Ford KA crap brakes!!

check the rear adjusters are working/wound out correctly on the rear shoes, they are sposed to be automatic adjusters but they dont always work.

Ford brakes generally seem to need fairly high pedal pressures. At the opposite extreme, Vauxhall always seem too sensitive to me.

Does the pedal travel reduce if you drive it with the handbrake pulled up a click or two? If so, check the rear adjusters as reg has suggested.

Chris

Thanks reg, will check the rears are properly adjusted. It's probably never seen fresh fluid either so might as well put some new pads in & go over the lot while I'm at it.

In message , Redwood writes

My wife had one for a few years. As you say, the brakes are crap. They seem under servo'd. I fitted grooved discs to keep the pads de-glazed and I fitted fast road pads. The fast road pads were better when they had some heat in them but were worse when cold.

I did wonder if the servo was actually working but no sign of leaks and it does hold pressure. Did notice though with engine off and I pump the servo dry, on other cars I've owned you get a solid feel to the pedal with not much movement but on this the pedal still goes down quite a lot and feels a bit springy & not solid.

Handbrake works very well locking even on both sides on 2 clicks but there doesn't seem to be free play in the cable - so I'm wondering if the cable has been adjusted at some time to take up the gap between the shoes & the drum instead of the shoes been properly adjusted first before adjusting the cable. I suppose that would account for the long pedal travel as the rear cylinders need to be pushed out further? Will check it out next week.

springy pedal can show that the calipers are seized, which gives longer travel and less braking (to confirm get two hose clamps and clamp off the front brakes, pedal should now be almost solid). wrongly adjusted rears will usually only increase the travel and the braking should be normal once the pedal moves far enough to make everything work, obviously do check out the rears at some stage , but a quick strip and sort of the front end will probably improve things the most (from your description)

On my SD1 which has self adjusting rear drums, the brakes are noticeably keener when the self adjusters decide to work - which isn't often. Maybe something to do with the leverage of the pedal to master cylinder being at optimum when fully up?

Do any drum self adjusters work properly? I've replaced them several times and shoes and cylinders and drums - but they've always been poor.

I've got a disc conversion waiting to be fitted when I get some tuits spare. Hopefully that will give a short pedal travel at all times.

ford brakes are usually crap, old escorts and fiestas were awful...

They have worked fine on all the Fords I've owned in the last 25 years; I always clean the drums out and use Copaslip on all the friction points every other year though.

I can tell by the pedal travel increasing that it is due to click up another notch, and can sometimes make that happen by standing hard on the pedal. (Whilst stationary of course!)

It should give a more consistent travel, but not necessarily shorter. It will depend on the degree of disc runout, and how much play there is in the wheel bearings.

Chris

Ka's have either vented or non-vented disks. The non-vented ones are, in my book, not up to the job of stopping the car. The vented ones are alright - you just need a set of calipers from a vented disk Ka or Fiesta and new pads and disks.

Got round to doing the front brakes - fitted new disks, pads and a good bleed to get fresh new dot 4 fluid in the system and they feel much better compared to before. There's a more solid feel to the pedal which doesn't go down as far, plus less force needed to stop. My old astravan brakes still seem a lot sharper but from all the reports I've read about KA brakes that's just the way they are.

The new pads I fitted (and the old ones were the same) are tapered at each end - anyone know the reason for this? There's about half an inch on both ends of the pad that don't make contact with the disk until the pad wears down!! I'd have thought for better brakes it's best to have all the pad friction surface in contact with the disk, not just the middle of the pads?

Stops them shrieking & juddering when they're bedding in.

Never come across tapered pads before but did wonder if it's for the bedding in period. Seems quite a lot of pad material needs to be worn away before the tapered ends even out though! Probably take over a year given the amount of miles this thing does.

When the pads that thick then the disks the bit that overheats, rather than the pad.