URG! I did but obviously misunderstood. Sorry.
Getting posts forwarded as messages on my phone has it's limitations.
I'm sure that part of it was a subliminal reaction that the BIG Tesla EPB couldn't possibly be lighter then the little rear Pantera caliper?
Plus I feel like my head is underwater and besieged with all this rain from this "tropical storm" we are currently enjoying. It HAS to be at 100% at the moment and I just don't do particularly well with that scenario.
What David said.
The 4 wires to the Tesla caliper are (most likely) two wires for power - which have one polarity to go in and have to reverse polarity to go out, and two wires for either a digital communication, or direct sensing of the Hall sensor.
I think the Hall sensor senses caliper POSITION, not rate, but I am sure that it definitely doesn’t sense if the ghost of Gary is in the area…
Why try and reengineer it, you ask?
Because 1) the Tesla controller was cheap, and 2) I think it’s (the PE controller is) more than I want to spend…. but I’ve given up on the reengineering plan…. I’m not as smart as Jon.
Rocky
Does the caliper work if you are using the 65 Mustang rear rotor?
When I was upgrading my brakes with the help from Ken Green and Ike Burrid, I was considering put the Brembo E brake from a Dodge Viper but would have had to have an adapter made. I believe this was part of Ken’s upgrade if you went with the full Saco upgrade. Before I went with the Ipsco e brake I was doing some research on this and spoke with a gentleman who did Brembo brake upgrades on Lotuses. He told me that the E brakes on the Vipers wouldn’t stop the car that quickly. He pointed out that given the amount of surface provided by e brake pads was not enough to stop the mass of the car. During the conversation I told him about the Brembo upgrade that Ken and Ike came up with using the Porsche 996TT calipers which was of interest to him, but I digress. Hope this helps.
Jimmy, here's a pic of the Brembo (Viper - Gen 3 and 4) mechanical parking brake. I've seen them brand new for around $280 each. If you try to buy them through a Lamborghini or Ferrari dealer, they want more than that for just the pads!!! The Tesla EPB is very similar but it has an electric motor on the inner side instead of a piston and mechanical actuators.
Doug, the Tesla EPB will accommodate a rotor up to 1-1/8" thick. Above that, you either have to file the pads down or make a spacer to go between the two halves of the caliper. Jon's adapter bracket fits the OE rear rotor diameter. Above that, you'd either have to modify Jon's brackets or make your own.
Hi Dave, does the Tesla brake and Viper use the same mounting bracket. I ended up going with the Ipsco calipers as I previously mentioned because I didn’t know anyone had made an adapter bracket for the Brembo calipers except for Ken and that is if you changed the uprights to the one Ed and Ken developed. Ed and Ken’s set up looked nice but i wanted to keep my OEM uprights. If I had known that I would probably have went with the Brembo set up. You can purchase the used Viper, Ferrari 360/430, Lamborghini Murcielago calipers on eBay or partrequest. I am not sure about the latter two fitting but they look pretty close if not identical to the Vipers.
It seems that these brake set ups would function more as a parking brake than providing any significant stopping force in an emergency situation. I think the Brembo calipers look more substantial than the Ipsco and Wilwood calipers.
At the same time I had also looked at the electronic e brake which came on VW’s, which were also Brembo’s if I remember correctly. That was the first time I had seen this system. I liked it but wasn’t sure what it was going to take to get it working on our cars.
David, is that a picture of your car with the Brembo Viper e brake set up? It looks very nice.
Jimmy,
I wouldn't be surprised if the mount spacing is the same for both the Viper and Tesla parking brake calipers but I have no way of knowing for sure. The photo of the car with the Brembo mechanical parking brake isn't my Pantera. In fact, I don't think it's even a Pantera!
The reason I like the Brembo mechanical parking brake calipers is, they allow for the best cable routing. My first experiment with aftermarket parking brake calipers was a StopTech / Audi S4 unit. They worked great but I wasn't crazy about the cable routing. Notice the outboard mounted brake hat/rotor.
I like the way the Brembo set up looks as well. Your set up looks nice and is great that it worked well. I haven’t tried mine yet. Who made the bracket for yours? What year S4 are those off of?
Here is a picture of a Brembo e brake kit offered by WCEngineering for a lotus Espirit.
Here are a few pics of Pantera Electronics Tesla parking brake kit.
Jimmy, the Brembo parking brake caliper in the Lotus kit is not the same as the caliper that’s used on the Gen 3 & 4 Viper. If I’m not mistaken, it’s the one that was used on the Gen 1 & 2 Vipers. The major difference is the way the cable attaches to the caliper.
@rocky posted:What David said.
The 4 wires to the Tesla caliper are (most likely) two wires for power - which have one polarity to go in and have to reverse polarity to go out, and two wires for either a digital communication, or direct sensing of the Hall sensor.
