12/25/09- Pantera: Success! Got the gill grills done today. Made them the same way Jaime and I made the hood vents.

12/24/09- Pantera: Christmas vacation means I have time to work on the Pantera! Over the last couple of days I have completed the carbon fiber stripes, made the side mirror mounts and got those put on, got the door panels on, brush finished the wheel lips and did a bunch of cleaning. Tomorrow Jaime is going to help me make the screens for the "gills". If all goes well, on Saturday we'll drive somewhere cool for a good photoshoot.

12/17/09- Pantera: Lots of work still to do, but things are quickly coming together. Got the carbon fiber hood and decklid back from Paint. The sides were painted body color, leaving a carbon fiber stripe down the middle. The stripe will be continued over the roof, and down the front and rear of the car with fake (but very convincing) carbon fiber vinyl.

12/04/09- Pantera: Now that the body has been painted, reassembly begins. We still have a bit of paintwork to do (hood, decklid, wheel touchups). I still have some other goodies like the new Wilwood brakes to put on as well. In these pics, the windshield is back in, headlights, side markers, tail lights and exhaust. The side markers are some Ferrari lights that I found on ebay. They fit nearly flush on the body. Gonna look real nice and keep me safer at night. The tail lights are tinted Carello clear lenses with LED's for colored lighting.

11/20/09- Pantera: O.K. so it took two months to get the paint work done, but look at it!!! It's amazing. And it looks even more amazing in person than it does in the photos. The car is smooth as glass and the pearlescent paint is a really bright, metallic orange where the sun hits directly, and changes to a red color in the shade. Just stunning to see.

Here we have placed the carbon fiber hood and decklid on to mark out the center stripe. More to come soon!

9/17/09- Pantera: It's been a while, but here's another update on the Pantera. Keeps looking rougher and rougher doesn't it?

The paint has mostly been sanded down to bare metal, or "All Metal" (an aluminum based body filler) in these shots. I'm happy to report that the car is very straight for the most part. There is evidence of a small fender bender on the right front fender, but other than that, it's solid. Notice how much lead is in the rear uprights. It probably approaches 1/4" thick. That'll all be sanded out and built up again with All Metal.

8/22/09- Pantera: Another update on the Pantera. After next week it should be ready to take to the body shop for Paint prep.

1. Fender: I really like the fender vents in the front of the Lotus that help alleviate the high air pressure that builds up in the front wheel wells, so we decided to do something similar on the Pantera. We wanted the vents to follow the lines of the new flares. We originally only planned for one, but after cutting the first, Josh drew out a second and I really liked the shark gill look it created. The holes will be filled with an embossed screen mesh that will fit flush with the fender (same style as what Jaime and I made for the hood vents). In this first shot, you can also see the new mounting hole for the side marker lights that will fit nearly flush with the body.

2. Side: Just about finished up with the metal work. Still need to weld in some bracing on the rear uprights. Looks like I'll want to raise the rear suspension just a bit. Can't wait to get the new brakes on so you can see those blue calipers and two piece rotors through the open wheels.

3. Rear Quarter: Check out how much lip that rear wheel has. Amazing. I have a new carbon fiber deck lid that should be arriving in another week or so. It'll partially be painted body color. More on that later.

4. Rear: The car must be a foot wider now. Crazy stuff. Those Nitto Drag radials look fantastic. I'm thinking about having the exhaust ceramic coated so that I don't have to fuss with the black Paint burning off. Not sure though. Maybe that'll be too glitzy.

7/25/09- Pantera: The latest pics.

1. The fender flares are being finalized. Right side is farthest along.

2. The top piece of the right rear flare has been welded on. Lower pieces are tacked into place.

3, 4. Right front fender flare is pretty much done except for a little clean up, and trimming on the inside. A new fender liner will be made to cover the area behind the headlights.

5. Bought a new big brake kit from Pantera Performance in Colorado. These guys always have good prices on high quality go fast parts. Wilwood calipers, two piece rotors, stainless lines, new master cylinder, proportioning valve, etc. I disassembled the calipers, painted them blue, sanded off the Wilwood logo and reassembled. These will go on the car once I get it back from the paint shop.

