Master Cylinder, Brake Booster, Pedal Assembly

The master cylinder/brake booster combination I choose was one for a GM that I found on Summitracing.com. Here's the page that links right to what I bought. http://www.summitracing.com/parts/clp-8dsrb-mc-c/overview/

The assembly is a Classic Performance universal system (P/N 8dsrb-mc-c). It has an 8" dia dual booster and two chamber universal M/C. It comes with a little chrome to boot. I think the entire set up cost just under $300. Not bad at all.

The Pantera mounting plate would have to be modified to fit the good old US 4 bolt pattern on the back of the booster. Other than that it looks to be a pretty straight forward install.

I began by rebuilding the pedal assembly. Unfortunately the torsion spring on the clutch has snapped on my assembly. I checked around and found one online for some god-awful price (with an even worse shipping price). My stubborn nature kicked in and I refused to order the stupid thing. I thought that I would resort to hooking up a simple tension spring to return the clutch if I couldn't find something that would work.

After a couple weeks of checking here and there for a torsion spring that would work on the clutch I was giving up hope. My pride just wouldn't let me purchase the original equipment one that was being extorted online. Then my buddy was showing me an old Singer sowing machine table from the 40's he was getting rid of. He was messing around with this lever that was spring loaded to return to a certain position. The light bulb went off in my head. I looked closely and found that a torsion spring was used to return this lever - one that looked like it would work on the Pantera.

I took the spring out and did a bit of bending, cut out a couple coils and wouldn't you know it - it works great. Now I have the starts of a real rat-rod Pantera! Singer sowing machine- who would have guessed.

Here's a picture of the pedal assembly assembled and ready to go (minus the gas pedal which I didn't attach for the picture). If you look close you can see the spring on the clutch pedal - a bit too big but should be just fine for now.

As I said earlier, the mounting plate needed to be modified to mount the booster I choose. I made a wooden template and used it to locate the mounting holes I needed to put into the plate.

After drilling the holes I decided to make a 1/4" steel plate just like the wooden template to give the mounting locations a bit more strength. I sandwiched the plate between the back of the booster and the mounting plate on the Pantera. Here's a couple pictures of the booster mounted to the mounting plate. 

I was just about to mount the completed assembly into the Pantera when I decided to make a spacer to extend the pedals a bit more to give me some additional leg room. Here's the spacer I made out of 1" square tube. This gives me one more inch of leg room down by the pedals - good for my 6'5" body!!!

I had to drill out the mounting holes on the Pantera body to get the bolts to work properly. Once that was done it was a pretty easy matter of just bolting up the assembled system. I did have to remove the clutch pedal, slide the pedal arm towards the passanger side of the car and wiggle the entire assembly into place. Once it was in the hole I had to reconnect the clutch pedal and start to bolting up the assembly to the car.

Here's what it looks like in place. 

Here's a view from inside the car. I did have to do a little reshaping of the clutch pedal to avoid contact with the steering shaft. All in all, not too tough a project. 

After getting a few more connectors it was time to hook up all the lines I had been running for the brakes. I mounted a "T" and the Proportioning Valve on the wheel well just to the outside of the master cylinder. Hard lines were bent and connected to hook the master cylinder up to both the hard lines under the Pantera running to the front and real wheels. Here's a couple pictures showing you the lines that were added. 

Now the entire brake system is plumbed. I will have to wait on the rebuild of the rear knuckle before I can fabricate the brackets needed to install the rear brakes. After that it is ready to add fluid and can actually stop on its own! Big steps forward. 

Front Brake Lines

The front lines were a bit more of a challenge to figure out where they are to be routed to. I ended up not liking the fact that the passenger side line actually runs through the boot. There is so much room up under where the battery is located (under the boot) that I decided to run the lines through there. Here's some pictures of how the front lines look.

In the picture above you see the front and rear lines coming together up against the bottom of the front boot. These lines will be connected to the hard lines that will come off the master cylinder - to be plumbed up later. 

Rear Brake Lines

Finally got most of the parts needed to start plumbing in the brakes. All the lines were missing and I wasn't sure how to run the lines to the rear. I was particularly worried about how to place the lines near where the transaxle will be sitting. Then it was the Internet to the rescue.

Thanks to the owner of Pantera 2077. He has a blog highlighting his restoration on blogspot.com. This page shows the rear brake line routing in detail. http://pantera2077.blogspot.com/p/chassis.html. I ran my line as close to this as possible. 

I did have to drill a hole in a cross member near where the engine will sit. Looks to me like the cross member on my Pantera was replaced. No big deal. Drilled out a set of clearance holes to feed the line through and it was ready to go. 

