[DeTomaso] Hand Brake

Tom Shinrock tmshinro at aol.com
Sun May 12 10:38:48 EDT 2013


After 26 years of owning my Pantera with stock brakes, I finally have a functional hand brake.  When I replaced the seals in my rear calipers for the first time around 15 years ago I discovered the teeth on my piston were so worn that they would slip rendering the hand brake inoperable.  Living without a hand brake was not that difficult but it occasionally bugged me that it didn't work.  At that time I had a nice flat driveway so it didn't really matter and we don't have a lot of hills in Iowa.

About six years ago I saw some stock rear calipers on eBay and contacted the seller to see if the parking brake worked when they were on the car (he upgraded his brakes).  He said the parking worked so I bought the calipers, which even came with brake pads that were less than 5% worn, and promptly put them on the shelf.  At the time I had kids that were very active in high school and I was working so I never got around to swapping them out.  Like I said, it wasn't a pressing matter at the time.

After moving to a different house that includes a rather steep driveway my motivation increased.  Almost 2 years ago I disassembled one of the used calipers and got it soaking to clean them up.  There it sat until now.  The combination of getting tired of the calipers taking up room on my workbench and the fact that I needed to clean up my suspension pieces after my drive to Phoenix I decided to remove the calipers to make the clean up easier and finally swap out the calipers.  I rebuilt them with a seal kit I had bought at the same time I bought the calipers and put everything together after cleaning everything up.  

I engaged the brake on the flat garage floor and saw that I couldn't push the car while in neutral.  I was encouraged.  I promptly backed the car onto the sloped driveway and engaged the brake looking forward to seeing the brake hold the grade.  I took my foot off the brake pedal and the car promptly rolled down the driveway.  I was immediately disheartened and thought back to stories I've heard that the stock hand brake wasn't that effective.  I thought everything I did was for nothing.

I pulled the car back into the garage, engaged the brake and again verified that I couldn't move the car while it was in neutral.  I then looked at the arms on the calipers that get pulled by the brake cables and noticed they were barely pulled up.  I did three iterations of adjusting the cable length with the adjustment barrels until I couldn't move the car in neutral and then backed the adjustment off until I could just move the car.  I backed it out on the driveway and was very pleased to see that the brake held the car on the slope.  I let out a manly whoop and thumped my chest once as I cast out one of just two demons that afflicted my car (the other being the A/C). 

Now all I need to know is what types of arm exercises to do I need to take up so I can pull up the handle to the last click?   I'm embarrassed to say that I need to lift the handle with my hand for the first couple of clicks and then put the handle in the crook of my flexed right arm and lift the handle with my arm.  To disengage I need to position my arm the same way to lift the handle to release the tension and push the button with my left hand so it can retract.  Looks goofy but it works.  

Now there is only one demon left, the A/C.  I switched back to the factory fan but it's been so cool since then I couldn't really test it.  We are supposed to hit 90 on Tuesday so I should find out if that demon is gone or in need of more attention.

Tom
5186



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