[DeTomaso] Chevy in & out of Panteras or Engine Psychology Today

Charles Engles cengles at cox.net
Tue Jun 16 22:47:36 EDT 2009


Dear Kirby,


               Interesting engine odessey.   It is odd that yours and others 
seem to gravitate back to the Cleveland karma.


                                 Warmest regards,  Chuck Engles



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Kirby Schrader" <kirby.schrader at gmail.com>
To: "List List" <detomaso at realbig.com>
Sent: Tuesday, June 16, 2009 9:41 PM
Subject: Re: [DeTomaso] Chevy in & out of Panteras or Engine Psychology 
Today


> Chuck,
>
> GT5S 9390 went from a Cleveland to an Cleveland stroker to a 545 Chevy
> and back to a 351 Cleveland stroker.
> The latter, I rebuilt when the car was in my garage back in uhh....
> gee... uhh... must have been around 2000? My memory is getting poor....
>
> The story was that the previous owner wanted to go 200mph. Or so I've
> been told by 'those who know'. Why he took the 454 back out and put
> the original engine (which was a botched build job in any case... it
> was ready to self destruct when I took it apart) back in is unknown to
> me.
>
> Also, the hatchet job that went into 'modifying' the engine
> compartment for the 454 was atrocious, in my humble opinion. I did a
> LOT of rewiring and repairs at the time.
>
> FWIW,
> Kirby
>
>
> On 16 Jun 2009, at 7:09 PM, Charles Engles wrote:
>
>> Dear Jack,
>>
>>
>>            You wrote:
>>
>>
>>  " Just an added note- if someone does do this swap, remember that
>> virtually
>>> ALL such swaps eventually get reversed and a nice 351C is settled
>>> back where
>>> it belongs. That includes at least 10 of the dozen 454 Chevs that
>>> MIke Cook
>>> did in the '80s, the ZL-1 that used to be in Weldon Brown's Pantera
>>> and a
>>> host of others including Windsors going back to Clevelands."
>>
>>
>>
>>              Why is that?     Given that the Pantera is already a
>> hodge podge of parts and a chimera of a car;  given that the Chevy
>> engines have the distributor in a good location for a midengine car
>> plus other intrinsic attributes (ignoring the  miscegenation of a
>> Chevy in a Ford car) ; and given that most of these Chevy
>> transplants are done as well as a Cleveland installation----then why
>> the mysterious trend to remove them and revert back to
>> Clevelands?     I can understand the benefits of a Chevy powered
>> Pantera.   I can't really understand the gravitation *back* to the
>> original 351C configuration after all the cost and effort to make
>> the Chevy change.   Do you have an understanding and some sort of
>> psycho-social-engine-ethnic (babble) explanation for this weirdness??
>>
>>
>>                     Life is strange,  Chuck Engles
>>
>>         It gets stranger when you start swapping
>> engines...........................!!
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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