New member looking for some expertise. I know this has been discussed to death, but...

I've got a Dana 70 full-floating rear axle that I'm interested in converting to disc brakes. The common thing is to use front calipers on custom brackets. The hitch -- if you want to call it that -- is that I want a "real" parking brake and not something like a line lock, so that pretty much eliminates the front caliper idea. That simple demand seems to have severely limited my available options (short of just coughing up boatloads of cash for an aftermarket solution).

In looking through every truck and offroad forum I could find -- including this one -- there don't seem to be a huge number of options. At least that people have worked out on their own. I may have hit on a "new" solution and was hoping to impose on y'all's expertise...

A lot of MFG's over the years have used D70's in all kinds of vehicles, but Ford seems to be the only one who put rear discs on them for any extended period of time. My research turned up some factory spec sheets from 2001 and 2002 listing that the E350/450 Super Duty's (and possibly the F-series trucks) came with 4-wheel discs and rear mounted parking brakes (some models of the same vehicles used tranny-mounted parking brakes instead). AH-HAH! I thought. Maybe this is the solution that I'm looking for (unless I've missed something really obvious).

The standard alternatives for this sort of project seem to be:
1) Skipping the parking brake altogether
2) Using late-'70's Cadillac El Dorado calipers (which have an integral, though totally unreliable and therefore worthless parking brake mechanism)
3) Using Explorer calipers since they have an integral parking brake mechanism. (Requires that you get blank rotors and drill them for the required bolt pattern.)

One's out of the question, two seems less than ideal, and I worry that the Explorer setup in general isn't heavy duty enough to stop a loaded truck (despite the fact that it has the p-brake feature). Which brought me to the possibility of using a Super Duty setup since Ford offered that for this particular axle for years. I don't know enough about the features over the years to know how many years and which parts will interchange. My assumptions are that this is the drum-style brake that mounts behind the disc assembly, and that it will mate up with a standard cable actuator.

After reaching this epiphany, I'm also assuming that there must be some really obvious -- to everyone but me -- reason why no one's done (or at least discussed) this. Every time the subject seems to have come up on this forum, people are recommending the really expensive aftermarket disc conversion kits (Blackbird, Currie, etc.) over what would otherwise be an infinitely cheaper stock solution.

Anybody got any thoughts on that?

michael


P.S. If it matters to the discussion, it's a D70 dually axle.

 

Michael... welcome to FTE! If there is someone here who knows, you can be sure that they will chime in before long. The only advice I can really offer is to post a similar thread in the 99-03 7.3L Powerstroke sub-forum in the Diesel section, and possibly in the Brakes, etc. sub-forum under the Misc. section. I'm sure that you're going to find some helpful info from these folks.

 

Thanks, Pete.

I wasn't sure if crossposting was cool or not, so I thought I'd post where it made the most vehicle specific sense.

michael

 

You know, crossposting may not be looked on well... haven't really run into it before. What you could do, though, is start a brief thread barely mentioning the topic and direct everyone to this thread by posting a link to it within your post. That way it wouldn't take up much room, and you'd get better coverage.

 

dude I got an 03 f250 sd,ec,sb,xlt,5.4 4x4. with disc all around must be some factory stuff somewere... oh yea its red too

 

You don't mention exacly what your project is, but maybe something like this would work for a parking brake.

http://www.4x4wire.com/toyota/reviews/parking_brake/

This would greatly expand your options as far as which disc you can use for your rear axle.

 

T-case parking brakes are great, so long as you've got a transfer case.

My particular project is a '63 GMC pickup, 3/4 ton 2wd. Obviously, a D70 dually isn't stock equipment, and the more research I started doing, the more I've gotten just a wee bit obsessive about building a better mousetrap.

Considering how many heavy duty axles get swapped from vehicle to vehicle, if the Super Duty brake system winds up being a workable solution, there are going to be a whole lot of happy truck modders.