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Ford Explorer Community - Maintenance - Modifications - Performance Upgrades - Problem Solving - Off-Road - Street
Explorer Forum Covers the Explorer ST, Explorer Sport, Explorer Sport Trac, Lincoln Aviator, Mercury Mountaineer, Mazda Navajo, Ford Ranger, Mazda Pickups, and the Ford Aerostar
Especially with bigger tires. I need front brakes. Don't see any apps for bigger rotors or brake kits for first gens. I had a set of the ART slotted rotors on my old X & they seemed good. But they are very expensive. I really don't want drilled rotors since there's less surface area then a sold rotor & that's not good. I could handle slotted, but the other slotted ones are also expensive. I saw brembo blanks on Tireracks website. I got a set of these for a Nissan & they seemed ok. Will these do for the X? I'm concerned since I will be running 31's in everyday driving & need to be able to stop good. I have rear drums, & I'm not converting to disks.
If you don't want rear-axle discs then there's only so much you can do. I mean, putting rear disc brakes on your truck will help a lot.
In the front, if you want a bigger size rotor, you'll really want a different master cylinder and calipers to go with it. If it will fit, you can do anything, I'm just saying that it might cost you a lot to replace the master cyl, calipers, and rotors. Might be cheaper just to go with the slotted brake rotors. I have a set myself that I haven't put in yet. Or it might be worth it to invest in a rear axle with disc brakes on it. You can never stop fast enough!
A good pair of ceramic pads will also make a large difference. The difference was like night and day when I put new rotors and cermic pads on my explorer. They are a little more expensive but well worth it in my opinion.
I added some Hawk brake pads to mine and they helped a bunch. I think these were the same pads that 4wheelparts was giving away when they had a deal on power slot rotors. I'd definetly recommend these
i remember years ago 4liter performance added bigger front brakes to their 91 extended cab ranger, they also added a bigger master cylinder from an older full size truck .... they are no longer in the biz .... they are a mustang and focus specilists ... maybe if you take to dennis hilard(owner)at central coast mustang, focus central (4liter performance) and he may have some catalog where it showed what needed to be done to install the bigger fronts .... also if you still have the old rubber brake hoses it would be a good idea to replace them with braided lines .... also need to brake in the pads correctly, almost to the point of brake fading, then let them cool and make them fade again, can't remember the correct procedure but it inbeds the brake pad material into the rotors for better braking .... rear rotors help a little, most of your braking is done by the front brakes unless you do alot of towing, hauling etc... it is a proven fact that drilled rotors do have better braking then solid rotors, with the drilled rotors they allow more of the gases to escape to avoid brake fade, just need to replace them more often because they tend to crack for cross drilled hole to cross drilled hole, the slotted tend to be not as good as cross drilled and better then solid rotors
Brandon Miller over at RPS is currently working on an upgrade to Cobra front discs and calipers. You would need to upgrade to a set of spindles from a 95-97 Ranger, as their caliper bolts on rather than using the sheeve pins like ours do, but aside from that I believe it will work. His thread is a sticky at the top of the General Tech Discussion page over there, check it out.
I'm not modding anything, or rigging other stuff to work. I'm only intrested in what's available now. I've decided I'm just getting the brembo blanks & some better pads.
get a big ole boat anchor and rig it underneath where the spare tire goes and make it lever activatede....you pull the lever it falls and slows you down, then put an electric winch on it and use that to reel back in so you can use it over and over
