Pantera Project Launch! On with the fun!
I have finished my cobra kit car project finally and I am ready to sink my teeth into the Pantera (hopefully it won't bite back). The first project I was going to tackle was the frozen brake calipers. I wanted the car on the lift so that I could work comfortably and use the new hyrdaulic lift jack that I bought (works awesome BTW). I ran into a little problem. The car wouldn't start. The engine was turning over and I was getting spark so that must mean I have a fuel delivery problem. Oh joy! Just to make sure, I poured a little gas in the carb to make sure and she started right up. So now I just have to chase down the issue. I figured I would start from the top down. First thing I figured is that I had a stuck needle. So I used some carb cleaner, got out my soft mallet and banged on top of the carb float bowls. Very scientific! I then poured some gas into my "Hawt Sawce" bottle (just a BBQ/Catsup squirter) so that I could easily pour gas down the vent tube of the carb to fill the bowls.

Once full, I could hear that gas was being squirted when I acctuated the accelerator linkage on the side of the carb. As a result, I figured that their was an issue farther down the line.

I took pictures of the fuel filter (think there is only one) and it looks dry!

I am going to change the fuel filter but if that is OK, then I either have a bad fuel pump (which is weird as it looks new) OR I have a plugged line somewhere....which could be a fun (read not so fun) project...but let's not get ahead of ourselves!

At this point I figured I could fill up the float bowls and drive the car up onto the lift so that I could lcomplete the diagnosis....filling the fuel bowls up when/if I ran out of gas. Worked like a charm. Now the snake (aka the cobra) has traded places with the Panther (aka pantera) on the lift:

I am not sure if I will tackly my list serially or jump on other projects as I get stumped. I'll probably jump around while the grey matter works on particular problems or I wait for parts. Either way, I'll be making updates here. If you read my cobra blog, I'll most likely follow a similar M.O.