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1985MustangGT.com |
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My 1985 Mustang GT - Front Brakes |
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Over the years my car has gone through many different brake combinations. 1. Stock — 10” front discs with 60mm calipers and rear drums 2. Upgraded — ‘87-’93 V8 Mustang front brakes which means 11” front discs with 60mm calipers and rear drums 3. Upgraded plus — Swapping the 60mm front calipers for 73mm calipers (as used in the ’86 SVO and 90’s Police Crown Vic’s) 4. Upgraded plus with rear discs — 73mm front calipers with 45mm rear calipers (as used on the ‘93 Mustang Cobra and ‘87-’88 Thunderbird Turbo Coupe) 5. SN95 Cobra — Twin piston 40mm PBR front calipers with 13” discs (‘99-’04 Cobra) and 38mm rear calipers with 11.65” discs (‘94-’04 Cobra) 6. ‘00 Cobra R — Front: Four piston fixed Brembo calipers, 13” rotors, 3” brake ducts, and ‘99 V6 1” MC. Rear: 38mm rear calipers with 11.65” discs. Stage 3 required a larger master cylinder as my stock one did not push enough fluid and the brake pedal was VERY soft. I switched to the ‘86 SVO master cylinder at that time. It is very large at 1-1/8”. The SVO MC was too large and the pedal became too firm. To fix that problem and improve my braking more I then swapped the rear drums to ‘93 Cobra discs. At this point I also added racing front pads and brake ducts. This set-up was OK for track use, but the brakes were still marginal under repeated hard usage. The next move was to 5-lug and SN95 Cobra brakes all the way around. I ran them with race pads and 3” ducts and they worked GREAT for me. The front brakes were ‘99-’04 Cobra twin 40mm piston PBR calipers with the stock 13” vented Brembo rotors. The rear brakes were ‘94-’04 Cobra single piston 38mm Varga calipers with vented 11.65” rotors. The SN95 Cobra brakes performed very well, but when the chance came to me for a set of the ‘00 Cobra R Brembo four piston fixed calipers I had to make the upgrade. My 1-1/8” SVO MC was already slightly too large for the ‘99 Cobra PBR calipers which had 40mm pistons so it was no surprise that the 36mm Brembo calipers required a smaller MC. I went with the ‘99 V6 MC which has a 1” bore. The “hardest” part of this upgrade was connecting the ‘99 V6 MC with its 10mm metric bubble flares to my gutted stock proportioning valve with its SAE inverted double flares. To fix this I simply made some new lines with the correct fittings on each end. The rear brakes are still ‘94-’04 Cobra single piston 38mm Varga calipers with vented 11.65” rotors. This set-up has performed flawlessly for me. The link below has some pictures of the front brakes.. |