SSBC Brake Kit: Whoa to Go

A couple weeks and a hurricane later, we visited J&J Performance in FortMyers, Florida, to finish up the installation of the brakes and to havethe car's rearend redone, which you'll get to see in a couple issues.J&J had just received a roof over its head prior to us coming for theinstallation. Hurricane Charley came through a few weeks earlier andripped up the southwest coast of Florida, right where J&J's shop islocated. J&J owner Justin and lead tech Nick got the brakes and rebuiltthe rearend of the car in one day. Bye-bye, Welds--we'll see you at thedragstrip.

With the axles out of the rear, Nick removes the drum brake assemblyfrom the 8.8's axle tube.

The rear brake line from the chassis is disconnected from the line thatleads down the rearend. We'll be installing a new Russell flexible linein its place. Nick uses this little piece of tubing with the end pluggedup to keep brake fluid from making a total mess.

Nick mixes the stock brake line bracket with the new Russell flexibleline to get the brake line from the chassis down to the rearend.

(above & right) For the rest of the brake lines, Justin custom bends new hard linesalong with new stainless flexible hoses leading from the hard lines tothe new calipers. Since we didn't get a rear brake package, our rearupgrade kit didn't come with new flexible hoses.

Nick installs the North Racecars SN-95 rear brake conversion brackets.The SSBC adapters will bolt to the North Racecars brackets, which willspace out the calipers to compensate for the SSBC 12-inch rotors.

The SSBC adapters are now installed onto the North Racecars brackets.The rear kit we obtained from SSBC is a '94-'95 Mustang GT upgrade kit.This kit is designed to adapt a 12-inch rotor to the rear. The rotorsare actually 12.2 inches, and the kit's adapters are designed to bolt tostock SN-95 rear calipers to space them out for the larger rotors size.

With the hoses connected, the caliper is then installed onto themounting hardware. Justin used provided shims to center the caliper ontothe rotor. After bleeding the brakes, we're ready to go. Since everyonesays to install a '93 Cobra master cylinder on a car with rear discs,Justin took the car for a drive to check the pedal effort of the system.We may perform the upgrade later, but for now our brakes work perfectly,easily hauling our little coupe down from speed. In addition, the redcalipers add quite a bit of flair to the car, contrasting perfectly withour coupe's yellow paint and the Falken wheels.