Photo Essay - Changing Bf Front Brake System

[PhilMeUp]

I've got a Brembo setup lined up for my car, so this week I've been trying to find a set of BA Premium Brake front calipers for my girlfriend's car (very good caliper that uses a 325mm disc that is also 4mm thicker than the standard rotor). I rang all the Ford wreckers in Perth and was unable to find the calipers that I'm looking for, but one place said that they had a set of BF XR6 Turbo front brakes there for $200.

I own my taxi and will be setting up more in the future. I figured that at that price, I might as well go and grab the XR6T brake set and try it out. When I put the Brembo stuff on soon I'll put the XR6T stuff aside until I set up another taxi.

As is the usual situation, I did the changeover in my front yard at night. At least this time it was relatively early (7pm to 10pm) instead of the midnight to 4am jobs that I've done lately. A workshop would be nice, but enough light to see what I'm doing would be enough of a luxury. I've just checked, and the temperature was a lovely 10 degrees Celcius for most of the three hours that it took me to do this job. Oh, and I never wear long pants or a jacket, everything I do is in shorts and t-shirt. Basically, it was bloody cold.

Here is the standard disc rotor (298mm diameter) sitting on the XR6T rotor (322mm). Not a huge difference in size, but every little bit helps. You can see the colouring on the standard disc - a result of how much heat it's copping. I'm tough on brakes, hence my awareness that I need something better than the standard system.

Got it all apart fairly easily but made one huge stuff-up. I didn't think to put anything under the brake hose to catch the fluid. Stupid, stupid, stupid mistake. Naturally, when I did the other side later, I put an oil drain pan under it all and didn't make a mess.

This is how I am often getting things done. Not a good environment for working on a car, but that's what I've got. The electric drill is very useful for getting wheel nuts off quickly - loosen them with a wheel brace and then use the drill and 19mm socket to get the nuts off. You can see the small tripod light that I use to work with. Yep, that's what I do.

I have a bit of an obsession about keeping wheels clean. I clean them regularly on the car, but when they're off the car it is an opportunity to do a thorough job without having to bend down all over the place. I use CT18 degreaser in a weed sprayer bottle and a brush that I bought at Bunnings. Then hose it all off. My interest in keeping my wheels clean is substantially higher than my interest in gardening and lawn maintenance, but CT18 doesn't cause any harm. I've lived in this house for almost 12 years now, and the lawn should by now be completely used to the fact that my care factor for it is extremely low.

The battle scene. Tools and brake parts all over the place.

I put the bracket on. That was easy. Then I realised why it was so easy - I'd forgotten to put the disc rotor on first. Idiot. Remove bracket, put rotor on and re-fit bracket. It is possible to fit the entire caliper assembly in one go but its a lot easier to do it piece by piece.

Another photo of the bracket in place, also making sure that the brake hose is in it's holder. Whenever I removed the hose from the holder for something (ie putting the banjo bolt back in) I made sure that I put it back in the holder straight away so that I wouldn't forget later.

I chose to try the Bendix pads that came with the calipers. Before putting the pads in, I coated the back of them with CRC Disc Brake Quiet to reduce the possibility of noise later on. I use a rubber glove for this part, so that I can just peel the glove off and get back to the job once I've applied this stuff.

Got the pads in place, in the bracket. Ready to put the caliper on.

Got the caliper on, and the brake hose bolted back on. My major stuff-up with not catching the brake fluid at the start meant that I was leaving brake fluid marks on things that I touched. I cleaned everything up with an aerosol degreaser before putting the wheel back on.

Thanks to the speed bleeders that I got last week, bleeding the brakes was a simple one-person process. I undid the top bolt on the caliper, so that I could lever it away and make sure that the nipple was at the highest point (so that no air bubbles were left anywhere in the caliper).

Put the nice clean wheel back on, do up the wheel nuts with the electric drill, let the car down and tighten the nuts up properly. This is where the lack of drain pan earlier caught me out again - the wheel is sitting in brake fluid! It was dispatched with CT18 degreaser, followed by plenty of scrubbing and water to make sure that my tyre didn't end up with brake fluid all over it when I reversed the car out.

If you're ever going to work on a BA or BF Falcon you are going to need one of these - a 15mm ratchet spanner. The bolts that hold the caliper bracket to the car are a 15mm head, and this spanner makes it easy to undo and do them up. Much easier than messing around trying to fit a ratchet and socket in there. I also use this on the engine oil drain bolt (ie also a 15mm head).

