Input on rear brake design wanted

[Littlebeefy]

Hi guys,
I'm still in the process of finishing the design for the Huge Brakes kit for the Bullnose half ton and Bronco. Will fit years 80-92. We are at the point of CNC'ing the first demo kit. It should be available for sale very soon.

I'm now on to designing a rear disc brake kit to match the front and keep good bias. It will be a 54mm piston on 13.86" rotors. It will also have an electric parking brake built into each of the calipers (not drum in hat). Uses off-the-shelf rotors, calipers and pads without modification. Hard to say exactly, but the price point would be around $1500. The parking brake actuators, controller and pigtails are pricey, so it's going to be tough to do it for less.

I know most of you aren't interested in dropping that kind of coin on rear brakes, but I'd still like your opinion. What do you think of the idea of an electric parking brake? Would you want something that big even if you didn't have our Huge Brakes up front? What would influence you buying it/not buying it? Feel free to chime in with opinions; you won't hurt my feelings.

Thanks!

[JimJam300]

The electronic parking brake sounds cool. I would want that if I were really into off-roading to eliminate the dangling cables and set the brake without stepping off the clutch. Or if I had an injury that made stomping the pedal difficult

[85lebaront2]

Chad, not having a small set of rear brakes I can't say yes or no on application, but I will throw some insight from my experience installing a rear disc brake conversion on a friend's 1995 F350 dually.

He ordered a kit from EGR Brakes that used deep dish rotors from an E350 which I believe has a Dana axle. There were a number of fit-up and clearance issues partially due to the GM calipers and parking brake actuators. The original rotors sent with the kit, might have worked on a single wheel rear.

I assume on the electric parking brake you mean electric release like a lot of newer vehicles are coming with. Definitely an improvement over the convoluted routing of the mechanical cables! One thought on that, please try to incorporate a means of release in case of a dead battery.

[Littlebeefy]

Lots of great info here.

If you were using the rotors I'm picturing, they are 13" rotors from an E350. They are slightly taller (more deep dish) than the 13.85" rotors I was thinking about using, but only by about a 1/8". I'm curious where you ran into clearance issues with those. Was it just due to the parking brake mechanism and the connection? The height of the rotors I'd use is 2.83". With a 2.5" offset that would put the inside rotor surface right at the axle end. I can't find a rear rotor that is large enough, thin enough and doesn't have a brake hub in rotor design with 5x5.5" bolt pattern. They just don't exist from the research I've done. The brackets would be very similar to how the El Dorado calipers are mounted (2 piece with spacers). Modern calipers are pretty compact due to everything they are cramming in these days but I'm wondering if you think I'd still have clearance issues on the caliper.

The parking brake mechanism is a built in actuator that bolts to the caliper itself. Most of the mechanism actually sits beside the caliper instead of behind it, so it doesn't push a lot of stuff far inboard.

I too am concerned about releasing the brake with a dead battery. That's tricky because it's got to pull power from somewhere to work. It would need 12V and around 15amps to disengage. The control mechanism can be hooked up to unswitched power. It is also designed with another input that determines if the ignition is on (could be left disconnected if you wanted to be able to use the brake anytime). I could provide an extra pigtail connection that allows you to plug it into a jump starter battery, or a 12V battery, which is plenty of power to disengage the brake. At that point, though, you might as well just hook up a jump starter directly to your battery and disengage the brake with that juice since the ignition would still be off. Do you think that is a reasonable solution? There is no mechanism that allows manual loosening of the parking brake; has to use 12 volts to disengage.

[85lebaront2]

If you will message me at wavose at g mail dot com with your email I will send you the pictures and information I sent to EGR brakes.

[ArdWrknTrk]

Hey Chad,

In another thread we were discussing the failings of these pickups (and Bronco's) front axles.

One idea I had (that's fairly dangerous, in and of itself!) Is to come up with a CV axle retro-fit for these trucks.
No more binding and jerkiness because the two universals are at vastly different angles.

Just a thought, and something that I thought you might take an interest in.