The Pantera Place
"Your de Tomaso Connection"

The Pantera 351 Cleveland and ZF Transaxle

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The Pantera 351 Cleveland Power Plant

The Ford 351 4V Cleveland engine powering my 1971 Pantera is a high compression (11.0 to 1), high performance engine typical of the early 70s muscle cars. 

The 330 horsepower that de Tomaso advertized for the 1971 Pantera is the same horsepower advertized for some high performance 1971 Mustangs.  de Tomaso achieved their horsepower rating not by using the 330 horsepower Mustang engine, but by adding steel tube headers and other tuning to a lesser horsepower hydraulic cam 351 4V Cleveland engine and doing so raised the advertized horsepower to 330.  

The engine in my Pantera has a high performance hydraulic lifter cam, aluminum Edelbrock Performer intake manifold, Holley 600 carburetor, Crane roller rockers,  Accel dual point mechanical advance only distributor, MSD plug wires, Hall Pantera headers, valve covers and air cleaner.  The horsepower of this Pantera is estimated to be approximately 350+.  Coupling the 351 Cleveland horsepower to the close ratio ZF five-speed transaxle with its 4.22 final drive gearing, 2.23 first gear and a 3123-pound car creates an awesome performance package.   

The ZF Transaxle

The Pantera uses a five speed ZF transaxle with a final drive ratio of 4.22.  The same type of ZF transaxle was used in the Ford GT40.  The ZF is very, very strong and is of limited-slip design.  An eleven inch clutch plate is used with a hydraulic master and salve cylinder for clutch linkage.

The 1st gear ratio is 2.23, 2nd gear is 1.47, 3rd gear is 1.04, 4th gear is .846 and 5th gear is .705.  The gear ratios are very close between each gear and keeps the engine in its power band.  At 6000 RPM in 5th gear the speed would equal the advertised 159 MPH.  Wow!  7000 RPM would be 185 MPH.  With just another 500 RPM it would be 202 MPH!      

The tested (August 1971 Car and Driver) zero to sixty speed of the stock 1971 Pantera was 5.5 seconds with a 1/4 mile time of 14 seconds.   Many of the Panteras with a slightly modified engine will do 0 - 60 in under 5 seconds and the 1/4 mile in under 13 seconds.  All of this straight-line performance and it can turn too! 

Running Through The Gears

Click to listen to a (256kb) sound bite of accelerating through the gears, 1st, 2nd and 3rd.  The top RPM for this run was about 5000 in 2nd gear or 63 MPH.  The sound clip represents an easy, not pushing it very hard, "get on the freeway" acceleration run.  4th and 5th gear were not used for this acceleration run as it would have created an illegal speed situation on the freeway.  We always want to drive our Panteras safely and legally, don't we!  The video cam used to make this sound bite tends to pick up a lot of higher tone background noise (air, ZF gear whine and freeway traffic) and clip some of the lower tone engine sounds.  If you would like to save a copy of this sound file on your own computer, "right click" on the link and then click "Save Target As" and then save the file to your computer.