Overhauling the brakes on my wife's 10-year-old Ford Fiesta

Removing a brake drum can be a bit of a challenge. Especially if the drum is worn, the shoes might get stuck behind that inside ridge.

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Various brake jobs on the Fiesta!

Mrs. D Fiesta will need an annual service and an APK (Dutch MOT equivalent). As this Fiesta turns 10 years, its distribution belt must be replaced. I discussed it extensively with spanner mate Peter. In the end, we decided to let the Ford Garage handle it. Even though Peter and I must have replaced at least several dozen distribution belts and chains on all kinds of cars over the years.

The Fiesta requires five special tools that I would need to buy. More importantly, it would most likely take us at least 3-4 days, we don't have a lift, and we would have a very worried Mrs. D looking over our shoulders and driving one of my cars all that time. We have an excellent marriage, but I'm not sure if we could handle that sort of stress and anxiety.

So I made the appointment with Ford for the service and APK in two weeks. Last time we noticed that the front discs were getting a bit thin. I decided to check before taking the Fiesta to Ford. Replacing front discs is a straightforward job. And it will save an awful lot of money. So with Mrs. D out for the day, I started.

As per the usual, rear wheel choked, and front up on the jacks and axle stands.

I have this set of special "disc-calipers". As the discs wear, a ridge will form around the circumference of the disc. You need this special tool to measure properly.

The disc was only about 0.1mm above the minimum thickness

For good measure I also checked the drum brakes at the rear. Front wheel choked, jack, axle stand etc.

Remove the wheel and next remove those two little torx-bolt holding the drum. Next pry of the drum. It is good practice to clean the whole area of brake dust before starting this little job.

Removing a brake drum can be a bit of a challenge. Especially if the drum is worn, the shoes might get stuck behind that inside ridge. In which case, you need to adjust the shoes and turn them in. These drums might also get very stuck. Look closely, the drum has a single threaded hole, thread a bolt in there and it will push the drum outwards! Drum removed

I measured the thickness of the brake shoes and the internal diameter of the drum. All well within specification. Before re-assembly, give everything a good cleaning.

Another image of the internals of a drumbrake.

Before cleaning

After cleaning. The mating surface on this inside and outside of the drum must be properly clean.

So I needed some parts, the front discs and the pads. The pads on the Fiesta were quite fine. But when you install new discs you should always install new pads too.

So I called my friendly local car parts shop. They look up the parts by car registration number. Not in stock, so they have to order it. Which means it will be there around 13.30 the same afternoon. So I decided to start taking out both discs, do all the necessary cleaning, pick up the parts after lunch and fit them.

I paid about Euro 170 for the two discs and set of pads. If Ford does this job, they will charge at least double for the parts and it will take their mechanic a couple of hours as well, at Euro 100 per hour, this simple job is a Euro 500 job at the dealer and not much less at an independent garage.

First thing is to suck some brake fluid from the reservoir. I will be pushing the brake piston inwards and that means brake fluid will be displaced from the caliper back into the brake reservoir.

To be able to remove the disc, you need to remove the caliper, which is attached with just two bolts.

You also need to compress the brake piston a bit. Because as shown in the earlier image, the disc has a bit of a ridge. With the piston extended, the pads will get stuck behind this ridge and you can't pull the caliper off the disc. So you need to wriggle it a bit, or use very large pliers to move the pads/piston inwards a bit.

Alternatively, you could take the caliper apart and remove the pads before removing the caliper from the car. I did not want to do that, as it takes a lot more time.

Getting the disc out requires a lot of whacking from behind whilst turning it. Took a couple of minutes of violence on each side.

Lots of cleaning of the various mating surfaces

With the caliper off the disc I used my special brake pad tool to push the pistons in. The new disc will be wider than the worn disc and the new pads will be thicker than the old ones as well. So you need to push the pistons in. You could do it with a large pliers, but I have this nifty tool which works well.

Make sure the caliper does not hang from its brake hose. Use a bit of string or tie wrap to tie it up properly.

I got the parts. New brake discs come coated with a protective oil film, so clean very thoroughly with brake cleaner.

As per my usual mode of operation. Always check old and new parts to ensure they are identical. In this case they were not! The new one has a threaded hole in it. That means, just as with the brake drum, you can thread a bolt in there to help remove them. Less whacking with a hammer, violence and cursing!

There were two problems with the new brake pads. They came with the incorrect anti-rattle springs and they had these special wear indicators.

This is the cheap, mechanical, wear indicator. As the pad wears at some point in time, this little metal clip starts hitting the disc and that gives a peculiar noise. Time to put new ones in. But I was not convinced it would not interfere with the pads sliding back and forth. So I just cut them off

Installing the disc and the new pads is simply the reverse procedure. Put a little copper slip on the brake pad ears. (That's the area where they slide across the caliper and or anti-rattle clip.)

Bolts on the caliper are torqued at 70Nm. Fill up the brake fluid reservoir. Very gently tap the brake lightly till you have a hard pedal. Check the brake fluid level one more time and take the car for a short test drive.

It took me most of the day, but that was partly because I had to wait and get the parts and go back to get the correct anti-rattle clips. The actual spanner time of this job was probably around 3-4 hours. Of which a substantial amount of time is always due to cleaning!

Working on brakes, especially disc brakes, tend to be straightforward. You don't need any special tools. Even though I have and use some, it can all be done with just some regular tooling.

You do want to check the torque values and have a proper torque wrench. Also, on some cars removing the disc means pulling out the front bearing as well. You can see me doing that on the Alfa Spider a couple of years ago. That always requires some more careful spannering. In most cases, those bearings require careful re-installation with a very special sequence of tightening and loosening with specific torque values.

Most importantly, these are the brakes, so make sure what you do!!

Jeroen

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