Disk brakes on 55 ford sedan

zoegrant

zoegrant

Well-known member
Anyone install disk brakes on their 55 Ford full size car ?
If so, who sells the kit ?
Thanks
 
There was an article in Y block magazine a few years back on installing Granada spindles and brakes on a 55 sedan. If you can still find a Granada in a scrap yard, its pretty easy to do the swap, and comes out about on third the cost of most of the kits.
 
The Granada spindles lower the car IIRC. I think most of the Thunderbird suppliers sell kits, pretty much like I installed 20 years ago. There's a spacer that goes on the splindle and allows a different bearing, a Granda rotor with the center turned down for the early wheels, and a custom bracket to mount the caliper. Mine came with an Fairlane caliper, year unknown. It moves the wheel out about 1/8", which isn't normally a problem. I used the oem remote booster, and the kit came with various other bits and pieces. A new disc/drum master was included, and the boost was only used on the front disc. I don't recall if different rear brake cylinders were in my kit (for brake balance), but some do.

Proper adjustment of the rear drums was critical. Brakes were good with the stock tires, but when I went to wider tires I couldn't lock the fronts until well after the backs locked up. Turned out to be the pads were too hard. With the right pads, proportioning valve etc. it all sorted out.

An acquaintance who lives close enough to go down looked at the front disc set up at Prestige Thunderbird. He's got a 56 pass car, and was really impressed by the engineering they'd done to solve all that, and they apparently do that for the full size car. I think that would be worth a phone call to them.

http://prestigethunderbird.com/
 
Let me begin my b!cthin' session.

I studied the BIRD disc/drum conversions and the first round of kits came through with resized rear wheel cylinders to hopefully somehow overcome the bias between front disc and front drum. Ain't gonna work that way. Front disc is considerably more aggressive than front drum and the only way to hopefully control the bias is with a front metering valve and rear proportioning valve, period. The later kits (BIRD) included the PPV (in the form of a COMBINATION VALVE I believe). I think somebody woke up.

When you go to a larger tire on a car, it adds leverage and most likely will over power the original brakes.

Most of these kit offerings are not (IMO) thought out well and include many parts that will not work together. And then they sell you a kit with GM/CHI-COM parts and will not tell you what exact application they were from so you are stuck trying to find correct service replacement parts at the next brake job.
 
There is a guy on EBay selling parts for Granada to Ford car brakes. He re-machines the granada spindles to accept the early Ford Ball joints and tie rods. All the Granada stuff bolts on from there. He sells bare spindles, all the way to complete brake kits and also offers master and booster combos as well. I have looked at his stuff, but don't know anything else about it. Search 1955 Ford Customline brakes, that is how I found it.
 
miker98038 said:
An acquaintance who lives close enough to go down looked at the front disc set up at Prestige Thunderbird. He's got a 56 pass car, and was really impressed by the engineering they'd done to solve all that, and they apparently do that for the full size car. I think that would be worth a phone call to them.

http://prestigethunderbird.com/
Click to expand...

You know, I looked at their kit and it is well thought out. It is using the GRANADA rotor and 65/67 KH 4-piston calipers.

There is no description of valving but this is better (IMO) than either the GRANADA or TORINO swap. Both of those do present problems and this kit uses the original spindles.

And I see no reason it cannot be used on PASS CAR,
 

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  • BRAKE - Disc Brake Kit - 55-57 BIRD _2 - PRESTIGE BIRD.jpg
    BRAKE - Disc Brake Kit - 55-57 BIRD _2 - PRESTIGE BIRD.jpg
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I did the Granada swap on my 54. Including reaming the ball joint hole. Brakes work real good.


Granada parts (as well as the like Mercury and Lincoln Versailles)are getting hard to find.



Beside MPBrakes, Engineered Components Inc (ECI) sells conversion kit. The latter actually build the kits.
 
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