Lets Talk Full Floater

[ntsqd]

Dang, was hoping it was more like Klamath Falls. Hermiston is about as far north as you can go and still be in Oregon, and quite a ways East. Used to have to go up there from Central Oregon on occasion for farm equipment parts. If they're willing to part it out and ship the outer assemblies, the shipping to So-CA would be less than the fuel to go get the whole thing. Even if parting it out means torching the 'C' brackets off the housing and shipping the whole outer assemblies.

[AussieRod]

Dang, was hoping it was more like Klamath Falls. Hermiston is about as far north as you can go and still be in Oregon, and quite a ways East. Used to have to go up there from Central Oregon on occasion for farm equipment parts. If they're willing to part it out and ship the outer assemblies, the shipping to So-CA would be less than the fuel to go get the whole thing. Even if parting it out means torching the 'C' brackets off the housing and shipping the whole outer assemblies.

Yeah, hence the 'bugger it'. I'll keep looking, there will be one closer and maybe I can get just the backing plates or the whole ends and Ihave a shipper in CA who can get them across to here. I'm not in a hurry (yet).

[ntsqd]

I thought that I'd post here to mention a couple things about my rear D60 swap. I went D60 because buying a full-float was considerably less expensive than building one and based on my net research less the drums it didn't weigh a lot more than the complete (drum brakes included) 8.8 that it replaced. So the majority of any unsprung weight gain was going to be whatever rear brakes I adopted. Were I to do it again I would still choose the D60 over the 14bff for this application, which is NOT used as a pre-runner. What I would change is I'd cut off the D60 spindles and have 14bff spindles installed. In total doing this would add a couple thousand to the cost of the project, but having stronger spindles and not having to replace the drive-axles after 3 miles of driving (not to mention the bills from getting it home and then fixed) would make it worthwhile.

A 2000 vintage set of Expedition rear disc brakes is a very viable RDB with a P-brake option for a full-floater. The caliper bracket - backing plate bolts to the existing brake flange on a Ford D60 rear axle housing using the Expe's own bolts. Everything is the same; bolt hole size, bolt hole pattern, even the register pilot diameter. My set had one tiny area that wasn't machined which caused the plates to sit at an angle. 5 minutes with a die grinder fixed it. Adapting the rotor takes a little more work, but it too is feasible if you can machine parts or know someone who can. There is a spacer needed and I've posted a drawing for it in my thread on SoCA Broncos. PM me if you can't find it. After buying all of the non-wear parts out of a yonke I found that it is possible to buy every last part new from Rock Auto. At the time that I discovered this the whole parts pile ran about $500, which is just about what one of the Explorer RDB kits would cost (except that the Explorer brakes will not work with a FF!).
With a light load in the rear of the Bronco I can run a wilwood p-valve at max rear brake and only get rear lock-up at the most extreme panic stop testing. With the full complement of gear back on/in the truck I doubt that I will need to adjust it. When adjusted correctly the parking brake will hold against light throttle. You can likely guess how I know this.
Because the GM 3/4t front brakes that I converted to are 8 x 6.5 wheel bolt pattern I didn't replace the D60's hubs. The GM brakes use a 9/16" stud while the D60 rear hubs use a 1/2" stud. I used the front wheel studs at the rear so that all of the lug nuts are the same. The design of these studs lent itself well to holding the rear rotor spacer in place and it was simple to ream the D60 hub stud holes to accept the GM studs.

Lesson learned: That the drive-axle not make contact with the housing, AT ALL, should be obvious. When dealing with 1.500" 35 spline drive-axles and a D60 housing that has had it's spindles opened up to Ø1.563" there is not much margin for error and it is easy to be making contact in spite of careful checking. All it takes is a slightly eccentric drive-axle shaft and contact will be made. See roughly page 10 of my thread here if you doubt the seriousness of this. Be double extra cautious about this if you opt to go in this direction.