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My Pantera Brake Project

This will be a small dissertation on how I managed to overcome a Brake problem on my Pantera.
Hopefully this will help others fix up their brakes.

Starting the weekend of April 8th, 2000, I proceeded to review the brakes on my Pantera. During this time, I found the drivers side Brake pad to be suffering from the effects of severe overheating and stress cracking.

Fried Old Pad

I also noticed I had some good original type pads, note the wire attached to the one pad. This is the wire used to indicate brake wear by the light on the dash. I don't think I'll find one of these without going to a Pantera Vendor.

Old Pads, showing original "wear indicator" wire

Please note, this was a very rush job and as such I was not contacting any vendors for parts. I needed to do this project during the weekend. At a later time, I may contact a vendor for some of the original style pads.

Once I identified that I needed new pads for the front of the stock system, I had to find them somewhere. Turning to the DeTomaso interchange listing that accompanys the shop manual set sold by the POCA Club Store, and consulting Ted Mitchell's interchange on the web, I went to work. Calling Napa in Spokane, I found out they had no crosses for the listings provided. So we went searching the silouettes for a suitable pad. I had noted from Ted's listing that one particular pad would work but would have to be modified to fit. So we chose what turned out to be:

Napa Tru-Stop parr number TS-7067. A box of four pads was $12.49. What a deal.

Old pad versus new pad TS-7067 (Napa)

The first step was to draw an outline of the old brake pad onto the back of the new pad

New pad with outline of old pad

Using a hacksaw, I rough cut the outline. Then used a die grinder to smooth and round the edges.

Old pad on left, new "cutout" pad on right

This gave me the basic shape I needed, but when I flipped the pad over, you will notice the pad material exceeded the edge where the rotor would be contacting it:

Old pad on left, new pad on right, not extra pad material

This necessitated some additional cutting and removing of pad material. And this left me with a pad very much like the originals. They fit fine and work very well.

Old pad, new pad with excess pad cut off, and new pad

Here we see the old pad (fried), the new one after reworking, and the new one before reworking. Overall, not too bad for under $15 and some sweat equity.

Hopefully this information can help others in the same prediciment.