Stag Turbo, With a smile & a nod the wise man said nothing

The impeller was just pressed onto the shaft, it doesn’t have any other purpose  than spinning. It doesn’t stop the any lateral movement of the shaft . The idler is rock solid, no end float. The impeller just sits on the shaft the main load is the Cambelt. 

For the last, well for this time, three weeks the car is been in bits trying to sort out the brakes. Took a while to get the pedal box back in, so that was sorted out. I’ve not tried it but it seems like the new master cylinder for the clutch, 0.7 rather than 0.75, is give me a bit of a clutch. I decided to fit a hydraulic handbrake as well, due to the fact that pulling off from a standing start, especially if there’s any sort of uphill gradient, can be a right pain in the asre. Hopefully the hydro handbrake will make things a little bit easier.

Putting hydraulic handbrake in I tried the normal handbrake and course it didn’t work properly, what a surprise. So it’s was a case of having to take the prop off reconnect the handbrake cables. Also make the system a little better as it was a while back it was done ( bodged). But even after that and bleeding the brakes though still quite poor, so I took the calipers off I found they weren’t the best.

I looked into getting some new calipers from the local motor factors. They weren’t a great deal of help, as the only information I had was, “Ford Mondeo ST 220 mate”. They needed the year, body shape and registration number. I said anything would do, providing they fit the 125 mm carrier, but they’ve said there’s over 15 different types of calipers to choose from. They did mention sending mine off and getting them overhauled, at a cost of £70, didn’t think was that bad, then they mentioned plus carriage and that was it per calliper. So using the wind it in and out tool, plus alot of lubricating oil managed to free them off so they sort of worked.

Took ages to bleed them, and the hydraulic handbrake did sort of work as well. The proper handbrake worked well, better than it had them before so the little modification was worth doing. I still wasn’t happy with the rear brakes, so after a lot of looking on eBay and the various different Mondeo calipers I ordered a pair. They were £63 including delivery for the pair, which I didn’t think was too bad compared to how much it cost to get them rebuilt. I did look into getting a rebuild kit but they were knocking on 20 quid apiece, and from past experience I don’t always work, also I didn’t know exactly which calipers I had.

As normal the front brakes took an age to bleed, as there’s two bleed nipples per caliper. It’s one of those cases yes all the air must’ve gone, and then you get a big stream of bubbles. A complete waste of about 2 L of brake fluid, mental when the reservoir hold about a thimble full.

Once all that curse word was done, the brakes still didn’t seem brilliant, as there wasn’t much of a pedal. Looking at the bias bar the rear master cylinder was getting more movement than the front. Which, as the bias bar was set up correctly, shouldn’t of happened, so this has led me to believe that the issue wasn’t anything to do with the rear master cylinder going tits up, it was the rear calipers all the time, the utter bastards.

But they turned up today……but couldn’t be arsed to fit them.




The problem with the car ditching coolant, I was hoping, well not hoping as you don’t want it to ditch coolant, but I thought I had an idea what it could be. This was no quick fix as the inlet manifold has to come off. But before you can do that a lot of other stuff that’s come up first.




It’s quite a big V, so that is possibly why no leaks were visible for quite awhile and I thought all was well. And it was what I thought it gone wrong after doing the cam belt and waterpump. On the one 1uz engine there’s a couple of O-rings replace one of these had failed.




Getting to this stage again wasn’t easy, unless you want to take a lot more parts off and replace more gaskets afterwards. So I hacksawed the pipe off as I started  to lose patience. The O-ring size didn’t surprise me as it wasn’t a generic size, nothing even similar to the 2 o ring kits I’ve got. So I had to use the O-ring from a new water pump.

I did look at the car with the inlet manifold off and think, shtie I’m at the  same stage about a year ago, in fact I'm probably even further behind, what complete utter Cnut.

I think the only thing that keeps me battling on, to get the stag done, is the thought that is in a better state than the car, and i use that term extremely loosely, that I’m repairing at work.

Yeah these are the rear calipers, apparently the Mondeos have different ones where is a saloon, hatchback or estate. There’s also different ones up to 2005 then from 2004 2007, also a different one from 2006. Add to that some have vented disc.