6. Our own Auger Resources led tail lights with clear lenses have now been smoked. I think they're going to look great with the Carbon Fiber bits on the car and the dark wheels.

7/17/09- Pantera: More progress on the pantera body:

1. Radiator support has been rebuilt (thought you can't see it anymore) and the new front valance has been put on.

2. Got the wheels back after having theirs welds cut, centers moved, and re-welded. Check out how much lip is on the rear wheels now! :O
The paint will need to be touched up where it was bolted into the machine that does the cutting.

3. Another fender flare test fitting, now that the wheels have the correct offsets.

7/10/09- Pantera: More progress on the pantera body:

1. The new wheels and tires were bolted on one side, and the fenders temporarily fit to the body. We're checking fitment here and decided to bring the rear wheel out another 1 3/4", and the front out another 1". The wheels have to be sent off, the center weld cut so that the centers can be moved and rewelded. Then the wheels will be repolished, and possibly repainted. Can't go this far, and then not do it right.

2. Windshield has been removed. The plan is to delete the clunky old metal piece in the windshield gasket and go with a solid piece of rubber for a more modern look. Plans also include removing, and smoothing the drip rail over the side windows. The drivers side door had a little spot of rust bubbling through so it has been sanded and marked. The metal will be replaced.

3. This is the new front valance top, and the old one below. Not much left of the old one besides rust and bondo. I bought the replacement piece on ebay a while back from a guy who hand makes them in Switzerland or something like that. Looks nice, hope it fits well.

7/09/09- Pantera: Wow, six months since my last post. That sucks. Been so busy with the new studio it's been hard to find the time to work on personal projects. Starting to get back into weekends and such though, so here we go:

The Pantera is over at PI Motorsports, where Jerry and the guys are are doing some serious work on our car. Stuff that I don't dare mess around with myself. They asked me to visit the shop regularly, to give feedback and make sure that everything is going just as I'd like it to. How cool is that? Here's a run down of what's going on in the pics. Keep checking back as I'll be posting updates on the car weekly until it's done.

1. Just getting started here. Paint has been taken off where the steel Group4 style fender flares meet up. Notice that the line overlaps the side marker lights. Those will be filled in, and new side marker turn signal indicators will be placed behind the front wheel arches, similar to a lot of cars you see on the road today.

2. This is one of the new wheels test mounted in the rear. They are a more modern interpretation of the Group 4 style wheel. 18x12's for the rear. 17x8's for the front. The rolled lip on the wheel creates a huge deep dish look. Wheel centers have been painted a dark metallic silver to visually push the centers back, make the disk brakes show up more, and tie back into the dark carbon fiber hood, deck lid (coming soon) and the blacked out chrome. Tires are Nitto 555R's in the rear, 305/35/18's. Nitto 555's up front, 255/40/17's. The tire sizes were hard to find, but they have a great look to them. The rears look beefy and have a tall side wall.

3. Front bumper area is being prepared to be smoothed since I moved the turn signals behind the grill years ago. Also notice that the lower valance has been removed. It didn't take much. It was so rusty and curb crushed that it almost fell off. Radiator support underneath has also rotted away. The radiator support is being rebuilt and new valance welded on.

4. The rear end has been smoothed. The rear bumperettes will not be going back on, nor will the Pantera emblems.

5. I installed door poppers a while back. Now the door handles have been smoothed. Here you can see the new metal that has been welded in.

1/24/09- Pantera: Did Hell just freeze over? I think it did. Jaime finished the Pantera seats this past week! We bolted them in, washed the poor car, and took it for a drive this evening. This is the first time that it's been on the road in over a year! :O Time sure flies when you're having fun. I also haven't ever taken a new photo of the white on black switch labels either, so here they are. We ran out of sun as we washed the car, so I didn't get to take any pictures of it when it was all clean and dry.

