Today, June 12, 2002 is the fourth anniversary of my Pantera purchase. I set some important upgrades and repair goals last year and I'm happy to report all of those goals were met.
One of the biggest and most expensive upgrades was replacing the old York piston type A/C compressor with a smooth running Sanden rotary compressor and installing a new dryer and hoses. I also wired in a pressure switch to shut the A/C system down if the A/C system pressures got out of specs.
One of the most difficult and messy items was replacing the headliner. I kept putting that job off, but the results were great. I completed the messy job of cleaning the underside of the car and spraying on fresh undercoat. Another expensive item was purchasing all of the missing hand brake cables, brake cross member and linkage. Getting it installed and working was a easy job.
I replaced the hydraulic lifters with new CompCam lifters and found the last oil leak I had on the engine so the engine and power train is now leak free. New Euro disk type horns were installed to replace the malfunctioning stock horns. New window cat whiskers were installed on the inside of the doors.
1,333 miles were logged this year and the normal preventive maintenance items were done to flush the hydraulic fluids, coolant and oil changes. Two unplanned maintenance items occurred, a leak developed in my three year old Holley carb and I replaced it with a new unit and the alternator decided to charge only 20 AMPs . The new carb was $200 (Advance Auto felt bad about the failure and made me a deal) and the alternator was covered under an Advance Auto lifetime warranty.
The absolute high point of the year was having the Pantera win the Peoples Choice award in its class at the Atlanta Italian Car Day! There were nine outstanding Panteras at the show and a total of 115 awesome Italian cars. Thank you Pantera East for all the time you spent producing the cool de Tomaso Pantera wheels!
I’m finding that my original idea of limiting the amount of work and money that I would invest in the car is fading. It’s more fun to work on the car and improve it a little more every year. Now I’m thinking it might be fun to build a new Cleveland engine for the car with big horse power. 450 horses would be good!
I had someone ask me recently, "Mike, it looks like you could pretty much buy any car you wanted and it is very obvious that your Pantera is awesome, but why did you choose a Pantera?" That is exactly it! The Pantera is super awesome and nothing compares to the Pantera. Nothing!