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Ford racing SVT focus brake kit

I hope posting this link is legal :confused:
...if not, accept my apoligies and remove it. I dont have enough posts to place my ad in the classifieds so I posted in the local regional section.

Please look here on my FSVT kit "plug and play": http://contour.org/ceg-vb/showpost.php?p=522417&postcount=88

After having them on my CSVT for over a month, the squishy feel I had at first is 100% gone now! ...Most likely due to the pad/rotors are now "broke-in"
I also want to add, due to a couple PM's, I have priced out a rear kit which is listed in the above link but post #101.

Again, just delete this if I'm in the wrong here.
 
NPG bracket kit

NPG bracket kit

Hey I just want you guys to know that our kit provides the same pedal travel/feel as stock CSVT brakes, to include nearly the same brake bias as stock. This means the brakes feel the same as stock but with a significant increase in braking performance. With the near stock brake bias you benefit because you are less likely to throw the weight of the car out in a turn when braking as you would in a setup where the bias was changed either more front or more rear.
The reason our kit works is due to the similar proportional increase in rotor diameter on both the front and rear, AND the fact that the stock caliper piston/cylinder volume is unchanged from stock. The brake pad does not fully cover the rotor face to the same extent as the FSVT pad but does not compromise rotor wear. The overall brake performance and fade resistance is significantly increased on the car.

The FSVT caliper uses a larger piston and requires more fluid volume to clamp the calipers. Consequently you have to press the pedal farther to get the same movement. The kit is good, and fade resistance is good from the extra rotor and caliper mass. The bias is off from stock though and pedal feel is different.

Both a good choices. By the way, we have not experienced a bracket failure nor a bolt failure to date. The failure one customer had was from the bolt being undertorqued and it backed out until it fell out. Once it fell out the caliper fell into the rim and locked it up, breaking the rotor and final bolt. If you take care and follow good directions you will have no issues.
Thanks.
 
Well, you obviously read the whole thread Tom. Did you see the nice little chunk missing out of my one wheel where the caliper flew through it?
 
You phrased your post like you want to say something more....
I don't know, did you have a failure? I looked on your pics to see if you had one but found nothing. I can't remember who it was that had the issue.
In any case, I would assume that if the caliper rotates into the wheel hub and locks it up then the wheel would be shot as well.
 
so just out of curiosity. Lets say I upgrade to focus fronts, and move my SVT fronts to the rear. I'm talking calipers and everything. How do I retain the e-brake?
 
You only move the front rotors to the rear, same rear caliper with an adapter bracket that moves it out and clocks it up a bit.

You can download the instruction manual from our site and see what it looks like and what is involved.

Due to the failure I did change the instruction sets to remind people about bolt-torque, visual inspections, and suggesting they re-torque the bolts after driving it through a few cycles.

We also email the files directly to people when they purchase this kit though the downloadable ones online are still the older ones.
I'm going to make sure they are updated now that I'm home though.

This is mainly to help the inexperienced person to recheck their work in case they just were not as thorough.
 
k thanks for that, I was a lil confused about that. So, if a person uses the FSVT fronts calipers and does the rotor swap on the rear, that kinda overbiases your brakes to the front doesnt it? So in that case wouldnt it just be better to keep using stock CSVT calipers front and rear?
 
FunInNorthDakota said:
k thanks for that, I was a lil confused about that. So, if a person uses the FSVT fronts calipers and does the rotor swap on the rear, that kinda overbiases your brakes to the front doesnt it? So in that case wouldnt it just be better to keep using stock CSVT calipers front and rear?
Click to expand...

You cant really overbias towards the fronts since they already do like 75% of the work anyway. If you like the feel of the brake pedal like it is (and I certainly do) sticking with the calipers the master cylinder is expecting is the way to go.
 
Dyoel182 said:
You cant really overbias towards the fronts since they already do like 75% of the work anyway. If you like the feel of the brake pedal like it is (and I certainly do) sticking with the calipers the master cylinder is expecting is the way to go.
Click to expand...

