"Roll yer own" bigger brakes

I'm an old Hot Rodder. Always looking for the next thing to move on to. OK, so I've got this First Gen Dodge Dakota (87-93) front suspension project and after some good beer searched the internet and came up with a plan for slightly bigger brakes. Goes like this:

Cut down the stock Dakota 5" x 4.5" disk brake rotors to take 98-02 Ford Crown Vic rotors. Use 95-00 Lexus LS400 aluminum four piston calipers and fab a bracket to hold it all together. Easy, yes? Well, not so bad so far. The Crown Vic rotor is 12.43" and 28.1mm wide. Near identical to a Lexus rotor. The whole shootin' match fits inside a 17" Mustang Bullitt wheel. So far I've got:

$120 machine rotors to hubs
$40 Lexus calipers from a boneyard(they are good!)
$100 Ford Crown Vic rotors
$22 Lexus brake pads

Under $300. I've got to fab the bracket still. Probably need a 1" spacer for the wheels because the caliper overhangs the rotor. Not a deal breaker. Can this be done for other setups? Probably, I'm only doing this one for the Dak.

That's pretty genius. But wait, did you machine the hubs or the rotors? Or both?

Machined the Dakota rotors as hubs to fit the Crown Vic stockers. No mods to the Crown Vic rotors.

The other part of this may be "can the 13" Mustang rotors also be used"? Answer is Yes, but. Yes, they will also work, but they have "less hat" than the Crown Vic rotors. That moves the caliper farther away from the steering knuckle and requires a thicker wheel spacer. So yeah, it can also work.

Ample clearance inside a 17" Mustang Bullitt wheel. The "hard" part will be fabbing the bracket.

Are longer wheel studs needed?

I think so. Depends if I can find the correct hub centric spacer at the right width. I'm winging it right now.

Oh, I forgot to mention. Lexus master cylinder bore size is listed at 1".

Hit a snag I should have caught. There's a small lip on the Dakota "hub" (formally rotor) that positions the Mopar wheel. It's larger than the opening on Ford wheels so I'll either take it back to the machinist to mill off ($60 an hour) or do it myself with a Dremel. That lip prevents the hub from fully seating in my Ford sized wheels.

Other thing of note. I've had in my stash a set of cruddy 2002 Toyota Tundra four pot SW13E calipers. Out of curiosity, I tried them on my setup. They fit GREAT! That's a problem.. They fit excellent and are inexpensive. However, they weigh about 14 lbs and are made of cast iron. The Lexus and Dakota calipers both weigh in at 7 lbs. The Tundra calipers are a snap to fabricate a bracket for but the Lexus calipers will take some work. Now I'm wondering if I should just push the "Easy Button".

Are you looking at this for some Dakota info or an FMJ? I have an F body front k member sitting in the garage.

Also, it looks like once I trim the hub down, I have adequate clearance and may not need spacers at all.

Geez that Dakota hub wheel face is Uber thick, does that take standard mopar/fmj wheel bearings ?? I plan on doing some thing similar with my volare, but I am using Mustang cobra rotors front and rear, and brembo 4 piston calipers front and 2 piston rear off a 2005 Mercedes clk500, I can't wait to see how this turns out, and I plan on upgrading to 18" wheels, but I am trying to stuff them inside 17" wheels also using large bolt pattern hubs from a mid 70s duster that had drums up front

out of curiosity, what diameter did you turn the dak hub to ? sorry if you said and i missed it.

I have a Volare front end in my garage. I'll see if I can pull the rotors off this weekend and let you know if the Dakota "hub" will fit the F body spindle.

Also, I think I mentioned that I see no problem with using this combo with 13" Cobra rotors other than it positions the caliper further away from the steering knuckle and MAY (or may not) require spacers.

Late edit:


Dak "hub" won't work on the FMJ. Dak spindle is bigger.

It's about 6 3/8" but that's imprecise. I took the Dakota and Ford rotor to the machinist. He did his magic and it came out pretty good with zero slop on the hub.

Now you got me thinking get if the Dakota spindle has the same dimensions as the fmj, but I believe the fmj is taller, I just rockauto searched and the ball joints are different, but with out physically measuring I wouldn't know the difference, looks like when I hit the junk yard today or tomorrow I'll see if I can find a fmjob to use as a test stand, and I know they have older Dakota state so this should be intresting

thank you.

I can tell you the Dakota spindle and the FMJ spindle are not close in dimensions. Dakota spindle is thicker. Dakota is front steer and FMJ is rear steer so the Dak hangs the caliper in the back while the FMJ hangs it in the front. That said, if you work with the FMJ stuff to try this you can really leave the Dakota parts out of the picture. If you hit the junkyard, grab a couple of nasty, rusty old FMJ brake rotors and a nasty, old 1998-2002 Crown Vic rotor AND hub. Oh, and while you're there, locate a couple of 95-00 LS400 calipers. See if you can get the shootin' match for under $60. After that, you're on your own!

Greg

A quick update and maybe you'll see something you didn't know. I picked up a 12" X 24" X 1\2" thick steel plate ($36) to fabricate the caliper mounting brackets. Made a cardboard template, then drew the outline on the steel plate. Dropped off the plate, template and spindles at the machinist. He'll get back to me fairly soon. In the meantime, my curiosity got the best of me about how this setup would work in other sized wheels. I know it works in 17" and 18" wheels, but what about 15" wheels? It so happens I have a set of 15" Mopar Cop Steelies sitting in the rafters so I got one down to check for a fit. Guess what? It sorta fits. Sorta? Well, when the Dakota hub, Crown Vic rotor and Lexus caliper are placed in the Mopar 15" wheel, the tapered portion of the rim fouls the caliper. BUT, if you run a 1\2" or 3\4" spacer, you've got all the clearance you'd need. So, that's the answer to the question nobody asked.

