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Rear disc conversion

This is quite a good upgrade if you are considering big brakes upfront. The most common upgrade are the rear calipers from a Serria. I got my kit from Arrow Engineering which was the most affordable and I found the owner Andy very helpful.

Fitting the kit was fairly easy though there was some fabrication and modification involved. Firstly, brackets needed to be fitted to the axle, the best option is to weld them but thay can be bolted to the axle flange, (I bolted and welded). The half-shafts needed a small amount of material machined off the outer edge so the disc would fit, a local machine shop took care of this for £30. Some material had to be taken off the caliper sliding bracket so the disc would run true, this may have been down to the alignment of the brackets which hold the calliper. Once this was done the brake pipes needed to be made up this was quite a simple process down borrowing Dave's pipe flaring kit. Well it would have been easy apart from the fact I didn't apply the old addage of measure twice cut once.

The next job was the handbrake which was a bit of a bugger as I had to swap the callipers round so the cable would fit that meant I had to re-route the pipe work. I also made up a bracket to secure the other side of the cable (the side without the adjuster). Even if I say it myself I think the brackets which atttach to the axle are rather neat and look deliberate.

Now thinking I was on the home straight all I had to do was fill the system with dot4 and bleed it through. Think again – after curing a leak from the t-piece the pedal almost went to the floor so I bled the system again, this didn't cure the problem so I have reasoned that the master cylinder isn't up to the job. B*****ks. The Ford master cylinder is 22mm and I have been told that a 25mm bore cylinder should cure the problem. I have yet to try this so will update this page as soon as I have sourced the correct cylinder.

If there is one thing I have learned form this is that you need to talk to the experts and people that have actually done this sort of thing before as choosing the right braking conponents that work together is vital.

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