1971 DeTomaso Pantera -

THPNLS01921

My son-in-law had it sitting for a long while doing nothing and the plan is to vintage race with CVAR.

Some pictures below after the blah blah blah.

2013
11 May - Got the car home.

1 June - After much cleaning and preparation, it started and ran well.

27 July - Went to Houston MSR and did two sessions, then Gray came and drove for a session and it died. Fuel pump kept blowing a fuse. John Taphorn tells more.

August - Joined CVAR

November - Re-wiring fuel pump and fans due to being towed in three times now at the track. Hard on the ego...
Rats had chewed through the insulation.

2014
February - Had planned to go to the CVAR Student Driver School, but two weeks before, the fuel cell developed a leak. It was old and needed a rebuild. Also ordered a new SVO Siamese block.

4 May - Went to TWS PDS for the weekend. Blew the right bank head gasket. Finished the event in the GT40.
Video of the Pantera from a friend with an LS1 RX-7
Video of the GT40

August - Went to the CVAR Fall Driver's School and was doing fine until the last student session on Friday. Dropped an exhaust valve in #6. All over for the weekend. I spent all day Saturday doing corner work on Turn #3.

2015
December -January - Building a new engine. You can check out the progress here.

February - Attended CVAR's last race weekend at TWS. Finished the student school, finally, won the student race and came in 13th after starting last in the Group 1 race.

September - Attended CVAR’s TWS weekend. Turned my first 2:00 lap, but had a mishap. A Javelin spun in front of me and we tangled.


Here’s the in car video. Still finished 6th!

October - Car back all good to go.



2016
February - Tom Upton and I attended the ‘3rd Last Race at TWS’ with CVAR for their spring event.
Sunday’s race from my GoPro is here.
Tom had to come in… electrical problems. We've fixed them since.
A picture sent to me by one of the attendees.



A couple of nice pictures IMHO.



April 1-3
Tom and I went to Hallett. We both broke….
Tom had two valve springs break; I had a roller lifter lose its needle bearings and bad things happened.

Here are some pictures.

April 30
Got the engine repaired. The needle bearings took out the oil pump and trashed the cam.
New cam installed and put it all back together.

Went to MSR-H for the CVAR event and on Friday, it ran like "a scalded ape" according to Tom.
Then, it started running ratty. Had fuel problems solved with a new fuel pump, but the distributor cap had black terminals, for some reason, and I didn't have a spare. Exhausted trying to fix stuff, so went home.
Oh, did manage to qualify 5th, even with it running crappy, but then spun it on Turn 1. My fault…

2017
February 24-25 MSR-H
Finished 3rd in the last two races

March 31 - April 2 Hallet
Qualified 4th, but then broke…

June 2-4 Cresson
Pretty much rained out and then had an oil problem.
Went home early. Depressing weekend.

Sept 30-Oct 1 Went to MSR-H
Managed to win my first race on Saturday.
Then, exhaust port plate problems creating head gasket leaks.
DNS on Sunday.

2018
I didn't do any racing… other stuff going on.
However, after discussion with MSD, they said I was running too much spark plug gap.
Recommended to reduce it from 0.045 to 0.035 to allow the cap and rotor to last longer.

2019
Feb 22-24
First race of the season at MSR-H
Started 13th, qualified 9th.
Started 9th, finished 5th
Started 5th, finished 5th.
Reduced spark plug gap seems to help.
Some pictures taken by a photographer.


Got into the CVAR March Newsletter!



Various pictures taken since receiving the car in no particular order…

New fiberglass hood courtesy of Mike Trusty

The original motor in the car when I got it.

Went to TWS with Tom Upton



A short video of us on the straight