Mike's Sylva Fury

This conversion has been far more problematic than I'd ever thought it would be.  1. The discs supplied had to be machined to fit over the ends of the axle. 2. The calipers required a Sierra handbrake cable, my Fury was set up for the Escort cable. 3. I had to re-drill the holes to bolt the caliper support bracket to the axle casing ends. 4. When all was assembled the inside of the wheel rubbed on the caliper. I had read some poor reviews of the handbrake mechanism on these calipers and have to say when I tried to make it work on the bench it didn't look good. Coupled with the work required to make the Sierra cable work, I decided to take a completely different route. I adapted the caliper's mechanism to be 'operated' by the Escort cable, but also placed a hydraulic cylinder in-line to the rear brakes to operate the calipers hydraulically.  I realize there is some question of the legality of these 'hydro-hand brakes' on the road, but I think if the original ...

When I first built the Fury I used the standard Escort brakes, discs on the front and drums on the rear. They were adequate since they were designed to stop a small steel bodied saloon. However I wanted to upgrade to discs all round so in 2007 I bought a kit from HiSpec Motorsport. The kit stayed in the box until recently so I unpacked it and dismantled the front hubs.  Everything came apart easily, the new 280mm cross-drilled disc seemed like it wouldn't fit on the back of the hub, but putting the hub in the freezer overnight to 'shrink' it made the disc fit perfectly. The front kit came with an adaptor to fit on to the old caliper mounts with everything reassembled I offered up the new calipers and...... they didn't fit. Long story short, I had been supplied calipers that were a direct replacement for the originals with the original discs! After a lot of  correspondence with HiSpec over a few months, I ordered new, correct calipers.  I moved to the...