Brakes.

Updated the links 15th on November 2005
Updated for the second time 15th of September 2002.
This brakeinfo is updated 30th of August 2000. Look a bit further down for the new bits.

Ford Escort Cosworth standard brakes
One can discuss the quality of the brakes on the Ford Escort RS Cosworth, and not all may agree with me, but from my point of view i have found them to leave quite a bit to be desired. The original Escort RS Cosworth brakes are hydraulically assisted, ITT Alfred Teves GmbH Mk2 with electronic anti-lock action (ABS).
My main con against the brakes are their tendency to shake or judder. When I first bought my car the brakes started to judder or shake after about 1 month. This got worse and worse up to the point where the steering wheel shook when driving through turns (no brakes applied). Then I had both discs and pads changed. A few days after I had my discs and pads changed I felt a small vibration when braking, and I have changed the suspensionbushings too so that should not be a problem. They got real shaky again and I bought non-Ford discs. To read about those discs go to the non-ford-dics-page.
The feel of the brakes are ok, but nothing more. Compared to the brakes on a 1997 Saab 900S, the original brakes on the Escort Cosworth sucks, the Saab brakes are very easily modulated and extremely smooth, and after hard braking they leave you with the feeling that they could have stopped you much faster if you'd had the guts to press the pedal hard enough. Not so on the Escort Cosworth.
The best idea is to change all of it, calipers and discs to AP Racing or Brembo brakes. This will improve braking more than you can imagine. And if you look at the brakecalculations on the next page you will realize that bigger is better when it comes to brakes.

Why the brakes are no good
At first I thought that the shaking or judder was a result of poor engineering and design of the calipers, but it has come to my knowlengde that the reason for the judder is in the production and design of the brakediscs. The first time the brakediscs get hot from braking (hot is by no means gloving red, normal to heavy braking from 60mph or 80km/h will do it) the metal holding the two discs of the brakedisc together (the metal in the vents between the discs) will heat-stabilize. This will lead to an uneven thickness of the brakedisc. This uneveness will increase as the brakes are worn by use. The solution to this is not to buy new Ford discs (which will warp again), but to buy a pair of non-Ford brakediscs. At first I bought Black diamond discs but those did not live up to my expectations. And I can testify that they do warp from heat. My discs changed color from silver to blue because of the temperatures they reached and after that they no longer felt as smooth; the judder was there again. When I installed the Black diamond discs they felt very good, up to the heat-incident. Still they are lots better than the original Ford discs. I think that they will last quite some time if you don't use them for trackdays or real hard braking. Just scrub the speed of a bit at a time to let them cool.
I have also tried and are currently using Black diamond and Goodridge braided brakelines. I don't know if it did any difference (difficult to tell) but it might have increased the max pressure from the pads on the discs a bit. The original rubber brakelines is said to expand slightly when the brakes are applied, thus giving an increased pedalstroke, but I think that such an expansion must be very slight.

Brake construction
I came to think of it when I studied the workshop manual that the single piston (pot) setup used on the Escort Cosworth do have an unstable nature in itself: Since there are only one point of pressure on the pad it could possibly rock back and forth on the piston as the brakepedal is pressed and released. That is not possible with a caliper with two or more pistons (on the same side, one piston on each side would not solve this). So: the more pistons, the better stability of the brakepad becomes, and of course the pressure can be increased and more evenly spread across the brakepad. More good reasons for the brakes pictured below. To see what those big brakes will do for your braking go to brakecalculations, which has been updated 30th of August 2000.

Do It Yourself
The first time I changed discs and pads I had it done at an authorized Ford dealer. But exactly that makes me a bit suspicious about how the stuff was installed. If it hadn't been -20 centigrade outside I'd done it myself. Do it yourself and know how it's done. I think you save a heck of a lot of money and the work is probably done better when you do it yourself, although it may take 5 times as much time, but that's not the point. Speaking of money and prices I must say it might be just as good to swap them for AP Racing brakes because the job (2 discs with pads and work) cost me 4800 Norwegian kroner = 368GBP = 589 US$. If you warp 2 sets a year it'll only take like 2-3 years before you've saved the cost of some real brakes.

What you really need:
Aftermarket brakes for Ford Cosworths are available from AP Racing , Brembo and Graham Goode (AP) and maybe other companies too. Mail me if you know of other companies that have brakes for Ford Escort Cosworths. Black diamond brakediscs and pads are available from Larkspeed.

After getting rather sick and tired of the standard sized brakes I did the only sensible thing and bought some AP Racing brakes. I went for 330mm discs with 4 pot calipers from Graham Goode. Excellent quality and the price wasn't too bad either.
After using them for more than a year I'm still very happy. I have used them for two track days and while people around me using stock brakes boiled their brake fluid and had no pedal left after a short while my pedal was just as nice at the end as when I started.

AP makes discs in a wide variety of sizes but the ones most commonly used for Cosworth cars are: 315mm, 330mm, 343mm and 378mm. Other makes like Wilwood commonly use 355mm discs. The most commonly used size is 330mm. The reason for this is that the 315mm discs don't fit under standard wheels and then it's just as good to buy 17 or 18 inch wheels. For 378mm discs you will need 18 inch motorsport wheels like Speedline or Compomotive. Most 18 inch wheels don't have enough clearance for the calipers with that size dics. 8-pot calipers is about right for that size disc. If you use snow tires it might be nice to have 16" wheels during the winter but that limits the dics diamter to 315 mm. Might be a good idea because snow tires in 17 inch and larger isn't the ultimate for grip in the snow. Rally teams use 15 inch wheels for snow events.

Hefty Brembo brakes	AP Racing with 6-pot calipers	AP Racing with 4-pot calipers

Go to the brakecalculations.

Back to wrc-cosworth.org.