What are people doing on their Lincoln Versailles rear axles when they need new brakes? I recently bought a Model A with a Versailles rear end and the rear calipers are seized. I tried to replace everything but found the original parts were very hard (if not nearly impossible) to get now. The replacement calipers I was able to find were new Chinese replacements and they do not fit correctly and cannot be used. I’m frustrated with all of the time I’ve wasted on this and I’d like to swap out the original brake parts for something that’s a better design and more readily available. I read a lot of posts online about people using brake conversion kits on these cars utilizing parts from various donor vehicles. However most of those posts are 10-15 years old now and any links to suppliers are dead or they are no longer making the conversion kits. I’m guessing due to the availability of so many other good rear axles options now people are no longer using the Versailles axles as much and aftermarket kits are no longer in demand. So I’ve reached a bit of a dead end. Changing the current Versailles rear axle IS NOT an option for me right now but I need to find something to do for brakes. I know someone on here must have run into this situation as well and successfully converted their brakes. I’m also fine potentially switching it to drum brakes if anyone has done that and cares to share how. Please help me out and tell me what worked for you.
See if Cardone support can locate one of their remanufactured pairs. 18-4093/4 or rebuild yours. https://www.cardone.com/search.php?...SAILLES&Part Type=Brake Caliper&sort=alphaasc
40 years ago, I bought a 9" rear disc kit from The Street Rod Manufacturing (now TSM). It used Versailles rotors (they didn't fit my axles without machining, different story), and GM midsize calipers (no e-brake). Since then, I think GM made some rear disc brake cars using a caliper that fits in the same hole and has an e-brake (Cadillac ?). Maybe you could modify your caliper mounting bracket to use an available caliper. Good hunting, Mike
I tried to make one of these work for a couple of years. They were used years ago but not a good choice today. I even tried adapting another caliper assembly. This gets complicated because the axle flange is indexed different from other 9 inch Ford rear ends. It was a nightmare. I have built a lot of stuff but I could not get parts, or make these brakes work. The emergency brake mechanism is a poor design and it must be connected to make the brakes work correctly as it is part of the automatic adjuster. Replacement rear axle bearings are poor quality and I replaced a couple new ones that failed during my use of this rear assembly. In the end, I replaced the whole assembly with a 8.8 rear end from a Ford Ranger V 6. It was almost exactly the same width and uses drum brakes. In my opinion, disc brakes on the rear of a street car are just fluff. Drum brakes are simple and all you need.
I had one that came in an OT Mopar. After reading up on the brake situation here, I replaced it with a Mopar rear. I had it listed here for a while with no interest and eventually I gave it away.
That’s a good thought. If I were keeping the original brakes I think I would need to use a remanufactured pair of originals as the new aftermarket models are slightly thicker than the originals and don’t fit correctly. I have tried everywhere I can think of online to find original remanufactured parts and have come up empty. I also work in the industry and have access to inventory databases for a couple of the BIG national parts houses. They are all showing these as unavailable. Rebuilding my old calipers did cross my mind but one has a broken off bleeder in it and they are both seized and won’t budge- even with the tool to retract the pistons. Plus in doing my research I’ve read a lot about how poor these brakes are compared to a lot of far more accessible options there are out there. I’m ready to be done with them.
I tend to agree with that. I was actually a little disappointed when I saw this car had rear disc brakes. Then I discovered it was a factory Versailles rear and thought I was lucky. Now after struggling to find parts and reading how difficult they can be to deal with I’m no longer feeling so lucky…
I would make a call to Quick Performance. A look at their website shows some value priced kits and I am not familiar with the ends on your housing, but they have an excellent reputation and are very helpful. Have a look at this page: https://www.quickperformance.com/Brake-Kits_c_61.html If the Explorer kit works out and you can swing it, I'd go that way, but look at the customizable bolt on kit and the $240 weld on kit as well.
This might help... years ago I refurbished a 9" Versailles diff with parts I got from a Canadian firm. Saw their advert in a car magazine. Evidently they were a supplier to Ford, or an outlet, and had virtually every part for that diff, including calipers and all the related clips and cables, in stock. The only problem was they needed a core deposit on some of it. And the shipping was a little slow. But the prices were great. I'm sorry I can't help more, but perhaps we have some Canadian members who can.
I'm doing a drum retrofit on mine (will be posting the details in the coming few days on my cabriolet build thread)...I bought a set of drums, loaded backing plates, bearings and new axle end pieces (the old ones need to be removed because they are at a weird angle for the drum backing plates) from Quick Performance. I recently sold 2 sets of Lincoln Versaille rear brakes (caliper, rotors, brackets etc.) to Sam (@The 39 guy )...one set was from a running car (should be rebuildable with minimum effort) and one set of nos aftermarket pieces as spares for his convertible sedan project.
This topic has come up before. The Lincoln parts are available. I run the rear disk brakes on my OT 76 Bronco. O’Reilly shows they can have reman calipers at the local store by tomorrow morning. These brakes have worked great stopping my vehicle with oversized tires and coming down very steep grades. I ran them for years without the parking brakes hooked up and had no problems. Yes the axle flange had to be turned down to fit the rotors I used but that was a one time deal and I use off the shelf parts. If you want to change calipers most shops that sell axles have disk kits that bolt on and rotors that are drilled for multiple bolt patterns.
I appreciate the thought but I’ve checked O’reilleys. They are not available for pickup or delivery. I’m guessing you may have mistakenly searched for front calipers which they could have at my store as well by tomorrow morning. Here’s my screenshot of when I just double checked based on your comment.
