Gt500, or S550 mustang gt base 4 pot brakes

[J_Train]

How many of you guys would like to put the s197 gt500 or S550 base gt 4 piston caliper (with 13-14 gt500 14 inch rotors on your explorers? There's a guy I've been in contact with and he's not trying to do a mass production or make a ton of money but if he could get 5 or more people to join in it will make things easy, now he does have a business so the turn around won't be great (it is a one off fabrication to start with) but i think it will be a better turn around then torque monster headers lol right now he's looking into it for my 2000 2wd but he said 4wd won't be any harder in fact he said it may be easier due to not having to make a rotor into a hub. If any interest let me know and I'll contact him and see if he wants me to give out his email so you can contact him. Also you will need to run at least an 18 inch wheel, and mainly for the lowered guys idk how many 4wd guys will go for this.

 

[CDW6212R]

Best of luck, I love watching these serious modification threads.

The stock rotor offset is near 1.45", which is a lot different than typical Mustang stuff. The 94-04 rotors are 0.350" offset, and the later cars are likely a similar small offset. I chose to have hats made to let me use a near stock location for the caliper. I went with an off the shelf hat first from a Subaru spec, which required drilling new holes etc. That was much cheaper than having hats custom made, which ran around $175 each BTW.

Find out what the actual piston sizes are for those calipers, and be sure the total area(only count one side) is around 5sqin. Stock is just a little under that, and you don't want it change too far from that area. The Wilwood pair I'm planning towards are just under 5.5sqin, and I expect to need a little "smaller" master cylinder, which a Ranger unit may be just right. Regards,

 

[J_Train]

they guy that will be making these has made a bunch of them he has a few s197 set ups in his files. He has done a few rangers, and a lot of mustangs as well as other stuff that has nothing to do with this.

heres a link to the ranger station for one of his kits he made for this guy. Jbrown1238. this user went with the 97-04 front cobra set up since he already had 17 inch wheels.

http://www.therangerstation.com/forums/showthread.php?t=93941&page=31

 

[VR4]

Following this for sure

 

[CDW6212R]

they guy that will be making these has made a bunch of them he has a few s197 set ups in his files. He has done a few rangers, and a lot of mustangs as well as other stuff that has nothing to do with this.

heres a link to the ranger station for one of his kits he made for this guy. Jbrown1238. this user went with the 97-04 front cobra set up since he already had 17 inch wheels.

http://www.therangerstation.com/forums/showthread.php?t=93941&page=31

Wow, that's a super nice Ranger, I love the details and the fit of the tires. I have 17x9's and the same 275/55 tires ready to be mounted. I wonder what wheel offset he has, even though the Ranger is slightly different. I hope I can get mine to fit that well.

 

[J_Train]

I can find out but I do know he ran spacers like I did.

 

[MAS Tequila]

Definite interest here.

I'm already running Mustang 18" wheels with 2" spacers and 275/65/18 Coopers.

Braking is definitely a weak point with these vehicles.

MT

 

[CDW6212R]

I can find out but I do know he ran spacers like I did.

Thanks, and yours looks good too. I'd appreciate the offset specs, and I think I read that his wheels are 9" wide, or 9" front and 10" rear.

I bought my 17's used as they have the right offset to work for my truck, 16mm and 9" wide. I won't need spacers with this offset, which is why I took years to decide on and find them. My truck doesn't have any flares either, so I have a harder time fitting more wheel and tire width. I bought the slim front flares from a JY Sport model, to help with the front at least. The rear needs the wheels to come out any way.

 

[CDW6212R]

Definite interest here.

I'm already running Mustang 18" wheels with 2" spacers and 275/65/18 Coopers.

Braking is definitely a weak point with these vehicles.

MT

The bigger and heavier wheels/tires definitely need more brake power. My first 18" wheel and tire weighed 72.5 pounds, and that hurt braking a lot, plus acceleration. With my first custom brakes I could easily lock the tires at 80mph, meaning the ABS kicked in hard at any speed. Those were 1.875" caliper pistons(4-pot caliper), so that was a little more brake power than needed. I moved down in size slightly, to a 43mm piston in my current SSBC calipers. I'd say the best piston size for these 4500lbs trucks is near 45mm(x2(for one side of the caliper)). Those first calipers I used were right at about 49.7mm pistons.