I decided to run 3/16 stainless for the entire car. I also elected to use AN fittings (-3) throughout. I purchased a Rigid flaring tool (37 degree) to custom make my lines. The tool was more than I wanted to pay but I'm sure glad I got it - it works great. I think I paid about $130 for it. 

What I was able to get done today was to run a single line from up under the front boot back to the rear of the car. I took a bit of bending here and there but I was able to get a single line for this long run. Here's some shots of what it looks like now. 

This is a shot looking up from under the front boot. The three holes just beyond the end of the tubing is where the brake lines will be coming down from the Master Cylinder. I will be attaching another line holder up towards the top of the line after I figure out how I'm going to run the line up from here to the MC.

Here we are looking from the front of the car to the rear. I will need to get a couple more grommets to protect the line in the middle pass through hole. The line is nice and secure and looks pretty much like the original.

Now we are looking from the rear of the car. you can see the cross member in the middle of the shot where I had to drill some pass through holes. The same will need to be done for the rest of the pieces that will come back to the transaxle and for the e-brake cable. 

Here we are looking at the passenger rear side of the car. The line ends at a T. From here I will hard line up to the small hole at the top of the picture where a flex line will go to the caliper itself. 

Next I made the tubes from the T to the hole in the fenders to where the flex line will go to the calipers. Here's what they look like. Pretty close to the originals from the pictures I have seen.

Console Finishing

I covered how I framed out the dash and console in an earlier post. Now its time to get the console in a finished looking state. I've decided to fiberglass over the wood and to smooth it out from there. I have never really fiberglassed anything of importance before so it was off to the Internet to learn some basics.

After a bunch of You-Tube videos and visiting various fiberglass product sites I settled on ordering 1.5 ounce cloth and a poly resin from FiberglassSite.com. They had about the best price per yard on the cloth and a decent resin cost. I paid less than $3/yrd on the cloth and about $37 for the resin (one gallon with hardner). Shipping was a whopping $33! Ouch.

I prepped the console by giving it a rough sanding. I rounded all the corners and edges as well. I also decided that I needed more room on the side of the console where the e-brake handle is. I did a bit of cutting and repairing to give me an indent where the handle will sit.

Then I just got with it and fiberglassed the entire box. I decided I wanted some thickness to the fiber so I went 3 layers. Overall it came out pretty good.

Once dried I found out how many bubbles and bad spots I had allowed to happen. I think I was in too big a hurry to get the cloth laid down and didn't prepare enough beforehand. I think when I go to do the dash I will cut out the cloth exactly as I want it to lay and then cut out two more exact pieces. Then I won't feel as rushed between layers trying to cut and mix the resin at the same time.

By the way, I found it best to mix 10oz of resin at the most at one time. The resin tried to set up on me in my paint can before I could get the resin on the cloth. More than 10oz was a waste since I ended up tossing out some of it anyway.

After letting the cloth dry for a couple days I started the finishing process. Out came my 4" and 6" Random Orbital (RO) sander, a small hand sander and my grinder with a 36 grit layered grinding disk. First step was to cut off the edges. I used a grinder with a cut off wheel for that. Then I started the real work.

With the grinder and the 36 grit layered grinding disk I wend over one side at a time. I was looking to eliminate all the bubbles (by grinding them into a hole) and to knock down as much of the high spots as possible. This isn't a very exact process. Just whack away at it and keep feeling for high spots and look for bubbles. You can see the grinder and grinding wheel I used to do this step - remember this is just a really rough outcome. Once I felt like it was fairly uniform it was time for the bondo.

I mixed up small batches (3 golf ball blobs) at a time. I quickly coated the side that I had just ground, doing my best to give a uniform, relatively thin coating.

After about 25 minutes dry time I roughed up the fresh bondo with a rasp and then got out my 6" RO sander and used 60 grit paper. I found this combination of sander and paper gave me a quick, smooth finish.

Of course there are many low sposts that didn't get quite enough bondo so it was back to applying bondo to the low spots. Here's a closeup of a bubble that needs to be ground out and finished with another coat of bondo.

After about three rounds of bondo/sanding it looked really great. The edges and rounded spots is where you need to pull out all your sanding tools. I used soft pads with various grits of paper to try and give myself a uniform edge and radius where needed. Take your time here since this will show up the most when a gloss paint is applied.

I continued the same process on all sides of the console. It came out pretty smooth. I put a little primer on it to help me see any spots that need a little more attention. Not bad for my first attempt at fiberglass.