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<DIV>From: <A href="mailto:MikeLDrew@aol.com">MikeLDrew@aol.com</A><BR>Subject:
[DeTomaso] Pantera fall down go boom :<(<BR>To: <A
href="mailto:detomaso@realbig.com">detomaso@realbig.com</A><BR>Message-ID:
<<A
href="mailto:844d.67fcf0e2.3b2fdbb8@aol.com">844d.67fcf0e2.3b2fdbb8@aol.com</A>><BR>Content-Type:
text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"<BR><BR>Hi guys,<BR><BR>Those of you who were at
the POCA Fun Rally last weekend perhaps noted that <BR>every single Pantera that
drove to the event, safely drove home at the end <BR>of the weekend, save
one.<BR><BR>Unfortunately, that one was mine. :<(<BR><BR>I've been loving my
new 408 stroker Cleveland, which has utterly <BR>transformed the
car. I had a wonderful drive up and over the Sierras, tempering my
<BR>enthusiam a bit in deference to the handful of Panteras that were running
<BR>with me (also a reflection of a recent run-in with Johnny Law that I managed
to <BR>escape from for about $300, but my next ticket will result in points on
my <BR>license).<BR><BR>At the track event, the first thing I did was to bleed
my brakes, as my <BR>pedal was soft and squishy. I got a bit of
trapped air out, which improved <BR>things, but they are far from where they
should be. I think this is a result <BR>of some uncharacteristically
horrible engineering that took place when my <BR>friend who restored the car
years ago, fabricated new brake lines. For <BR>reasons unknown, he
deliberately placed a big loop in each line, which is <BR>seemingly guaranteed
to trap air and result in a spongy pedal--exactly what I have <BR>had all these
years. I think I am going to trash all the hard lines and <BR>start
over.<BR><BR>But anyway. Once the brakes felt up to the task
(although far from <BR>perfect), I started driving on the track Thursday
afternoon, and the car was much, <BR>MUCH faster than two years ago.
I'm still very handicapped by my <BR>super-crusty tires (my intent was to burn
them off at this event and then replace <BR>them when I got home) which kept
cornering velocities laughably low, but also <BR>provided lots of opportunity
for sideways antics at relatively low speeds.<BR><BR>Two years ago, I would
enter the front straight in 3rd gear, upshift to 4th <BR>at about 5500 rpm, and
just be nudging 110 mph when I felt it was prudent <BR>to lift for the first of
the three S-curves leading to the hairpin at the <BR>end. This year,
with all the extra power, I was topping 130 mph.<BR><BR>Whee!<BR><BR>The thing
is, I would reach the 6000 rpm rev limiter well before the <BR>turn-in
point. My choices were to either upshft to 5th gear for just a
moment, <BR>then back down to 4th, or to just coast for a bit. Since
nobody was paying <BR>me for this and there were no trophies on the line, I
elected to do the <BR>latter. My car has an MSD system with the
'soft touch' rev limiter; the bumpf <BR>that comes with the MSD box indicates
that there is no harm in just riding <BR>the limiter, as it randomly cuts spark
from various cylinders to keep the RPM <BR>at a predetermined maximum
point. So often times, I'd keep my foot to the <BR>mat and just ride
the limiter for 100-200 feet or more, then lift off and <BR>turn in.<BR><BR>At
the end of the first day, the car was running just a little bit
weird. <BR>I was having trouble with the idle speed, and in fact the
next morning I <BR>had to turn the idle up quite a bit.<BR><BR>I then went out
for a second day of more fun and games on the track, and <BR>the motor seemed
'off' ever so slightly. I was driving with a raised <BR>eyebrow, and
then I came down the front straight and noted that it was well down on
<BR>power; with my foot to the mat it was 20 mph off at the turn-in
point. I <BR>determined that I would pull in at the end of the lap
for a look-see.<BR><BR>Didn't happen. :<(<BR><BR>When I got to the steep
uphill, the engine started stuttering, and I had my <BR>foot on the floor trying
to keep it going to at least the top so I could <BR>pull off. But
just before the top, it went POP and quit, leaving me stranded <BR>on the side
of the track, and causing a yellow flag in that area for the <BR>rest of the
session.<BR><BR>I figured the distributor shear pin had sheared.
There were no other <BR>indications, I had fuel, no clanking noises from the
engine, so it was pretty <BR>apparently an ignition issue.<BR><BR>They threw the
checkered flag and I coasted down the hill to a safe spot <BR>and abandoned the
car until lunchtime. Rich Boschert was kind enough to tow <BR>it in
to the paddock on his flatbed trailer, and then any number of <BR>volunteers
stepped in to help sort it out.<BR><BR>Steve Liebenow offered up some shear
pins, and I figured I'd be rolling a <BR>short time later. But then
the distributor cam out. Bad news. <BR>Distributor gear
totally mangled. :<(<BR><BR>Then we started thinking about getting a
replacement gear from Summit, just <BR>down the road. But Chuck
Melton took a look-see down into the engine, and <BR>what he saw was far from
good--the drive gear on the end of the camshaft <BR>was destroyed as well.
