MY 5.0 front brakes. Not bad for $75 Comes with everything I need, pads, rotors, calipers, spindles, and even brake lines.
Not too bad. I'll be doing mine for about $40 in stock parts, plus Hawk pads and the rotors need to be resurfaced. If you get to it before I do, post up tips and whatnot. Ash
Hm, I paid $75 for mine too. Course that was with struts and V8 front springs too... Anyway, you want tips, well here's a couple. 1. The spindle is hard as hell to get off the ball joint. When I did mine I supported either side of the spindle with blocks of wood and knocked the ball joint stud through with a large punch and a BFH. 2. Also the bolts holding the strut to the spindle are pretty hard to budge too. However if you heat the nuts with a propane torch and then hit them with an impact wrench, they should come off fairly easily. 3. The factory Torx bolts on the 2.3L calipers suck, and they're hard to get off. Make sure you have a big enough Torx bit (the bolts on mine had a round head with no hex) and if they don't budge, stop and heat the bolts with a torch (people like to put loctite on caliper bolts so you gotta melt it out). Once you get those bolts out, throw them far away. Other than that...it's all really straightforward. I take it neither of you guys are switching to V8 struts? (if you are I have a tip to go with that as well)
I would just like to mention the ultimate irony. LOL! It would be ironic if you pulled into your driveway too fast, couldn't stop because of your 4cyl brakes and ran over your V8 brakes.
I'll be switching to V8 struts, hopefully will be getting a 15k mile set of Bilsteins for $300. What was your tip? Ash
What to keep and what to replace? I see that one of the calpier pins is bent, and the dust cap is in crap shape. What do you guys see or know of that might need to be replace? The pads are said to have only 10,000 miles on the, but I think I will start with a fresh set anyway. Thanks Dan
You should definitely resurface your rotors and get new pads. I'm planning on going with Hawk pads, the street performance ones. They're supposed to be quiet and pretty dust-free, but still offer substantially better-than-stock stopping power. I think you can get caliper pins at a parts store, and probably a dustcap too. Are our old dustcaps the same size, maybe? Ash
Caliper pins are about 20 for 4 of them and they may toss in the dust cap free. they did for me. Oreilly's At least your dust cap is intact, mine was split and someone used JB weld to try and fix the break in it. Looked horriable.
Chances are ill be doing this soon enough.... The thing i find the most amusing is when i walk into the part store and ask for "so and so part for a 88 turbocoupe, 87 mustang, 86 turbocoupe, 740 volvo" ...soon to be 5.0 parts..sometimes i forget what i drive...FRANKINSTANG!!!
Well, I meant if you're taking 5.0 struts directly off a 5.0 car. I don't know if this was a difference between years, or between 5.0's and 2.3's, but when I tried to put the 5.0 struts on my car, the strut plates wouldn't fit (the studs didn't go through the holes in my strut towers). Turns out the plates were slightly different (BTW the brakes were from an '89 GT, my car was a '90)
I was thinking about 5.0 brakes but just replaced my stockers. Did the rear ones too. Good bleeding and they stop great! And they are a bit lighter!
Well I think that I am going to wait on this project till the end of the summer. I think that I am going to get new rotors, 73mm calipers, SVO MC, SS brake lines and many other small things that will improve the brakes. I will just save up my money until I have collected all the parts and take a day or two to do the swap. Another thing is I can put rear disks on later because of the SVO MC.
