I called Wilwood to order a front disc brake kit for my 34" Ford gasser and was told they do not offer one with a 5 1/2" bolt circle. Right now I have early Ford hubs w/ Buick drums & 39" Lincoln brakes and a nice pair of Ansen Sprint alum. slots which I hate to give up because of the bolt pattern and I don't want to re drill them. I know I can get the Speedway kit with the heavy GM calipers but that's not what I want. Looking at the photos of the Wilwood hubs it doesn't look like there would be enough meat to re drill them either. So...anybody got know of a combination that will work or am I stuck with getting another set of rims? Thanks, Art
Art, I would start looking at some Ford pickup rotors or newer Dodge Ram rotors since they're the right bolt pattern. You can likely get Wilwood calipers that would work with them. You will probably have to fabricate some brackets for the calipers.
SoCal offers a Wilwood calipered front disc kit with hubs that can be changed from 4-1/2, 4-3/4 or 5 -1/2" bolt circles.
Newer Dodge rotors are hat style rotors.. They slide onto the hub not part of it like early trucks where the hub/rotor was one piece. https://www.oreillyauto.com/detail/...-1500?fitAttr_10039=Front&q=brake+rotor&pos=1 on second thought that maybe a idear.. Make a caliper bracket to fit the old spindle and hold the dodge caliper? Slide the rotor over hub and utilize stock bearing in the original hub.
All of the kits that I have looked into move the wheel mounting surface out about 5/8 an inch per side also . The GM calibers are heavy heavy stuff , the work well but not so good for the power to weight ratio
You can use the stock hub with a Geo Tracker rotor mounted on the back side of the rotor. This is an unvented rotor about 3/8" thick. You would need to do some machine work to the hub to center the rotor. Or you can use an 1995 F150 rotor mounted to the back side of the hub, similar machine work to the other one. Vented rotor 1" thick 11.71" diameter. You do you on the caliper make and bracket. Wilwood does make an aluminum replacement for a GM caliper https://www.wilwood.com/brakekits/BrakeKitListFront?mincatdesc=D52 Front Caliper Kit
ECI Shows them, but with big calipers. You probably know that. http://www.ecihotrodbrakes.com/early_ford_discbrake_conversions.html FORD (5-1/2) Bolt Circle - uses 73-93 Ford F100/F150 (2WD) rotors with 71-79 GM big car calipers. EC-730 37-48 pass. car and 37-47 1/2 ton P/U - Basic Kit $ 175.00 EC-730CK - Complete Kit $ 450.00
Quite a few possibilities if you dig deep, mostly Dodge and Chevy. Listed here as 5 x 139.7mm (5 x 5.5") : https://www.bbwheelsonline.com/your-bolt-pattern/
what's wrong with drum brakes ? You can only put so much braking power on the front with the skinny tires anyway. You can upgrade to rear discs if you don't already have them. My gasser stopped fine with 4 wheel drums running in the 9's in the 1/4 and 6 flat in the 1/8 th on some pretty sketchy tracks in the south. 10x2 inch in the front and 11x2 1/2 in the back.
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