DeTomaso Mailing List: February 2001, Message #16

David,

As you've heard from others (thanks, guys!), I do indeed drive my car 
everyday, rain or shine. I also run it at the track and on long 
trips. Longest I've ever done was from Denver to New Jersey and back 
to Kansas. Many trips from Kansas to Texas and back and from Kansas 
to Denver and back. The car has 105,000 miles on it. And many of them 
aren't easy miles... I've drove it to the track, run it on the track 
and drove home many times. Last year I did TWS in February, Heartland 
Park in July and TMS in October. Sometimes it has given me a problem 
along the way (a coil problem on the way to Heartland Park, for 
example), but it most always gets me there and back.

It has only had to be towed home once, and that was about a year ago. 
I had just installed the EFI system and was headed home from work. 
Went over some railroad tracks and burp... it just stopped. I rolled 
into the median area and tried to figure out what was wrong. The only 
thing I could figure out for sure was that I was not squirting any 
fuel into the throttle bodies...

To make a long story short, it took me about five minutes to fix the 
problem once I found it after getting back home to the garage. The 
plug that connects the injector harness to the rest of the harness 
had been assembled poorly. One of the pins had pushed back and was 
not making very good contact with the socket. The vibration going 
over the railroad track was obviously enough to open the connection 
and I lost all fire pulses to the injectors. No fuel - no run...
;-)

Fixed the pin and I was back in business. Fine every since.

When I had the car restored 15 years ago, Dennis Quella and I focused 
on making it as reliable as possible knowing that I planned to drive 
it a lot and also planned to try and go fast at the track. I've tried 
to keep that focus every since. Hence, no roller cams, 180 degree 
headers, superchargers, turbochargers, etc. I did go with a Wilwood 
brake system, chassis strengthening, better radiator and fans, and 
some mild performance enhancements like solid lifters, a 377 stroker 
later on, GTS headers, etc.
I agonized for years over the EFI setup knowing it would break my 
wallet and be replacing the dead reliable carb, but I don't regret it 
at all now that I have it on and working. You can continue tweaking 
it forever though... A little voice keeps telling me to just leave it 
alone! But I ignore it a lot...

The A/C works well enough to just keep up with 100 degF high humidity 
days in Houston, cabin ventilation is marginal but functional, I 
could use some more legroom, etc., but as Mike Drew said, driving to 
work in a fun car is fun!

Nothing like getting the adrenalin going in the morning by whuppin' a 
C5 'Vette on the way to work. What? Me? Street race? Never...   ;-)

Hope that helps.

Kirby


At 23:12 -0500 31/1/01, David DeTomaso wrote:
>Question?  Do any of you with De Tomaso Panteras actually use their cars
>for a daily driver?
>All I read about are problems and more problems with  their cars. Is any
>one satisfied with their
>car?  Has  Uncle  Alejandro  designed  a mechanic's special?  David De
>Tomaso {In HOT water}