SwapMeet2002

Once again, Roger & Pam Sharp hosted the Pantera Club of Northern California for the Swap Meet and Technical Session. Starting promptly at 10am, the event is PCNC�s 3rd Annual Swap Meet where everyone must bring at least one DeTomaso related part to sell, trade or just �show�. New member, Steve Lentz, went to the trouble to bring the only part he has on his otherwise bare shell, the hood release lever. Hey, rules are rules. The �part� Curt Hall brought was his very original, just purchased Pantera, with the goal today of replacing the alternator.

Bob Bensen noticed his black machine had a leaky steering rack. Thinking he needed to replace the whole rack (with the belief that a �seal� had blown), he pulled the unit. It was compared to a replacement rack, and it was learned that his rack had slightly different dimensions, mainly the distance from one threaded end to the other. It turns out that the other rack didn�t have enough threads, and thus the tie-rod ends would not be able to be correctly adjusted. However, his rack only had a leaky boot, so back in the car it went.

Greg Jacobs is adding his Lokar dipstick. A friend helps by cutting off the support bracket on the water tube. A series of �fitting� challenges hampered this task. Temporarily, Greg went back to the stock dipstick tube, but with new high clearance Ford Motorsport valve covers. Recently Greg had a U-joint failure, some damage is visible.

There were not one but two rear axel bearing jobs going on this day. Bill Santos arrived with all the parts he would need (bearing and axel), and quickly went to work pulling his hub. The bad news is that the disk was unsupported when the bearing was pressed out, and the brake disk actually broke !
It might have helped to remove the studs before attempting to press out the bearing, but without the right support to the disk, it might have broken anyway.

The good news was a vendor was here with a truck full of parts. The bad news is that he would only sell a �complete assembly�, consisting of upright, disk, axel and bearing, in the neighborhood of $800. Bill wandered the swap meet looking for a rear disk to avoid the $175 �core� charge, and was successful, apparently.
An expensive mistake we can all learn from, support the disk correctly.