40 included.
He was told that ZF had to be "sweet-talkied" into building it for the car and that some of the internals like the synchros were a result of ZF saying we are going to build it our way or not at all.

The implication is also that it is one of the ways that ZF reduced the likeliness that it would wind up behing anyones BB without ZF cashing in on that.

Also of note, and I am sure that you are going to hear from them, the 427 owners, but Dennis Quella of Pantera Performanc Center in CO, built several 427 Ford Panteras. It isn't know by anyone but him what if anything he did to add durabilaty to the ZF.

I only hear good things about Dennis and I never heard anyone say that they broke one of his ZF's. Perhaps he is the guy to talk to?

thanks for all the info. i will have to look up dennis and see what the scoop is. i would like to have some sort of reassurance the trans can for the most part handle what i plan to toss at it.
i just know myself and after the last few projects, i will go completely overboard on the motor, haha. being a small block ford, parts are plenty and fairily cheap, so mega power with a couple turbos is easily attainable.
i have a couple crazy plans for a hybrid (so crazy i don't even want to tell about it for fear of laughter, lol) but fear cutting of the car and the shear looks of it will lessen what the pantera actually is, which is counter productive.
this is a shot in the dark, but what about an adapter plate and a porsche trans axle? i know they have adapter plates to hook a V-8 up to one, and i assume with a little work, the engine could be shifted back of forth a little to set the axle shafts at the correct position.
that may atleast may be an option to pull the zf, and put one in so if it grenades, go get another, and not run into the high prices of a blown zf.
just bouncing ideas around. the next car i do i am having high aspirations of well into 1000hp, just trying to find a way to do it with the pantera.

Hi Overzealous and fellow Portlander,

Unless your after dyno sheet bragging rights I can promise you that 700HP in a Pantera is enough to out run anything in this town. Stop light to stop light you have the torque advantage, and on the freeway, just downshift to 3rd, hit the happy pedal, and all else near you disappears.

I remember Lloyd saying the trans would handle 900 HP if you rolled on the throttle.

Art

quote:

Originally posted by ParaPantera:
Hi Overzealous and fellow Portlander,

Unless your after dyno sheet bragging rights I can promise you that 700HP in a Pantera is enough to out run anything in this town. Stop light to stop light you have the torque advantage, and on the freeway, just downshift to 3rd, hit the happy pedal, and all else near you disappears.

i hear what your saying. i guess part of it is having some bragging rights, but also kind of a progressive personal challenge as i will be making most all the parts for the build. my Z right now is tapping on 800rwhp and wanted the next car to go a step beyond that. so ya, more of a personal challenge.
glad you chimed in on this as i have been meaning to pm you about maybe meeting up one weekend so i can take a closer look at your car?
pm sent here in a minute or 2!

When RBT rebuilds a ZF, it is guaranteed for up to 550 foot pounds of torque.

Greg Esakoff is putting over 700 bhp through his ZF under racing conditions. He has had to make modifications in order for it to survive.

If you plan to put that kind of power to the ground under racing conditions, you'll need to research the Pantera's coachs' propensity for cracking and how to rectify that problem.

Greg has also had to go through his ZF many times because of his gearing. I also know of some that have a 514 crate motor in their Pantera who have blown out the sides of the ZF. I would guess too much torque.

Has anyone seen this transmittion www.gearfox.net

Priced at about 15k ..problems solved ?

Ron

Sure you can fix the problem with a $15,000 transmission.

My question would be, where does it stop? It's only a $35,000 car.

I must add I have never seen Greg Esakoff pussy foot his Pantera around the track. He drives that Pantera hard. No rolling in and out of the throttle for Greg. In fact if you have never been to Vegas it is a must see event to watch Greg drive the track in his Pantera.

That is for certain. He winds through those gears so fast it is amazing! And that is a really nice car!

If you want to go racing it going to cost you. .. I have a friend he spent 30k on the body 30k on a motor and is using the stock trans and axles .. whats do you think is going to happen the first time he hits the GAS ? If you want to play with the big boys in the sand box .. your going to get sand in your eyes.

Ron

good saying, hahha.

Here is a picture of Gregs car