Braking Matters

The Satin Black Hammerite paint dried a bit thin in places. You wouldn’t notice it except under a strong light, not much we could do about it, because unless repainted within 3 hours of application it takes six weeks to cure before it can be repainted. We could come back to it later if necessary.  Time to turn our attention to assembly

 The first component to be mounted on the chassis was the master cylinder quickly followed by the pedals. Our kit contained a selection of straight lengths of brake pipe. Each pipe was pre flared and fitted with the appropriate connector.  It was not difficult to identify which fitted where. We borrowed a brake pipe-bending tool from Peter Sharp (Sharps Auto Services, Newbury). This gave us the confidence to bend the pipes, though we still had to do some fine-tuning by hand.    

We fitted the front and back “Tee Pieces” which distribute the braking fluid to left and right callipers, and proceeded to run the brake pipes around the engine bay as described in the Westfield build manual, making sure we secured the pipes at 8 inch intervals with “P” clips and rivets. We understood this to be a mandatory SVA requirement though it is common sense really.  There are two brackets in the engine compartment near the front suspension mounting points. The manual says the brake pipes are terminated in the body side panels and then connected to “Aeroquip” flexible pipes for connection to the callipers. It looks more sensible and a better solution to use the brackets.  Westfield says that we can use the brackets as long as we don’t have the ducted nose. So we connect the pipes and “Aeroquips” to the brackets.  At the back of the vehicle there are similar brackets, which we used, running the brake pipes from the “Tee” piece along the chassis members and terminating them at the bracket, then joining on the rear “Aeroquips”. 

Now to the connect front to the back. Westfield just runs the pipe from the master cylinder straight under the floor to the rear “Tee” piece. We asked about running the pipe down the tunnel for greater protection. “Not necessary except for racing” is Westfield’s response. We needed to check whether the pipe we had would be long enough. We trial mounted the diff to see how much space we had got to play with. Playing with some stiff fencing wire we worked out the approximate distances and positions of the bends to run the pipe down the top of the tunnel and in to the rear compartment near the “Tee piece”. It looked as though it was possible and we made up our mind that down the tunnel was the best solution. 

We bent the pipe so that it would run diagonally across eh front kick plate avoiding the clutch opening to the top rail of the tunnel and in to the rear compartment.  The pipe bender was essential in carrying out this operation.  The pipe was anchored to the front plate and the top rail at regulation intervals using “P” clips and rivets

Whilst we were in pipe mode we purchased a length of alloy fuel pipe and set about running this down the tunnel. We had a copy of the original construction manual, which showed the approximate route to take.  The diff needed to be removed again to fit the pipe.  The fence wire template was used again to work out the angles of the bends and distances involved.  The pipe was run from the engine compartment down the RHS of the tunnel, following the line of the top rail, passing down the diagonal to the lower rail and in to the rear compartment, making sure that the pipe is well fixed with plenty of “P” clips and rivets.