Ford Capri 3.0 S: £15K competition update

The woeful brakes can be ignored no longer!

With the clocks forward and the summer on its way, our Adrian Flux competition winners from last year are eagerly preparing their cars for the imminent (hopefully) warmer months.

This update from Matt on his Capri is actually a little late (sorry Matt!) with more work underway at present. Expect another story from him in the very near future as he continues building his perfect Capri. With John's Integrale laid up over winter we will hopefully hear from him soon as his Lancia gets rolled out for 2014 and enjoyed.

Here Matt explains how his ongoing brake issue was finally resolved and his rather unorthodox approach to some suspension work. More to come soon!

Thanks again to Adrian Flux for sponsoring the competition.

In the past few updates I've mentioned an ever-growing pile of parts that I have for the Capri. After the last bit of excitement with the brakes, I figured it's about time I stopped using them as a draft excluder in the garage and introduced them to Tony.

This one's called 'hammers are important'

Last month I explained how utterly awful the brakes have been since I bought the car. The (working!) Land Rover master cylinder seemed to make a huge difference in feel and performance, but I figured it'd be wise to refresh the rest of the system before I got used to them being terrible again.

I'd spent months researching how best I could give the car some stopping power that wouldn't be laughed at by my sister's Fiat 500. I got very tempted by the Caprisport kits and mesmerised by the likes of Hi-Spec and Wilwood, before realising I wasn't too keen on £450 for scrapyard parts and definitely couldn't stretch to the £600+ for shiny aluminium offerings, in addition to the £150 increase on my insurance premium.

Luckily, everybody's favourite auction site came to my aid. I'd already bought some 2.8i Bilstein struts that had been freshly rebuilt and converted to coilovers from there, and found the perfect complement to them; a set of new M16 (2.8i) calipers with drilled, grooved and vented discs, including everything I needed to fit them for less than half the price of the cheapest four-pot set up. I know brakes are never an area to scrimp on, but on a student budget I'll never be melting plastic and placing an order with AP any time soon. Besides, anything is an improvement here.

Burning the midnight oil after a small mistake

A friend of mine races Caterhams and told me the M16 is still a widely used caliper here, receiving praise from him for being such a solid, flex-free unit more than up to the job with decent pads. Admittedly the super-lightweight Caterham would probably stop well if I put the discs from my bike on there, but we chatted for a while and I thought I'd give it a go, maintaining a view to a four-pot upgrade in the future.

I got into conversation with Dave, owner of DS Automotive in Weston, about the kit and various other bits and pieces I needed. Following some sound advice and a lot of deliberation about spring weights and general car set up, a big box of tricks turned up in the post a few days later after he'd specially ordered some Mintex M1144s in for me. For that, I'd like to thank and thoroughly recommend him - absolutely fantastic bloke whose help was invaluable to me, top quality parts too.

With the parts in, I started making a plan of attack. First up, do the Billies have the same size thread as the 3.0 legs? After taking the nut off and checking, I can confirm they do. I can also confirm that forgetting to put the top nut back on to very tired dampers before lifting the car off the ground is a terrible mistake to make.

New brakes a huge improvement

Before I could register my schoolboy error, the damper was through the top-mount and sat in the middle of the spring, refusing to go back through. After an hour or so of trying, I decided there was no time like the present and started the strut swap, on my own, largely underprepared, on the cold floor of my driveway in at about 3pm. Proof that the naivety of youth knows no bounds, I tackled it head on, broke out the work lights and eventually finished up after around 16 cold hours on my back, punctuated with a little sleep and a hangover due in no small part to my neighbour and their toffee vodka. Never again.

Around 6pm on day two, with the sun gone, struts fitted, ride height set, brakes plumbed in with some typically fantastic Goodridge braided lines, then bled with the help of my mum, it was just about time to go for a test drive.

Crunch, wobble, grind, crunch, bang. Oh dear. I made it barely 100 metres before limping back at a speed only comparable to tectonic plates or longshore drift, to find nothing was clearly wrong or damaged. Now I'm not an overly spiritual person, but I think the very vocal protest was a gentle nudge from someone telling me it wasn't advisable to go and bed my brakes in without tightening one set of wheel nuts.

Matt out enjoying the fruits of his labour

Point taken, and tiredness error corrected, Faye and I took Tony out for a burn over to Wallasea the following evening to get everything checked out. To say it has transformed the car is an understatement - braking hard from 60/70 now suspends me in the seat belt, it pulls up straight and true and the 275lb springs have actually improved the ride, as well as largely eliminating the understeer issues it suffered from so drastically before.

Frustratingly, it's carried over the 40mph-right-turn-wobble despite almost everything up front being changed, however that has narrowed down the possible culprits to only the track control arm bushes (a common Capri failure) or the steering rack. Hopefully a replacement of the former will see stage one of the suspension overhaul complete. I've still yet to fit the rear springs or cure the shake, but I'm feeling very good about how it's starting to shape up, driving the car hard in confidence at long last is pure joy.

OP Posts Only

Prev 2 Next

OP Posts Only

Author

Discussion

UltimaCH

Original Poster

3,181 posts

218 months