New owner of '66 F250 C/C C/S. I've been reading here for a couple of months now and would like to thank everyone for what I've learned thus far.
Reading past posts regarding disc swaps, '73 to '79 donors are mentioned as appropriate. I recently bought a '71 F250 rolling chassis mostly because I couldn't pass up the price. Useable rear chrome bumper alone justified the purchase.
I had already started to overhaul the front drum brakes, but now am considering swapping for the disc. The chassis has dual piston front disc.
Has anyone used a '71 setup?
'66 now has power brakes w/ single pot. What issues do I have with fitting a dual pot M/C to the existing booster.
Any help or opinion regarding swap / no swap would be appreciated.
Thanks.
PS can anyone estimate labor hours to perform swap? I know thats a hard one but I'd hate to see the truck sitting in the garage for half the summer. If this is the case I might just finish the drums and tackle the discs this winter.
When you have read about using 73-79 parts as a donor, that is mainly for half ton pickups. Sometime in the late 60's on F-250 pickups you could get front disk brakes as an option, but not on F-100 until 73 and then it was standard.
I would think your 71 pieces would work just fine, just like the articles you have read, use all the parts from your donor and the swap will happen very easily. I did mine on a F-100 in a weekend.
jowilker is a believer in swapping out the entire front end. I've done it both ways and prefer the spindle swap via the kingpins. Either version you can easily do the 'hardware' in a weekend. The master cylinder should work fine with the booster provided the bolt pattern is the same so it fits and the pushrod length is correct or modified to the same length as the single pot.
The brake lines are the most time consuming, mostly because you have to make them from scratch and can't just copy what's on your truck (adding the proportioning valve adds to the fun). I'd say a week of evenings would do them. I left the stock ones on from under the front floorpan back. There is a junction there you can easily tap into.
The whole process is a couple of weekends if you work that way, provided you get all your parts up front! The front suspension portion requires some muscle and floor jacks and the brake lines require patience and endless trips under the truck until you get them right, but none of it is difficult work.
i plan to do the same swap. i have a full 72 donor to swap into my 65. not sure how long it will take me, i'm not in a rush. i will probably start next summer. i plan to do p/s at the same time too.
__________________
1965 F250 Custom Cab
1972 F250 XLT Ranger, to be donor truck.
Related question.....has anyone fit 16" one piece wheels over the dual piston caliper
The 66 came with 16" splits with 7-50's which I was going to upgrade to a one-piece wheel to run radial tires presumably 235/85
Donor chassis has 16.5" wheels - kinda oddball for tires and I don't know if I can go as tall/skinny as the 7-50's with a 16.5. Closest I know is 9-50's roughly 1" shorter and 2" wider.
the 16" splits clear caliper so it makes me wonder if a newer one-piece 16 will also clear but not sure about differences in width, backset and inner diameter
wanting a relatively stock utilitarian look so standard plain steel. not wantiing to go to big plus up sizes
On my 65 F-100 single bowl master cylinder the push rod measured 4 3/4".
Measuring from the back of the master cylinder mounting flange to the center of the push rod hole.
My truck has a bolt made like acam to fine tune the brake pedal.
I used a dual master cylinder, cut the push rod to fit and rounded it off.
