offroadkarter
04-06-2019, 01:28 PM
Some of you may recall my last thread talking about Wilwood brakes for these cars. Well, in a fortunate turn of events, a member on here who recently sold his car had a 13" front and rear kit sitting in his basement since 2005 & 2007.
The rear kit is going on the DTR, I'd really like to buy a wilwood made 14" kit for that car, but depending on the future of the black car these 13's may end up on the DTR in the future. We'll see.
I will say, installing these took way longer than it should have. Both hardlines up front snapped because this car is a northeast shitbox, so I ended up buying a new passneger side hardline from tasca ford and Comin in Hot came got me a used drivers side from a 09 P71 at the local yard.
I also spent more time playing around with shims, washers and checking the offset of the caliper to rotor with feeler gauges than I did actually installing these. This is because this kit predates the newer style radial mounts, so as far as I understand this should not be an issue on newer kits. This front kit is from 2005, IIRC this caliper isn't even made anymore.
A few emails w/ Todd got me on the path to figuring out my shimming issue, once I got the drivers side squared away I had an idea of what to do on the pass side.
This kit also came with extra pads, Hawk HPS to be exact, which is great because my car has 15k mile HPS pads on the rear.
Now that the kit is installed and bled, I will say the pedal feel is a HUGE improvement over stock. I am sure many people with 300A's note how crappy the pedal feel is, my car when I got it had the pedal go half way or more to the floor before you got feedback. I swapped the booster from the DTR into this car and it made a good difference, but wasn't great. These wilwoods really fixed the last gap in the pedal, it's immediate braking once you put your foot down with great feedback. The hawk pads are starting to bite in hard, but I need to do another bed in procedure once less traffic is on the road and I update my tags to PA tags (these expired mar 31st).
Overall, the performance + looks is slightly outweighing the annoyance of install, I'm happy it's finally done. I'll have some better photos once the car is cleaned up.
https://photos.smugmug.com/2003-Mercury-Marauder/WilwoodTCE-BNSL6-13-BBK/i-2VS4SjK/0/a413f5b0/X2/20190406_155454-X2.jpg
https://photos.smugmug.com/2003-Mercury-Marauder/WilwoodTCE-BNSL6-13-BBK/i-rcv9dmZ/0/d2bdd7f1/X2/20190406_155444-X2.jpg
https://photos.smugmug.com/2003-Mercury-Marauder/WilwoodTCE-BNSL6-13-BBK/i-xJKDxhw/0/30e847d2/X2/20190406_150814-X2.jpg
https://photos.smugmug.com/2003-Mercury-Marauder/WilwoodTCE-BNSL6-13-BBK/i-QBZVCXK/0/52db1819/X2/20190406_150821-X2.jpg
https://photos.smugmug.com/2003-Mercury-Marauder/WilwoodTCE-BNSL6-13-BBK/i-SdS2H77/0/56171e36/X2/20190328_193205-X2.jpg
The rear kit is going on the DTR, I'd really like to buy a wilwood made 14" kit for that car, but depending on the future of the black car these 13's may end up on the DTR in the future. We'll see.
I will say, installing these took way longer than it should have. Both hardlines up front snapped because this car is a northeast shitbox, so I ended up buying a new passneger side hardline from tasca ford and Comin in Hot came got me a used drivers side from a 09 P71 at the local yard.
I also spent more time playing around with shims, washers and checking the offset of the caliper to rotor with feeler gauges than I did actually installing these. This is because this kit predates the newer style radial mounts, so as far as I understand this should not be an issue on newer kits. This front kit is from 2005, IIRC this caliper isn't even made anymore.
A few emails w/ Todd got me on the path to figuring out my shimming issue, once I got the drivers side squared away I had an idea of what to do on the pass side.
This kit also came with extra pads, Hawk HPS to be exact, which is great because my car has 15k mile HPS pads on the rear.
Now that the kit is installed and bled, I will say the pedal feel is a HUGE improvement over stock. I am sure many people with 300A's note how crappy the pedal feel is, my car when I got it had the pedal go half way or more to the floor before you got feedback. I swapped the booster from the DTR into this car and it made a good difference, but wasn't great. These wilwoods really fixed the last gap in the pedal, it's immediate braking once you put your foot down with great feedback. The hawk pads are starting to bite in hard, but I need to do another bed in procedure once less traffic is on the road and I update my tags to PA tags (these expired mar 31st).
Overall, the performance + looks is slightly outweighing the annoyance of install, I'm happy it's finally done. I'll have some better photos once the car is cleaned up.
https://photos.smugmug.com/2003-Mercury-Marauder/WilwoodTCE-BNSL6-13-BBK/i-2VS4SjK/0/a413f5b0/X2/20190406_155454-X2.jpg
https://photos.smugmug.com/2003-Mercury-Marauder/WilwoodTCE-BNSL6-13-BBK/i-rcv9dmZ/0/d2bdd7f1/X2/20190406_155444-X2.jpg
https://photos.smugmug.com/2003-Mercury-Marauder/WilwoodTCE-BNSL6-13-BBK/i-xJKDxhw/0/30e847d2/X2/20190406_150814-X2.jpg
https://photos.smugmug.com/2003-Mercury-Marauder/WilwoodTCE-BNSL6-13-BBK/i-QBZVCXK/0/52db1819/X2/20190406_150821-X2.jpg
https://photos.smugmug.com/2003-Mercury-Marauder/WilwoodTCE-BNSL6-13-BBK/i-SdS2H77/0/56171e36/X2/20190328_193205-X2.jpg