<BR><BR>Trailer time. :<(<BR><BR>Fortunately for me, Rich has to drive within
a mile of my house on his way <BR>home. He was kind enough to
trailer my Pantera back to the hotel, and then <BR>back home Sunday afternoon,
and allow me to follow behind at the wheel of <BR>his lovely green Pantera, so
all things considered, this went about as well <BR>as could be expected under
the circumstances. Sunday morning we had an <BR>uneventful drive
home, and since we had two other truck/trailers and another <BR>Pantera in
convoy with us, it was easy to unload the car and push it into the <BR>garage,
where it now sits, sad and forlorn.<BR><BR>Here's some photos of the gear on the
distributor. All of the teeth were <BR>filed razor-sharp, creating
much slop in the timing (the cause for my idle <BR>problems no
doubt). But then, a number of teeth simply sheared off
<BR>completely, which caused the car to stop dead.<BR><BR><A
href="http://www.poca.com/index.php/gallery/?g2_itemId=32311">http://www.poca.com/index.php/gallery/?g2_itemId=32311</A><BR><BR>When
you click on each photo, it opens up in a normal-sized view, but you <BR>can
select the max size, which shows really excellent detail; you can clearly
<BR>see where the teeth were literally sheared off.<BR><BR>I've since been in
touch with Dan Jones, John Christian and others, <BR>attempting to determine the
cause of the problem. I was using a steel hydraulic <BR>roller cam
core, and a Crane steel gear advertised to work well with such
<BR>things. However, I did have a couple of things going against
me:<BR><BR>1) Excessive oil pressure. I purposely
re-used the oil pump from my <BR>previous engine because it delivered 50 psi
there (verified with a mechanical <BR>gauge) and I did not want high volume or
high pressure, both of which are bad <BR>for Clevelands. However, my
new engine (perhaps due to tighter <BR>tolorences) sees the oil pressure gauge
pegged. Probably 80 psi at operating RPM. <BR>The
literature that comes with the cam gear says that it will live with a <BR>steel
cam, EXCEPT if excessive pressure or volume oil pump is used. They
say <BR>that rapid wear will then result--which I got. So, since oil
pumps are <BR>cheap, I'm going to start over from scratch with a new Melling
M-84A. (The <BR>Summit website is incorrect and doesn't list this
for the 351C, only showing <BR>it as applicable for the 351M and
400M. But in fact this is a 351C pump, <BR>as shown on Melling's
website.)<BR><BR>2) Driving on the rev limiter. Although
MSD says this about their <BR>system:<BR><BR>There are two ways to limit your
rpms. The rough way simply cuts off <BR>ignition spark, which can cause
backfiring, extreme engine roughness, and possible <BR>engine damage. The gentle
way is with these MSD Soft Touch rev controllers. <BR>They use sophisticated
computer circuitry to drop spark one cylinder at a <BR>time, until your engine
is at or below its maximum rpm. Those cylinders are <BR>then fired on the next
cycle, to prevent them from loading up with fuel. The <BR>result is smooth rev
limiting action without all the rough stuff.<BR><BR>The truth appears to be that
even this 'gentle' process is rather hard on <BR>the system, perhaps aggravated
by the fact that I'm running a gear drive <BR>instead of a timing
chain. It didn't occur to me that running on the limiter <BR>for a
few seconds at a time would stress the system, but in hindsight (and <BR>after
consultations with Dan, who hadn't heard of such a thing but <BR>subsequently
did research and found other stories of people suffering similar damage to
<BR>mine after running on the rev limiter, regardless of whether they were
<BR>using a timing chain, gears or whatever) I'm sure that my driving habits on
the <BR>track created this problem. I'm going to address this by
fitting a higher <BR>RPM pill in the MSD (the motor is built to go to 6500 all
day long but I was <BR>being 'conservative' and had a 6000 rpm chip in the MSD)
and by avoiding <BR>touching the rev limit, if at all possible, and certainly
avoid deliberately <BR>doing so and just keeping it on the limit.<BR><BR>I think
the gears were perfect when I drove over the hill to Reno, and I <BR>just busted
them all to hell at the track.<BR><BR>Tomorrow I'm ordering a new cam, same as
the old one (did I mention how <BR>wonderfully this engine ran?).
Dan also turned me on to a new distributor <BR>gear. Tri-Tec
Motorsports now makes a carbon-reinforced polymer distributor <BR>gear for the
351C/460.<BR><BR><A
href="http://www.tritecmotorsports.com/Carbon_Ultra-Poly">http://www.tritecmotorsports.com/Carbon_Ultra-Poly</A><BR>-Ford_Distributor_Gears.htm<BR><BR>I
am going to phone them and see what they have to say. I don't want
to <BR>run a bronze gear, because of all the maintenance hassles, but a steel
gear <BR>might not be as good a bet as one of these glorified plastic
ones. At this <BR>point I think I've got nothing to lose by
trying.<BR><BR>The motor will come out of the car early next month (no time
before then), <BR>by which point I should have my new components in
hand. With the help of <BR>friends more knowledgable than I am
(which is most of them, when it comes to <BR>engines anyway!), I hope to have it
repaired and ready to go in a day, then <BR>installed another day
later.<BR><BR>I will have to pull the oil pan and clean all the metal shavings
out (and <BR>also from the front of the engine), and the oil pump pickup is
likely filled <BR>with debris. It goes without saying that the oil
filter will be changed as <BR>well. While we'll take a look at the
bearings while we're in the <BR>neighborhood, I'm fairly confident that the rest
of the motor was unaffected by this <BR>little glitch.<BR><BR>We'll
see!?<BR><BR>Once it's up and running, I'll pull the distributor every few
thousand <BR>miles to inspect for any signs of untoward wear or
failure. I'm hoping this is <BR>a one-time situation to be quickly
and relatively painlessly resolved.<BR><BR>Fingers
crossed!<BR><BR>Mike<BR><BR></DIV><BR><BR>__________ Information from ESET Smart
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