So the new van '05 E350 has a semi floating rear axle and disc brakes. The old van '98 E350 has a full floating rear axle and drum. Can I remove the disc's from the newer semi float axle and install them on the full float axle and vice verse? Then put the full float with disc in the new van.

Thanks,

Michael

 

well i don't know whether they went away from the Dana axles by 2005. check your owner's manuals or dig around here on FTE and you'll find out what they put in your vans.

if you have a Dana 60 in both vans then i see no reason why you can't do the swap as described. i don't think the vans got hit with the wheel stud change (8 on 6.5" to 8 on 170mm) like the trucks did around '98 or '99. you can go to napaonline.com and look up rear brake rotors for the new van and the site will tell you the stud pattern.

you may have to futz around with e-brake cables - like swap them too. then you might have differences in the brake line routing. you should also look into the possible ABS issues. do both vehicles have a sender on the top of the diffy?

last point to consider: you will need to change your brake master as the drum brake m/c has a 10# residual valve - you can possibly remove it. not remembering for sure. discs only want 2# residual. and they changed the m/c mounting flange when they went 4wh disc. so you need the matching booster - which won't interchange between the two years - the firewall bolt patterns are different.

i ran into that issue when i did my disc brake conversion. the solution was simple - i took both boosters to my rebuilder and had him swap the booster front half from the donor '97 E350 w/ 4whl disc onto the '95 E350back half. i kept my firewall untouhed and the disc brake m/c bolted right up.

hope this helps

 

Thanks for the reply. I don't think I will have a master cylinder problem as I plan to keep the discs on the same van. I just want the full floating axle. I may just look around for a full floating disc axle with limited slip. That would be ideal.

Michael