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Front brake upgrade


Spiky

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Has anybody ever tried to adapt larger calipers, say from a F-150 to a Ranger? Thought I might play around with some 1/2 inch thick steel and see if an adapter plate is do-able.
Thanks.
 


pjtoledo

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if you're going to make adapter plates skip the F150 and go for Mustang rotors & calipers. 2015 Mustang rotors are 12.4" with a low offset. that makes room to sandwich an adapter plate in between the knuckle and anchor bracket,,,,,BUT,,, it pushes the caliper out farther to hit the wheel. the wheel would need cutout for calipers.
or you could make an adapter for radial mount calipers, such as Wilwood. that would keep rotor offset the same, and you could choose the rotor size.
HINT: 1998 crown Vic front rotors are the almost a direct fit, they are bigger at 12.5" diameter and a bit thicker.

you can do 12" front rotors with all factory parts, but it won't be cheap. that would be 04+ steering knuckles, rotors, calipers, anchor plates. I think the 98 hub/bearing will fit the 04 knuckle, but 04 doesn't have the hole drilled for vacuum hubs. the boss is there, just not drilled. it would also need the seals. the locking kits should work too, that would eliminate the vacuum.
or swap up to 04 CV/axle units & the 04 hubs/bearings. that would give you live axles n o more vacuum stuff.
 

pjtoledo

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the problem with "simple adapter plates" is they push the caliper out farther, so the disk needs to be out farther. if you look at a stock setup the outside of the caliper lines up with the wheel mount surface, so when you push the caliper out it hits the wheel, unless the wheels have a big caliper cavity. another problem is the hole patterns from one system overlap with the other system. unless you have a good source of "offset bolts" things get tricky.


the 12" rotors fit under all 16" wheels, and SOME 15" depending on the backspacing and inner barrel shape.
 

don4331

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Spiky:

I looked at this heavily and there are reasons why it hasn't been done:

Mustang calipers* are a significant downgrade - their 43mm pistons are 10% less than the 48mm pistons on Ranger, so as it is ^2 relationship, they provide <80% of the clamping power of the stock calipers.

Even the F-150 calipers are only 51mm, so don't even get you +10%. I looked at SD calipers and they do have larger pistons (54mm), but the caliper is SO much heavier and they needed they needed an adapter to mount the 8x6.5 pattern SD rotor to 5x4.5 Ranger hubs that it wasn't practical, not to mention, the SD rotor weighs a lot itself.

*I'm excluding the Brembo brakes; if you're talking that kind of money, lots of possibilities exist.

As pjtoledo notes, the stock 12" rotors are more/less the largest that fit in 16" rims.

Now, I kept my '98 front knuckles(11.28" brakes), when I swapped in my Explorer knuckles (removed PVH hubs/12" brakes) as fitting Mustang 13" rotors is possible with an adapter/without "offset bolts". And I have 17" Mustang rims/30mm spacers to provide clearance (255/75R17 tires). I just haven't got around to the adapter yet.

p.s. Don't make adapter out of aluminum. Saleen wound up recalling all his Explorers and replacing the aluminum brake adapters with steel ones after a couple nasty mishaps. Saleen was doing the bling bling radial mount Brembos, but you get the idea.
 

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