So today I finished plumbing my front brakes and almost finished off the rear. It was a little more tricky than I had hoped for. Making sure everything sat snugly against the frame was a bit of a pain.
For all the fittings I went down to the local brake place and had them put all the fittings on the end. Andrew at The Brake Place in Berwick was great to work with. He understood exactly what I wanted and did a great job. Even better it was very well priced. There service was so good that I ended up ordering the brake pads for the car through them. I ended up going with some QFM pads which I have read some good reviews on. I fitted these whilst I was at the brake lines.
Below is the front brake lines as they snake there way around the engine bay. I made particular attention to not let the hard lines go close to anything that could be potentially very hot, or moving. This proved rather tricky as the the steering shaft runs almost directly in front of the brake mount where the hard lines meets the hose. It can be seen on the right hand side of the picture. I gave myslef a little extra pipe on this side in case the engineer has any issues with it.
The hardest part I found was getting the exact matching curvature for the master cylinders. I may be a little picky in this area but I wanted it to look good as well as being functional. I got pretty close to the curves being the same.
I also ended up using the nylon p-clips riveted into place. They hold the pipe very snug, so I think my original concerns weren’t warranted. I ran the pipe to the rear of the car on top of the transmission as well mainly for the convenience of getting a drill in there. Came out rather neat and out of the way.
Whislt the guys at The Brake Place where fitting the brake connectors I got some new brake hoses made up. I did this for a couple of reasons…main reason was the front hoses were to short and the rear was perished. I decided to get everything made up in 3/16 size fittings. So now the whole car, bar the master cyclinder and actually caliper fittings are the same. Hopefully should make life easier in the end.
Below you can see the new flexible hose to the rear t-piece mounted to the diff. I have bent up the rear hard lines but have not yet had the fittings put on the outer sides. I originally was going to run hard lines to the calipers but The Brake place recommended re-fitting the flexible hoses to the caliper. The rear calipers are R31 units and as susch are a sliding design meaning the hard lines would be forced to flex. Not a good thing. So my original lengths were to long. I have trimmed them up and bent to shape just need a spare moment to get back down to The Brake Place to get the last fittings put on.
Here are the other set of hoses. The front hoses I felt were to short in there standard Cortina guise. As the car has the extra wide front suspension the hoses pulled very tight when the wheel was on full lock so I had some made up about 50mm longer. They fit perfect and should allow full wheel travel without tension on the hoses.
So this weekend has been very productive
