DeTomaso Mailing List: January 99, Message #129

Andy wrote:

>
Geez Mike... with all that Dynamat, you're gonna have to upgrade the
jackstands to handle the extra tonnage!  :-)

>>>HAHAHA!!!  Actually, my Pantera is probably quite a bit heavier than most
as it is.  You'd be surprised at how cheesy and flimsy the stock metal is, in
places like the floors.  The stock floorpans are made of the same grade metal
as the hood skin!

My car's floors rusted to shreds, and when new ones were fabricated, they were
made of 18-gauge USA steel.  Same for the new inner and middle rocker panels.
I don't know for sure, but I'd guess that between all the extra USA metal
welded in, and added goodies like the roll bar, etc., that I've added several
hundred pounds to the weight of the car.  Of course, that added weight
contributes to theoretically greater strength, an acceptable trade-off to me.

It's really amazing how CHEESY the Italian steel is.  Last week, I was using a
cut-off wheel to notch the metal lip below the windscreen, where the top of
the dash meets the car (had to fab up new mounts for the dash, and had to make
some room for them.)  My cutting wheel would just zizz right through the
Italian metal like it wasn't there, but when it ran into AMERICAN metal (and
I've got a bunch of it), even of the same nominal specifications, suddenly I
started eating up cutting wheels left and right.

In doing this job, I was rather thankful for the high dirt content of the
Italian metal--imposing-looking brackets that needed to be moved could easily
be tweaked by hand, even though to the eye they looked formidable!

Mike