Taking calipers designed for mounting behind the axle and just swapping sides puts the force on the caliper in the wrong direction. Or at least in the opposite direction of how they were mounted originally. I won't say I'm very familiar with different caliper designs, but the one's I've paid attention to are very specifically built to take the force of braking in one direction only. So, it appears the calipers need to be engineered to mount in front of the axle to begin with.Steve, caould you flip the brackets side to side and upside down? I havn't looked at them for doing this but that brackets should work but the bleeder screws may end up being on the bottom which really doesn't work.
Maybe circle track weld on brackets and calipers?
I'd really like to keep my shocks behind the rear axle. And I'm gonna bet one of these days I'm going to want rear disc brakes.
Does anyone know of a rear disc conversion for our 9"s that mounts the caliper in front of the rear axle housing?
Yeah, I (obviously) don't know either. And where the brakes are concerned, I'd rather not second-guess the engineering that went into their design.In the case of the Lincoln brackets - you're now pushing on the spring/slider instead of the top of the bracket. Whether that's a huge issue, I don't know.
Late model Crown Victorias mount their calipers in front of the axle but their backing plates are drilled for the small bearing pattern (good disc swap for the small bearing housings). You may want to investigate the feasibility of combining Crown Vic parts and Explorer parts to get what you want.
In any case, the e-brake cable routing might get a little interesting too.
Perfect excuse to spend some quality time in the junkyards, Steve
Todd Z.
As for the forces going the wrong way, only if you are running a race car with floating calipers and a brake link. For the rest of us who have the caliper mounted to the axle housing it will come down to torque. The caliper will apply force to the rotor and the caliper bracket will apply that force as torque to the axle tube. doesn't matter if the caliper is front, back, top or bottom. the rotational force will be the same trying to rotate the axle tube.
What would be the year range of the "late model Crown Victorias" you referred to?
Yes, exactly. As you mentioned, Todd, the Lincoln calipers, and several others I've seen including my own front calipers, would put the force on the spring/slider assembly, instead of directly on the V-d part of the caliper bracket if they were mounted in front of the axle. I don't know what other differences there might be with any other applications caliper and bracket if the force was reversed.I believe Steve was concerned that the rotational torque acting on a different part of the bracket might be of concern.
My rear drum brakes are working quite well. With the hydroboost I can lock up all 4 35's in a heartbeat. But I believe there are advantages to "properly working" rear disk brakes. And there are rear disk brake setups that do have a very good parking brake. My DD, a 98 Camaro SS, has a fantastic parking brake, and is actually one of the reason's I started this thread, as the calipers mount in front of the rear axle.Why do you want rear disk? I just converted one back to drums. Lousy parking brake, caddy calipers. The stock setup works so much better.
can't remember if it's the newer ford or chevy 3/4 and 1 ton trucks, but they have one caliper on the front and one on the back of the axle. don't know if it's to save money by being able to use the same caliper on both sides, or the same backing plate, but seems to work.
Although I don't hear too many complaints about ride, etc with either the shocks mounted forward, or even inboard shocks, they just seem to work better in all aspects if they're mounted to the rear. My thought on shock mounting was to use something like the Wild Horses Extreme Shock Hoop, but mount it behind the rear axle. Call me lazy ;D but I'd rather deal with just the shock mounting in relation to the spring, etc., than have to deal with fitting it around some calipers, too.So far I have been happy with the ride/response with the shocks mounted forward, though.