Accelerator Pedal

Since I'm going with a 5.0 Coyote engine in the Pantera, I need to install a drive by wire accelerator pedal. I was bummed that I had to do this since I had finished the pedal assembly not too long ago. Taking that thing a part is not an easy thing to do.

Here's a picture of what the new pedal looks like. It's out of a Mustang. As you can see this pedal is quite a bot different than what came in the Pantera and the mounting situation is quite a bit different as well.

After a bunch of staring at the pedal and the pedal assembly I finally came up with a plan. I decided that I would have to cut off the mounting pin for the existing pedal and make a bracket to hold the new pedal assembly in place in the Pantera. I had to be careful not to interfere with the brake pedal and the clutch mechanism.

The mounting ear on the right side of the pedal picture above so the clutch assembly had to go. I decided that two bolts would hold the pedal in place just right.

I took a piece of 13 guage steel and cut two holes in it to fit the mounting nobs on the back of the new pedal assembly. I bent the sheet steel to where I thought it would need to be in order to turn the bracket towards the front firewall. Here's what the pedal assembly looks like on the bracket.

You can see from the picture above that the mounting nobs would have to be trimmed in order to allow bolts to hold the pedal in place. In this photo I hadn't cut off the third mounting tab as of yet. Now its time to prep the Pantera for the new assembly.

To do this I had to cut off the end of the mounting piece that held on the old accelerator pedal. With this out of the way I could lay the new pedal assembly in place and determine how to bend the bracket so that it can be mounted on the firewall. Once bent, I drilled two mounting holes. The bolts will to out just to the right and under the steering column and will terminate just below the floor in the front boot (in that space where the rack is under the car). Here's a shot of what the Pantera pedal assembly looks like after I did the modifications.

The shinny square in the upper middle, right side of the picture is the cut off mounting point for the old pedal. The mounting holes I drilled to hold the new pedal assembly can be seen just to the right of the steering column going through the firewall. The following shots show what the new pedal assembly looks like on the new bracket.

You can see from the photo above that I bent the mounting tab beyond 90 degrees to allow the pedal assembly to be tilted down allowing the accelerator pedal to be able to line up with the brake pedal and clutch. If you don't bend this down in this way the accelerator pedal would be much higher than the brake - now a good thing. 

Here's what the completed project looks like. 

Notice the pig tail of wires sticking out at the top right. This is what has to be hooked up on the computer. That'll come much later down the road. The photo below shows the part number for the new accelerator pedal. 

Rear Brake Caliper Brackets

The Wilwood brakes I'm using for the rear didn't come with any kind of mounting bracket. Just like the fronts, the rear calipers have a 3.5 inch mounting hole pattern. The Pantera mounting holes are an approximate 3" pattern. Time to make some brackets.

I started by cutting a piece of 3/8" steel plate to go around the ears of the original Pantera mouting holes. This was a laborious process since I really don't have proper cutting tools. After a while of cutting this is what I came up with.

With the first piece cut out it was time to make the next piece that would bolt into the mounting holes on the Pantera rear hub. Here's how it looks before the work began.

After a bunch of work I was able to shape the two pieces to fit exactly the rear hub and the caliper from Wilwood. Here's what the bracket looks like all finished laying on the rear hub.

Here's  shot of the bracket off the hub laying on the rotor. I made another one just like it and built a set of brackets to mount on the other side of the hub to hold the parking brake I bought from Wilwood as well.

This shot shows what the final assembly looks like.