I am going to look at a 9" rear out of a 78 Versailles later today. He has the disc brakes, and says they are rusted up. What do I look for to know if they are useful at all? Thanks in advance!
I assume that any caliper thats been open to the atmosphere for a while needs replacing. Thats a given for me in the trade.
I should have said - a list would be great. Im not familiar with disc brake setups, especially from a car I had never heard of before Sooooo - what about other things also? rotors? or do I just scrap the whole setup if its looking pretty rough?
I have owned my Versailles rear for 20+ years now and I'm not sure if some of the replacement parts are available anymore. The calipers are important if you want to retain a parking brake as it is built into the caliper If the calipers are still bolted up, the caliper bolt on frame will be there as will the caliper mounting hardware The rotors are different from left or right due to the direction of the cooling fins - I know years ago, you could only buy 1 side but maybe the rotors will clean up or could be cut
The first thing I would look at is a website and an auto parts store to see what is available. If you can't get parts for it...no need to even go look at it.
the parts are tricky to find, but they are available: calipers can be found remanufactured or rebuilt with widely available rebuild kits. start at rockauto.com rotors are available, even on ebay same goes for pads, rockauto or ebay parking brake cables are available center hose is the same as maverick side flex hoses are tricky - a company named brake hoses unlimited sells them on ebay, though. that's the only source left, but he manufactures them himself, either rubber or braided. most important is that all the stock parts for the parking brake are there: levers on the calipers, mounts for the brake cable on the u-bolts. these are impossible to find otherwise. i went through the painful process of rebuilding such a thing over here in europe...
If all else fails, you can always convert a Versailles rear to drums. The housing itself is the same width as your Maverick rear. You will need to buy axles though as the drum axles will be shorter, but that will be a good excuse to upgrade the rear to 31 spine axles and differential.
It looks like my comments will come too late, but I will express my concerns anyway. Some 20 years ago they were great for their disc brakes, but today they are usually very expensive, hard to find parts and usually the pumpkin is filled with 2:73's or some small number highway gear and last is that they very seldom came with positraction. For the amount of money you are going to have to spend refurbishing it just find a normal 9" and put a disc brake conversion on it..........you will come out with a better working setup and the price will probably be lower. Just my opinion after doing a number of these, the last one went in my 66 Mustang GT. With that said, if the guy only wants $100/200 bucks it may or may not be a good deal..............IMHO
i would get the rear end if its less than $200. if the brakes have any problems then i would just get newer disk brake kit for the rear end. currie enterprises has some 90s mustang based disk brake kits that work really nice and are alot lighter than the lincon ones. the other nice thing about that rear is that it will bolt into your car with out any fabrication and is not much wider than stock.
