I have a 2000 ranger supercab with a 7.5 rear. What is the best thing to do for my crapy rear drums? Upgrade to 10" drums, switch to disc, or swap in a 8.8? If i go with a disc conversion on my current rear end, what parts do I need? i really don't want to spend $720 for the SSBC kit. Thanks.

 

A 2000 SC should have the 10" drums from the factory, mine does. Keep in mind the front brakes do most of the work so any upgrade at the rear won't make a big difference.

 

I have the SSBC conversion on my ranger.

The big advantage is that I don't have to get underneath it and manually adjust the rear brakes anymore.

The disadvantage is that the SSBC rotor required a spacer between the axel and rotor. This means the lug studs are not long enough to safely mount the factory alloy wheels. I have a spare set of steel wheels and an adaptor to mount the alloy wheels. Also, this summer, I need to disassemble the entire rear axle and do some tweeking on the caliper mounting bracket - I was in a hurry when I installed the conversion and didn't make the adjustment.

Overall the SSBC kit is pretty good.

 

It's a lot of money for little-no gain on overall breaking. As Ken00 said, the front tires do most of the work (around 80 percent) stopping the vehicle, and putting discs out back, while cool in concept and in looks, provides few advantages. The parking brake is also weaker I believe.

 

The 10in rear drums should serve you well. They have more surface area than the discs and therefore have more holding power. The only advantage to discs are that they can cool off faster to reduce brake fade, good for the track.

If you really want rear discs, the Explorer has them. From '95-'01 will work, but there are several issues. First you will need the 8.8, I don't think the discs will bolt to the 7.5. The Explorer 8.8 has different spring and shock mounting locations, so custom work is needed to install a complete Explorer rear axle. Best to find a Ranger 8.8 to install the Explorer discs on. The parking brake also needs to be addressed, you cannot use the drum setup. Another concern is with ABS sensors, although I'm not sure on the details for that.

In short, rear discs are a lot of work. Generally, a Ranger will be better off with 10in rear drums. The rear discs do provide a cooler look, though, through custom wheels. That would be about the only reason I would attempt this, to get the looks.

 

I just finished my swap today. I bought all the parts from an Explorer of ebay ($125). The caliper brackets have to be modified, the hole in the braket is larger because the bearing sizes are different from the Ranger(small), Explorer (large). Once you get the bracket modified, the rest is a bolt-on affair. The e-brake cables hook up once you shorten one of the lines, and the e-brake set up is the same as the Ranger, only a little smaller drum. A lot cheaper than SSBC and no spacer is needed. They look GREAT behind my '03 Cobra wheels!

 

Very very cool! Can you get some pics, we'd like to see that!

 

Will try to do that tonight

 

I used to have the rearend off of an explorer on mine. that had the disc brakes