[DeTomaso] Ladder-style engine bay brace

Tue May 1 21:08:43 EDT 2007

I don't have before and after experience since the full Hall chassis brace
setup was on the car when I bought it, though I did add the triangulation
bars between the two horizontal tub supports.  But I have played around with
jacking the car corners with some of the braces out and also done
side-by-side jacking comparisons to stock non-rusty Panteras with only the
not so good single tub support.  In short, the chassis braces noticeably
improve the overall stiffness of the car.

With all the Hall braces in place, I can jack up one front corner (using the
jacking point in the front foot well) and the other front corner will
eventually come off the ground as well.  Then I can rock the car back and
forth diagonally like a crooked teeter-totter with first the front wheel
opposite the jack touching the ground, then the rear wheel on the side of
the jack touching, by pushing down on one corner or the other.  Through all
this the doors open normally.  When trying the same thing with a stock
Pantera without the braces, there are all kinds of sheet metal moans and
groans as the chassis flexes, the doors quickly end up jammed shut and the
jacking experiment stops.

Todd Reid in Oklahoma came up with a different kind of brace for the tub,
somewhat along the lines of Goran's.  He fabricated a flat brace out of
heavy sheet steel (maybe 1/8" thick) that stands upright across the tub and
is bolted to the both the ZF/bellhousing bolts as well as the stock
horizontal brace supports.  This brace basically turns the ZF into a
stressed chassis member.  Todd made before and after measurements diagonally
across the tub and said the brace really stiffened up the tub.

Dave Bell

-----Original Message-----
From: detomaso-bounces at realbig.com [mailto:detomaso-bounces at realbig.com]On
Behalf Of Gray Gregory
Sent: Tuesday, May 01, 2007 3:38 PM
To: doug at silicondesigns.com
Cc: DeTomaso Forum
Subject: Re: [DeTomaso] Ladder-style engine bay brace

Doug,

You didn't spell my name wrong. Your previous post was a reply to Gary; I
just chimed in. I think Dave Bell might have been one of the guys who
documented the improvements. Dave should be back from Vegas today so maybe
he'll chime in with real results.

Gray

-----Original Message-----
From: Doug Braun [mailto:doug at silicondesigns.com]
Sent: Tuesday, May 01, 2007 2:56 PM
To: Gray Gregory
Cc: DeTomaso Forum
Subject: RE: [DeTomaso] Ladder-style engine bay brace

Gray,

        I would say that the jacking/door test is a good before/after
testimony.
This is the kind of info I was looking for.

BTW, sorry I spelled your name wrong in the previous post.

Doug

-----Original Message-----
From: detomaso-bounces at realbig.com
[mailto:detomaso-bounces at realbig.com]On Behalf Of Gray Gregory
Sent: Tuesday, May 01, 2007 11:57 AM
To: doug at silicondesigns.com; gow2 at rc-tech.net
Cc: DeTomaso Forum
Subject: Re: [DeTomaso] Ladder-style engine bay brace

Doug,

I seem to remember one / some of the early adopters of the Hall kit doing
some before and after measurements by jacking the car from one or more
corners and reporting significant improvement. I have also heard others
comment that the door will open and close normally with one corner off the
ground where it previously would not.

The original Hall sys was a 4 piece kit that had front and rear lower frame
braces as well as front and rear upper braces. I don't think I've seen any
measurement data on just installing the rear wheel well brace, but my hunch
is that's the most effective piece in the kit.

Gray

-----Original Message-----
From: detomaso-bounces at realbig.com [mailto:detomaso-bounces at realbig.com] On
Behalf Of Doug Braun
Sent: Tuesday, May 01, 2007 12:42 PM
To: gow2 at rc-tech.net
Cc: DeTomaso Forum
Subject: Re: [DeTomaso] Ladder-style engine bay brace

Gary,

        Stiffening the box at the rear using Goran's "X" design will also
help to
stiffen the wheel wells.

        My main point though was, that to my knowledge, Goran is the only
one who
has come up with a brace design of any kind, whether it be for frame, box or
wheel wells that has objective data to prove it works.  What I'm looking for
on the other designs is either frame-twist data like Goran's in torsional
units, before and after skid pad data, or before and after track lap time
data.  Has anything like this been done on the other brace designs?

Doug Braun
blue 73L #5505

-----Original Message-----
From: gow2 at rc-tech.net [mailto:gow2 at rc-tech.net]
Sent: Tuesday, May 01, 2007 10:20 AM
To: MikeLDrew at aol.com
Cc: doug at silicondesigns.com; mikeldrew at aol.com; detomaso at realbig.com
Subject: Re: [DeTomaso] Ladder-style engine bay brace

The X brace which many and Goran have talked about stiffens the "box". The
cross brace stiffens the wheel wells which are different problems.

Gary

>
> In a message dated 5/1/07 9 27 39, doug at silicondesigns.com writes:
>
>
>>
>> This may be obvious to some, but not to me.  Which brace are you
>> referring
>> to here (the Pantera Proformance ladder?) and who measured its
>> effectiveness?  I'd be interested in seeing some evidence of
>> effectiveness
>> for these designs.  The only one I've seen test data for so far is
>> Goran's
>> rear "X" brace.
>>
>
> The Hall Pantera system (later copied by Precision Proformance with slight
> modifications, mostly so that they can sell it as a true bolt-in kit as
> opposed
> to a finish-it-yourself project) may not be perfect, but it has been
> proven to
> work quite well by those who have it and swear by it.   Like I said
> originally, I have NO objective, scientific test data, but rather just
> some
> before-and-after testimonials, as well as knowing nods of approval by
> various
> professionals (and by that I don't mean Pantera professionals, but rather
> proper racing
> engineers, structural engineers etc.) who have compared the design of the
> systems.
>
> Goran's solutions are probably the 'best', but involve major construction
> and
> a lot of other compromises.
>
> Mike

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