Backup Light Switch

I ordered a OEM back up light switch from one of the Pantera places and received it just fine. I installed it only to find that the selector box wasn't hitting the switch lever when in reverse. I pulled the cover off the selector box only to find that whatever mechanism should be there to make the b/u switch work wasn't there at all.

After a bunch of looking at it to see if I could make something that would trigger the switch when in reverse I decided that it was too difficult to make this work. I will find a plug with the same thread size as the hole for the OEM switch and plug it up.

I decided to just purchase a simple, universal b/u light and install it in the housing for the shifter. Here's a picture of the box for the b/u light switch showing the P/N. I ordered the switch though Amazon for just around $10.

After making sure this would work, I pulled the box, located the exact location where the switch would best fit and drilled a hole to fit my switch. After tightening it all down I soldered up a connector on the wires for ease of removal should something goes wrong. Here's a shot of the wiring installed in the car.

As you can see I had to cut a notch in the center framework to make the switch fit into the console. The following pictures show the finished product. I tested it with the power on and the b'u lights work just fine.

Radiator

The radiator was a project I was putting off for as long as I could. Now that I have the Coyote engine running, it is time to get it so I can keep it cool.

I looked online for a stock Pantera radiator and couldn't find many options that I found affordable and made sense to me. I checked out having one made - but that wasn't economically feasible. I really wanted to just find a radiator option from a readily available car in production now.

I did a lot of looking but didn't find anything that would fit my car. Then one day my son said, "Have you tried looking at a radiator from a Toyota MR2?" I know, I know this car is so much more under-powered when compared to a Pantera with a Coyote engine, but what the heck, let's take a look.

I got online and found that the radiator was exactly the size I wanted (15" wide by 30" tall). I found a new, two-row aluminum radiator for a whopping $135. To top it off, the twin electric fan with shroud cost only $185. Less than $500 and the cooling was looking good.

Will it work and keep the old girl cool? We will have to wait to see. I did get a radiator that was for the turbo version of the MR2 - hopefully that will be all I need. Here's a shot of the radiator I bought and the p/n of the electric fan that I am using.

I decided that I wanted to lay the radiator down as flat as possible to let the cooling fans have plenty of room to pull air through the radiator. I saw this done on several Panteras and was told this gives more cooling ability especially when vents are added to the hood - a project I will take on later.

I had to do a little surgery to the brackets on in the front where the radiator resides so that it would lay down like I wanted it to. Here's a before and after shot of the space in question. In the second picture you can see how the brackets were modified.

I made a set of brackets that would would allow the radiator to lay carefully in place at the angle I needed for it to be set in the car. Here's a shot of what the radiator looks like laying in place.

I then secured the radiator in place with two side brackets. Now it is securely in place. Here's a shot of the mounted radiator.

With the radiator securely in place it was time to plumb it up. I decided to use flexible stainless steel tubing to hook the radiator to the tubing under the car running to the engine. Here's a shot of the kits I used (2 total @ approx $30 each).

As you can see the inlet and outlet are in the upper corners of the radiator. I needed to turn the inlet and outlet in a quick 90 degree down to hook the radiator to the stainless steel pipes I placed under the car running to the engine. I went to the auto parts store and found a radiator hose that is 1.25" x 1.5" dia with a 90 degree turn. With a little trimming this fit perfectly. Here's a shot of the part numbers of the two parts I bought (one from two different parts stores).

It all went into place quite simply. Here's some shots of the finished product.

Parking Brake

Due to the fact that I decided to use Wilwood brakes I had to come up with a parking brake mechanism for my Pantera. If you check out my post titled "Rearend Rebuild" you will get the details on all that had to be done to get the rear end in shape with the Wilwood brakes I chose. I used WILWOOD MC4 MECHANICAL PARKING BRAKE CALIPERS FOR 0.81" WIDE DISCS to make my e-brake work. It is definitely a little on the light weight side but I think it will work just fine. I did have to do a little grinding on the body of the brake assy to get the pads free enough to install them on the rotors. Not a big deal, but we forewarned. Here's a shot of the brakes I used.

Now the parking brake needs to be pulled from the rear. That made the stock cable and linkage that came on the Pantera obsolete for my application. Good thing, because I didn't have any of the stock parts - remember, this was a junk yard find and almost everything was missing! So it was time to fabricate something that could work on my car.

I started with going through all my spare parts and looking at the various pull cables I collected over the years. I had parts from my old 66 Galaxie and others I pulled from junk yards trying to modify brakes on both the Galaxie and my 65 pickup. I finally settled on an old clutch cable from a 1990 Mustang GT that was the engine and transmission donor for my 65 F100. That cable was almost perfect in size and length for the ebrake on the Pantera. I only had one cable so I ordered a second one for about $40.

