I have a 66 F100 with a front disk brake swap and the truck is used as my daily driver. My plan is to get this truck a bit more comfortable and more reliable than what it is right now. For a few years throughout high school and college, I used this truck as my daily driver until I decided to swap in a 351W, C4 auto ******, new leather heated and powered bucket seats and a few other things to get the truck a bit more road worthy and comfortable for street driving. I stopped driving the truck when gas prices got high and bought a little Prelude car for the time being. Well now I am selling the car next week and will have some money to spend on the truck wisely. My plan is to add A/C, finish the interior and rubber/felt around the doors and windows, dual speed wipers, put my 3.25 rear posi unit in and possibly upgrade the rear brakes to disks and powered brakes. What I plan to do later in the future is go with a dodge dakota front end kit but keep the original 5x5.5 bolt pattern front and rear. My main question here is, what can I do to have a bolt up disk brake conversion on the rear without having to spend $300 or more on an aftermarket kit? I know that explorers and Crown Vic's work but I guess that would leave me with having to change the axles to 5x5.5 and I do not want to swap out axles, I'd like to keep my originals in it with the original bolt pattern. If anyone has any ideas on what to do here then it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
I'm guessing you have a small bearing but don't you have 5x5.5 axles already? If so you could do the crown vic swap (explorer won't work on small bearing) and redrill the rotors to 5x5.5. Not too big of a deal if you have a drill press..
Take a look at www.ford-truck.com They have a forum for your truck, but the best forum is 48-60. You can find answers to your questions there I'll bet.
Thanks for the info I will look into them. I dont have a drill press or know of anyone with one so that is one reason why I'd like to keep my original axles and have minimal work. I may end up having to just buy an aftermarket kit from Speedway or such.
Do a crown victoria front end swap rather the the dakota swap (you only have to cut the front crossmember out). http://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/716058-buildup-06-crown-vic-front-suspension-into-67-f100.html
I don't think you will gain much by adding disks to the rear. You already have them up front where you need them. If the rears are adjusted properly you should be fine as a daily. I'd spend the cash on something else.
I did a lot of research and homework on the Crown Vic front end and it's nice but I want to keep my stock bolt pattern and not only that but they are much too wide for my liking. I would have to run a different offset wheel (stock crown vic wheels) and then the track width from front to back will be way off. The Dakota front crossmember kit from Industrial Ch***is seems to be the best option for these trucks and have a great ride. As for the rear disks, I have looked into it more on some Ford truck sites and decided to just leave the stock drums for now until a later date. The only reason I wanted to change to disks in the rear is for the simplicity of doing brake jobs because as far as them making a huge difference, I know it doesn't. Most of the braking is of course in the front and hell there are even new cars around still using drums. But again, only reason I was looking into it was for simplicity of doing brake jobs and the look behind a more open wheel if I decide to get rid of the steelies and moon caps.
If you go the crown vic route, you could get the rotors all set up ahead of time and have a local machine shop drill them. That would save you some cash... There's a couple ways you could go about transferring the pattern to the rotors. When you get them, take your lugs out of your axle, and set the rotors on the register. Find a good spot to make your new holes and use a set of transfer punches to make your center point. Follow that with a good whack on a center punch and then take it to the machine shop and tell them you want it drilled in those exact 5 spots. If you don't want to pop your lugs out, you could get a cheap bolt pattern guide from a swap meet or even summit sells them for pretty cheap. Use that to make your new pattern and have the machine shop drill them. They really shouldn't charge much for just drilling a set of rotors since you've done all the time consuming work. The exact location of the holes isn't as super critical on the rotors as on the axle because the rotors are hub-centric and will center themselves on the axle register. As long as the lugs fit through the holes, it's all gravy. Again, just a thought- with a little ingenuity, you're not stuck with aftermarket rotors... Something I just thought of though, is you should check the axle register (hub) diameter on your axles and find a crown vic rotor to measure the inside diameter (or ask someone else on here). Hopefully they're the same. There's another thread going on here that does a really great job of explaining the whole swap for small bearing discs... Check that out too.
Thanks a lot for that info. I will still look into it and see what I can do. The front end and rear disks aren't on the top of my priority list, the only reason I brought up the rear disk change is I thought I might as well look into it since I will be pulling the entire rear end out to blast, paint and swap in a new 3.25 center chunk and throw in new bearings.
You have four old cars and don't own a drill press? Not even a cheapo from Home Depot? You need to spend your "disc brake" money on some tools first.
Nope I dont own one. Want to buy me one? As for 4 old cars, I'm now down to 3 since my father gave away my rust free and complete 48 Chevy coupe to someone!!! I could have sold that car like planned and gotten a few thousand from it to buy an 80 gallon air compressor, a few air tools that I need and some parts for my 63 Chevy II wagon.
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