Nascar guys are running 12.12 inside 15" wheels. As you see, the wheel hoop and its related step downs is a big factor in fit.

hells yea, awesome update Greg, I can't wait to see more progress shots !!

-Mike

Still no caliper brackets from my machinist, so I took a little time to fool around a little more. I have a complete 1977 Volare FMJ front k-member sitting under my car. It's in the way and I haven't gotten rid of it yet. So, I figured I'd try out my combo on that to see if it works. Looks like it will. I pulled off the F-body caliper and rotor and put on the Dakota hub. The Dakota "hub" is not a match for the FMJ spindle because the bearing sizes are not the same so they are not interchangeable. BUT, for mock up purposes, it's close enough. With the Dakota "hub" on and the Crown Vic rotor on that, there's sufficient clearance to mount the Lexus caliper. Once I put the whole shootin' match together, I cycled the steering lock to lock to verify there was no binding to fouling on the knuckles, pitman arms or drag link. Turns clean. It also looks like an easier mount than the Dakota. OK, now you know.

So if somebody asks "Can you mount a Lexus 4 piston caliper onto a Mopar passenger car spindle?" The answer looks to me to be "Yes". Of course, the best part is it didn't cost you anything and maybe you learned something. Please don't ask me about master cylinder's and bore sizes. I haven't gotten that far yet. I do know the Lexus master cylinder has a 1" bore size.

I went with crown vic brakes front and explorer rear, the explorer rears were the same size piston as the crown vic rears. installing the fronts on standard drum brake spindles and hubs with the rotors that fit perfect. Took a while to find compatible studs, but should be a simple upgrade because ford already did the engineering for me. Tim

I took the factory FMJ style brake rotors and cut them into hubs for my AMG brake conversion.
Your thread made me think about all the fun I had putting my combo together.

I build my own cailper bracket by using Autocad. I 3D printed the bracket first before milling them.

I used the 2003 Mercedes rotor and a machine shop milled the mopar bolt pattern in them. For the caliper I used the Brembo caliper, 6 pistons, type Z18 used on a Porsche Cayenne.

That is EXCELLENT! However, I had to use a Sharpie, a pair of scissors and a piece of cardboard before I gave the plate to the machinist. Almost done with final mounting.

That is what I call CAD.

Cardboard Aided Design.


I do it too.

You got any pics?

I'd have to do some pretty deep digging to find any pics of building the parts.

Pics of the finished project are easy to find.

WOW!!!! Now I kinda wish I'd used the larger Mustang Cobra rotors or the SRT8 rotors. But, the Crown Vic stuff keeps me in my budget. What did your whole brake project run you? AMG calipers don't fall off of trees. I just spent another $200 bucks to my machinist to fab my brackets so I'm still under $500 total for the swap.

Man... that sure is pretty....

I had about $2400 in all four calipers, pads, and rotors. That was in 2005 when there were no big brake kits for our cars. These are the front 8 piston calipers and 14.25" rotors as well as the rear 4 piston calipers and 13" rotors for a 2005 S55 AMG.

I work at a Mercedes store and got them at my employee discount.

As for the work, I have a machine shop at home. My first set of brackets were made by carving up old 2x4 lumber then copying it in steel.

OK, summer is almost over and the kids are back to school. I did a bit on this setup but this is as far as I'm going for now. Got the caliper mounting brackets finished and after a LOT of grinding on both the spindle AND the caliper (keeping SAFETY in mind), everything fit up quite nicely. Again, this is a Dakota spindle and I don't believe you'll have half the heartburn doing this on an A, B, C, E, F, M and J body. Left to do are new wheel bearings and brake lines. I may rebuild the calipers anyway. Still, the whole shootin' match comes in under budget. I'm keeping my banker happy.

$120 machine rotors to hubs
$40 Lexus calipers from a boneyard
$100 Ford Crown Vic rotors
$22 Lexus brake pads
$36 1/2" thick steel plate
$200 machine brake caliper brackets
$20 new grade 8 bolts
$40 needed to re-machine caliper brackets (tweak)

Figuring this out... Priceless!

Nice work.
I pieced together discbrake conversions for most of my ('60s) cars this way.
Currently running '73 Chrysler C-body rotors and calipers on all conversions; '60,'62,'64 and '65 Chrysler and '73 Dart.

I do think however, you need to find a new machinist that works faster or smarter when you're paying him by the hour.
$200 for simply cutting the disc-part of a discbrake rotor is pretty stiff imo.

any chance to upload the pics from a different source than photobucket dickdale ? or did anyone save them ?

Nice write up. I finished up my brake swap on my 76 D100. I machined custom aluminum hubs and used 13" Mustang rotors and 2008 up Chevy s1500 calipers. They work great. I recently machined more hubs for my friends 89 D150 and made mounts for Wilwood calipers. He is also using 13" Mustang rotors. When machining the hubs, I accounted for the rotor mounting thickness so my wheels would be in the stock location. They barely clear my 17" Year One ralleys. I will post pics later if I can figure out how.

By the way, the hubs I machined for the later D150 work on the Dakota's as well.

excellent machine work on the hubs ! as a retired machinist, i recognize quality work when i see it. again, good job !

Thank you MoparX.