[DeTomaso] Repair Costs - New vs. Old

[Will Kooiman]

Mine is very fast, and it is fun to drive.  It gets ~21mpg on the highway.

I ran it in the 1,000 ft. last year, and it did well, especially considering
it is stock.

But I still don't like the repair costs.  I want something that I look
forward to driving, like the 67 FB that I used to have, but also something
that is reasonable to repair, like the 67 FB that I used to have.

Of course, this is in addition to my Pantera.

--
Will

From:  Jack DeRyke <JDeRyke at aol.com>
Date:  Tuesday, March 5, 2013 3:17 AM
To:  Will Kooiman <will.kooiman at gmail.com>, <detomaso at poca.com>
Subject:  Re: [DeTomaso] Repair Costs - New vs. Old

Two Viper techy- things I've come across over the years; when the Viper was
brand-new, Nor-Cal Panteras invited a Chrysler engineer to our monthly
meeting. During his talk, someone asked how they got an inherently
imbalenced V-10 engine to idle smoothly. He said the ECU has a lot of extra
capacity, so below 1800 rpms the controller randomly kills a cylinder each
revolution of the crank. This turns it into a V-8, and the dead cylinder
drag helps smooth things out. Above 1800, that subprogram goes away and
underway/under load, the shake is much less noticable. Simple.... if you've
got an engineering department helping.

The other was a race note- Hennessey personally ran one of his high-dollar
800 bhp Vipers in a Silver State event many years ago, and told a few people
he wasn't going to pay attention to the 15-mph-over-and-get-disqualified
rule 'cause he wasn't coming back. He was legging it at 'around 182' when he
noticed Larry Stock's '73 Pantera (with an iron-head 351-C) 20 ft behind
him. Larry was in the draft & couldn't pass but the Viper also couldn't pull
away. They ran like that for a few miles, then Larry dropped back & braked
hard.... and over the next rise was a SS radar station. Larry was zapped
'legal' at 165 while Hennessey was radared at 185 and disqualified from the
150 class. Needless to say, Pantera aerodynamics was quite the subject at
the SS wrap-up dinner. Cheers- J Deryke