Well I had the same issue before I took it all the pieces, and when I looked at it on the bench the bias bar wasn’t set up correctly. So this time I spent quite awhile get it set up right. By screw in the pushrods all the Way in, then back a few threads so not to impede the movement of the clevis. Locking off the rear then winding out  the front by 1/4” to get the bias bar cocked in favour to the front. All the centre and measurements were done using a digital caliper check a few times. The basis bar was set to be bang in the middle.   I could have made a mistake but I’m sure it correct.

I followed what Wilwood and tilton both suggested but still have the problem. Wilwood did mention, when I emailed them, that I might have to test and adjust rear master cylinders to get everything to work correctly, as the front and the rears brakes are totally different.

www.streetmusclemag.com/news/adjusting-brake-bias-using-balance-bar-tilton-engineering/

if the the biases bar was set up wrong I would  have either all front or rear brakes. The fronts work but don’t get enough force to work correctly un less you wind the biased adjuster to the maximum front loading.  don’t think there’s anymore air in the system but there may be some hiding away, which would cause the same issue.

But any help or advice is always welcome. I’ll look at it again in the week and make sure I’ve not made a glaringly big error but otherwise I’ll just have to wait until the new bits come. But still got loads to do in the meantime.

I can’t get a photo of it but it’s set as in this;



The biases bar is centred in the housing.

Once that is set as shown, get an assistant to push brakes on firmly. Then adjust pushrods so when brakes are firmly applied the balance bar is level across both M/C's.

Nearly every instruction available tells you to set it up wrong, when I found the correct wat to set it up the brakes were transformed.

Yes I think you are correct on the thread size.

Imagine you had a 6 foot beam with 2 poles attached sticking out (M/C pushrods). You have a friend on each pole (M/C's) and you are pushing on the beam in the middle. You will push both friends the same amount. Even if one friend had a 3 foot pole and one had a 5 foot pole (unequal length M/C pushrods) you will still push them equally.

Now imagine the same thing if you hold your beam 1 foot from the middle. The friend nearest you would be easier to push, and the friend further away very hard to push - this is your brake bias.

The reason you adjust the pushrod lengths to get the bias bar level when under full load is you want to push both front & rear brakes with the same amount of movement so all brakes brake evenly, but you want the most pressure to the front brakes.

Hope that explains it easily for you?

It seems like an age while trying to sort the brakes out. It took ages to bleed, still wasn’t happy with the footbrake or the hydraulic handbrake. So I changed the rear master to a .75 bore, didnt make a lot of difference, so I upped it again to a 0.831. That improved things very slightly, with the slight improvement I went the whole hog and put in the 1 inch for Master cylinder.

Even with that it was taking a while to bleed and I still get in bubbles even though everything was tight, and no leaks at all. This meant I would have to replaced all the rear brake lines just in case one of them was letting Air in on the recuperation. Sourcing all the correct brake unions was a bit of a pain as there were imperial and metric. Once everything was fitted it was a bit easier to bleed but still not hundred percent happy with my travel on the brake pedal. Although I’ve not a car out so things may be different on the move.

All the advice I’ve been given about setting up the bias bar/pedal box has been incorporated, but not fully, as other things need to go back on the car before I can drive it, or even attempt to move it out the garage. This will then allow me to see if the brakes are working and how they do need adjusting or if it’s completely poo still.

Once again something that should’ve took a minutes/hours has dragged on for a matter of weeks. The car still needs to be put back together, all the coolant pipes put back on along with the inlet manifold etc. but I have fitted the extra pipework to enable both ports of the EWP to be used. That should increase the flow and allow better cooling of the engine.

Oh yes hanging upside down in the foot well of the car trying to attach the clevis pin to the pushrod with limited room, while in a hot garage on the hottest day of the year was great fun.

Thats not right. Under firm pressure they should both 'go solid' - and if the bar & M/C rods are adjusted correctly they should also be level.

Are the rears discs or drums - can't remember. If discs are the handbrake mechanisms adjusted up tight?