Vise grips are your friend when setting up the e brake. I am working on some tensioners for my brakes

 

I quite agree. I used one pair to hold the spring back behind the bracket built onto the caliper, and I used another pair to grab the end of the cable. This ensured that I would have sufficient length of cable with no spring around it to make it easy to slide into the e-brake.

another piece of advice: Remove the e-brake return spring from the caliper when connecting the cable. then you can push the brake in by hand and have a much shorter distance to pull the cable to fit. I found that the spring could be removed by hand (with gloves on) or with the assist of some vice grips. getting it back on was a bit harder, but still doable by hand.

 

I recently did this conversion this weekend. The only problem I had was using gt caliper brackets, cobra calipers, and a gt solid ebc rotor. it measured 10.5". I think I might have ordered the wrong ones, they bolt up great but the pads are only being used half way. As if the rotor is too small in diameter. Summit says they are for a 94-04 mustang gt, but I think I need a 11.6" rotor instead. Any thoughts?

 

Right, the Cobra uses 11.625" rotors. This would explain the mismatch you have now. Sounds like you need Cobra rotors to match the Cobra Calipers. Not only will it all work better, but the vented cobra rotors will give you much better performance than the solid GT rotors.

 

What hardware do I need to mount the calipers? Am I correct in reading you used 3/8" bolts for the caliper bracket? about how long, and what about the flange bolts mounting the caliper? Do I need a specific caliper bolt or can I just find a grade 8 of that size and go with that?

 

Ok, well I found this which says for 89-93 uses and M12 1.75 pitch 20 mm long bolt. I feel like that's pretty short, but I think the M12 size is spot on. I found the sizes in a metric grade 10.9 flange head bolt from mcmaster-carr, should that be sufficient? I just need to determine the length I need.

http://www.mustangpartstech.com/Gene...BoltSizes.html

Mcmaster carr definitely has these bolts cheaper than if you got specific "caliper bolts" as they come in a pack of 10 for $6-7 plus shipping.

 

Anyone got any tips on a place to order the AN-3 SS Brake lines? I did some searching on Summit but came up empty.

The people at my local O'Reillys are idiots and can't seem to understand the word "generic". Once I said Mustang they refused to take that off the computer so I was told any brake line I needed was a "Custom Order".

 

man i want to do this so bad... but im no diffenterial expert... im lost on how to pull whatever clip off the gear already lol....

Anyone in houston area would give a helping hand to do this with me lol
i pay for ur beers =)

 

Ok, I'm dumb. In fact, I'm so dumb I do anesthesia for children needing heart and lung transplants. But.... The instructions listed here are so good that I performed this mod on my sons 96 B3000 without any huge issues. Total cost, a little over $200. I love this board. Now to check the front hubs to see why they aren't engaging. Any suggestions. Ps. The transfer case motor is good and the front axels are rotating on jack stands but wheels aren't moving.
Thanks, everyone, for all your contributions.

 

hey guys just wondering if any one changed the master ,seems you would need more fluid to operate calipers or did i miss that ?

 

You're still pushing fluid through the same sized lines so it shouldn't matter. You're moving the same volume of fluid.

GB :)

 

Nope - you don't have to mess with that.

Even the factory made SSBC disc conversion kit doesn't change the master.

 

First off, this is great write up; thanks for posting it!. I have a few quick questions, hopefully you guys can help.

1. Will the Cobra brakes fit under stock 16" "tear drop" style wheels? (I have a '98).

2. When replacing the brake hoses do I use Mustang or Ranger parts? I plan on switching to braided stainless hoses for both calipers and the axle to chassis hose.

3. I'm a little intimidated by pulling the axles to get the stock brackets off. How hard is this to do? I'm decently expericened, just did ball joints, tie rods, and control arms up front by myself.

4. Finally, Rock Auto is the cheapest place for calipers I've found. Anyone have a better suggestion?

Looking forward to your resposnses. Thanks!

 

I wanted to thank Dangerranger01 for his excellent DIY on the rear drum to disc rear brake conversion. I did the conversion because of the poor quality replacement brake drums that are available today. They all seem to be made in China and whether they are Motorcraft or not they are out of balance and out of round making the truck shake like crazy on the highway ruining the tires.

I ended up chucking up the drums on my wheel balancer and welding steel weights to the drum to balance them. This is not fun !!!! Then they don't stay in balance from season to season as they are also out of round so every Spring the drums have to go back on the balancer and the balancing, welding, grinding has to be redone.

So this conversion is a wonderful thing. Had the truck on the highway and it was smooth as glass. YAHOOOO !!!!!

As info to others: I was trying to budget for the conversion kit sold by Summit Racing, etc. but decided to go on eBay. Midwestmustang.com is selling all parts necessary (used) for $210 including shipping. I decided to go for it thinking I'd have to rebuild the calipers but the parts I got were in amazingly good shape and the calipers had what looked like new pads in them and the rotors were turned. The caliper pistons were turned in and the calipers worked perfect.

