[DeTomaso] Fw: FOR Sale Rant
JDeRyke at aol.com
JDeRyke at aol.com
Sat Sep 19 17:25:08 EDT 2009
FWIW, I've never heard of anyone successfully buying aftermarket wheels
(even those built to order) that simply bolted onto a GR-4, Gr-5 or GT5-S
conversion and fit correctly. All of the successful ones started with the wheels
and tires IN HAND and went from there- including the vendors who do these
conversion commercially. One reason is, the spot-welded Pantera chassis moves
around over the years, many cars have been in traffic accidents and
inexpertly repaired, and some if not most were actually welded asymetrically in the
factory jigs.
All this means the suspension mounting lug locations on the left may not
perfectly match the right and thus identical wheels will not wind up in the
same place relative to the fender edges. One engineer-owner found his
unmolested car to have the front crossmember welded in place some 1-1/2" LOWER on
one side, causing the entire front body- with its nicely fitting panel joints-
to be slightly skewed, and again- factory wheels not well aligned to the
fender edges. Regardless of Ford's best efforts, these are hand-built cars!
Such problems are easily solved during flair mounting if the wheels & tires
are at hand, but after-the-fact, spacers, cutting and machining wheels and
other antics are often necessary to get a symmetric look. I also remember
one owner that took quite a while to do his all-metal GR-4 conversion, and by
then, the tires he'd planned to use and had based his calciulations on were
no longer available.... Good luck doing things the other way around- J
Deryke
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