Stainless Steel Brakes: Brake Stuff

SSBC includes this nicely machined steel spacer to take up the extra space of the shorter SN-95 spindle. Slide the spacer over the spindle and then rein-stall the original castle nut. Torque it to factory specs. (You do have a shop manual, right?) Install a new cotter pin for safety.

Due to the design of the SN-95 spindle, the outer tie-rod ends must be adjusted outward. Loosen the jam nut and screw the tie-rod end outward until it can slide into the spindle eye. Reassemble with the factory castle nut and a new cotter pin. Your toe setting might be a bit off after this, so get an alignment right away to prevent ruining your treads.

The SN-95 hubs feature sealed bearings for simple installation, zero maintenance, and long life. The hubs are slid onto the spindle and then secured by a whopping 36mm nut. You'll probably have to buy the socket as we did. Torque on this big guy is 250 lb-ft, so beg, borrow, or steal a manly torque wrench to tighten it. [Or just call our IT buddy, Greg Clark, and tell him you're torquing down an intake bolt and you need help.--Ed.]

The 13-inch rotors are side-specific. Though we've seen brake kits machine the degas slots in all sorts of directions, we went by the cast in "LEFT" and "RIGHT" on the back of the rotor for orientation. Throw a lug nut onto a stud to keep the rotor from falling off during the rest of your work.

The new SSBC calipers come "loaded," meaning they are fully assembled with guide pins, pads, mounting bracket, and so on. To install the caliper to the spindle, line up the two mounting holes and install the mounting bolts, torquing them to 90 lb-ft. Make sure the bleeder screw is pointing up for proper caliper orientation.

Remove the original Banjo bolt from your stock caliper and discard the original copper sealing washers. Assemble the new DOT braided brake line supplied by SSBC in the kit as shown here, with the Banjo bolt and washers sandwiched around the end of the brake line.

Install the brake line to the rear of the caliper, but do not tighten the Banjo bolt yet. You don't want to crush the copper washers until you are sure of your brake-line routing. Simply snug down the bolt for now.

The opposite end of the new DOT line will fit into the factory bracket on the framerail after some minor filing. Remove the bracket from the framerail and file away the locating notch and side until the hose easily slides into the bracket, as shown here. Reinstall the bracket and complete the line installation. Later, when you fit the front wheels, check for line clearance and tighten the Banjo bolt. You may need to tie-wrap the brake hose to the strut to keep it off the tire as well.

For the rear brakes, we start with SSBC's A111-3 Torino kit so we can use the 9-inch Ford axle-end brackets. For the 9-inch ends, you simply have to unbolt the axle, slide it out, and then install the two-piece bracket behind the bearing retainer. On the standard 8.8 rear-disc kit, you'll need to drain the fluid, pull the C-clips, then slide out the axles to install the bracket.

The four bolts facing inward carry the rest of the rear-disc kit. The dust shield goes on first, then the caliper spacers, the caliper mounting ears (shown here in my hands), and finally the caliper itself.

All that remains after installing the caliper is to orient the rubber flex hose and bend the hard lines on the axle tubes. Make a gentle bend from the old disc/drum location to the flex hose. A large socket or other round item will help you with the bends in this tight area. For our application, we needed to replace our stock parking-brake cables with Ford Racing Performane Parts M-2809-A (two of them) and M-2810-A, which we obtained from Parkway Ford. SSBC also carries several other parking brake cable configurations. Naturally, the stock 8.8 kit comes with the correct cables.

To finish our brake upgrades (and because we now needed five-lug wheels) we picked up a set of take-off premium wheels from an '01 GT via Saleen's take-off parts division. The wheels add greatly to the looks of the car, and the handling and traction will undoubtedly be improved over the 16-inch wheels previously used. A Gorilla Automotive lug nut and wheel-lock kit secures them from thieves.

With rear-disc brakes, it's important to get the right bias for the weight of the vehicle and the suspension setup. This means a stock proportioning valve will not cut it. The use of an adjustable proportioning valve is a must. This valve, also from SSBC, comes with the correct fittings and is easily installed in place of the factory brass union at the upper right cowl area.

When using an adjustable proportioning valve, you must defeat the OE valve under the master cylinder. To do so, remove the plug found at the front and gut the valve by removing the spring and piston found inside. Though many brake kits don't include this FRPP solid plug (M-2450-A), Matt Bobbitt recommends it to block off the end now that brake fluid will be in contact with the rubber center found in the stock plug. We found out about the plug the hard way by trying to bleed the brakes without it, and the rubber cap gave way, spraying fluid everywhere. Fortunately, we weren't in the midst of a panic stop.

The stock disc/drum master cylinder found on Fox Mustangs will not function properly for a car now equipped with four-wheel disc brakes. A two-port master cylinder (such as on a '93 Cobra, a '94-'98 GT or Cobra, or a '99 V-6) with a main bore sized to the brake system is extremely important. Matt suggested a '93 Cobra master cylinder for our project. You can see the third port on the bottom of the stock master cylinder here.

When installing the four-wheel disc, two-port master cylinder, the third line, which is the LF brake, needs to be plumbed back into the proportioning valve.

Using Matt's own kit we added the 3-2 conversion fitting to the bottom of our proportioning valve and then carefully bent the LF line to connect to it. Now we're ready for the awesome stopping power of four-wheel discs, and we don't have to worry about waiting on race pads anymore.