09/20/08 - Pantera: Finished putting custom air vents into our new carbon fiber hood that we purchase from Panteras by Wilkinson. The hood is super nice and fits great. It came without vents, and that actually worked out nicely because we didn't want to install the traditional Pantera hood vents. They're very rectangular, and the straight metal grill really makes them look dated. We wanted something with more shape, made from a more modern material. And since we're running the radiator in a more laid down position, we were able to make the vents taller to help vent more hot air.

First I had to come up with the design. I designed the vents to mimic the shape of the gap between the back of the radiator and the front of the trunk. Had to leave room for the hood support beams on the sides and in the center. I rounded the corners using a small paint can cap, and adjusted the front most line to have the same curve as the front of the hood (instead of the straight line of the radiator). Jaime found the steel mesh material from an on-line computer store. Comes in flat sheets. Once we had the design and metal mesh, we needed a way to shape the mesh. Made a trip to Low's for a couple planks of wood and some router bits. Traced the pattern onto the wood and made a positive and negative shape for each vent. Inserted the mesh, fit the wood pieces together and clamped them down, pressing the mesh into the proper shape. Primed and painted the vents semi-gloss black with rattle cans.

Next, I traced the design onto the back side of the hood so that I could see the vent position relative to the hood supports. Remember how I used a small plastic cap as a guide to draw the rounded corners of the vents? I drew the circle at each corner, marked the center of each circle, and drilled a small hole through the hood at each mark. These were used as registration marks so I could then transfer the vent pattern to the front side of the hood. I used a metal cutting disk on the dremel and cut from the front side of the hood to make sure that all of the lines were perfect. This is the most carefully I've ever cut anything! Ya! nothing like cutting up a $1600 hood! All the lines came out perfect. Once the holes were cut, I hand sanded the edges and test fit both vents.

Now it was time to finish off the newly cut edge. Using 1/4" pinstriping tape, I followed around each vent hole to make a guide line. Then I outlined the guide tape with a second piece of tape, and removed the original guide line tape. This gave me a perfect 1/4" piece of exposed carbon fiber around each vent hole. Jaime finished masking off the rest of the hood and I scuffed the carbon fiber resin lightly to help the new paint stick. This time I painted with glossy black. Once the paint was dry I installed each vent using a bead of black silicone sealant on the back side of the hood.

Once the silicone was dried we re-installed the hood. Pardon the dust on the rest of the car. We're getting there, one piece at a time!

08/31/08 - Pantera: Jaime and I spent all weekend on the Pantera. I installed some electronic bits and Jaime installed some new carpet..

First, I installed Pantera Electronic's LED Front Signal Lights Conversion. These things are bright! In the first pic you can see the new LED panel installed into the original Pantera housing. This is an awesome install. Much easier than I expected. No modifications are made to the factory housing, just open it up and insert the LED's. Run the wires through and put connectors on them. They plug right into the factory harness. The only other thing left to do is install an electronic signal flasher. Pantera Electronics also makes a nifty flasher. It has a Green LED that lights up letting you know that the flasher has power and is operating correctly, plus it makes an electronic "di-doo" flasher sound. The flasher sound is quite loud, great for people with loud engines. It was a litte too loud for me though, so I put a little strip of foam tape over the speaker hole and now it's pefect! Did I mention that these are bright?

Second, I installed Pantera Electronic's Headlight Motor Controller (Jon does incredible work.) The Panteras are getting on in their years now, and one of the things that people are having problems with is the pop-up headlight operation. Not only does Jon's controller make the headlights reliable, it addresses a ton of other issues with the factory set up. You ready for this?

• Permits reliable operation of the headlight lift motor. Modern reliable semiconductor design, no relays to fail. Works in Pre-L and L Model Panteras.
• Preserves headlight switch life by removing heavy electrical load from the headlights switch on the console.
• Preserves dimmer switch by removing heavy electrical load from the headlight high/low dimmer switch on the steering column.
• Preserves headlight limit switches by removing heavy electrical load from the headlight lift mechanism limit switches.
• Minimizes electrical load of the headlight operation by proper sequencing motor and headlight operation.
• Automatically turns off parking and headlights when ignition is turned off, regardless of headlight switch position (no more coming back to a dead battery because you left your lights on. I've even managed to have the headlights stay on while they were in the down position!)
• LED's on controller indication proper switch operation and well as aid in trouble shooting (this is true, because of the LED indicators, I discovered that I had some wires in the wrong positions on the fuse block, been that way for a while, ooops.)

