Zetec Rear Drum to Disc Conversion

[TheColonel]

Evening all, today I carried out a rear drum to disc conversion on my '06 Zetec, the brakes were off an ST (thanks Adam at Britek) and the whole operation was painless and only took about two lazy hours to complete, with everything bolting and clipping on quite easily, no modifications needed.

Only one carry over niggling issue is the ABS light is now on, on the dash. Could either need a code clearing in the ECU or putting the original Zetec sensors back in instead of using the ST ones, either way should be a ten minute fix.

[Ives]

Interesting!

How does she stop now? have you tried it?

[TheColonel]

The pedal feels a lot firmer and more consistent and it pulls up well, though i haven't given it a serious throw into a corner yet...

[mitch_lx]

Awww the brakes are teeny weeny !!!!

haha still, cars this light dont need too much brake power at the rear of the car.

P.S i probably wouldnt go fanging through corners and slamming on your brakes too hard until you get that ABS light sorted. Because chances are :P the brakes wont function properly :P

[Piotr]

Conversion looks nice, id be using the zetec sensors for ABS. Keep us informed on how it goes

[csv8]

ZETEC should have discs all round as standard ?

[photn]

nope. have rear drums as standard!

all Fiesta have Rear Drums. bar the XR4

[Adsy01]

Is there any update on how these brakes are going Colonel? I'm really wanting to convert mine to disc rears too

[jweb]

nice work,the ABS light staying on sounds a bit worrying tho.

[TheColonel]

all is working well so far, i have the week off this week so we're going to plug in the diagnostics at Ford and see if it's just a code that needs clearing otherwise i'll change the sensors back to the zetec ones, will let you know before i head to Foster for the ARC round on Thursday...

The cars pulls up nicely now, love it, handbrake feels great and the pedal is also nicer and firmer

[TheColonel]

All sorted, faulty abs sensor in the right rear of the ST loom that we used, replaced with the original Zetec ABS rear loom and all is good... highly recommend the conversion to anyone

[dang-r-us]

have you found that the rears seem to not release as quickly as the front?? the master cylinder on disk/drum usually has a valve that prevents the fluide from returning as quickly as the disk/disk version which means that the rear would hold for a littel longer. noticed anything????

[TheColonel]

haven't noticed anything as such, from what we've been able to see (and what we were concerned about originally) is that there is no proportioning valve on it otherwise we would have changed that as well, i quite like how it brakes now... if anyone in bris wants to have a look and feel, PM me and we can arrange a meet

[Adsy01]

Good to hear. I had my rear drums off on the weekend to adjust the shoes as the brakes have been getting a work out lately. While checking everthing out i noticed i had lightly glazed them i guess i had been braking a lot harder than i had thought.

If you don't mind I've got three further questions.

1. do you think you go for an upgrade in the front (pad and/or discs) when they need replacing?

2. would you fit braided brake lines too, or does the system feel firm and solid enough.

3. what parts did you actually change over? discs, hubs?(or they a single unit with the discs) calipers and mounts, Backing plate? brake lines??? i just ask incase i can soruce the parts other than gettting them from a single car like you were able to.

[TheColonel]

Originally Posted by Adsy01

If you don't mind I've got three further questions.

1. do you think you go for an upgrade in the front (pad and/or discs) when they need replacing?

2. would you fit braided brake lines too, or does the system feel firm and solid enough.

3. what parts did you actually change over? discs, hubs?(or they a single unit with the discs) calipers and mounts, Backing plate? brake lines??? i just ask incase i can soruce the parts other than gettting them from a single car like you were able to.

1. i'll go better pads all round when the fronts need changing, not sure what yet, maybe green stuff...

2. the system seems very firm and solid, a lot more so than when the drums were on the rear, so no change in lines...

3. disc and hubs are a single unit i believe, calipers and backing plate, hand brake cable, brake lines from caliper to the flexihose that mounts to the strut top and the cable and hose carrier on each side are different for the handbrake cable to run to the caliper rather than to the drum

[Adsy01]

Thanks for that.
Sounds like i'm better off waiting for a wreck to pop up or another rally car to be built.

