I was thinking of doing a rear disk conversion on my 2005 ranger and am looking for opinions and trying to determine if it would be worth it, performance, stopping power and distance benefits if any. Would like to know any benefits or short falls from others who may have done same.

Thanks for any info,
John

 

What axle do you have?
If you have the 8.8 inch rear end, you might consider the rear disc setup from other Ford vehicles using rear discs... Explorer, F-Series, Panthers, etc.

 

Even if you go with discs in the rear, you will still not have wheel speed sensors like the front brakes, only a single speed sensor on the top of the differential for rear brakes, giving you the same braking action as you have now with drums on the rear. How is your braking performance now? I just don't see that much advantage with rear discs over drums.

 

If you go to the Ranger Station, you'll see a couple options for rear discs. I'm not so sure it's worth the effort as the rear brakes don't do much. In the 21 years and 170k miles that I owned my Ranger, I never had to replace the shoes or drums. That being said, if I had to choose when purhasing new, I would get rear dics if I could as pad changes are a lot easier than changing shoes.

 

The pad changes that you don't do will be easier to change.

The rear brakes on the Ranger are not lacking sufficient power with the drums, but if you add more braking power to the rear then you might end up with a balance problem. By balance, I mean that the rear brakes would have a tendency to lock up during normal use, or would trigger the ABS system. I had a similar balance problem with a '91 I once had (not due to disks).