[DeTomaso] ZONKEY's Appraisal

[Richard Barkley]

Will,
I was asking myself these kinds of questions while I was pulling the 
engine and taking off other parts.

I am totally happy with the 4.6 conversion. It's run absolutely 
flawlessly since I drove it to Silver State in Sept. '01, leaving home 
with about 75 mi on the engine. It's now showing 14,700. When I drained 
the coolant, it was perfectly clear and there was not a hint of rust. Of 
course everything (I think) it touches is either aluminum, stainless, or 
rubber, so I guess there shouldn't be. So yes, I'd absolutely do it again.

When I did it, there was very little in the way of after market stuff to 
make more power. Now I think there is. But even basically stock as mine 
is I'm getting about 290 RWHP. Depending on whose RW to Crank inflation 
factor you want to use that's something like 360 to 385. More than 
enough for me. And no, I don't miss the low-rpm torque. The torque curve 
is pretty flat and above 240 (RWTQ) from 2.5K to 6K rpm. Max is about 
282 over the 4.2K to 5.1K band. And, try this with your high output 
Cleveland, I can pull away smoothly starting at, say, 1000 rpm with my 
foot on the floor. Nothing exciting happens, just a smooth increase in 
power. Another thing I was pleased by is that I was on the dyno at a 
club dyno day over a year (and maybe 5K miles) after my initial dyno 
runs and got essentially identical dyno results and the engine hadn't 
been touched. It can't tell you how many times I've seen Panteras, 
presumably recently tuned, hop on the dyno and things just don't run 
very well; they're popping and belching and frequently sort of crap out 
at the high end.

As for doing anything different, no not really. Although I'm going to 
look into getting my EEC (computer) permanently reprogrammed (I'm 
currently running a custom chip that accesses through the "service 
port") to eliminate the possible failure of the chip or its connection.

Not related to the motor but one of the things I was very glad I did was 
use anti-seize on all the threads. At the time, and I posted in '99 
about it, I used a ceramic based hight temp compound from Griot's 
Garage. One advantage was that it was white and very easy to clean up 
after. It worked very well and even my stainless bolts holding the 
muffler to the header came right off. They don't seem to offer it any 
more. So I searched to see what else I could find. The nickel version of 
this anti-seize tape line looks like it would be great and have no clean 
up issue at all.
http://www.antiseize.com/index.htm?bycatgry.htm and click on POLY-TEMP® 
NICKEL Tape (36300)
If you have trouble with that link, try this http://tinyurl.com/5nnc7e

Richard

Will Kooiman wrote:
> Ouch.
>
> I've been meaning to ask.
>
> How do you feel about your 4.6 conversion now that you've had it together
> for a while?
>
> If you were doing it all over again, would you?
>
> Would you do anything different?
>
> Do you miss the low-rpm torque of the 351C?
>
> I'll stop at 4 questions.
>
> Will.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: detomaso-bounces at realbig.com [mailto:detomaso-bounces at realbig.com] On
> Behalf Of Richard Barkley
> Sent: Friday, June 13, 2008 11:09 PM
> To: detomaso
> Subject: [DeTomaso] ZONKEY's Appraisal
>
> I just got an appraisal report on ZONKEY's current value. The guy who 
> came to do it seemed quite knowledgeable about cars in general, 
> frequently judges in concurs events and back in the '70s had a close 
> friend who had a Pantera and the two of them took it to speed events on 
> the local dry lake. He was very impressed with my car and appraised it 
> at $66K and was aware that I'd done much of the work myself. As another 
> data point, I asked Dave Adler at the PI Xmas event last year what he 
> thought it was worth. Without much thought (but he is quite familiar 
> with the car) he said $70K to $90K. I thought that was a bit high, but 
> maybe not.
>
> You might be wondering why he was appraised. Some of you at Vegas heard 
> that ZONKEY got bumped in the rear as I was getting on the Pasadena 
> Freeway. It was dark and just starting to drizzle. The Pasadena fwy has 
> the unique feature of requiring you to come to a stop less than about 
> 100 ft (maybe it's only 50) before the on ramp merges with the traffic. 
> Here's a Google map view of the intersection.
> http://tinyurl.com/47ed4a
> The two white cars (one on the on ramp) are about where it happened. I 
> came to a stop. Saw a hole and started to accelerate. The ground was wet 
> and being the first rain of the season the road was quite slick from 6 
> months of oil drippings. I could feel the rear end break loose so I 
> stopped before I got on the Fwy. I waited for another hole and was just 
> about to take off when the guy behind me saw the same hole. Thud. He 
> hadn't noticed I was still there.
>
> Wilkinson will be handling the repair. I decided that I wanted to pull 
> the engine out and Steve also suggested removing much of the interior  
> as a precaution. So over the weekend through Wed. I did that. The tow 
> truck came early Thurs. am. The preliminary repair estimate last Jan. 
> was that it would probably be over $10K to fix it. The guy who hit me 
> only had $10K of liability so now my ins. is taking the lead.
>
> I've posted some pictures of the damage:
> http://gallery.mac.com/rbarkley67#100016&bgcolor=black&view=mosaic&sel=1
> the user name is pantera and the password is zonkey (all lower case).
>
> I'll keep the list posted on the progress. Hopefully he'll be as good or 
> better than before.
>
> Richard
>
>   

-- 
----- 
Sincerely, Richard Barkley

To Ski or not to Ski, that is the question!

Richard Barkley (310) 373-6695 (home)
E-mail:  rlbpantera <atsign> earthlink.net
ZONKEY'S home page: http://home.earthlink.net/~rlbpantera
Mammoth Lakes Vacation Condo: 2BR+loft/3Bath - Horizons 4 #186 (760) 934-6758
Condo web address: http://home.earthlink.net/~rbarkley