big brake options for granada kit ?

[mattstead]

Hi I'm finishing an incomplete kitcar using a 1993 2.0 litre GLX Granada which came with the kit. The car has front and rear discs but I was wondering what I can change in the way of discs and calipers to improve the braking system, Are the Cosworth ones the ones to go for? are they the same on sierra and granada cosworths? I have 5 stud hubs, does this limit my options? Thanks.

[lukeb]

5 stud does limit you a bit. On the rear you would probably be best looking for the 273mm vented setup, found on 2.9 estate Grannies as well as the Cossies. Probably overkill unless you have a really heavy kit though?

On the front, you can hunt around for a Cossie setup which will give you 278mm vented. Or, if you want to go large, it looks like the Galaxy (same PCD) has a 300mm disc available, you'd just need to get handy with some brackets to space the caliper out as needed.

All that assumes standard calipers, which are the same Sierra/Granada. The Sierra Cos 4 pots weigh an absolute ton, wouldn't recommend them. Go for alu if you want to upgrade the calipers, Wilwoods aren't too expensive.

Don't go overkill on your brakes. I'd rather build the kit with the standard brakes (which after all were designed to provide some resilience for a 1500kg car, probably towing a caravan) and upgrade them if they proved to be lacking rather than take the weight and cost implications of going with monster brakes from the get go.

[dern]

I would go for lightening them if anything. I can't imagine you'd need more stopping power. I had standard cortina stuff on my westfield for a while with 1144 pads and they were well up to the job on a full trackday and I had near enough 300bhp and a 4.6lv8 on board. It came with 4 pot wilwoods which I took off because I warped the discs. I had the discs skimmed and put them back on after the track day and they were no better. I had no problems with fade with either setups. I'll be using standard tina stuff on the bec I'm building simply because they're good enough and fit under the smaller wheels I want (13&quot in order to run 2nd hand slicks.

Mark

[andygtt]

Depends on the Kit you have, the main reason to upgrade the brakes IMO is because the standard car has a completely different weight distribution and thus standard brakes are not a lot of good.
You also need to take into account that the standard brakes use servos and often on a kit you do not.

For example the Ultima I had (uses Granada hubs) seemed to use corvette standard brakes all round, this gave the brakes a terrible pedal feel (like the granada they used pull calipers) as the car didn't have a servo and the rear brakes were a long way from adequate (they were bigger than a granada rear caliper).

What upgrade you go for will depend on your budget.

[RazMan]

You may find that changing pad compound will have a more dramatic effect so I wouldn't be too quick to upgrade. As already said, your kit car will probably weigh less than half of a Granny and you may find that you are overbraked anyway. If you are not using a servo, a change of master cylinder bore size can also make a huge difference too.

[vojx]

My Stratos lookalike has Granada 4x4 brakes. Although initially they would overheat with abuse, it was because i had set the front/rear balance up wrong. after adjustment, the retardation is fantastic - i can lock up at 90mph, so bigger brakes arent necessary (875kg all up weight)