So aim for that 45mm size range for a caliper piston, given about a 13" rotor. I like my 12.75" rotor size to be able to run a Winter tire on a 16" wheel.

The Mustang calipers will likely have smaller pistons, my guess in the low 40mm range. But the larger rotors of 14" or more does provide more braking power. I can't say how much and what the ideal caliper piston area is for those rotors. But I'd guess it's just under 45mm.

 

[J_Train]

Ok so I've had a few thing come up. The lack of s550 4 piston calipers that pop up is slowing me down. There's been a few that will not separate the front from the rear. So I'm probably going to go with reman boss 302 calipers. My cost would be around 100 a side. I still need to measure the piston to get the sizing. I'll be going with a boss 302/gt500 rotor as the guy I'm using is custom making the brake I won't need to worry about that offset. Also if anyone else is interested as I'm sure most want to wait to see mine. He has a 2wd spindle from a ranger. I crossed the part number at work and our 2wd explorer spindle updates to that number. I'm hoping to start going forward with this soon.

 

[VR4]

Since my last post my cobra got stolen and wrecked.

Any chance things will fit in the cobra 17x9? (Fwiw they fit the explorer pretty well with a 1" spacer. )

 

[J_Train]

No, not the stuff I'm going to use. It will need 18's, you could talk to the guy I'm talking to about making bracket for your cobra stuff to fit on your explorer. The other guy from the ranger forum I posted in the beginning of this thread use 03 cobra 17's and 03 cobra brakes I believe.

 

[CDW6212R]

Since my last post my cobra got stolen and wrecked.

Any chance things will fit in the cobra 17x9? (Fwiw they fit the explorer pretty well with a 1" spacer. )

I'm sorry to hear about your Cobra. I got to drive my friend's 03 one time, and it is a blast.

What offset are those wheels? Check the back side, look for two digits, and the letters "ET." I think most will be in the 30mm range, my Cobra 17x8's are that. I would think it shouldn't take an inch of spacer to use them, but some amount. My intended 17x9's are 16mm offset, they will stick out just a hair.

 

[VR4]

I'm sorry to hear about your Cobra. I got to drive my friend's 03 one time, and it is a blast.

What offset are those wheels? Check the back side, look for two digits, and the letters "ET." I think most will be in the 30mm range, my Cobra 17x8's are that. I would think it shouldn't take an inch of spacer to use them, but some amount. My intended 17x9's are 16mm offset, they will stick out just a hair.

Thanks. I get to start over from scratch so it'll be exactly what I want.

I'll check the offset when I get home. They fit without spacer but there was about 2mm between the tire and upper ball joint with the 285/40s. It really didn't need an inch but I wanted hubcentric bolt on spacers so that's what I went with.

http://i.imgur.com/C8qBM2S.jpg


Edit... 26mm offset

 

[CDW6212R]

Ah, you have the big fender flares which help. My 99 has those, but my other two don't. That'll work for you, just keep those lug nuts tight and checked often. I've been using 1/4" spacers with some 18's(35mm offset), and want to get away from that if I can.

 

[J_Train]

ok well couldn't find a decent deal on gt500 or S550 calipers but I did get a set of Boss 302 Caliper which are the same as gt500 just no glossy. they will get re-sprayed probably the same grey just gloss not a matte. On the fence if I'm going to spray the brembo back on or not. they are stripped and reassembled (I assembled them before deciding on painting them) for size reference that's the new Samsung Galaxy S8+ next to it

With hurricane Harvey and Irma this will be taking longer then expected now. I have most of the parts to do just need the brackets and stock rotors turned into hubs but the guy making them is in Texas near Houston and I'm in Florida I had top spend the play money to get a new generator and prepare for hurricane Irma so I have to wait.

 

[J_Train]

ok well now that I'm waiting on the fab guy to get things going again after the Harvey clean up I'm going to look into painting the calipers. Any recommendations for colors? I may go with the grey as stated before but I'm open as long as it would go with the colors of my explorer.

 

[Mbrooks420]

My vote would be grey.

 

[J_Train]

this is the factory color. Although someone here brought it up to keep them raw....... so they show through the wheel.

 

[CDW6212R]

How about a gold, when dirty it should be more subtle than bright yellow or red? I bought some in Spring to try on a caliper for my work truck.