Chim front brake upgrade Fiesta ST150 under 15" rims
Discussion
Finally finished the Fiesta ST150 front brake upgrade yesterday, and took it for a quick spin.
A notable difference in stopping power at the front end, and to be honest I was slightly skeptical that I would barely feel it, but it is a lot more effective.
Started out with the original 240mm discs and callipers as per my 1995 Chim 400 - when they were still fitting 15" Imolas on the front, which I have retained.
Here are the bits I bought to start with:
Ford Fiesta ST150 callipers and carriers - from a breaker £60
Calliper refurb kit (new pistons, seals, clips, sliding pins etc) from ebay (as recommended by the breaker) £42ish
MTech discs 283mm Sierra Cosworth Sapphire £68 whilst on offer (usually nearer £80ish
Brembo brake pads from Amazon £50ish
ST150 parts have seen some muck!
The difference in disc size is notable
Having read somewhere that the carriers needed a minor modification, I scrubbed them down and did a dry fit to discover what that was.
It is to grind off part of the carrier to fit the hub. It's two small chunks, and they leave plenty of material around the bolt holes anyway.
My next job was to paint the callipers and carriers to match what was coming off (red and black).
Quite frankly this was a journey of failed attempts until after the third fail I took them to a local (to me) wheel refurb company to blast and powder-coat them.
My sage piece of advice is to ignore calliper paint on ebay, ignore high-temp paint from Halfords, ignore X-high-temp lacquer, they are all complete nonsense, and the finish is either soft or poor.
I did take a run at it with some etch primer, and some 2k paint - which actually would have worked if the callipers hadn't already got an extremely robust coating on them that no amount of paint stripper or wire brush drill attachment would remove, and the etch primer just couldn't bite into it, so it chipped off with a thumb nail.
This became a giant ball-ache, and in retrospect I could have saved a lot of time and effort by just taking the stripped callipers and carriers directly to a blaster. Anyway, lesson learned.
Written off costs around £70 in paint and stripper.
Cost for BJV Engineering in Flaunden to do the blast and powder coat was £90.
After that, fitting the rebuild kit was easy. It came with all the relevant parts, greases, clearly marked up.
Fitting to the hub was easy - as per other advice, a 1.5mm washer is needed between the hub and the carrier to centre the carrier around the disc.
A neat trick is to use something to secure the disc (I used the threaded end of a plumbing straight coupler to fill the gap between nut and disc) - this will allow you to see it properly. Discs are of course loose until the wheel is bolted on - used a bit of copper grease between facings (not on the disc surface) to reduce chance of seizing up.
Two details here - I opted for marine grade (A4) stainless steel washers; and bought a new set of carrier bolts from a Ford reseller on ebay - they have a better flange shape than using ordinary bolts.
I had to cut the bolts down by 3-5mm to ensure they didn't stick out near the discs, then added a new blob of blue threadlocker when fitting.
Used a dab of copper grease when fitting the brake pads, and getting the retaining spring on is a b**ch of a job when trying not to scratch your newly finished callipers...
All torque settings are FT.
The last bit, which I hoped to not need was the flexible brake line sections.
The old set were around 10 years old (added when the car was restored), in perfectly good condition, but were completely seized into the old callipers, and the ford callipers have a recess around the threaded hole for the hose, so it's almost impossible to get a spanner of any sort onto the close fitting hose end like I had.
Critical info here - measure the new fitted calliper to the chassis lug (where the hard brake lines couple with the flexi) to get the right size (ask me how I know, and why I've got a brand new pair of brake lines sitting in their box in my loft).
Details to note - on my car it was all M10x1 thread
The length of hose needed is slightly longer than the old lines - therefore I don't think you can buy a pre-made set for the Chim from the likes of ACT, Motaclan, Racetech.
Pay attention to the way the end of new lines are built, as the hole on the hub for the line to pass through with its grommet is quite near the calliper - if they have a long hose tail , there isn't much room for the line to form a radius to go through.
My journey here was to buy HEL Performance custom lines - cost around £65 for two lines.
One end I went for a 70 degree bend with a swivel fitting (for the calliper), and this pointed the hose directly at the hole.
The other end needs a bulkhead fitting to go through the lug.
On my car I went for 53cm length.
I reused the retaining nut to secure to the lug, and then could easily wind on the hard line female fitting.
Again, torque settings are fairly-FT/stop any brake fluid from leaking out.
I bled the brakes with the help of my 14 year old son, popped the wheels back on, and went for a test run.
Very happy, and the balance between front and back feels fine.
I got a reasonable amount of nose dip when I slammed the brakes to lock up, but when braking more progressively and not 'emergency' felt very good.
Makes the old brakes look a bit silly really:
A notable difference in stopping power at the front end, and to be honest I was slightly skeptical that I would barely feel it, but it is a lot more effective.
Started out with the original 240mm discs and callipers as per my 1995 Chim 400 - when they were still fitting 15" Imolas on the front, which I have retained.
Here are the bits I bought to start with:
Ford Fiesta ST150 callipers and carriers - from a breaker £60
Calliper refurb kit (new pistons, seals, clips, sliding pins etc) from ebay (as recommended by the breaker) £42ish
MTech discs 283mm Sierra Cosworth Sapphire £68 whilst on offer (usually nearer £80ish
Brembo brake pads from Amazon £50ish
ST150 parts have seen some muck!
