Maserati Mistral Handbrake

I have hit a complete roadblock reattaching the handbrake connections on my '65 Maserati Mistral. The geometry on the triangular piece on the top of the rear axle has me completely baffled. I fail to see any way tension can be applied equally to both Girling rear brakes with the handbrake lever lifted. No other vintage Maserati appears to have a similar handbrake layout. Any assistance or advice would be sincerely appreciated.
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Hello Ettore. The mechanism is actually rather simple and elegant and is used at least in the Ghibli also.The parts are shown in tab 24 of the Ghibli parts book.
That triangular piece has a 101 part number so seems to date from the 3500 gti. I will attempt to describe the operation as clearly as I can.
The way your picture is arranged would be a view from above with the front of the car to the top of the picture. Thus the cable exiting the picture to the bottom Right acts on the rear right handbrake shoes, and the one on the Left acts on the rear left ones. The sleeved cable entering from the top LHS is connected to the handbrake lever.
It may help firstly to imagine that the swing arm which is oriented vertically in the picture is welded to the triangular bracket and is thus immobile. in this case, pulling the handbrake lever would move the cable inner for the right hand brakes to the left, the caliper would close and the shoes squeeze the brake disc. The RH brake is now on.
You can imagine that if you hold tension on the handbrake lever, as if to put the brake on really tight, that the cable inner is imposing a load on the swing arm as it braces to try and pull in more of the inner leftwards. The load on the swing arm would be to the right at the lower end.
Now in real life, the swing arm is NOT fixed at all and can move around the pivot. The load will now begin to move the arm counter clockwise and pull on the actuating cable for the left caliper, applying the left rear brake.
The two brakes do not deploy simultaneously, but that is of no consequence as the car is stationary (one hopes!)


I hope that is a satisfactory explanation. I’m sure others will be able to provide better if required.

best regards to all.

Mark

 

Apologies. Line 7 should read ….the cable OUTER is imposing a load…..
Missed the editing window!

 

Many, many thanks! I understand your explanation completely and will reinstall this assembly with complete confidence now. I think my mistake was assuming that this mechanism was supposed to apply tension simultaneously when the handbrake lever was pulled.