Rear disc kit?

With the stock ponies, there really is no need to upgrade the brakes, since there will hardly be any showing. Performance-wise, nothing will be gained either.

Been there and done that! With success!

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. 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.

See http://www.mustangcentral.net/tech/brake.html for help with the emergency brake - the stock setup tends to lock up and not release properly.

All in all I have been very pleased with the results.

_jb_ said:

With the stock ponies, there really is no need to upgrade the brakes, since there will hardly be any showing. Performance-wise, nothing will be gained either.

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huh? are you serious? we all know that the stock brakes on our beloved 'stangs are barely adequate at best. I'm with j on this one, if you want to keep 4 lug, do the turbo t-bird rear disc swap. if you dont mind going five lug-then you have several options. but honestly, i don't see how you can straight-faced tell this guy that no performance will be gained...ok, maybe his 60ft or 1/4 mile times won't get any better, but I am a true believer that if you make your car faster, you should be able to slow it down better. disc brakes do just that-if they didn't, all the new cars coming out would still have drums all the way 'round. last time i ck'd even full duty trucks use disc brakes all the way 'round

and the comment regarding there will hardly be any showing....brakes are not for "bling"...that may be a fringe benefit, but their main purpose in life is to slow the car reliably, safely, and consistently. and going from a 9" drum on the fox body to a 10.5" rotor with a good set of pads will most definitely affect his "braking" performance...

I say turbo coupe axle swap as well.
You dont need to guys to do it either.
Eat your spinach and use your head. I did it by meself, your going to need at least one jack and 4 jackstands "two to hold the car up".
If you really want to save your self TONS of time and brain power, use a harley motorcycle jack to lift it in and out of the car, you can even cart it around on it easy.

accidentprone86 said:

I say turbo coupe axle swap as well.
You dont need to guys to do it either.
Eat your spinach and use your head. I did it by meself, your going to need at least one jack and 4 jackstands "two to hold the car up".
If you really want to save your self TONS of time and brain power, use a harley motorcycle jack to lift it in and out of the car, you can even cart it around on it easy.

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yet another good call...but it sure does help to have another body there helping you.

txstang84 said:

huh? are you serious? we all know that the stock brakes on our beloved 'stangs are barely adequate at best. I'm with j on this one, if you want to keep 4 lug, do the turbo t-bird rear disc swap. if you dont mind going five lug-then you have several options. but honestly, i don't see how you can straight-faced tell this guy that no performance will be gained...ok, maybe his 60ft or 1/4 mile times won't get any better, but I am a true believer that if you make your car faster, you should be able to slow it down better. disc brakes do just that-if they didn't, all the new cars coming out would still have drums all the way 'round. last time i ck'd even full duty trucks use disc brakes all the way 'round

and the comment regarding there will hardly be any showing....brakes are not for "bling"...that may be a fringe benefit, but their main purpose in life is to slow the car reliably, safely, and consistently. and going from a 9" drum on the fox body to a 10.5" rotor with a good set of pads will most definitely affect his "braking" performance...

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Yeah ok. Do a search and find out more. I NEVER SAID DISK BRAKES SUCK did I? The rears do NOT do the main braking, so there will hardly be an advantage to upgrading the rears. This has been talked about many times.
We are talking about HIS car, not the new ones.

As for the brakes not showing for "bling", I have seen MANY stangs with 4 lug stock brakes with rims like Cobra Rs, Saleens, ect and it looks like ****.
I guess I should have paid $300ish for a new brake setup and think I could stop a lot better than stock
Good brakes are not cheap, my car stops excellent from my upgrade. Just seems like a waste of time and money to upgrade the rear brakes, use pony rims, and not address the front 10" brakes. You will have to change the MC anyways, why not do the whole thing?

_jb_ said:

Yeah ok. Do a search and find out more. I NEVER SAID DISK BRAKES SUCK did I? The rears do NOT do the main braking, so there will hardly be an advantage to upgrading the rears. This has been talked about many times.
We are talking about HIS car, not the new ones.

As for the brakes not showing for "bling", I have seen MANY stangs with 4 lug stock brakes with rims like Cobra Rs, Saleens, ect and it looks like ****.
I guess I should have paid $300ish for a new brake setup and think I could stop a lot better than stock
Good brakes are not cheap, my car stops excellent from my upgrade. Just seems like a waste of time and money to upgrade the rear brakes, use pony rims, and not address the front 10" brakes. You will have to change the MC anyways, why not do the whole thing?