Time for a test drive, after double checking and stopping to think for a few minutes if there was anything that I'd forgotten. I've changed brake pads on cars plenty of times but never actually changed the calipers over. So I was very nervous when I got the car moving. It was make or brake time (bad pun).

Is there much of a difference? Not particularly, at first. I did a bunch of slow, nerve-racking 20 to 30km/h stops for a while to make sure that it was all working properly, before trying some 50 to 60km/hr stops. It felt a little bit better, but not enough to convince me that it wasn't just my imagination.

I returned home, put everything away and went for a proper drive. After a bunch of routine stops in normal driving I was convinced that there was definitely some improvement, but not wildly overwhelming.

However, when I did some downhill stops I could definitely feel the difference. By the time you've got a BFII station wagon (kerb weight of 1,736kg), taxi stuff and pathetically overweight 120kg driver it's getting up to close to 2,000kg. That's a lot of weight to stop, hence my interest in brake performance.

Downhill stops definitely took less pedal pressure. Instead of having to really push hard on the pedal it was like coming to a normal stop.

I drove around for about 40km and concluded that there wasn't a massive difference in braking performance but it was worth doing for what it cost ($200). There will be other benefits, such as having more disc rotor metal to take the heat from regular braking. Naturally, if I was going to stick with these calipers for a while then I would get slotted disc rotors.

I'll leave this on the car until I fit the Brembo setup, which will give me a weekend or two to really evaluate it properly. I cover between 450 and 550km on each of a Friday and Saturday night, so by Sunday I'll have a good feel for how much difference there is.

Should everyone be replacing their 298mm front brake setup with a 322mm set? If you can get it done for the right cost then you'd be mad not to. The parts cost me $200 and the labour cost me nothing. I was going to get a workshop to fit the Brembo calipers but after doing this tonight I realise that I can do that myself easily enough. Tonight was a very useful learning experience, but it would have been very frustrating and time consuming if I didn't have speed bleeders to make it easy to bleed the brakes on my own. A task such as this is why I was so determined to find and obtain them (http://www.speedbleeder.com).

For someone who is going to try this on their own personal car, you would want to research what pads and disc rotors to get before touching anything else. I just used the rotors and pads that came with calipers, but if I was going to keep this permanently then I would have lined up some good slotted rotors and pads first. Obviously, you would try and buy just the calipers from a wrecker (ie without rotors and pads) if it is going to make the project cheaper for you. But, it's also handy to have a spare set of pads and rotors stashed away.

These discs are slightly warped, which can be noticed in the last few metres of stopping. If you're going to use the standard rotors then you might as well get them machined before putting them on.

To do this properly (ie slotted rotors and good, new pads) would easily take the total cost to at least $400 to 500. But for someone who takes his/her car seriously, and wants to make sure that it will stop properly when you have to, this is worth pursuing.

If you are going to replace the disc rotors and pads on your standard 298mm brakes, then you might as well try and find a set of these calipers at the same time.

All of this is assuming that you have already got 17" wheels on the car, which is the minimum size required to clear the calipers.

Now, as soon as my Goodridge braided brake lines turn up, I'm gonna have to get the Brembo stuff on there...

[xr6greg]

Well done. Thanx for the info.

(Don't take this the wrong way, just me being me. Can't see an axle stand supporting your car. Having had a hydraulic jack 'let go' when I was jacking a car up and seeing more than a tonne of steel smash onto the driveway in a split second is a constant reminder not to put anything under a car that isn't supported on stands - particularly anything made of meat and bone...)

Edited 08/07/11 03:28 AM by xr6greg

[PhilMeUp]

(Don't take this the wrong way, just me being me. Can't see an axle stand supporting your car. Having had a hydraulic jack 'let go' when I was jacking a car up and seeing more than a tonne of steel smash onto the driveway in a split second is a constant reminder not to put anything under a car that isn't supported on stands - particularly anything made of meat and bone...)

Yep, lessons have learned for next time (as pointed out to me on one of the other forums):

- don’t let any brake fluid leak onto the ground

- put an axle stand under the chassis rail whilst the car is jacked up.

- a turtle jaw clamp could be used on a rubber hose (but not braided), but a rubber cap on the end of the brake line would probably do the job. If nothing else is available, put a small plastic bag over the end and use a small zip tie to hold it on.

- important - spend the time preparing the mating surfaces before putting the disc rotor on.

And, I wish I knew about DBA's YouTube videos before I did this. There is a series of four videos that covers this. Part one:

[PhilMeUp]

Take 2.

