What kind of brake conversions do u perfer for a fox body. I want to keep the 4 lug because I just bought new cobras for the car and i would also think about upgradeing the axles. It has discs in front right now with powerslot rotors and drums in the rear. Is it worth doing the rears? should i do the front at the same time? Is it worth the money? The car will be for sunday cruising at some small local shows and for as a toy at night. Thank you for the help
Brake Conversion sugestions.
- Thread starter thojoewen86
- Start date
Roland69
Sergeant Tangnet
I don't think there is to many 4 lug options....Maby sell the rims you just bought and do a 5 lug swap and buy some rims.....Sometimes you will find someone with a set of 5 lug rims that they can't use and are looking to trade for some 4 lug rims (like me right now)
bill302
Active Member
Do the 87-88 T-Bird Turbo Coupe rear end swap!
Auto trans 87-88 Tbird Turbo Coupes come with 3.73 gears and manual Turbo Coupes come with 3.55 gears. Cost is $125-$300 for the rear axle. Add another $100-$200 or so to complete the brake upgrade.
I choose 3.55 since I do more highway driving. Both ratios have 10” disk brakes with vented rotors as standard equipment.
It takes 2 guys the first day to get the old rear end out and the new one bolted in place. It takes 1 guy another whole day to do the brakes.
You will need a several sets of fittings, I recommend that you get them from Matt90GT's website, http://www.svo73mm.cjb.net/. Read Matt's instructions thoroughly, everything you need to know about the brakes is all there. You need to be patient and follow all the internal links, and there are many of them. You will need 2 fittings in the rear to adapt your old brake tubing to the TC disk brakes. The fittings go between the steel tube and the caliper brake hose. You will need another set of fittings to make a 2 port to 3 port adapter. To make life simpler, just buy the kits from Matt. You could piece them together, but it's not worth the time unless you work at an auto parts store with all the fittings ever made.
You will need to drill the quad shock mounting holes 2” below the holes drilled for the Turbo Coupe mounting points. The bolts are metric, so don’t loose them or the nuts. A 15/32” drill should be about the right size unless you have access to metric sized drill bits. Going without quad shocks is not an option unless you have aftermarket parts to soak up the wheel hop.
You will need a proportioning valve, Summit has one for $40 + shipping.
You will need a kit (FMS makes the part) to gut the stock proportioning valve, Summit also has that, about $10.
You will need a new master cylinder, see Matt's site and make you choice. I used a 94-95 Mustang master cylinder. Note that rebuilt 94-95 Mustang master cylinders do not come with a reservoir. That means a trip to the junkyard and some more money spent.
Your brake pedal may be very hard and almost impossible to lock up the brakes. I had to replace the front calipers with 73 mm calipers from a 91 Lincoln Mark 7 to get the braking performance up to par.
Bleeding the brakes will require 2 people and some coordinated effort. I don’t recommend using you wife or girlfriend to pump the pedal – they get offended when you yell at them. I used a homemade power brake bleeder constructed from a garden sprayer and some fittings from Home Depot. It cost about $25 and was worth every penny. Do a search on garden and you'll find it complete with pictures.
See http://www.mustangcentral.net/tech/brake.html for help with the emergency brake. The red words link to some very useful photos on how to modify the handle. The stock setup tends to lock up and not release properly.
All in all I have been very pleased with the results.
Auto trans 87-88 Tbird Turbo Coupes come with 3.73 gears and manual Turbo Coupes come with 3.55 gears. Cost is $125-$300 for the rear axle. Add another $100-$200 or so to complete the brake upgrade.
I choose 3.55 since I do more highway driving. Both ratios have 10” disk brakes with vented rotors as standard equipment.
It takes 2 guys the first day to get the old rear end out and the new one bolted in place. It takes 1 guy another whole day to do the brakes.
You will need a several sets of fittings, I recommend that you get them from Matt90GT's website, http://www.svo73mm.cjb.net/. Read Matt's instructions thoroughly, everything you need to know about the brakes is all there. You need to be patient and follow all the internal links, and there are many of them. You will need 2 fittings in the rear to adapt your old brake tubing to the TC disk brakes. The fittings go between the steel tube and the caliper brake hose. You will need another set of fittings to make a 2 port to 3 port adapter. To make life simpler, just buy the kits from Matt. You could piece them together, but it's not worth the time unless you work at an auto parts store with all the fittings ever made.
You will need to drill the quad shock mounting holes 2” below the holes drilled for the Turbo Coupe mounting points. The bolts are metric, so don’t loose them or the nuts. A 15/32” drill should be about the right size unless you have access to metric sized drill bits. Going without quad shocks is not an option unless you have aftermarket parts to soak up the wheel hop.
You will need a proportioning valve, Summit has one for $40 + shipping.
You will need a kit (FMS makes the part) to gut the stock proportioning valve, Summit also has that, about $10.
You will need a new master cylinder, see Matt's site and make you choice. I used a 94-95 Mustang master cylinder. Note that rebuilt 94-95 Mustang master cylinders do not come with a reservoir. That means a trip to the junkyard and some more money spent.
Your brake pedal may be very hard and almost impossible to lock up the brakes. I had to replace the front calipers with 73 mm calipers from a 91 Lincoln Mark 7 to get the braking performance up to par.
Bleeding the brakes will require 2 people and some coordinated effort. I don’t recommend using you wife or girlfriend to pump the pedal – they get offended when you yell at them. I used a homemade power brake bleeder constructed from a garden sprayer and some fittings from Home Depot. It cost about $25 and was worth every penny. Do a search on garden and you'll find it complete with pictures.
See http://www.mustangcentral.net/tech/brake.html for help with the emergency brake. The red words link to some very useful photos on how to modify the handle. The stock setup tends to lock up and not release properly.
