ford 9" discs

Just got done doing this swap actually. I bought some weld on mounts off of ebay for $45 I think. It uses 75 3/4 ton chevy calipers and pads which were $15 each for the calipers and I think $13 or so for the pads and I used '97 Dodge Ram 1500 rotors which have big vents in them and fit the 5 on 5.5 bolt pattern. With the calipers I got rear brake lines off of a 2005 F350 SRW wide frame-just found them in the parts dept one day and they fit reall good, had to shorten drivers side slightly. But after its all said and done I think you'll have about $200 in it.
 
aa-mfg has some bracket that will work with the chevy calipers as well. they are weld on. that's the route i'm going to take.
 
I haven't done it yet but the plan was to use my Caddy calipers and cut the backing plates to weld to the tubes. I heard that F-150 front rotors worked if the outer flange was turned down a tiny tad.

So if I read that right above the Ram rotors slip on? Need to look into that!
 
Almost everyone I have seen that puts the rear disks on takes them back off shortly thereafter. You DO NEED an E brake and the caddy caliper ebrake seems to suck. The best way to go is with something simular to the currie set up which is an explorer disk with drum e brake. Why do you want disks anyhow?? The drums have better holding power anyways. Especially helpful for really low gears as disks wont hold good. I've seen many with crawler t cases swap the front axle to drums for the better holding power. SB
 
My drums do not hold well when they are caked with mud and water, had more than one issue with that. At the least the discs are self cleaning.

Everyone that is doing these disc swaps should be swapping out master cylinders as well to get the full effect.

The Caddy e-brake can be problematic, but there are parts on the market now that address the issues with the ball-ramps in the caliper. I'd post a link but forget where I saw them.
 
Using the TSM kit will take care of your ebrake issue as it has a great ebake setup built into the caliper. Home brew may not be any fun, but these work.
 
Newbie said:
Almost everyone I have seen that puts the rear disks on takes them back off shortly thereafter. You DO NEED an E brake and the caddy caliper ebrake seems to suck. The best way to go is with something simular to the currie set up which is an explorer disk with drum e brake. Why do you want disks anyhow?? The drums have better holding power anyways. Especially helpful for really low gears as disks wont hold good. I've seen many with crawler t cases swap the front axle to drums for the better holding power. SB
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I know several people that won't go back to drums.
 
Newbie said:
Almost everyone I have seen that puts the rear disks on takes them back off shortly thereafter. You DO NEED an E brake and the caddy caliper ebrake seems to suck. The best way to go is with something simular to the currie set up which is an explorer disk with drum e brake. Why do you want disks anyhow?? The drums have better holding power anyways. Especially helpful for really low gears as disks wont hold good. I've seen many with crawler t cases swap the front axle to drums for the better holding power. SB
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I guess this is why most all new car/truck manufactures use discs....they just don't know any better.
 
Newbie said:
I've seen many with crawler t cases swap the front axle to drums for the better holding power. SB
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I've never...ever... seen that. Not once.
 
The only people I have EVER known to favor drum brakes were crazy draggers.

And that was only because they could back the shoes off sos far that they had no drag. Some of those old coots swear by the .05 sec they gain from not having friction between disc and rotor.

As to more holding power, wow, I mean other than the physics being totally wrong you are spot on. I mean really, how much do physicist no about coeeficients of friction anyway?
 
SkyHiK5 said:
As to more holding power, wow, I mean other than the physics being totally wrong you are spot on. I mean really, how much do physicist no about coeeficients of friction anyway?
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Hold it now, there is a small bit of info that is actually still true. Drum brakes (the ones on most all autos anyway) are set up with opposing shoes, and one shoe will be self-energizing. That is to say that due to the angle that it comes into contact with the inside surface of the drum it is actually wedged in there and held tighter due to the frictional force component between the shoe and the drum. Moving in a forward direction, the rear shoe is self-energizing, moving backwards it will be the front shoe. Disc brakes cannot generate their own clamping forces, hence the need for higher line pressures to make them actuate and hold.

Some people will argue that if discs are so great, why would big rigs still use drums. The simple answer to that is packaging, to get a disc that has the swept area (surface area that contact pads) to provide enough braking power to stop a rig, it would have to be a very large diameter. With a drum brake you can simply increase the width to get more swept area.

That being said, I will trade my self-energizing drums out very soon so I can have a set of self-cleaning discs.
 
OnlyOneDR said:
Some people will argue that if discs are so great, why would big rigs still use drums. .
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Disc brakes are used on most trucks in Europe. They work much better than drums because the do not fade near as fast.

The simple reason they are not used in the US is that American trucking companys don't like to change unless they are made to by the government.
 
rockmafia said:
The simple reason they are not used in the US is that American trucking companys don't like to change unless they are made to by the government.
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Exactly, and the laws on minimum stopping distances for class 8 trucks is going to change in the future. Volvo is working on disc brakes for when this happens, and we have one truck outfitted with them at the design center here in Greensboro.
 
Wow, this is an interesting topic.

Lots of good points but to me the stopping power of a good set of disc brakes is better than that of drums, seat of the pants evaluation anyway. I also like the fact that they cool faster under alot of use and self clean after a mud hole or two.....
 
test pilot for big trucks would be cool...

big-assed brakes:
image022.jpg
 
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