The difference in disc size is notable
Having read somewhere that the carriers needed a minor modification, I scrubbed them down and did a dry fit to discover what that was.
It is to grind off part of the carrier to fit the hub. It's two small chunks, and they leave plenty of material around the bolt holes anyway.
My next job was to paint the callipers and carriers to match what was coming off (red and black).
Quite frankly this was a journey of failed attempts until after the third fail I took them to a local (to me) wheel refurb company to blast and powder-coat them.
My sage piece of advice is to ignore calliper paint on ebay, ignore high-temp paint from Halfords, ignore X-high-temp lacquer, they are all complete nonsense, and the finish is either soft or poor.
I did take a run at it with some etch primer, and some 2k paint - which actually would have worked if the callipers hadn't already got an extremely robust coating on them that no amount of paint stripper or wire brush drill attachment would remove, and the etch primer just couldn't bite into it, so it chipped off with a thumb nail.
This became a giant ball-ache, and in retrospect I could have saved a lot of time and effort by just taking the stripped callipers and carriers directly to a blaster. Anyway, lesson learned.
Written off costs around £70 in paint and stripper.
Cost for BJV Engineering in Flaunden to do the blast and powder coat was £90.
After that, fitting the rebuild kit was easy. It came with all the relevant parts, greases, clearly marked up.
Fitting to the hub was easy - as per other advice, a 1.5mm washer is needed between the hub and the carrier to centre the carrier around the disc.
A neat trick is to use something to secure the disc (I used the threaded end of a plumbing straight coupler to fill the gap between nut and disc) - this will allow you to see it properly. Discs are of course loose until the wheel is bolted on - used a bit of copper grease between facings (not on the disc surface) to reduce chance of seizing up.
Two details here - I opted for marine grade (A4) stainless steel washers; and bought a new set of carrier bolts from a Ford reseller on ebay - they have a better flange shape than using ordinary bolts.
I had to cut the bolts down by 3-5mm to ensure they didn't stick out near the discs, then added a new blob of blue threadlocker when fitting.
Used a dab of copper grease when fitting the brake pads, and getting the retaining spring on is a b**ch of a job when trying not to scratch your newly finished callipers...
All torque settings are FT.
The last bit, which I hoped to not need was the flexible brake line sections.
The old set were around 10 years old (added when the car was restored), in perfectly good condition, but were completely seized into the old callipers, and the ford callipers have a recess around the threaded hole for the hose, so it's almost impossible to get a spanner of any sort onto the close fitting hose end like I had.
Critical info here - measure the new fitted calliper to the chassis lug (where the hard brake lines couple with the flexi) to get the right size (ask me how I know, and why I've got a brand new pair of brake lines sitting in their box in my loft).
Details to note - on my car it was all M10x1 thread
The length of hose needed is slightly longer than the old lines - therefore I don't think you can buy a pre-made set for the Chim from the likes of ACT, Motaclan, Racetech.
Pay attention to the way the end of new lines are built, as the hole on the hub for the line to pass through with its grommet is quite near the calliper - if they have a long hose tail , there isn't much room for the line to form a radius to go through.
My journey here was to buy HEL Performance custom lines - cost around £65 for two lines.
One end I went for a 70 degree bend with a swivel fitting (for the calliper), and this pointed the hose directly at the hole.
The other end needs a bulkhead fitting to go through the lug.
On my car I went for 53cm length.
I reused the retaining nut to secure to the lug, and then could easily wind on the hard line female fitting.
Again, torque settings are fairly-FT/stop any brake fluid from leaking out.
I bled the brakes with the help of my 14 year old son, popped the wheels back on, and went for a test run.
Very happy, and the balance between front and back feels fine.
I got a reasonable amount of nose dip when I slammed the brakes to lock up, but when braking more progressively and not 'emergency' felt very good.
Makes the old brakes look a bit silly really:
Edited by PabloGee on Monday 10th February 13:51
Edited by PabloGee on Monday 10th February 14:03
, but you know what insurance companies are like. I probably wouldn't either.V8 FOU said:
What is the original fitment? Fiesta or....
Early production Chimaera and Griffiths had a 240mm disc set up taken from the Ford Sierra. This was soon ditched in favour of the 260mm set up from faster Sierra's such as the XR4iPabloGee said:
Do you mean the old smaller set?
To be honest I've no idea, and they're in my loft now anyway.
Do you want to sell them, are they the 260mm discs?To be honest I've no idea, and they're in my loft now anyway.
V8 FOU said:
What is the original fitment? Fiesta or....
Fiesta ST 150 the MKV generation 2002-2008This wiki in the S Forum is useful as it shares the [front] brake set up - https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...
PabloGee said:
Probably saying nothing to insurers.
Also not sure how anyone could argue it's performance enhancing, surely just safety enhancing - I bet the stopping distance is still cr@p compared to modern cars!
Their reasoning will likely be that it will encourage you to drive faster/brake later, as the performance envelope of the car has increased - meaning increased risk.Also not sure how anyone could argue it's performance enhancing, surely just safety enhancing - I bet the stopping distance is still cr@p compared to modern cars!
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