While I waited on the other cable to arrive I started to fabricate the arm that will hold the cables in place. I wanted this arm to be pretty beefy while not being too heavy. The picture below shows what I came up with after a bunch of work.

The arm slips over the 10mm bolt that was originally used to hold the stock ebrake assy. I put 10mm sleeve bearings into the arm I made to make sure it slides on the mounting bolt with ease. To the hook on the underside of the ebrake arm in the cabin I fabricated the following adjustable linkage.

This linkage can be adjusted to take up any slack in the system. Pretty simple and not to difficult to make. I know it doesn't look like it came off the assembly room floor, but who cares? This car was destined to be scrap metal so anything I can do to keep it alive is moving in the right direction, IMHO!

I also had to fabricate a bracket to hold the clutch cable ends just behind the pull arm. The photo below shows this bracket that I made and bolted to a cross member under the Pantera.

The clutch cables ends had to be ground down a little bit in order to fit the mounting point on the ebrake itself. I just took my time and made sure that I cut away just enough to give me a tight fit into the brake bracket. Here's a shot of the end of the clutch cable going into the ebrake itself.

I put a nut and bolt to hold the cable into the ebrake assy.

I did a bunch of routing of the clutch cables to get them to go as straight to the front of the car a possible without being interfered with by the exhaust or the shocks. Here's how I finally decided to route the cable. I'm not sure this will be their final position, but it is a place to start.

Then I put it all together. Here's a few shots of the final product.

Works like a champ. I don't have wheels on the car yet so I can't tell how tight the brakes hold. I do know that I can put a lot of pressure on them from inside the car and get them to release when I want them to. We will see how they really operate when we put the car on the road. For now, I think this was a nice clean way to adapt to what I had to do to make her work.

Wiring

I started wiring up my Pantera over the past couple of months. I have always used Hot Rod Wires for all my auto wiring needs. I know you die-hard Ford fans will cringe at this but it is a GM based wiring system. I hate saying this, but the GM philosophy of wiring is so much easier to work with. Nice part about this company is that the owner is available for phone calls to help with questions on how to wire up the system. I'm in no way an expert at wiring but feel totally confident with this guy's help to make any car do exactly what it needs to do with their wiring kit.

I used their 18 circuit system that set me back around $300. Here's a shot of the system along with a link to their web site. http://www.hotrodwires.com/product/18-circuit-harness.html

I also ordered a wiring diagram for the car I took the ignition switch module from. It took a little digging but having the wiring diagram is critical to marry up the wiring system to the ignition, turn signal, horn, headlights and windshield wipers. After carefully attaching each of the Hot Rod Wires to the ignition module, I'm actually able to turn the engine's starter motor using the ignition key. That's some good progress.

Here's a picture of the "rat's nest" of wires that I am working with. When I have every thing hooked up and tested I will do a little beautification work to get it all looking the way I want it to.

HEADLIGHT DOORS

After getting the ignition module hooked up I decided to tackle the headlight doors. The previous owner had already installed the opening motor and limit switches and had a bundle of wires coming from each connection. After a little digging I found several wiring diagrams for the original Pantera. Now the fun begins.

I said earlier, I'm not an expert at wiring up anything. But, after restoring several cars now, wiring is something I just had to figure out. After staring at the original Pantera wiring diagram for the headlight doors, I saw that I was going to have to get creative with the relay setup. I had already pulled a small power distribution box from a small Ford at the junk yard. This box came with slots for four relays. I already knew that I was going to mount this thing in the front boot and use it to control the headlight doors and the radiator fan. Now I needed to figure out how to make the doors work. Here's a shot of the power distribution box I'm using.

Relay 1&2 are used to control the headlight doors. Relay 3 is for the fan motor. The fourth slot is open for some other circuit that needs a relay in the future.

I saw on the original wiring that they used a double throw relay for the headlight doors. I never used anything like this and didn't have the place to mount such a thing. I came up with the following scheme to use normal relays to do the same thing as shown in the original wiring diagrams. The first diagram shows the current path for when the headlight switch is turned on. The second one is when the headlight switch is turned off.

Great in theory, but will it work. I soft wired everything up and, can you believe it, the doors go up and down as I had hoped! I then hard wired it all up and again, it worked perfectly.

More will come on wiring as interesting things arise.

Defrost and AC Venting

I really didn't think about the effort that would go into making your own dash. One thing I overlooked was how to get air to the vents both for the A/C and for the defroster. I tried a bunch of parts from the junk yard, but none of them would work without major modification. So, time to make my own.

Basically I used a bunch of scrap exhaust tubing and light weight sheet metal to make all the vents. The next three shots shows the center defrost vent for the dash.

I painted up this piece a nice flat black. I then stuck some rubber seals for windows around the sealing edge and screwed it into the underside of the dash. Here's a couple pictures of the two side defrost vents. You can see the white seals I used. 

