Reply to "Big bearing front spindles?"

I am a believer that the reason the brakes exist as offered was to make the car as foolproof to drive on the street as possible.

Ford had plenty of input into the Pantera and the edict from them was that there could be no way that they would finance Detomaso and sell the Pantera under the Ford logo if the car was going to understeer like the Mangusta did.

Putting the small brakes on the rear was part of the safety net built into the car.

Understeer was also.

The last thing Ford needed was a travasty similar to what happened with the new Ford GTs.

The current Ford GT Registry is indicating that as much as 40% of these cars were wrecked with under 500 miles on them.

Most of those were one car wrecks with people running into trees and poles thinking just because they could buy the car that made them AJ Foyt.

I think Ford did the right thing initially with the Pantera.

Putting more brakes on this car now isn't that simple. The panic handling of the car as far as going straight in braking will be effected.

Putting more brakes in the rear without balancing that to the front probably will be lethal.

Not everyone is going to have track time available to them to dial in a brake proportioning valve to balance.

Also you don't want to be able to lock up the front brakes in panic stopping.

The key as proven with anti-lock brakes is to keep the car straight even at the cost of longer stopping distances.

Just my opinion of this subject.