Cooked my brakes!!!
 

Hi guys,

went on the CKC mag track day at Llandow today, and after a fair few mods to the car from it's original setup I'm happy to report it's handling much quicker on track, and much improved under braking. Everything was going well till I smelled a nasty rotten burning smell... a lap later my brakes were all but gone.

Back in the pits I soon discovered that my solid front discs were now a lovely blue colour, and my pads had worn by about 4mm in about half an hour on track.

Ok so the cause is obvious, far too much heat. Answers/solutions on a postcard please...

I'm happy with the stopping power of the standard sierra 240mm brakes, the solid discs just aren't up to the repeated abuse of a track day, however I don't want to spend big bucks on a huge and unecessary upgrade. (brembo AP etc)

What ford standard fit vented brakes are available? What would be required to do a conversion?

Has anybody successfully made GRP/carbon brake cooling ducts a-la formula 1 cars?

Thanks guys,

Sam.

Used to have this problem on my racing car when things got hot it suffered brake fade result I pushed harder on the pedal result increased pad wear was going through 2 sets of pads a weekend till I went out and got a set of drilled and groved discs and a decent set of pads its worth spending the money to get it right but there is no need to spend thousands on bigger discs and 6 pot calipers when the cars weight does not warrent it

Great, just what I was thinking of!

Are there direct-fit replacement discs? Could you make any reccomendations where to find them?

Thanks!

Normally direct fit I used to go to demon tweeks to get mine

Rally design have a good choice and not badly priced either.

Bigger ford brakes
 

The biggest i know of is fitted to sierra's with abs, vented 260mm Ø instead of solid / vented 240mm Ø and larger pistons in the calipers 60mm Ø instead of 54mm Ø. A popular track and road pads are Mintex M1144. Dont know if the abs calipers fit straight on std hubs, i am sure someone will know.

Golf's etc had a plastic blade fitted to the lower wishbone to direct air at the brakes and most Beemers have a duct through the lower part of the bumper for the same thing,would not be hard to rig up a piece of plastic on the lower arm.

Thanks guys, Burton power do 240mm vented discs for twenty quid, bargain.

I'll have a look and see what I been cobble together for a duct to direct some air into the brake area. Ideally I'd like to make something from grp or carbon fibre.

I dont think you will get what you want from the 240mm disc vented or not. You have gone the fat heavy seven route like i have with a v8, that takes some stopping. Even if you just changed the discs the calipers will have to be changed as they dont have the width to squeeze the wider disc into. You might as well get some cossie front hubs complete with discs and calipers, then add some air ducts as suggested. That would give you a fighting chance.

Bob

Like I said before, braking power isn't a problem, they are plenty strong enough they just overheated. What calipers are required to fit the standard vented discs? I thought that as they were sliding calipers, they could just be opened further as the disc diameter is the same?