The A/C vents were pretty easy to make compared to the defrost vents. The A/C vents didn't have as much of a clearance issues as did the defrost vents. Here's a couple shots of the three A/C vents.

These vents will be installed with a set screw attaching them to the vent opening already in the dash itself. Pretty simple fabrications that should do the trick.

Side Vents

I have seen pictures of the side window treatments that double as vents for the engine bay on Pantera pictures I've seen on the Internet. Just like most of all the other projects on this Pantera, what I want to do is so customized that purchased parts just don't make sense.

Since I don't have any of the window pieces in my parts inventory that came with the car I decided that the vent should cover the entire side window space. I also want the vent to be functional. At least one side will be ported to the intake of the Coyote engine I've placed in the car. The passenger side has to have a fuel fill door for access to the fill tube I installed earlier.

The question was how to make this thing and make it look good. It took three tries to get it where I think it's going to work. The first attempt was to cut out a couple wood pieces that fill the space then spayed on some of that "good stuff" foam on the cutout. That's the stuff used to fill cracks in home construction. I then tried shaping the scoop thinking I would fiberglass the final form. Bottom line - not a good idea. I just couldn't get the shape I wanted - Strike One!

Second try I called the Frankenstein approach. I cut out a piece of sheet metal the shape of the window opening. To this I tacked up pieces of metal shaped to make the scoop. After a bunch of cutting and tacking to try and get the shape I wanted I had to stop. This thing was just plain ugly. I'm not sure I could ever duplicate a second piece - Strike Two.

The third attempt was a winner. Here's what I did. I cut another piece of sheet metal the shape of the window opening. Then I a second piece about 1 1/2" smaller all around the edges. Then I bent the curve I wanted for the scoop opening. Now it had to be welded to the flat larger piece that covers the window. But before I did any tacking I had to attach the flat piece to the car. Here's a shot of the flat piece attached with 4 screws.

To make installation and removal as easy as possible I decided to weld the screws onto the flat piece. Even though the body on my Pantera isn't anywhere near being ready for public viewing, I hate welding directly on the car but in this case I had no choice. Here's a shot of my set up with wet towels to try and protect the body from weld splatter.

Here's a shot of the bent pieces before they were welded up to the flat one.

Next I played with the bent piece until I got it to mate up with the flat piece as close as I could. It took a bunch of bending so that the welding could be done as easily as possible. Here's a shot of the tacked up bent metal vent on the flat piece.

The fit was really coming together so I decided to go ahead and make the other side the same way I did this one. When I had both pieces roughed out I did a little more tacking off the car and then did a little grinding off the welds. I used strips of fiberglass to give myself a smooth transition from the curved piece to the flat over the weld spots. Here's a shot of what the rough glassed piece looks like.

Then is was a matter of smoothing out the glass then doing a bunch of bondo work. Once it was smoothed so that I liked the overall shape it was time to make an opening for the fuel fill on the passenger side. I used an existing door from some other car and traced the shape on the vent. I carefully cut it out.

I used a fuel fill door hinge from an old BMW to mount the door back onto the vent. I had to do a bunch of modification to the hinge but once done it opened and closed just the way I wanted it to. Once the door operated like I wanted I then closed the door and bondoed the door completely closed. Crazy, right? I was told by a friend of mine who did a bunch of body work that the only way to get seams as smooth as possible was to bondo them closed then cut them out just like you want them. Once the bondo dried I used a grinder to carefully cut the seam out just like I wanted it to look. This method also gave me a really smooth transition between the door and the vent. Here's a shot of the final product.

Finally I put a little primer on the vents and put them on the car. Here's the driver's side side view and front view.

Here's the passenger side side view and front view with the fuel door opened and closed.

Next I'll work on putting tubing openings on both vents to give me into the Coyote intake. I'm going to wait to do this after I figure out the air filter box and tubing requirements sizes. Check back for more updates later.

Dash Update

I decided that my first dash design needed a bit of updating. The steering column I installed required that I move the gauge holes up quite a bit. Here's a picture of the problem.

As I played with where the gauge holes needed to be I noticed that the dash itself was in the way - part of the gauges would be blocked by the straight bottom part of the dash. I decided to modify the straight part to give more of an arch. It took a little doing but it worked out pretty well. Here's a shot of how it looks now. 

Now the gauges are so much more visible. It looks really good. 

I also cut in vent holes for the defroster flow to the windshield. The vents came out of a mid-90s Ford Escort. They were the small vents on the front of the dash. They were just the right size for my design. There's one more vent you can't see in this shot all the way to the right side of the car. Here's what it looks like all primed. 

Also I did a little grinding to get the A/C vents to work properly. Here's a couple shots of the front of the dash with the vents installed. There's another vent on the driver's side that isn't shown in the pictures below.

Now the dash is ready for texture and final paint. I also need to to design and install venting behind the dash. More on those projects in future posts.