As is my nature when doing a mod like this, I bought Eastwood's caliper paint kit and painted everything. I had a friend with a plasma cutter modify the caliper mounting plates (gave him $30 for the job) as I saw myself spending a day modifying them with a cutoff wheel. I did buy the Currie brake hose kit-expensive at almost $50 with the shipping but well worth the money as everything was so tidy. I had already installed coated brake lines so I just cut them to length and double flared them-perfect.

So I probably spent about $350 for the conversion and couldn't be happier.

Edit-BTW I cut the old backing plates off with an oxy-acet cutting torch being very careful not to fry the axle bearings or seals. Took about 5 minutes a side. I change my diff fluids every 30K so no problem there.

Edit 2-Gosh almost forgot. My truck is a 96 4X4 with the 4.0 liter. I have 15 inch rims so I went with the GT brakes & they fit perfect. I'm sure the Cobra brakes give more braking power but I have 2 sets of wheels as living in Maine necessitaes studded snow tires for winter. I plow my driveway and small parking lot. Anyway buy 8 new wheels and tires is not in my plans.

 

I just completed this swap and couldn't be happier. This along with cranking my T-bars has been the best mod on my truck so far and completely change the way it drives. Thanks to DangerRanger01 for posting such a great how-to. A few notes for the next guy:

Cobra brakes look good but are massive overkill, you just can't drive a Ranger hard enough to need all the extra cooling they provide. Normally I would say more is better but in this case its just more money, more rotating/unsprung mass, and thinner brake pads. A buddy hooked me up with Brembo Cobra rotors for free, otherwise I would have used GT brakes (from the junkyard).

This is the perfect time to replace your LSD clutches, you will need the friction modifier and cross pin bolt anyway, and they come with the kit. I also replaced my wheel seals.

I used the Currie brake line kit and it is great but came with the wrong banjo bolts.

I did not use the anti-moan brackets and don't need them. According to fox body guys that do this same mod, mounting the calipers on the opposite side of the axle flange reduces the torsional force enough to make them unnecessary. I also don't recommend dust shields if you offroad.

Since we don't have cores to return, Amazon becomes by far the cheapest place to get calipers. I got the pads from rockauto, and everything else from summit. I did not need the whole Ford Racing kit but Summit was also the cheapest for that.


Brake line tabs have not been welded on yet in this pic. I have a few more pics but for some reason we can not attach pics in the how-to section.

The hardest part of the whole project was actually changing my wheel seals. I tried everything to pull them out and finally had to cut them out with a chisel. The only hang-up I had was with the parking brake cables. I initially ran them over the axle to keep them protected, but that caused them to bind too much and they could not adjust the pads. Reflaring the lines was also a PITA, I should have just bought some preflared lines.

 

^^any more info on the parking brake issue youre talking about? i did this over the weekend and everything went great, but yes reflaring the lines was a pain. i had just done a new diff cover and new fluids so pulling apart the diff wasnt gonna be practical. ended up cutting off the backing plates with my angle grinder. still a pain but less work than the diff would have required.




still need to put tabs on the tube to hold the line in one place

 

Just look at the pic, you need to run them under the axle so they will connect without bending them too much.

 

yes i saw you mentioned a pic but there is no picture there..

 

Weird, I see a pic. Try my photo album. I don't know why we can't attach pics in the how-to section.

 

How does the emergency brake from the oem ranger fit the rear brake calipers from the mustang?

 

Are the stock rear disk brakes from a '10-11 also a option to consider?(researching the best way to do the swap with the least amount of fabrication)
I've seen several in wrecking yards and from what I can see it might be possible to add a T distribution block on the axel and swap the whole system over.

 

so I ran into a new issue today with my cobra brake swap, for the past few months I have felt like I have had a warped rotor while stopping (pulsing in the pedal as I stop)

so I got a fresh set of rotors and while mounting them up today I realized that neither the old or new rotors make full contact with the axle flange. the bore is just not quite large enough rotor will not fit flush and square on the axle flange. this allows the rotor to walk on the up from side to side acting like a warped rotor.

any one else run into this? I am going to have to open the hub bore up slightly to get everything to fit.

 

Negative...that's weird. We've never had Grant's apart since the swap...it's been flawless for the 40k or however many miles he's put on it since the big brake upgrades.

If needed, he's on vacation til the new year, we could pop a wheel and caliper off and check it out.

 

The axle housing is totally different and there's no reason to go in blindly on adapting the complex '10+ axle or the brakes that won't bolt-on to your existing axle's brake flange...the flanges are different.

Mustang brakes are now tried-and-true to be a viable and easy swap. Repeated many times.

 

Update on my swap: After 6 mos. mine are fully broken in now and the pedal feel has softened some, still better than with the drums but not great. I have had a couple panic stops and in that case the truck stops a lot shorter, like 40ft shorter. The brakes have started to moan a little (I did not use anti-moan brackets) after I let of the brakes while turning. It isn't enough to bother me but it could be a problem when it comes time to sell the truck.

I looked into this a bit. The axles are different so you would need to find one with the right ratio that hopefully has a limited slip and swap the whole unit. Around here they are rare and expensive, but if you've found one it should be even easier than this mod.