While I was messing with the electrical stuff, Jaime got to work on the loop style carpet. She made patterns out of paper first, then cut out the carpet and sewed various pieces together, essentially creating a "moulded carpet" look, only better. The fit is stunning. I'm totally amazed. Not a wrinkle or bare edge to be seen. Fanstastic!

01/12/08 - Pantera: I got the drivers side seatbelts installed and Jaime finished up the remaining center console pieces. The box surrounding the e-brake lever was designed by Jaime out of cardboard, then I cut it out of sheet metal and welded it up. Jaime covered it and designed a custom e-brake boot to cover the base of the lever. The ash tray is new as well. It's the same one that can be found in the Vipers. I liked it because it was a lot simpler than the original one, and didn't look as dated. The interior is coming together!

12/30/07 - Pantera: With Christmas vacation at an end, I have to say that we didn't get nearly as much finished on the Pantera as I would have liked. But that said, I have had a wonderful vacation full of other adventures so all is good in the universe. Today I did manage to get the new 3-point retractable seatbelt system figured out and installed. Passenger side is done, drivers side awaits backordered parts from Summit Racing. Going to be so much more comfortable (and safe) than the factory lap belts. I also installed new door latches (not in the picture).

12/25/07 - Pantera: After opening Christmas presents, I moved on to installing a new fuseblock in the Pantera. Nothing was wrong with the old one, but this new one is so slick and compact that I couldn't resist. Since I already had the seats and carpet out of the car, I had lots of room to work. The old fuseblock used old style fuses and was seperated into two seperate blocks. One small block just for the window motors, and one large block for everything else. The old style fuses are getting harder and harder to find and I just don't see them having as good of connectivity as the new style.

This new fuseblock was purchased from Pantera Electronics. It's the same size as the larger of the old fuseblocks, but includes the power window fuses as well. The fuse ratings are labeled on the side, and when a circuit is blown a little LED lights up to show you which fuse is the problem. So cool! Installation is easy and everything worked on the first try!

12/23/07 - Pantera: We're getting back to the Pantera now that the Miata frenzy is settling down. The interior has been out of the car for a while. I welded in two pieces of 2" x 1/4" Steel Plate down the length of each door sill area for chassis strengthening. This is where most of the chassis flex occurs in the Panteras. The holes for the old seat belt plates are covered up since I'll be converting to a 3-point seatbelt system. Jaime finished up the center firewall piece and we finally fit the new roll bar. The seatbelt tabs at the top had to be cut off, ground, rewelded and repainted to match up with the seatbelt bolt holes. I drilled and tapped the 1/4" steel plate on the floor for the roll bar to bolt to. Everything is extremely solid and tight fitting.

10/19/07 - Pantera: Took the day off work today. Picked up some paint and supplies for the Miata, and I installed a brand new Momo steering wheel in the Pantera. Looks more modern and it's really comfortable, I love it!

9/23/07 - Pantera: The Pantera work keeps coming. This weekend we installed the Cat Eye Quad Headlight Kit from Amerisport Industries. The kit converts the huge factory froggy looking headlights to more modern, low profile headlights. Expensive, but amazingly high quality. Installation would have been straight foreward if our Pantera didn't have a couple frozen headlight adjustment screws, and a oddly sized headlight bucket hole that didn't have enough clearance. At any rate, after working the majority of Saturday on the conversion, Jaime and I were eventually victorious. The car looks awesome with the headlights on now (yay!) and night vision should be greatly improved. Check out the before and after:

9/09/07 - Pantera: Jaime and I worked like crazy to get as much done on the Pantera before this weekend's car show as possible. We finished both door panels and armrests, kick panels and the rear firewall cover. I also replaced the orange switch LED's with blue ones, and added som angle trim rings on the Autometer gauges to point them towards the driver. Slowly but surely the Pantera interior is coming together. Still have a lot of work ahead of us though.