[photn]

YOu could always Purchase mk3 mondeo parts from the UK. wreckers seem to sell them pretty cheap. even with the conversion rates.

you could probably get like 300m fronts and 256 rears.

[dang-r-us]

stay tuned guys, i'll be changing my rear drums to discs on saturday. will be talking pics and probably make a small how to for those who want to know

[TheColonel]

a little thing to note is that the rear plate for the drum is bolted and riveted on but a little bit of force with a pry bar will pop them out

[Piotr]

Originally Posted by dang-r-us

stay tuned guys, i'll be changing my rear drums to discs on saturday. will be talking pics and probably make a small how to for those who want to know

What are you changing to?

[dang-r-us]

Conversion was successful!! Purchased a set of ’02 focus rear brakes which I’ve swapped for my old drum brakes
I’ve written up a small how-to guide with pictures; will be posting it by next weekend so you can see exactly what I’ve done. The conversion was reasonable cheap and came in under $400 for everything.

[Adsy01]

Sweet!! looking forward to some info and feedback after some decent driving ;-)

[Adsy01]

Well i'm even more intrested in this after today.
I went for a "hard" drive in the hills today to a mates place. I would of done this drive 200 times over the years in cars of varying power (60-330HP at the front or rear wheels) and varying braking capabilites.

The fez's brakes ranked second last out of all these cars (the worst was my MK2 Escort which had almost the same setup minus the ABS).

I had brake fade much earlier than i thought I would of (compared to cas close to the power/weight of the fez), and the pedal just got spongey to the point where i had to settle and let the car just cool down with some normal driving.
Don't get me wrong they were getting a big work out and i did expect them to fade towards the end of the run, but it was worse than expected and sooner.
The pedal now drops a little further before the brakes work and the pedal is not a firm, but not as spongey as when they were hot.

So its pretty much back to how they were when they needed adjusting a only a fortnight ago. I'm going to flush the fluid and readjust the drums as soon as i get a chance. I can't wait to see if ive reglazed the drums again after seeing them last time. It was fine once it all cooled down.

Rear discs here we come!!

[Adsy01]

Originally Posted by Adsy01

Rear discs here we come!!

Well 13 months later my Fez has rear discs too!

Now anyone with a WP fiesta that thinks this is a straight bolt up conversion, it isn't, it took some minor fabrication and a bit of grinding!

Firstly it seems the rear beam is different on the WP to WQ. On mine we had to die grind out a hole for the ABS sensor to pass through the rear beam on the drivers side of the car.
With the drum brakes, the ABS sensors are on the front (of car) side of the stub axle the LH side, on RH side they are towards the rear (of car) side of the stub axle.
With the Focus Stub axels the ABS Sensors need to mount on the front (of car) side of the stub axle on both sides of the rear beam, but there is only the one hole per side. The Focus control arms that my stub axels came off had holes on both sides making them interchangeable and I’m guessing the WQ does too?

Secondly there is no way of mounting the focus brackets for the brake lines, handbrake cable or ABS lines for wheel/suspension clearance. The Fiesta brakets aren’t suited either.
I ended up modifying the brake line support brackets from the focus, by cutting them a little and then welding on the Fiesta ABS line holders. I then welded these newly modified/made brackets onto the beam. They came out looking like they were there from the factory.

The only other thing I did was add a spacer to the hand brake adjuster (inside the cabin), as the adjuster took up about 3/4 of the thread with the new setup. so I just placed a tube over the handbrake cable, between the hand brake mount and the adjusting nut so that it still has a full range of adjustment.

Other than that everything for the actual brakes themselves bolted on. Also, with the rivets that hold the baking plate on, they're just aluminium, so they drill out in about 3 seconds, then just tap them through with a pin punch.

It was maybe 4 hours work all up but i had a mate die griding as i fitted the other sides parts and the hand brake cable...
So far I've only managed a short drive to help bed in the rear pads, but it already felt much better than the drum set up. Well worth the small effort to make this conversion work (well, small if you have a welder & die grinder as I do).