Mondeo Discs & Pads

Front Discs & Pads are fairly straightforward and there's an excellent guide here. Essentially, you remove the caliper guide bolts with a 7mm Allen bit (easy), lift off the caliper and then remove the mounting bracket (hard) using an 18mm socket. These bolts are very tight and loctited in place. Grab the longest breaker bar that you can get onto them and heave! Or better still, use a windy gun. Access is limited and, unlike the rear brakes, these brackets do need to come off if you're changing the discs.

With the mounting bracket out of the way, the disc can come off. Ford retain them with a couple of washer things that screw onto the wheel studs, which can be unscrewed with pliers. With those off there'll be nothing but corrosion holding the disk to the hub. A couple of thumps from behind with a lump hammer will then get the disk off.

With the disc off, the hub should be cleaned of any corrosion on the mounting surface using a wire brush on a drill. The new disk should then be cleaned and hung over the wheel studs (I temporarily refit a couple of wheel nuts at this point just to hold the disc in place). Then the retaining washers can be refitted. I don't bother screwing them on: Just push them over the wheel studs and then tap them down into place using a hammer and a suitably sized socket as a drift.

Once the new disc is on, the caliper mounting bracket needs to go back on. The 18mm bolts are meant to be torqued to 200 Nm which is a fair bit. Unfortunately, my torque wrench doesn't go that high so I just do them up as tight as I can with a normal socket wrench.

Then it's time for the new pads. Unlike the rears, there is no wind-back tool required. Just push the piston back in. I use a standard piston spreader tool but you could just as easily use a G-Clamp. Best practice is to clamp off the brake hose and open the bleed nipple (after placing a tube over it) before pushing the piston in so that the old fluid in the caliper doesn't get forced back into the system, which can apparently damage the ABS unit.

With the piston retracted, you can fit the new pads. The inner pad clips into the piston. The outer pad sits in the caliper mounting bracket. I applied Cera-Tek grease (good stuff) to the pads where they touch the caliper and bracket. The caliper then goes back into place (making sure that the brake pipe isn't twisted) and the guide bolts can be refitted. These torque to 28 Nm which isn't much. If you can't get a torque wrench on them, do them up hand tight and then tweak them just a touch further. Check that the master cylinder fluid is at an appropriate level (especially if you've bled fluid off from the caliper) and then pump the brake pedal until it goes firm.

And that's it. Rinse and repeat for the other side and remember to check the fluid level in the master cylinder when you've finished.

Rear Discs & Pads: Again, pretty straightforward and there's plenty of walk-throughs on Youtube. The only thing I would say is that they can be a little vague on one detail: You definitely need a wind back tool, which of course I didn't have. To be fair, even the Haynes manual suggests that you can improvise this, but fuck knows how: You need to turn the piston clockwise and push it in at the same time with considerable force (and even with the proper tool they can still be a bit reluctant). Unfortunately, I was half way through when I realised this. I did have a normal piston spreader tool but this was no use whatsoever: You absolutely need the right tool, like this:

Unfortunately, none of my local accessory shops had one in stock so I had to go against my principles and try Halfords. For once they had what I needed, albeit at the usual ridiculous price. Still, needs must. With the correct tool in hand, the rest of the job was a piece of piss: There are only 2 bolts per side (the caliper guide pin bolts) that need undoing. The guide pin needs to be held still with a 17mm spanner on the flats while the bolt is unscrewed with a 13mm socket. Access to the top bolt is limited by the handbrake cable. You can either unclip the cable from its bracket (which I did) or undo the bolt and then fully remove it once the caliper is off. Unlike the front, there's no need to remove the caliper mounting bracket when replacing the discs.

With all the faffing about, the first side took me about 3 hours (including trips to buy tools!), the second side took about 20 minutes. With the right tools the first time around, I could probably do both sides in an hour. Still, live and learn!