Explorer Rear Brake Brackets

I have a 9 inch Versailles disc rear in my Maverick and would like to lighten up the stock heavy Lincoln disc brake parts. I found a set of brackets from a 99 Explorer and was wondering if these would fit.

I have read up on Frank Cooper's swap and just checked the photos of his parts that were used. These brackets off of a 1999 Explorer don't look identical to his 1996 brackets that we know worked. They do look close though.

Does anyone know?

 

i think those use a big bearing (Torino size bearing) while the lincoln/grand marquis and such use a small bearing.... and i believe the versailles uses a small bearing, i think

 

I never came to a point that I really needed to know if my Versailles rear had small or big axle bearings until now. I did a search and, from everything that came up, it looks like Versailles used the big bearings.

 

it's something that i need to lookup as well, but from the way mine looks (i have one too), mine look like small bearings. if nothing else, you'll find out for both of us lol

 

I wonder what the big and small bearing sizes actually measure?

 

Well, I still don't know if these Explorer brackets will work or not but I did find out the axle bearing size difference between a small bearing rear and a large bearing rear. Tomorrow I'll have to measure my axle bearings. Too late tonight.

Small axle bearing: 2.833 OD
Large axle bearing: 3.150 OD

This info came from http://americanbronco.ipower.com/page9.html

 

cool. good info so far. be sure and post what u find out

 

Large bearings for certain. They measure just over 3 inches.

 

that's good to know. thanks for the info!

 

Did it end up working out with the explorer brakes? I'm installing a 9 inch Versailles rear as well and want to do the same swap. Any help would be appreciated

 

explorer brackets have a different bolt pattern than the Versailles housing end. they also have a different spacing on the bearing to flange. the explorer fits the late ford big bearing end. versailles uses the early ford big bearing end.

 

It's funny that you picked today to resurrect my old thread from 2009. I never followed up on the Explorer brackets but I did in fact order a set of bolt on brake brackets from Speedway Motors on Saturday and they arrived at my house just a few hours ago. I pulled them out of the box and checked the pattern against my big bearing Versailles axle flange bolt pattern and they are a perfect fit. No instructions came with them but it appears that the main bracket that has the flange bolt pattern now acts as an axle bearing retainer. It has 2 sets of holes in it so the caliper can be positioned in 2 different places and can also be flopped from front to rear depending on where you want your caliper to be mounted. The main caliper bracket then bolts to this bracket and comes with 2 different thickness spacer sets. There is a full round spacer too but I won't know where that fits in until I get to put this all together when the weather warms up some. I asked Speedway to give me the rotor dimensions for the rotor that they sell separately for this kit. I already have a set of new rotors from a Jeep Cherokee and these compare to 11 inches to Speedway's 11 1/4 inches and the offset was only off by a 1/4 inch so I'm going to try to work with what I already have. The caliper needed for this set up is the 78 to 85 GM Metric caliper of which I already have 2 new ones from my stock car days. I'll do a write up with photos as I install it

 

That is funny! Well thank you I would really appreciate the write up!

 

And thank you for clearing that up for me. Since I don't want to use the stock brakes iv been doing a lot of research on brakes and rears in general and on the Versailles rear it LOOKS like the (new) big baring but after measuring it appeared to be the old style. So I was confused so thank you for clearing that upurock:

 

Bob, Speedway says to use front calipers on the rear axle? Seems like that would really throw off the braking bias, rear calipers usually have much smaller pistons. Are you gonna use an adjustable prop valve for the rear? I'm gonna be facing this problem soon on my Rambler project...