All in all I have been very pleased with the results.
Bens95cobra8594
New Member
For whatever it's worth, SSBC had some great sales before Jan 1st. A price increase happened thereaftet. They seemed to have decent prices on stuff though...
I also have the Steeda 2007 catalog with some 4 lug stuff...
Good luck.
I also have the Steeda 2007 catalog with some 4 lug stuff...
Good luck.
It's a little involved, and takes some time, money, and a trip to the machine shop, but I pursued this method in order to retain 4-lugs, yet still upgrade to full floating rear discs with a parking brake (and keep all 3 sets of wheels and tires I already had for the car (race, road, and show)).
Order disc brake adaptor plates that allow you to adapt GM discs to your 8.8 axle - about $150.00.
Buy some GM calipers that fit the adaptor plates. The 1979-1985 Cadillac discs with built-in parking brake fit the bill for me (as do Camaro and S-15 pickup front brakes, but you don't get a parking brake). They are available new / rebuilt from Cardone. Good luck finding them in a salvage yard - everyone has already picked them pretty clean to do "restomods" and hot rods. I found new ones already loaded with pads for about $200.00 for the pair.
Buy a Lokar universal emergency brake cable set - about $50.00.
Buy the proper GM banjo bolts - about $4.00.
Buy a pair of 1990 Audi 90S Quattro discs - about $60.00.
Buy an adjustable proportioning valve - about $30.00.
Buy some 1991 Chevy Caprice brake flex hoses - about $30.00.
Buy some hard brake lines that you will cut to fit and run from the brake center block for the rear brakes out to your Chevy Caprice brake flex hoses. You may be able to avoid this, depending on the model year of your car - mine is an '85, so needed it.
You may have noticed that you're already right around the $500.00 range and you haven't yet started investing any labor, but if you're saving money on your wheel / tire investment, all the better (and you won't need to convert your front spindles to 5-lugs, either).
Now for the machine shop part. You need to remove your axles and take them to a reputable auto machine shop. Their work is not as involved as they may try to lead you to believe - don't get ripped off. All you really need them to do is cut down the diameter of the axle where the lugs run through by about 1/2 inch. All they need to be able to do is clear the hole in the Audi rotors so that they mount flushly. This leaves plenty of metal to secure your lugs and allows you to only change the rotors out in the future (vice having your rotors lathed everytime) as they wear out. Plus, when the lugs are run through the Audi lug holes, voila, you're centered.
Now, build it all up. The absolutely most critical aspect of this build is to follow all instructions carefully on how to pre-adjust your parking brakes. You MUST do this properly before you add a single drop of fluid to your lines. It's easy, but if you do not, you will NEVER get those calipers to adjust properly - they are a PAIN if they aren't done correctly and your pedal feel will be for crap.
What a difference you will notice, immediately. Of course you'll need to adjust your proportioning valve to the correct bias, and your parking brake cable to the correct length, but once you've done this, the difference is unbelievable, expecially if you drive the car at events.
I was guessing on some of the exact years and specific models of vehicles' parts mentioned above. I have the paperwork at home regarding the specific components, models and makes. If you'd like to try it, PM me. I'll rustle up all the details.
Order disc brake adaptor plates that allow you to adapt GM discs to your 8.8 axle - about $150.00.
Buy some GM calipers that fit the adaptor plates. The 1979-1985 Cadillac discs with built-in parking brake fit the bill for me (as do Camaro and S-15 pickup front brakes, but you don't get a parking brake). They are available new / rebuilt from Cardone. Good luck finding them in a salvage yard - everyone has already picked them pretty clean to do "restomods" and hot rods. I found new ones already loaded with pads for about $200.00 for the pair.
Buy a Lokar universal emergency brake cable set - about $50.00.
Buy the proper GM banjo bolts - about $4.00.
Buy a pair of 1990 Audi 90S Quattro discs - about $60.00.
Buy an adjustable proportioning valve - about $30.00.
Buy some 1991 Chevy Caprice brake flex hoses - about $30.00.
Buy some hard brake lines that you will cut to fit and run from the brake center block for the rear brakes out to your Chevy Caprice brake flex hoses. You may be able to avoid this, depending on the model year of your car - mine is an '85, so needed it.
You may have noticed that you're already right around the $500.00 range and you haven't yet started investing any labor, but if you're saving money on your wheel / tire investment, all the better (and you won't need to convert your front spindles to 5-lugs, either).
Now for the machine shop part. You need to remove your axles and take them to a reputable auto machine shop. Their work is not as involved as they may try to lead you to believe - don't get ripped off. All you really need them to do is cut down the diameter of the axle where the lugs run through by about 1/2 inch. All they need to be able to do is clear the hole in the Audi rotors so that they mount flushly. This leaves plenty of metal to secure your lugs and allows you to only change the rotors out in the future (vice having your rotors lathed everytime) as they wear out. Plus, when the lugs are run through the Audi lug holes, voila, you're centered.
Now, build it all up. The absolutely most critical aspect of this build is to follow all instructions carefully on how to pre-adjust your parking brakes. You MUST do this properly before you add a single drop of fluid to your lines. It's easy, but if you do not, you will NEVER get those calipers to adjust properly - they are a PAIN if they aren't done correctly and your pedal feel will be for crap.
What a difference you will notice, immediately. Of course you'll need to adjust your proportioning valve to the correct bias, and your parking brake cable to the correct length, but once you've done this, the difference is unbelievable, expecially if you drive the car at events.
I was guessing on some of the exact years and specific models of vehicles' parts mentioned above. I have the paperwork at home regarding the specific components, models and makes. If you'd like to try it, PM me. I'll rustle up all the details.
Similar threads