I think the Hall sensor senses caliper POSITION, not rate, but I am sure that it definitely doesn’t sense if the ghost of Gary is in the area…
Why try and reengineer it, you ask?
Because 1) the Tesla controller was cheap, and 2) I think it’s (the PE controller is) more than I want to spend…. but I’ve given up on the reengineering plan…. I’m not as smart as Jon.
Rocky
Read Jon's testing instructions. You can easily burn out the electronics on the caliper if you hot wire the thing wrong.
Personally I think for 250, let him do the work. Titania wants some new earrings.
If you want something reliable and that works, PE is THE place to go. I trust him completely on the equipment. On the color choices for LED's and the "Close Encounters of the third kind" flashing strobe lights, that's another thing altogether but no one is perfect.
As a matter of fact, I think those little aliens help him with the designs since some of them just aren't human and sometimes he's entirely too stubborn.
Can anyone give me a length of the brake hose for the relocated Pantera caliper?
I used a 19” hose with straight ends. I also used a 45 degree bulkhead fitting on the chassis side and a 45 degree banjo fitting at the caliper; all stainless steel.
I see all that but haven't torn down yet. I need to order the bulheads and the fluid bolt for the caliper. It took a -3 bulkhead, correct?
Since I haven't torn down yet, can you tell me which fluid bolt it takes? The fronts were an SAE 7/16.
Just looking at the connection it looks like it is a 3/8 thread.
I used a -3AN to -3AN 45 degree bulkhead adapter, -3AN Female hose, -3AN to 45 degree 10mm/3/8" banjo and 10mm x 1.0 banjo bolt. Keep in mind, I am not using the OEM rear calipers.
OK. Thank you David. Your info is helpful.
@jimmym posted:I like the way the Brembo set up looks as well. Your set up looks nice and is great that it worked well. I haven’t tried mine yet. Who made the bracket for yours? What year S4 are those off of?
Jimmy, the calipers are from the Stoptech Audi S4 big brake kit. They are not Audi OEM.
Thanks Dave. It looks like a nice set up. Stop tech makes some nice stuff. Did the kit fit the Pantera without mods?
Jimmy, I had to make brackets for mounting the calipers. If I were doing it over and wanted a mechanical parking brake, I’d go with the Viper (Gen 3 & 4) calipers. Not only are they a bit cheaper but the cable routing is better.
If my Ipsco set up doesn’t function as well as I like, maybe I would go with the Brembo’s but I would like to put an end to the project or as close to an end as possible.
I need a good picture of how the Pantera caliper fits on the Tesla modification and all I can find is the pictures of the Tesla mounted.
Does anyone have a good picture of that?
Also, I'm not convinced of the distance between centerlines mounting points on Jon's adapter plates is optimum.
He's a little sensitive on things like this questioning his designs. (He gets cranky...but so do I and don't want to argue with him on this) To those who have tried both, what was the decision, in numbers, to get the best full pad contact? Not just "use Jon's adapter, or David's", etc)
No, but nice picture.
I figured it out myself. My installation is done. Thank you though.
I went with matching grey to the EPB.
What I was looking for was the center line to center line on the EPB adapter. I was having issues with the thickness of the adapter and where it located the brake pads in relationship to the edge of the original Pantera rotor.
I can only speculate why in some issues but it may be that what is being offered as an adapter was done using the 65 Mustang rotor and not the original Pantera rotor.
The Mustang rotor varies from the Pantera rotor in both thickness and outside diameter. The Pantera rotor is thinner and larger in diameter. That effects how the adapter is dimensioned as well.
No problem now though. I found that I needed a 1-1/2" center to center and a 3/8" thick adapter.
As far as relocating the Pantera rear caliper to the front, for my car, it isn't a simple bolt on.
The thickness of the mounting tabs in the front vary from the rear.
On the right upright, the tabs were machined 1/8" thinner and on the left, 1/16" thinner.
My reaction to that was because the left and right varied on the front tabs, I thought that those were "mis-machined" initially from the supplier and because they didn't want to throw them away, the mis-machined tabs were just located where they were never intended to be used by the factory to begin with.
I didn't like the proximity of the "outboard" mounting brackets for the original mechanical handbrakes when the calipers were mounted in the forward position.
I wanted to see what everyone else had done with that. There are amazingly little photos of that detail, as well as no mentioning of the tab thickness variation OR the variation of the adapter using different rotors, so that's where my installation needed to be re-engineered.
My solution was spacer/shims, to center the Pantera calipers correctly varying from left side to right side, and removing the "outboards" entirely.
That's why I asked for a photo but even Pantera-Electronics couldn't supply those.
Hey. It was a fun project and the kind of thing I like to do anyway, so no complaints from me.
There are LOTS of places on this car where sometimes even the slightest variation from stock involves considerable fabrication AND "you should be careful so you shouldn't get killed".
