2 June 2006
Session 80 - Rear Calipers sliders
These are proving to be a big problem sourcing. Even drawing a blank with salvage yards! A number of fellow buildings have spares which they are offering to me at reasonable prices. I rang Ford in Kidlington and they said nope we do not produce those anymore and we have now left. Erm, suspicious, I am sure that car manufacturers have to make a commitment to have car parts for a long time after production has ceased. These caliper sliders were used on the higher performance sierras; 4 X 4, 2.9v6, Coswoth's, also on Granada's and scorpios and I think that takes production up to 1995, just 11 years ago. A fellow builder said he had this sort of problem before and it is simply that the person you are speaking cannot be bothered, in the words of catherine tate! With this in mind I decided to turn up in person to another Ford parts department rather than telephone. Guess what, they are available!!
I finally hung my small parts cabinet on the wall to reclaim lost space on my bench.
Also fixed my fire extinguisher on the wall. I am sure my insurers would be impressed. Funny thing buying one of these, you sort of hope that you never have to use it, does this mean that it is a waste of money!
5 June 2006
Ordered my rear caliper sliders from Ford today along with pins and bolts to mount to upright. All this talk about rear calipers and I do not think I have yet shown you a picture. Please see below.
Only spent 30 minutes it the garage tonight measuring up and working out the exact route for my fuel lines.
These calipers do not look anywhere near as nice as the fronts do they? They are cast and therefore quite heavy. I am not so worried about saving weight on the rear actually because I think it will help with the weight distribution of the car with a heavy V8 in the front. These are simple one pot calipers, the front are 4 pots! but it is better to under-brake the rear, we do not want the rear end overtaking the front under heavy braking!
Fuel lines marked with tape where I need to form bends:
I am really starting to think about my engine options and what I want. Currently reading the V8 tuners bible.
6 June 2006
Session 82 - Rear caliper sliders
Picked up two new nice and shiny rear caliper sliders from Ford today. Unfortunately they failed to get the correct bolts in which to mount the sliders to the uprights! A quick phone call to Westfield quickly confirmed what bolt specification I needed as Ford did not know!
The bolts are M10 X 1.5 pitch and should be 50mm long. My local bearing supplier always has the bolts I need except this time, they had 55mm. I was planning on using a spring washer which takes up about 3mm anyway, so I also added a flat 2mm washer between the spring washer and upright which is a good idea anyway as the upright is alloy, spot on!
Here is a photo of the sliders before I painted them. Took me 1 hour to do 2 coats of black caliper paint. Picture to follow when they are dry.
Here's a photo of Ford specification anti rattle plates and caliper to slide mounting bolts in the packet so that should you need to source them you have the product code details:
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8 June 2006
Session 83 - rear caliper installation/ fuel lines
Spent 1.5 hours in the garage tonight.
Caliper sliders were dry enough to install tonight. So I have installed onto uprights and installed calipers. Not yet torque up as I do not have the brake pads yet, which I am expecting tomorrow. Then I finish off and install the hand-brake cable. Then all I need are the front pads for the raceleda calipers and brake fluid. I might have a working brake system by the weekend!
I also formed the bends in the fuel line, they are looking good. All I need to do now is attach with p-clips. I shall leave the drilling to the weekend I think.
I also replaced the socket cap M8 bolts on the upper and lower UJ's on the steering column. I was not happy the bolts supplied as they were not long enough to engage the nylon part of the nyloc nut. I ended up using an M8 x 40mm with as washer on the cap head and a washer under the nut, perfect two threads showing through the nut. This is critical. Torque up to 25nm.
Almost forgot to mention, my gear level and handbrake gaiters turned up today, that I ordered from Mr. Gaiter Ltd. Made with italian leather and stitching to match the yellow body, nice. These are actually designed for westfield fitment.
9 June 2006
Session 84 - Rear brake pads/ handbrake cable
My EBC brakes I ordered start of the week appeared today. They are green, erm. Installed anti-squeek backing which goes a long way to hide the green. Installed the pads into the calipers. Now at last I can hook up the handbrake cable. Please note for future reference do not connect the handbrake cable to the handbrake until this has been done! Another point to note is that the handbrake cable can be adjusted by turning the white wheel thing on the the drivers side handbrake cable in the transmission tunnel. Connected up the hydraulic line as well. Handbrake appears to work, wow! Believe it or not this took me 2 hours.
EBC green stuff brakes, DP2617, even the box looks nice!
Photo of nearside rear brake caliper from front, sorry it is slightly out of focus, damn camera
Photo of offside rear brake caliper from the rear showing all the beauty!