I stand corrected, I went back and reloaded the search and they now show up just like your search. That is very odd. We searched several months ago and they were definitely available. Ordered a pair for someone that said they couldn't find them. They came in and matched. I used the cores I had for the Bronco to pick them up. He paid me for the cores, but I can check and see if he has a rebuildable pair if yours aren't. The 9 inch I'm putting in my 51 has a set of disc brakes with E brake that came from Quick Performance. They have mounts to fit them, I thought about switching the Bronco over so I had the same brakes on both vehicles. Might give them a call tomorrow or look for them online.
Thanks for your efforts. Right now I’m leaning towards just changing them out entirely. I think I’ll get in touch with Quick Performance and see what they have to say. I’m also still kicking around the idea of a rear drum conversion.
My decision to replace the rear end had to do with how I plan to use the vehicle. It is a car my wife and I travel long distances. One of my goals was that critical parts for the car would be readily available when we were a long way from home. I could not trust the Lincoln brake system. I thought about changing the calipers, but in the end, it was easier and cheaper to change out the rear end assembly.
No matter what you do it's an involved process, there's several posts here about what people have used to replace the factory setup. I remember someone using the 8.8 bronco disc brakes but it still required cutting off the brackets and redrilling the flange. My plan was to cut the axle ends off and have big torino style ends welded on then use the Currier big drum assemblies. This would also help in axle bearing replacement too.
I have an OT Jeep that uses a kit from a now defunct company that I believe was Studebaker centric. The kit used '85 Seville rear calipers. They are still available from NAPA.
https://www.hotrodders.com/threads/replacement-brakes-for-a-lincoln-versailles-axle.547757/ It looks like one solution is 9" drum brakes.
This article might be worth having if you want to remove the bracket without removing the bearing. https://jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/anyone-ever-cut-versailles-brackets-off-an-axle.1141758/ If you go with the Quick Performance kit I would tell them it is for a Versailles axle as the horseshoe bracket that bolts to the axle may need to be different due to the axle flange being at a angle and not straight.
I have a Versailles rear and recently went thru the brakes. They are a pain to say the least. One of mine had a frozen nut so I went hunting. Ended up finding remans on Amazon of all places. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B081T8F87Q?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share I pulled them apart to ensure the ball-in-ramp system was installed correctly and greased. What I learned is that the arm has a small tang that drags against a boss on the caliper during release. This action appears to pulls the ramp shaft and bearing tight to the caliper bore allowing the screw to self adjust. This was not set correctly and took some tweaking. I'll see if I can find pics. Getting the pad/rotor/piston spacing correct is tedious but in the end it all seems to work. If i had the choice I would ditch these in a flash but time and money are not on my side...
I'd just go with the made in china ones off Amazon and their 34.99 set of pads and run it until I had stuffed enough money in the stash for hot rod stuff box and run it if I wasn't up to changing it out. The "OH this is so cool" didn't last very long on those rears.
Tried the Amazon Chinese calipers- didn’t work. The Amazon Chinese new castings were physically larger than the original Ford calipers. There was not enough space to fit the new pads and new rotors inside the caliper. I even made sure the calipers were compressed all the way- still would not fit. That’s when I compared the original parts to the Chinese parts. Castings we’re about 1/16”- 1/8” fatter on the Chinese pieces.
Interesting. Were the ones you bought remanufactured originals or new castings? Amazon had two different brands of calipers available for the Lincoln Versailles. They were both the exact same price and both listings looked like they were using the exact same photos. I assumed they were the same product just being sold from different distributors. I ordered the Drivestar option instead of the Mayasaf because the reviews sounded better to me. I thought the new Drivestar calipers looked kind of cheap. The castings were really rough but I figured they were the only game in town so I went with it. When I tried to fit the assembled caliper and pads onto the rotor they would not fit. They were pretty close but I couldn’t get them to go on. I did eventually force one over the rotor but the rotor would not turn. It was incredibly tight. I even ensured the caliper was compressed all the way and tried it again with no better results. When I compared the new caliper to the original I found the new caliper was probabky 1/16-1/8” thicker in some areas which is probably why the pads would not fit over the rotors. Maybe I will try the Mayasaf brand and see if they are the same as the Drivestar brand. Depending on what I find I’d like to hear more about what you had to do to yours. Could I possibly DM you about it if I run into trouble?
Possible you could mill a fraction of an inch off the friction surface of the brake pads to get the China stuff to fit together. Buddy had to do that on some Wildwood stuff. Just lost some pad life.
That’s not a bad idea and one I hadn’t considered. I had thought of turning the rotors to take a little meat off of both sides. I like the idea of taking some off the pads better though. However I’m not exactly sure the best way to accomplish that- possibly some kind of grinder or sander?
If it's just 1/16 or 1/8 then mill it off the outer part of the caliper. Realistically nobody building a Versailles rear end with stock calipers in 2024 is going to miss that little bit of material. If this were an aftermarket 9" in an ultra 4 car on 40" tires it would be a different story but those guys aren't using stock 70s car parts.
Just for info, RockAuto shows new Dynamic Friction brand rear calipers at $108 per side available; https://www.rockauto.com/en/catalog...cid+v8,1189054,brake+&+wheel+hub,caliper,1704
My friend didn't have much to go and just put a sheet of abrasive paper on a steel plate and stroked the pads on there, turning the pads as he went. 'Spose you could use a belt sander to take more off or maybe an endmill in your drill press if the table was level. Lots of possibilities. Any unevenness would wear in quickly once the brakes were in service. Or just find a buddy with a Bridgeport and use a flycutter.
Honestly I didn't read every response here, but NAPA lists them as remanufactured for the rear....if you do decide to take material off the pads (not a bad idea), just use a belt sander to keep them even and chamfer the edges to avoid squealing. https://www.napaonline.com/en/search?text=rear brake caliper&referer=v2
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