I am looking to upgrade my brakes on my 56 Fairlane. looking to upgrade the front to disk brakes. What fits. I have heard that granada brakes fit. What years, part numbers. is there any other options Willwood?? Thanks
I pulled spindles and discs/calipers of a '76 Mercury Montego, same as late '60s and early '70s big Ford. Bolted right onto my '55 Ford. Remove the '55 spindles and bolt the disc brake spindles in their place.
Here is their bracket kit for a 56 https://scarebird.com/index.php?route=product/product&path=65&product_id=91
If you use the Granada spindles, I think you have to ream out the hole for the bottom ball joint, the Torino/Montego/big Ford/Merc spindles bolt right up with no modification. Of course anything from the '60s and '70s is getting hard to find at the local u-pull-it places.
38fordpickup is correct the Granada will bolt on, but you do need to ream the ball joint taper to, I believe, 7 degrees
'72-up cars with the full frame, not the unibody cars. You should also be able to use the full-frame LTDII and the 'big' Cougars. I'm always surprised when people use the Granada-type spindles/brakes on the full-frame 50s/60 cars. I did a disc swap on a '56 in the mid-70s (pre-Granada and swap kits) and spent a full day at the wrecking yard looking at various disc brake set-ups. The unibody spindles, while being a better match to the ball joints, don't have the same geometry as the early spindles. Shorter distance between the ball joints, and shorter steering arms compared the full-frame ones. The fly in the ointment is the lower ball joint in most case; in '57 Ford started enlarging the lower ball joint and the hole is too big on most late 'frame' spindles to fit the early joints. I had a tapered shim made for mine and used '71 full-size Ford discs. Given all the swap kits these day, I'd just use a kit on the OEM spindles.
Scarebird has nice brackets. I used another kit that came with everything which was a mistake, but I made it work. The Wilwood kits (wished I saw that before I got mine) seem to be excellent.
What work best for the booster? And do you have to do anything special to the rear brakes when adding power up front?