There's really no comparison between a cable operated hand brake and a hydraulic caliper though, honestly. There's only so hard you can pull that thing, and the cable has some give to it. I admit the difference between going from disc/drum to disc/disc is not as dramatic as it is when you replace front drums with discs, but I drove my car every day in a variety of conditions in both configurations for quite a number of miles now, and I can tell you the difference is very noticeable. It was certainly worth the maybe $80 and the few hours I spent on them.
Agreed. I try to do the same most of the time, but it's not always possible because in some situations, people will take advantage of it as an opportunity to cut over in front of you, and if you compensate for it, more cars will just do the same.. I daily drove these cars for 30k miles with drums all around, and had many close calls! Swapped to front discs, and it made a HUGE difference, 4 wheel drums are truly dangerous now days. I can't comment on a disc/disc Maverick, because I haven't drove one, but I'm currently at 110k daily driven miles just in my '72 Maverick, and 120k total daily driven miles including the mileage I had put on my '74 Grabber. I've had to make quite a few panic stops, and all I can say is the disc/drums stop just as fast as I could ever imagine needing to stop. Another issue is, the faster your car stops, the more likely you are to get hit in the rear. I got very lightly rear ended a while back while stopping fast for a red light, just made the small bumper chip the paint on the tail panel a bit. Since then I've had a habit of glancing in my mirror when stopping fast to see what the vehicle behind me is doing, and there has been a few times now where I believe if my car could stop any better, I would have got hit in the rear. There's been some very close calls as it is. It dosen't matter how well the cars around you can stop, if the people driving them aren't paying attention! Another thing that bothers me, is people who stop right on your back bumper at red lights. It seems like 98% of people do this.. If they were to get rear ended, their car would be plowed right into the back of yours. You try to creep up a bit so they aren't so close, and what do they do? Creep right back up behind you 2 seconds later! When I'm stopped at a light, the main thing I'm doing is keeping one eye on my rear view mirror. Been pretty paranoid about it since I got bumped into a while back. I always leave enough room between me and the car in front of me, that if I see a car coming up behind me isn't going to stop, I can crank the wheel and gun it off to the side!!
a lot of new cars still are rear drum. the exploders and broncos were rear drum "anti lock" during the mid 90's so that is not necesarily why they went to rear disc. If you can do the rear conversion for about $100 and not need to change your wheels i could easily see it being worth the time and effort. if your skill level requires buying a pre made kit that costs closer to a grand and requires larger rims, i would place it as being not worth the money. the front is worth it even if you spend a grand. It would be interesting if someone could figure out how to move the anti lock system over with the exploder conversion, but i will warn you that system is glitchy. just getting snow built up on a hub would cause the idiot light to come on for those sometimes. the same with mud puddles. not that either should be an issue on a mav.....
What I was trying to get across is to go down the road in a rear drum Maverick and pull out the parking brake enough to lock up the rear brakes and see how little stopping power they really have. Great for a high Jacker turn around but not that great for anything else.. BUT, if rear discs can be done for only $80 I am all for them. I am sure they make some difference. I just didn't think they would be worth say $300 or so difference. I would think they would be worth an $80 installation price easy enough clint
My 4 wheel disc Stallion stops as good as my 4 wheel disc 04 Bonneville. Real thing I noticed is the car does not nose dive on hard stops. It just sucks down to the ground and stops quick and smooth, even in the rain. Biggest difference I noticed was shutdown when drag racing.
That's roughly what it cost me. Using Frank's tech article to install Explorer rear discs, it can be done very economically with mostly junk yard parts. I probably wouldn't have done it if it took some fancy and expensive kit. Totally agree, that's the most noticeable difference. The car just "sits down in the road" as Frank put it.
OK, another mod I want to do to my 71 Maverick. I want her to sit down in the road when I jam on the brakes also. Ya'll have changed my mind. Not that hard to do anyway though so don't feel all bloated up about it. lol I doubt I'll go so far as rear discs on my 71 F100 though. Since I did the front disc swap I feel like it stops enough to through you through the windshield as it is. Discs mae a world of difference on that truck and then the front sway bar was the next best mod as far as drive ability goes clint
I went to 4 wheel disc afew months ago and the biggest differance between that and my previous disc/drum setup is as people have mentioned before, the car just sits down more another words theres alot less of that forward pull feeling you get from the disc/drum. took a day and a half (I was taking my time), salvage yard parts and some steel brake line from autozone and that was it. my conversion was more than $80 though for the simple fact I forgot to grab the rotors from the salvage yard and had to buy new ones... funny thing, before I bought the new ones I would go back to the yard periodicly and all the explorers were missing the rear disc parts expecially the rotors, after I bought new ones and installed them the salvage yard all of the sudden had alot of explorers with their rear brake parts and rotors... go figure... Anyway for me it is a noticable differance, I would do it all over again if need be.