12 June 2006
Session 85 - Fuel line1 installation
I cannot believe I spent 2 hours installing a fuel line under the floor when I pre-formed the line. The issue I had is that I forgot the bolts for the seat that will need to go through the floor. A good tip is drill the holes for the seats before installing any lines under the floor, will then be obvious. I had to manipulate the line to literally just miss the holes and the eventual nut. I tried getting a socket over a nut and I must have about 0.5mm clearance, so it work out all right in the end, in fact looks like I have really given it a lot of thought, when in reality I had not given it enough!
Another tip, if installing lines under the floor put a small washer between the floor and the p-clip, this will increase the gap between the floor and the line by a small fraction, in my opinion the gap is too small and when the floor flexes it will contact the line between the p-clips, even if the p-clips are less than 25cm apart.
I bought a starter motor off Ebay the other day which turned up today. It is brand new and a high torque Rover V8 type as used on TVR's and Morgan's .A real bargain at £63 including delivery ! I believe these cost around £200-£250.
17 June 2006
Finally my front brake pads arrived today. Pads are Blue Hawk HB237.These pads are fast road/race, an all round good compound that operates at an optimal temperate range of 250-1000F. They are also a low dust compound just the rear pads.
Now that I Have all my pads installed I can begin bleeding. I borrowed an EZ bleed system but when I tried to use it, hydraulic fluid leaked of the top of the reservoir. This made me think something was wrong, due to lack of confidence as I had not used one of these before, I decided to revert to the manual bleeding operation require two people. The only other person at home was my 14 year daughter, who made a very good job of bleeding the rear brakes! She was a little concerned about damaging her finely manicured nails though. When I came to bleed the front brakes I was a little confused because the bleed nipples have two bolts, which one do I turn, erm! I tried the large one first and nothing was coming through. My daughter had to go out and needed to do her make-up! So I decided to tackle the EZ-bleed again. This time I thought I would use some plumbers' PTFE tape on the top of the reservoir and also lowered the tyre pressure from 20PSI to 15PSI. This time no leaking ocurred. I tried turning the large bolt and nothing, I tried the rear brake nipple just to check the EZ-bleed system was working, wow, the fluid flew out. Okay so I concluded that I was turning the wrong nut on the nipple at the front. I started turning he smaller nut and bingo! The Raceleda calipers, wait for it, have 4 bleed nipples a piece. Now with this new found tool, on my own it took me about 10 minutes to bleed through all 8 nipples. The rears took about 30 minutes using the old fashoned way with two people.
To my amazement I had no leaks from my various brake unions, flexi-cable and banjos. The brake pedal feels really firm and works a treat, hopefully this is job done.
I used Dot 5.1 non silicone based fluid and ditched the fluid bleed through the system. I used 1litre and measured that I had bleed through 500mls, therefore the system capacity seems to be 500mls. I find it amazing that with just 500mls of hydraulic fluid that this operates 4 calipers, between them 10 pistons to pressures in excess of 900PSI and looks like that half of this fluid is in the resivoir!
I checked my handbrake adjustment. Just one click on the handbrake secures the wheels. Apparently you should only just be able to turn the rear wheels by hand on 3-4 clips. If I put 3 clicks on and really try hard with all my might I can just about move the wheel a little, this sounds optimal to me.
I shall probably bleed a bit later in the build when I have changed the angle of the car, I have been told that I should raise the back higher than the front and leave a block of wood holding the brake pedal down over night. Then bleed from the rear again, doing this means any trapped air in the brakes lines moves to the highest point in the system, this being the rear in this case and thus can be bleed out of the system.
All in all spent 90 minutes in the garage today and that includes moping all the floor from the drips left out of my bleeding tube!
If brake systems still mystify you then click here
Photo from of articles, left to right, hawk bedding-in instructions, hawk pad box and Hydraulic fluid
Hawk brake pad specification sheet.
Here's a picture of the end result of bleeding my brakes!!
30 June 2006
Session 87 - Battery box installation
I know I have not done a lot in the last few weeks. I have been ultra busy at work. I have been in the garage a couple of times to check my finished brakes are not leaking fluid and after almost two weeks to my dismay I saw three drips on the floor. A tip here, when you bleed your brakes, try not to get brake fluid everywhere, and if you do get it up! I neglected to spot some on my drive shaft and hand brake cable, it took days to drip but it did and very alarming it was to. My brake pedal remains constant and no sponginess, looks like I may have to got this right first time.
Anyway, the heading says battery box installation...
I spent 90 minutes to fixing a aluminium box to my rear bulkhead. Well, I wanted this to be installed right and completely level. The box goes around one of the diaganol cross members. I found that the battery box was not quite formed correctly to fit around the cross member, so I had to do some cutting and filling of box. A little patient is required here because you need to hold the box level on the bulkhead around the cross member, have to ensure that it is pressed hard on the bulkhead and with the other hand mark where drill and with the third hand hold a laser guided spirit level. You think I am joking, if I had four hands I would have taken a photo of me doing this.
Here's some photos showing the installed battery box.
Go to July 2006