I am aware that they are biased for additional braking in the fronts. Considering how often I drive on ice, and from what I have seen already I would rather not add to much more braking to the front than what I would be able to add to the rear. Pedal feel isnt what I am going for, I like how the brakes currently act on the car, I just want more braking force equally on all 4 wheels.
 
FunInNorthDakota said:
I am aware that they are biased for additional braking in the fronts. Considering how often I drive on ice, and from what I have seen already I would rather not add to much more braking to the front than what I would be able to add to the rear. Pedal feel isnt what I am going for, I like how the brakes currently act on the car, I just want more braking force equally on all 4 wheels.
Click to expand...

If you like how the brakes currently act you probably wont like how they act when you throw a different caliper on the front. But which do you want, more braking force total or more balanced braking with added bias towards the rear?
 
I dont think there is a one or the other option when deciding on more braking force or balanced braking. I feel the factory braking is pretty well balanced, possibly a little to much towards the front, anyways thats not the point. I am not really concerned with pedal feel. I know the pedals would feel different. Thats not what I am talking about when I am talking about how the brakes "act" I am talking about total braking performance, weight biasing, that type of thing. I like the predictable feel of the stock SVT brakes in corners and that type of thing, I would just like a little beefier brakes that can provide more stopping power.
 
FunInNorthDakota said:
I like the predictable feel of the stock SVT brakes in corners and that type of thing, I would just like a little beefier brakes that can provide more stopping power.
Click to expand...

If you like the predictable feel of the brakes I wouldnt aim for more braking power in the rear. I played with a brake bias controller in one of the mazdas and all it did was make my car twitchier when I got on the brakes. If you want more stopping power I'd try better pads with a beefy rotor before I started adding parts.
 
I already have CSVT brakes front and rear. OEM rotors and carbon metallic OEM replacement pads are pretty good in my opinion, especially compared to the variety of cheap aftermarket crap out there. Cant really upgrade from there without going to bigger rotors, which leads me back to the whole dilemma of using the CSVT calipers or the FSVT calipers. Also as far as I am aware, you cannot adjust the proportioning valve on a contour. Anyways, I am not looking to bias the brakes more to the rear, I am looking to keep near stock biasing.
 
I'll toss in my experience with the Warmonger kit.

I installed the front kit first. That entails using the stock front calipers and using the Warmonger brackets to move the calipers out and using FSVT front rotors (300 mm). The pads didn't have much wear on them so I used them over, which gave me a pretty good idea of the improvement the larger rotors made.

Braking response was greatly improved. From the seat of my pants I would judge it to be in the range of 15% to 20%. I noticed no degradation in front to rear balance or bias issues. The brakes just flat out were more responsive in all respects.

A few months later I installed the rear Warmonger kit. I used the rotors that had been on the front (280 mm, replacing 240 mm). Again, I had nearly new pads so I used them over. Braking response improved a bit more, certainly taking it solidly into the 20%+ improvement range. But more importantly, the poise and agility of the car while braking moved into a range that it never had before.

On the earlier Contours, including early SVT (like mine), brake bias is handled with a pressure reducing valve. There are only two part numbers for the pressure reducing valves, one for ABS and one for non-ABS. The numbers are even the same for disc or drum rears. Later Contours may have used EBD (but that is a different story).

The non-SVT used 260 mm front rotors and 240 mm rear rotors. Moving to 300 mm front and 280 mm rear puts things back closer to the original design. Personally, I always felt, from spirited driving, that the original biasing was a little light on the rear anyway.

So, that was my experience. Others may have different results, but that also seems to match what others have posted. It also matches the results of the 2000 SVT that I helped perform the installation on.
 
hmm, let me see if I can lay a bit of tech background in here.