When I changed the calipers and discs over last week I didn’t clean the hub backing back and disc rotors. There’s been a bit of brake shudder that could be because of this. I also bought some secondhand DBA4000 disc rotors over the weekend, which are slotted and a much higher quality disc. So, tonight I had a go at doing the things that I didn't do last week and fit the DBA rotors at the same time.

I chose to try cleaning the relevant surfaces with an electric drill and wire brush instead of the usual emery cloth sandpaper. I already had the electric drill (Ozito LIR-012 which cost $90 from Bunnings) and bought a set of wire brushes for the job. After trying out different ones I found that one brush did pretty much everything.

The first task was to clean the inside of the disc rotors. It didn't look particularly bad on this one but I had a go anyway.

The wire brush made a huge difference, resulting in the inside of the rotor hat being spotless. I made sure that the inner ring was also clean, and this is what centres on the spigot (ie middle of the hub).

I then adjourned to the front yard. So far, I was a lot more organised than last week (ie hook holding the calliper, axle stand behind the jack (but out of view)).

I knocked the studs out with a hammer. Rather than stuff around getting around the studs, I wanted full access to the backing plate.

It was starting to look a lot better, then my organised night suddenly became very disorganised. The battery in the drill went flat, so I went and got the spare. Which also turned out to be flat. Oh dear. Lots of cursing ensued as I realised that I would have to leave one of the batteries on charge for at least a couple of hours before I could resume. When I did get back to it almost three hours later, it was drizzling rain. The best laid plans of mice and men…

When I finally did get back to it the night had gotten very cold. This meant that the backing plate had shrunk a bit and I couldn't get the wheel studs back in. I didn't have anything suitable to heat the backing plate up enough so that the studs would knock back in properly (a butane lighter didn't help). I even tried putting the wheel studs in the freezer for half an hour, hoping that they would shrink enough to fit back in. Nup, that failed to.

By now I was starting to panic. I had a car in pieces in my front yard and possibly couldn't get it back together again. The only option was to get the studs in as far as I could and put the wheel back on. Hopefully tightening the wheel nuts up would pull the studs through. By now I had given up on fitting the DBA4000 rotors and the priority became getting the car mobile again.

I got it sorted out - the wheel went back on and the wheel nuts pulled the studs back into the backing plate. Phew!

I accepted that it just wasn't going to be my night. It was getting very cold and wet. I resigned myself to failing for the night, packed everything up and called it quits for the night. I was rather disgusted with myself.

Take 3.

I was still rather miffed about this a while later when it finally occurred to me that there wasn't a whole lot that I actually needed for this task. So, I put everything in the car and went looking around for a place that I could do the job. It was tempting to ask a service station if I could do it in the driveway but then I realised that a nearby car wash was suitable. One of the bays hadn't been used for hours, meaning that the concrete was dry. And there was light. This was an interesting novelty - working on a car without having to aim torches and lights everywhere. Wow. So that's how the other half lives.

Despite scaring myself earlier by not being able to get the wheel studs back in I was now on a roll again. Here's the backing plate before cleaning.

Here's the backing plate after cleaning - a big difference from how it was before. It looks scratched in the photo but that's just how the light is reflected by the flash - it was actually perfectly smooth. I was very thorough and made sure that any surface that was going to come into contact with the disc rotor was well cleaned. I also made sure that the spigot (ie the middle bit - the disc rotor sits against it) was spotless.

The inside of the wheel before cleaning.

The electric drill and wire brush did a very good job.

While I was doing this I figured I might as well put some graphite power in each of the wheel nuts. This is a dry lubricant and will help the wheel nuts to rotate on and off when the time comes to change a flat tyre on the side of the road somewhere. I recently found a screw stuck in one of my new tyres and to prevent damaging the tyre I fitted the spare. From start to finish, I did it in just under six minutes, which I thought wasn't bad for a roadside tyre change.

This is the left side back in one piece. You can see that I had done my homework earlier and marked on each disc which side it was for. You can also see that I cleaned the outside of the rotor hat to ensure that there was nothing to put the wheel off centre.

The right side ready to have the wheel put back on.

The wheel back in place. The slots can be seen.

Finally I was done… 3:34am. The old discs are in the foreground and will be put away for future use. I am curious whether the brake shudder was because of warped discs or incorrect fitting, but my curiosity isn't enough right now to pull the brakes apart again and try the old rotors. The test drive was a success - no brake shudder at all. I did numerous stops to make sure that everything was settled and that my day driver wouldn't find any nasty surprises (and when I would be asleep and not able to attend to any problems). I had done the wheel nuts up very tight when I put the wheels back on and double checked them before I called it a night. Finally, success!