SN95 Disk Brake Kit Installed From CSRP

The good news is that my power disk brakes are now installed and working on the '66 although there was an issue with the brake lights not working with this CSRP kit. I resolved it recently in THIS BLOG POST. The bad news is that my power steering appears to have stopped working on my way to work this morning--the only steering part altered from the brake upgrade were the tie rods. I'll have to tackle that problem later.

I had picked up the Mustang from my mother-in-laws garage two night prior to the install so that I could drive it to work on Friday to get a feel for the old drum brakes one last time. It drove like a champ even though I was sitting in Friday traffic on my way home during the heat of the day in southern California. With the 24" radiator upgrade I don't think the water temp breached 190 degrees.

On Saturday morning I packed up the baby and drove over to my parents house where I have access to any tool that I could ever possibly need. My wife was worried about the baby driving in the Mustang  because of it's lack of nearly everything modern when it comes to automotive safety standards. I made sure to send her a picture when we arrived so that she knew the Mustang hadn't failed the baby.

I took out our child and passed him off to his Grammie since she would be watching him for the day while I worked on the car--he made the occasional visit outside to see what I was up to. I got the front of the car jacked up in the air, put some jack stands under the frame, and pulled the front tires off so that we could get started.

Upgrading From Drum to Disk

1. The first task was to pull off the entire front brake system. We decided to keep everything intact so all we had to do was unscrew the brake line from the master cylinder and remove the spindle from it's three points of contact:

• Upper control arm
• Lower control arm
• Tie rod.

All of them were secured with a cotter pin and castle nut. We also decided to unbolt the sway bar, and adjustable strut rod from the lower control arm so that there was a little more room to get the spindle off. Using a brass hammer we were able to knock off the pressure fitted studs and get the entire front brakes off. Fortunately the kit we were using from CSRP provided new spindles so we didn't need to break down every component of the drum brakes. Below you can see all of the bolts I had to remove (with the exception of the tie rod castle nut):

2. Next I mounted the new spindle onto the upper and lower control arms torquing down the castle nuts and installing the cotter pins.

3. This kit required new tie rods which had lager studs for the castle nut to spin on to. Before removing the old tie rods, I measured from the edge of the inner sleeve to the center of the stud. This would allow me to remove the old tie rod while installing the new tie rod with the same measurements to keep the same alignment.

• I greased the tie rod with the new zerk fitting supplied in the kit.

4. We realized that the new brake hose had a larger fitting than would work with the existing hard brake line from the master. My dad had to to buy a fitting to step down the threading size.

5. I put the strut rod, and sway bar bolts back through the lower control arm and tightened them.

6. We installed the foam pad on on the spindle, then the splash shield, then the retaining ring with the supplied bolts and lock-tight.

7. After packing the bearings and installing the inner bearing in the rotor, I slipped it onto the spindle, put on the outer bearing, washer, and nut.

• I torqued down the main nut, spun the rotor, backed off the nut, spun the rotor, tightened down the nut, spun the rotor, etc., etc.
• Once the bearings were seated I put on the nut cap, cotter pin, and the dust cap with a little bearing grease in it.

8. I mounted the caliper bracket to the spindle (2 bolts) and made sure to use lock-tight on the threads.

9. I dropped in the brakes pads, and then put the caliper over the top of the pads. 

10. We tightened the new brake hose to the caliper.

We moved over to the passenger side of the car and performed the same procedure as above. The real pain came when it was time to install the new power booster and master cylinder. I have the Mustang Steve clutch cable installed which didn't interfere with the power booster, but it did make for a tighter working space when it came to tightening the bolts.

Upgrading the Master Cylinder

1. My dad got under the dash on the driver's side to remove the brake pedal and brake light switch from the master cylinder push rod. 

2. I removed the lines from the current master to the distribution block mounted on the fender apron. 

3. I mounted the new power booster to the firewall (4 bolts) and installed the vacuum line off of the carburetor spacer plate.

4. Once we had the new push rod threaded on to the correct location and tightened down, my dad hooked up the brake light switch and tie rod to the brake pedal.

5. The new master cylinder was mounted to the booster (2 nuts) and now it came time to fit new lines from the master to the distribution block.

This is where I had to walk away from the project and head home because we were having friends over for dinner and I still have to shower. My dad let me take his truck home and I would bring it back the next morning. We pulled the master back off the booster so that we could get the right fittings on the new lines. The picture below is how I had to leave the car for the evening.

When I came back the next morning to drop off my dad's truck, I saw that he had fitted one of the brake lines from the master to the distribution block. I had purchased two 12" 3/8" lines from the local parts store, but he needed a line longer than 12" to travel from the front of the master (the rear brake reservoir) to the rear of the distribution block.

By the time I got back to their house after church, he had bent and installed the last brake line, but we still needed to bleed the brakes. We didn't install the proportioning valve that came with the kit because we couldn't find a proper plug to blank off the spot on the distribution block. Maybe we'll get to that another time.