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?

The vented/non vented calipers are different. Saying that a pair of secondhand calipers are cheap. http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SIERRA-FRO...item257021b45d


I still think its better to go bigger.

Bob

good set of pads will do you to be honest if your tracking it a lot go for mintex 1155's if its road with the odd track day then 1144's are a nice compramise but you may possibly cook them. at the end of the day the discs can be glowing as long as the pads can take the heat!

I was using ebc green stuff pads, and I only so track days. I'll happily fit better pads too!

Maybe upgrade to 278mm vented discs and Mondeo MKI/II V6 calipers ? :)
Bigger diameter = better heat distribution/resistance.

Price of calipers is same as Sierra's: ebay link

green stuff are not up to track days tbh. if you want to stay with them then go for yellow stuff or the mintex 1155's i had sierra 240vented discs and calipers on mine with 1144's and they never overheated on track days.

i now have willwood's and yellow stuff. i would say the yellows dont have the initial bite like the 1144's did but they work very well once they start to warm up after a couple of laps and i have not got them to fade yet. my old sierra brakes worked very well i only upgraded to willwoods for the weight saving.

That sound like fun, what mods are required to fit to sierra uprights?

You just need 11mm spacers - between caliper and upright (single plates or "bushes" for each bolt), longer bolts (10,9 grade), and sometimes driling hole in upright to 12mm diameter (depends on calipers - Scorpio/Granada Cosworth or Mondeo mkI/mkII V6).





Still need de-rusting and painting... but looks like this ;)

Bolts are M12x40.
I have to drill uprights...

Nice one, I can get spacers made up no probs. Sounds like a fairly easy conversion.

iirc laws of psyics say that the only way for brakes to work is to convert to a diffrent form of energy (heat) so no matter what pad or disc you use heat has to go somewhere.
a grippy pad makes more heat quicker, sintering (adding metal to friction matrial) will pass some of the heat to your caliper etc. making your brake fluid hotter so helps for a short time then cooks the fluid and seals. the best way is to increase the outside area of your disc and help airflow (venting best option)

you can't fight the laws of psyics so just get bigger vented discs :cool:

dont forget the threadlock :)

I used to use DOT5.1 synthetic fluid too if that helps and was using red stuff pads with grooved and drilled discs was not allowed to go any bigger due to the technical regulations so have no experience in the difference but maybe try a combination of all the suggestions

Very true, this conversion to mondeo spec looks like a good, cheap and fairly easy option, I'm also going to look at making some sort of cooling duct like you see on formula 1 cars to feed air into the inside of the wheels.

The wole thing is a trade off between generating heat to get friction from the pad to grip the disc and then getting rid of it to start all over again,choice of pad will make a huge difference over standard application,saying that the Ginetta G20 used standard rear pads,Ferrodo with Ginetta stamped on them a silly prices.

any idea if this is a cosworth or a mondeo v6 278mm disc? the offset is diffrent

i now have this upgrade fitted to my car mainly to sort ballance issue from disc rear upgrade after fitting an lsd

what you need is 1 pair of mk1 or 2 st24 or st200 calipers and pads (jag x type?)
1 set of mondeo v6 discs 273mm size
4x 11.5 mm long spacers with 12.5mm hole
4x m14x40 bolts with locking agent
hoses are the same as sierra set up so swap right over

fair bit of room under 15" alloys but i did have to trim off the fins at the back of the caliper to clear cycle wing brackets