Front Discs on a Series

[ltwt1981]

First many thanks to Tonk and Jon White for advice and their threads on this.

Really just a brief description of how mine went.

You will need a lathe, grinder, taps and dies, pillar drill (better still a mill) and some patience.

I started with a stub axle and hub in the workshop together with disco/RR rear callipers and discs (not LR).

You have to make the calliper bracket, I used 12mm steel but I think 10mm would be better, I just happened to have some 12mm.

I formed the bracket shape using the hub to mark a circle and a drum brake back plate for the inner circle hole. This means it will fit on the stub axle correctly.

I then looked at the caliper and drew up where I thought it should go.

Made it all in card first including a mock disc of exact diameter.

The disc I used has the centre machined out and the hub requires some machining as well to fit.

Mine is like the TIC brakes, see their web site for pics.

The disc is fitted to the back of the hub with five bolts tapped into the hub.

I used the centre of abrake drum machined to fit into the rear recess of the disc to centre the holes exactly.

This disc can be fitted on the front of the hub and one hole central between the studs drilled through both.

Move it round one drill the next hole through the first in the disc and so on.

With five holes drilled turn over and drill all five back through the hub and disc.

You now have a template to drill the brake disc, place it in the rear recess and drill with a pillar drill all five holes.

If you machined right in the first place you have them in the right place tap the hub, drill out the disc holes and bolt up with loktite or similar.

Mock it up on the bench and offer up the caliper and mark the holes.

I made the caliper bracket in aluminium first so I now have a template for this as well.

After this its all bolt together and mod brake lines to suit.

You need a 6mm spacer on the front of the hub for the wheel to clear the caloper, I machined out a brake drum centre as its complete with all the holes you need.

With my 12mm calliper plate I found I needed lnger bolts to the axle and to mill sme recesses as the bolts fouled on the hub, I think 10mm may clear or at least not require th milling.

I thought about countersunk bolts but I'm not sure, any comments. Or anyone got any in imperial to fit, needs 12.

I cut the caliper bracket roughly with a jig saw first, ground and filed to shape.

Stich drilled and filed the centre hole.

All seems to work well other than comments on my other thread re pedal a bit firmer.

Will post pics when I do some any questions please ask.

[Tonk]

be interested in the pics, good to see u made them with wot u can get your hands on.

i prefer cad system, cnc punch machines and lathes and mills

[ltwt1981]

Tonk

I don't have them, but you definitely need a lathe and with templates you can do the rest fairly comfortably.

I reckon with the gear to hand I could probably do it in a weekend now.

[Jon White]

Hmmmmmm if you've used RR rear calipers on the front, then you'll need to be careful with brake bias when you do the rears or else you'll lock the rear end up first!

I'm running wilwood 4 pots up front, which has avoided this problem and I've had no problems with brake bias, as you can select what piston sizes you want when you order them.

You can use the adjustable brake bias valves I suppose, but they're alot of money for what they are, and in my opinion are a bit of a bodge.

The dual circuit masters are available in a range of biases. Standard series is 50/50, but some of the defender ones are different. There's a plastic ring clipped around them which will tell you what they're biased to. I suspect you'll need to change the master.

Cheers

jon

[isuzurover]

Here is another option, sorry it is sideways:

This is a SIII hub, machined drilled and tapped to take a RR disc, with a RR 4-pot front caliper. No wheel spacer is required for this method. You need to drill and tap the swivel housing, and also fit longer studs to the swivel pin bolts top and bottom.

[ltwt1981]

Looks good, any other photos or comments.

[isuzurover]

Looks good, any other photos or comments.

Unfortunately no more photos. This caliper mount design was originally built by a mate of mine, the setup used (if I remember correctly) range rover front discs all round, bolted to machined and tapped SIII hubs. The front had range rover 4-pot calipers, the rear had 2-pot calipers from the front of an early model ford cortina (EF???) and a proportioing valve from a volvo (internally adjustable) between front and rear lines.

The braking performance was equivalent to a defender.

The picture above is of a second conversion based on the method my mate used. I don't know for sure if it used the same parts, but it also worked quite well)

[tiagoc]

disc brakes is one of the things I might offer myself (and the landy) in, hopefully, a short time... front first, but front & back is the goal, along with a disc handbrake

the problem is that I can't make my own disc brakes like you guys, so I'll have to pay for them. I believe I'm going for TIC ones mainly because they're cheaper than RM (and they're already on this side of the ocean, wich also helps on the price tag). so, today I went to TIC's website to check some components and I saw that they now have ventilated discs and their new kit is now trully bolt-on

but I've been thinking about one thing: when off-roading, won't the ventilated discs catch a lot of mud inside of them? aren't the simple discs better for those who use the series off the tarmac? what do you think?

[Tonk]

i wouldn't be overly worried about if the discs are vented or not. are TI still using a single pot sliding caliper? thats the bit that really puts me off their kit, along with the small diameter of the disc.

[isuzurover]

i wouldn't be overly worried about if the discs are vented or not. are TI still using a single pot sliding caliper? thats the bit that really puts me off their kit, along with the small diameter of the disc.

Yes they are and I agree with what you say. The sliding type caliper with one or two pots on one side only is cheap and simple, but not as effective as a four pot - especially in wet and muddy conditions.

The Rovers North kit does seem to be the best one out there. Although I am wary of anything made by Zeus - their kit seems not too bad - especially if you already have non standard rims.

[Tonk]

the zues kit aint bad, i've seen it in the flesh. wont fit inside 15" rims though

[Phil Hancock]

i wouldn't be overly worried about if the discs are vented or not. are TI still using a single pot sliding caliper? thats the bit that really puts me off their kit, along with the small diameter of the disc.

TI are now using vented discs but the caliper is a 2 pot sliding thing. They are actually Santana PS10 units, all i can say about them is that on the PS10 they pull up fine even with a 4 wheel trailer with a loaded transit on it!