Generically, there are three things that affect how the pedal feels to the driver, and how "responsive" the brakes feel.
First is pedal travel, ie how far the pedal goes when you push on it.
Second is pedal force, ie how hard you have to push on the pedal
Third is brake torque, or braking force, effectively how much the car slows down.

Each of these is closely related, and the combination of the three at any given time determines how "responsive" the brakes seem to be. Brake engineers try to design the system so that all three build evenly so the system feels confident, and controllable, but not "grabby", or "mushy", or just plain scary.

As an example, a brake system with low travel, low pedal force, but very high brake force will feel very "grabby" ie it doesn't take much on the pedal to make the car slow down a lot.

But, if you have a system with lots of travel, low pedal force, and normal braking force, the pedal will feel soft and mushy.

Then, if you have a system with low travel, high pedal force, and very low braking force, that will feel downright scary, because you would push hard on the pedal and it barely moves and the car doesn't slow down . . .

In a race car, most drivers like a pedal with fairly low travel, and a bit higher force, and of course excellent brake force. This results in a pedal that feels firm, and doesn't travel a long way, but of course has excellent braking force. This allows the driver to use pedal force mostly as a way to very precisely modulate the braking force.

For me, the stock contour SVT brakes are slightly on the soft side (I'm biased, I like race car feeling brakes . . .) but otherwise very well balanced. When you start to change components, you change the characteristics of the system.

First, the warmonger kit, because it changes the least. Since warmonger's kit only changes the rotor radius (ie larger rotors) and the rest of the system stays the same, the only part of the three factors that changes is the effectiveness goes up. So that means that while pedal force and travel are still the same, the effectiveness goes up, so when you press on the pedal, the same old press on the pedal results on more braking force. ie, it feels a little bit more "grabby".

The difference w/ the full Focus SVT setup, is that not only does the effectiveness go up with the larger diameter rotor, but the pedal travel gets a little longer also, because the Focus SVT caliper uses a larger piston, which means you have to move more brake fluid. So, now, compared to stock, the pedal travel gets a little longer AND the brake effectiveness goes up. So you get a combination of a little more mushy AND a little more grabby.

Honestly, neither is a severe change, and most drivers will just be happy to have the extra braking effectiveness. For me, typically I would choose the warmonger/NPG kit, because I prefer a firmer pedal no matter what; but, if I were in a situaiton where I needed brand new calipers anyway, then I'd consider the whole FSVT kit.


Fwiw, I'd still run either a warmonger rear kit, or the TCE rear kit when upgrading the fronts as well to keep the brake bias in line. While it is true that the front brakes do most of the work, the rear brakes do have a big effect in a number of ways. Keeping the natural bias relatively close to the stock bias is very desirable. Maybe I'll run through some of the tech behind that one of these days when I have time.
 
Rara said:
Fwiw, I'd still run either a warmonger rear kit, or the TCE rear kit when upgrading the fronts as well to keep the brake bias in line. While it is true that the front brakes do most of the work, the rear brakes do have a big effect in a number of ways. Keeping the natural bias relatively close to the stock bias is very desirable. Maybe I'll run through some of the tech behind that one of these days when I have time.
Click to expand...

Very much agreed. From playing with a bias controller I can tell you the car feels very funny with almost no rear braking and very twitchy with more bias towards the rear. You might get used to it but something close to the factory bias will generally feel the best.
 
Rara said:
For me, the stock contour SVT brakes are slightly on the soft side (I'm biased, I like race car feeling brakes . . .) but otherwise very well balanced. When you start to change components, you change the characteristics of the system.
Click to expand...

I agree, the SVT has too much pedal travel for my liking. i much preferred the travel of my pre98, very little travel before the brakes started to bite. that being said, the only difference between the systems is the SVT has ABS which adds to amount of fluid that needs to be moved.

ive been debating on upgrading to the 300mm brakes but was always concerned about making the pedal softer, which since i think its too soft already, would be a problem. Short of removing the ABS, any good way to shorten the pedal travel?
 
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