DeTomaso Mailing List: January 99, Message #187

And speaking of dash work, mine has as annoying squeak...when I took
a good look, I found cork wedged between the firewall and the "cheesy"
bracket.

Is this stock ?  Or just the previous owner's attempt to quiet the rattles ?

CM


> 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
>