Jensen-Healey Front Brakes Improvements
Healey Journal
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Jensen Healey Pages: |
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The old brakes in situ.... |
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All the new bits, old ones cleaned and painted
New ones (Shocks, Springs, Brakes and Hardware, too) all nice and shiney... |
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Having decided to upgrade the suspension and engine so it would go faster in straight lines and around corners too I also decided it might be a good idea to be able to stop a little more quickly too.
I saw some "big brake" conversions that used aftermarket calipers, but these also required wheel spacers and seemed less appealing for that. A little more searching showed that a Girling type 16 like those used on 1980s Fords was a suitable alternative- bigger calipers and pads, and maybe better disks too.
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The "new" caliper with pads. |
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So I watched e-bay and got a set of Girling calipers from one person and an e-bay stores vendor sold the Minitex pads to fit them. These seemed to fit the Axles well enough and the standard disks would fit... but the original calipers were designed for solid, thin disks while the larger ones used vented, thicker disks. So the next upgrade step is to find and fit a set of the vented disks- I'll try to find some suitable ones. I've looked at those for the Fords that the calipers fit, but those are too deep in the hub crown, I've done a fair bit of searching and it seems the closest fit come from a Peugeot 205/305, the diameter is very close, the hub crown deepth is the same, the distance from hub to the disk is the good, but... the hole through the hub crown is too wide. This would mean the mounting holes would not fit... so it seems that a vented disk isn't really a feasible option.
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The Caliper's too big:
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A greater problem would be the potential interference between the mounted caliper and the wheel. Even with a suitable vented disk the size of the calipers would make wheel spacers necessary to allow sufficient clearance for them.
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So I'll either need to shim the pads to take up the distance, or split the calipers and remove the spacers used to widen them to accommodate the thicker disks.
A photo of the caliper being split. The nearest bolt still has the spacer hanging from it. The farside spacer has been removed and the "O" ring used to seal the joint between the two halves can be seen. These were then retightened using new hardware, since the old bolts were long and the threads did not seem to reach high enough on the bolt shank to adequately torque the caliper's halves together.
Once bolted back together the calipers were then painted with high temperature paint. The brakes pads were then fit to the calipers and they were then mounted on the stub axles.
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The final step was to fabricate brake lines between the calipers and the flexible brake hoses connecting to the chassis mounted brake lines. These were 7 inches long and made of Kunifer tubing. These were cut to length and a special brake flaring tool used to make the double flare needed for the caliper end, and the doubled flare for the flexible line end.