8/26/07 - Pantera: We finally got some traction on the Pantera door panels. To catch you up, we had a couple things going on that necessitated a redesign of the factory door panels. First, we shaved the door handles on the outside of the car and installed remote door poppers. We no longer need the door lock on the inside of the Pantera door. Second, the factory door panels were made of some kind of plastic/fiberglass material that hasn't stood the test of time very well. They were warped, cracked and brittle. So Jaime and I decided to go the hotrod route, and make our own, flat door panels. They don't wrap around like the factory ones did. This means that the door lock hole and surrounding metal will be exposed so they needed to be cleaned up and finished nicely.

In the pictures below, you can see the original door lock hole and surrounding, unfinished metal. I welded up the hole with new sheetmetal, filled the seams, sanded and repainted semi-gloss black. Jaime cut the new door panels out of wood, sewed up a new cover (half UltraSuede, half UltraLeather), put in the new panel clips and installed the new door panel.

This week we hope to get the armrest refinished and installed, and the drivers door will be complete!

8/12/07 - Pantera: The Pantera has always had a flat steel gas pedal and normal looking rubber pedal covers so I thought it was time to dress it up a bit. Ultimate Pedals makes great looking pedals so I thought I'd give them a shot. I'm very impressed! Super high quality, great looks and they're grippy, thanks to the rubber inserts. Very cool!

4/21/07 - Panteras at Irwindale: The Foothill Pantera club arranged for a Pantera day up at Irwindale Raceway. If you arrived in a Pantera, you got free admission, special parking and a few parade laps around the track before race night begin. Was a good bit of fun. We caravanned up and back with a couple other local Panteras. Only downside was that it was a bit cold and threatening rain so the spectator turnout wasn't as huge as it was the last time I went with the Cobra club.

It's tradition to do a burnout in front of the grandstands on your parade lap. This is something I haven't really tried to do with the Pantera as I have monstrously wide Kumho V700 tires in the rear. They're actually DOT legal race tires so they're very sticky... oh, and a new transmission for the Pantera will run you just under $16,000. But screw it, I tried it anyway! My first lap around I slowed to a near stop, brought up the revs and released the clutch. Clutch couldn't hang on and just slipped. Doh! Happened on the second lap too. On the third lap as we were exiting the track, the gods must have decided that I paid my dues and had mercy on me. The clutch finally held, the tires lit up and we sailed past a bit of the grandstand sideways. Yay! Watch the short clip here.

4/07/07 - Pantera: Worked on the Pantera. I took out the door locks and installed remote door poppers in preparation of shaving the door handles. I also installed a new window regulator system from Vader Racing. Both are really nice updates to the Pantera. I can now use a remote to open the doors (no more door key, yay!) and the windows roll up and down in seconds!

C&C Car Show: Got up in time for the car show this morning. Drove down with Pinto Rick and hung out for a while. Saw the usual handful of nice cars, including a Porsche Carrera GT, an awesome old Road Runner, a Lotus Europa and more.

10/15/06 - Pantera: I am honestly not sure where the Pantera is going these days. I seem to be moving it away from "classy" and more towards "raw and functional". After last month's intake install, the Pantera started having a real pinging problem. I double checked the timing, vacuum lines and everything else. Just couldn't see anything wrong with it. I pulled the plugs and found that the #1 spark plug was coated in oil. I also noticed that the intake gaskets were leaking a little bit of water out of the water passages in the heads. I decided that the intake gasket was probably leaking oil into the #1 cylinder. My understanding is that it doesn't take much oil in the combustion chamber to cause detonation. I also discovered that 351 Cleveland heads do not have water passages on the intake side, so the heads on my Pantera aren't Cleveland heads. The numbers on the heads reveal that they are actually 1970 302 Boss heads. Cool!

