Rear Brake Calipers
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Once I had received the half-shafts I was able to assemble the rear hubs for the final time and fit the brackets for the calipers which had been powder coated.
I obtained a pair of new Sierra rear calipers from Sylva for the bargain price of £50 each plus VAT, about half what others were charging for them and around the cost of a reconditioned exchange unit. These came with all the relevant mounts, clips, rubber boots and silicon grease but obviously no carriers (which bolt onto the hub) as these are retained on the car. Luckily my local scrappy had one sierra in with rear disks on it and I was able to obtain the carriers plus steering column extension and a set of pedals for a tenner. The carriers were pretty grotty, but cleaned up very nicely with a wire brush cup in the drill. I decided to paint both the carriers and the new calipers with some brake caliper paint. I managed to find some in a nice discrete black colour (if there is such a thing for brake caliper paint) at my local max-power car accessory outlet. Very embarrassing. Whilst I was doing them I decided to give the steering column a lick of paint as well as the track-rod ends and suspension ball joints as these were already going rusty just sitting in the garage. Also the steering rack was painted with the crappiest paint I had ever seen which looked like it would all get blasted off the ends in no time at all so I took that out to paint it too. Everything was taped onto the remaining length of electrical ducting left over from the brakes and given a good clean with the stuff that came with the paint. This stuff is awesome, cleaning dirt off where it wasn’t even visible and actually stripping the paint off the steering rack. There was a small set-back when I opened the paint only to find that it had gone off but fortunately the shop were able to get me a new tin for the next day. Also luckily the weather seemed to take a turn for the better for a few days and so the paint went off very nicely indeed. I left everything for a few days to make sure it was good and dry.
With everything freshly painted the steering rack, track rod ends etc were all put back on in the same position as they came off to maintain the suspension setup that I had decided upon.
The rear brake disks had been on and off the car a few times and had been handled quite a lot by now and so needed a really good clean with white spirit and kitchen paper until they were absolutely clean. The calipers went on very easily with the only slight snag being that they needed a 15mm spanner to tighten the sliding bit, which was I size that I either didn’t have or had lost somewhere. The paint on the calipers doesn’t interfere with the travel of the pads as there is a small shim that clips in place that the sliding pad (nearest the piston) slides on.
It was necessary to file down the end of the handbrake mechanism lever a little as this was the only point of the caliper that would not clear the inside of the rims. The bit filed off has no impact upon the strength of the arm as it is the end of the hook that stops the cable falling out. In the end I think I filed a little more off that I really could have done considering that the handbrake cable will pull the lever away from the rim a little, but there looks like there is a sufficient hook on there to stop the cable pulling free. Lets hope so otherwise I’ll have to make some more up that will move the cable away from the rim a little, which shouldn’t be too difficult. Perhaps I should do this anyway.
Anyway everything went back on very easily and looked very smart all in black squeezed inside the rims.