The Pantera Place
"Your de Tomaso
Connection"
Keeping The Covering on The Firewall Cover
The firewall covering is glued around the back edge of the fiberglass firewall with upholstery glue (like contact glue). Over time the coving shrinks reducing the amount of material available to be glued to the fiberglass resulting in loose covering. A great fix for this is to buy some cheap supper glue and glue the covering to the fiberglass. Be very careful not to get the glue on the outside of the covering so keep it off of your fingers.
Removing The Firewall Cover
Slide both seats as far forward as possible. You will need to move your floor mats if you have them.
Take out the bolts that hold the shoulder harness to the firewall. My bolts are painted black so I’m careful not to scratch them.
Carefully lift up on the firewall. It has some flat metal hooks that slide into some straps on the main metal firewall so it must be moved up to release the hooks.
Holding the passenger seat back, forward, extract the firewall out of the passenger side of the car. The firewall must be lifted up so that it will clear the center console. I don’t have the extra center arm rest unit to remove.
Be very, very careful that the firewall hump does not catch on anything on the seat back. Keep the top edge of the firewall away from the door opening rubber seal. The covering on the firewall can be damaged easily and the door rubber rips easily.
I’m not sure why I take it out the passenger side but on my car it seems to work best that way. It must be that my car is parked in the left side of the garage.
When the firewall is out the engine hatch will be visible and is held to the main firewall with small bolts.
Remove the bolts and lift out the hatch. Note that the shift linkage is close to the edge of the hatch on the driver’s side so when you put it back make sure that you check the linkage in all gears. The inside of the hatch is usually covered in some places with belt rubber dust and will need a little cleaning.
After you install the engine hatch the firewall is installed back in the car in reverse order. Getting the firewall hooks to engage the straps is a little tricky so you will need to keep working with it. The firewall is started in a position up about 1” to 1 ½” and then pressed to the back and then pushed down so the hooks engage.
Some people find that they need to remove the two seat back position bolts so that the seat back on the passenger side can be moved forward for clearance during removal.
Use extreme caution, if you plan on running the engine with the engine cover off. The belts and pulleys are very exposed and lethal. The seat backs can come in contact with the belts and pulleys as well as body parts.