Last weekend I bit the bullet and pulled the intake and valve covers, and reinstalled everything. I also added oil baffles to the valve covers because the rubber baffles built into the grommets were junk. I took the advice of my on-line Pantera buddies when installing the intake this time, using a couple new tricks. Seems to have worked perfectly. No water leaks and the install went smooth with the use of things like alignment studs and quick drying cement. The pinging was reduced, but still noticeable. Friday I picked up a couple cans of Mopar Combustion Chamber cleaner. This stuff has a great reputation of being able to clean out detonation causing carbon deposits. I used two cans and now all of the pinging is gone unless I ease onto the gas in too tall of a gear. This week I'm going to pick up another two cans and see if I can get rid of the pinging entirely.

Ram Air! I mixed PIMotorsports' Pantera side air ducts and Vararam's Street Ram Air Intake system to build my very own Pantera Ram Air intake. Works like a charm. I am shocked at what a difference it makes, even under low speeds. Feels like there is a ton more torque. Got sideways in first gear while test driving tonight, something that hasn't happened before. At low speeds there can't be much, if any. ram air effect. I can only guess that the more important difference is fresh/cool air? It's probably ten degrees cooler tonight than it has been for a while. Fall is in the air. No matter the reason, the Pantera was a blast to drive this evening. I couldn't be happier with the end result.

09/16/06 - Pantera: Got the new engine cover put on. Wow does that really clean things up! Looks so much better back there. Had a loose throttle linkage. Fixed it and can finally tell how much of a difference the new intake makes. Much better! Throttle response is much improved along with low end grunt. Feels more fun to drive.

09/10/06 - Pantera: Had a lifter ticking so I decided to adjust all the rockers. Bought a new intake that is lower so that the Panteras original engine cover will fit. The new Edelbrock Performer intake is also more "streetable", offering more torque at lower rpm's than the old Torker intake it replaces. The old Detomaso valve covers were cracked and leaking, so I replaced them with some Ford Racing tall valve covers. In the process of swapping intakes, I also found that the brake booster vacuum line was resting against one of the header tubes. When I bent the hose to move it out of the way, it cracked and broke in two! The heat made it brittle. I replaced the hose and routed it away from the headers this time. That could have been bad! Also replaced the fuel filter while I was in there.

12/03/05 - Jaime and I spent the last week working on the Pantera every evening. We've been working on the interior, and this time we were focusing on the center console, trying to finish it by the December 3rd Pantera holiday party at Pantera International. We wanted to design a center console that would have the stereo mounted horizontally and have cooler switches. I handled reworking the fiberglass and the specifics of how everything would fit together and still allow easy access to the backs of the switches and gauges. Jaime took care of the upholstery. I think it came out pretty good. We are still waiting on our switch labels to come in and there are a few things that we will change soon, but it's on the right track. We went to the PI show this morning and won a trophy for "Best Work in Progress", wohoo!

11/20/05 - Haven't had time to finish the new website design yet, as I have been very busy this weekend. We are still rounding up parts for the Miata V8 conversion, and I had to start re-building the Pantera Wiki since the database crashed last week. Jaime and I finished the commercial version of the AugerResources Pantera Shift Boot. It went up for sale this evening. I also installed a third brake light on the Pantera. I feel better having an additional brake light up a little higher. Saturday Jaime and I met some other TPOC members at Donut Derelicts. After the show we got breakfast, and then headed up to Dromo for some go cart racing. It was a hoot! And I'm still sore.

10/16/05 - Replaced all of the gauges in the Pantera with new Autometer Phantom Gauges. Merged a universal fuel level sender with the stock Pantera fuel sender, and now have a functional gas gauge, yay! Also installed new water temp and oil pressure senders that were included with the gauges. Sorry for the crappy photo, but it's raining outside today so I left the Pantera in the garage, and had to use a flash. Jaime has also redone the door panels, and shift boot. I'll get good pictures of those soon.

09/30/05 - I started tinkering around with some recording software and a mic. Took a few recordings of the Pantera this morning. I didn't have time to drive it, so I only recorded it starting up, idling and turning off from both the inside and outside of the car. This weekend I hope to record some sound clips of it on the road. Till then, here are the idling clips:

• exterior - start idle stop wave file
• exterior - start rev idle stop wave file
• interior - start idle stop wave file