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I HAVE done PLENTY of searches, and you do make a point the rears only contribute to about 20-30% of your total braking, but why not have at least better ones? he's planning to upgrade them anyway, right?

and for the "bling" factor, did you ever think about getting your drums powder coated? that at least cleans them up a bit...but hey, that means they wanted wheels more than brakes. and speaking of putting on bigger rims, did you know that it requires more energy to stop a bigger rim due to incresed rotational forces induced from the bigger wheel? hmmm, requires more braking force to get the same effectiveness-upgrades in order in those cases, wouldn't you think?

and yes, good brakes are not cheap-but they can be had for much less than the high dollar kits if you have the patience to seek them out. My '95 front, SVO rear swap (complete) probably cost me a grand total of around $500...that's for all four corners. I've known others that did it for much less, but i sprung for a few good parts. Last time i ck'd the 2300k kit is somewhere in the $2k range...i'd say that I did fairly well.

I'm glad to hear that your car stops excellent from your upgrade. but honestly-and yes, i have done my research on this one-drum brakes suck...bar none. the only advantage that drums have-again, based on my research, is at the drag strip, the adjuster can be set to create a gap between the shoe and the friction surface-however, this means that you will have to apply the pedal farther down to get the shoes to apply the same force as you need to slow the vehicle. so, now you've made a safety trade off...doesn't seem like a good choice to me. it only seems like a waste of time to you and seldom few others. it is widely held that disc brakes will always trump drums. oh...and the 10" fronts, yeah, they are just shy of 11" on the '87-up 5.0's. might wanna ck your info

speaking of which, why are you telling this guy not to upgrade his brakes, when you laid out the green for the m-2300 kit? sounds like a bunch of to me

soon enough, i'll have the cobra rotors, and calipers...very nice btw

if you don't mind dropping the $700, the ssbc kit is a good one, and like i'd mentioned in an earlier reply, as i recall, the ssbc kit is an almost exact mock up of the t-bird kit, using the same rotors, pads and calipers thereby eliminating the need to order special parts from them, as they would be available at your local parts store...i think the only really different things are the lines and such so they can be specifically used on a mustang, as the t-bird axle shafts have-i think-1.25" wider track.

i wouldn't know about the steeda kit, but i'm sure it's excellent quality as well. another thing i'd seen of the ssbc kit was that the lines to the calipers are hard lines...once again, i can't confirm this, jrichker would be a much better source, since he's done it already.

either way, don't forget the fronts when you do your swap, the lincoln MK7 73mm calipers seem to be a very popular and worthwhile investment...they are also widely available, they can be had new from the parts store, or more than likely from a nearby salvage yard.

i still think getting the parts or even the whole axle from a turbo coupe would be a cheaper route, and would provide you with the much improved braking you seek.

Another vote for the SVO set up...That's what I have....Cobras in front,SVOs in the back...They work great and unlike someone else here is mentioning,they do make a world of a difference...

how much did you give for your cobra fronts? i'll be in the market for a set soon

I used to have a 96 Cobra which I had taken them off of...The replacements for it though were like 550 for a front set of Baer brakes...

txstang84 said:

I HAVE done PLENTY of searches, and you do make a point the rears only contribute to about 20-30% of your total braking, but why not have at least better ones? he's planning to upgrade them anyway, right?

and for the "bling" factor, did you ever think about getting your drums powder coated? that at least cleans them up a bit...but hey, that means they wanted wheels more than brakes. and speaking of putting on bigger rims, did you know that it requires more energy to stop a bigger rim due to incresed rotational forces induced from the bigger wheel? hmmm, requires more braking force to get the same effectiveness-upgrades in order in those cases, wouldn't you think?

and yes, good brakes are not cheap-but they can be had for much less than the high dollar kits if you have the patience to seek them out. My '95 front, SVO rear swap (complete) probably cost me a grand total of around $500...that's for all four corners. I've known others that did it for much less, but i sprung for a few good parts. Last time i ck'd the 2300k kit is somewhere in the $2k range...i'd say that I did fairly well.

I'm glad to hear that your car stops excellent from your upgrade. but honestly-and yes, i have done my research on this one-drum brakes suck...bar none. the only advantage that drums have-again, based on my research, is at the drag strip, the adjuster can be set to create a gap between the shoe and the friction surface-however, this means that you will have to apply the pedal farther down to get the shoes to apply the same force as you need to slow the vehicle. so, now you've made a safety trade off...doesn't seem like a good choice to me. it only seems like a waste of time to you and seldom few others. it is widely held that disc brakes will always trump drums. oh...and the 10" fronts, yeah, they are just shy of 11" on the '87-up 5.0's. might wanna ck your info

Click to expand...

I've seen painted drum setups, but I believe drums are ment to be hidden. From what I heard on here before, that converting to just disk in the rear was more for looks than anything. Guess I was wrong. Two good things about the TC swap are the disk brakes and gears.

The reason I got my kit was because I almost lost my car to an idiot cutting me off. I had the money, knew what rims I wanted, so I ordered it. Last I knew, the 2300-M kit was on a nationwide backorder from Ford. I got the last one from Steeda, and I believe Jegs said they would have them in October or so. So I say save up and do a whole brake change, doesn't matter if it's the junkyard upgrade or a kit.