YES, 'tis me. You are right, Ron, I lurk and then respond.
On the brake issues, Stainless Steel Brakes has not revised their kit
yet. The bleeder valves are near the top of the rear calipers, but on
the leading front corner, this puts them below the highest point, not
good for bleeding your brakes. Their fix, put a bleeder screw as part
of the screw for the banjo fitting! They also don't tell you that
unless you are running the thin stock wheels, you will have to replace
the wheel studs for a bit longer ones unless you feel like trying your
luck with your lug nuts only going on 1.5 turns!!
Also - you need to put in a brake proportioning valve in line. The
proper way to do the brakes are to have the front brakes with more
muscle than the rears, otherwise you lock up the rears. SSBC says to
remove the plunger in the ABS valving. WRONG!!!! Your fronts should be
at least 1 inch larger rotor diameter to have the proper proportioning,
or put in a proportioning valve or do what they did to the Viper, put a
smaller caliper on the rear.
All of the other Dodge/Chrylser/Plymouth/Jeep kits have the same
problems, the brakes are mushy afterwards and stopping distance actually
increases!! If you want the appearance of rear discs, put on the fake
ones. Otherwise, there is nothing else out there. Market is not big
enough and nobody wants to pay $4000 for a rear disc conversion package
that owns a Dakota.
When I did the Viper brake package on my Dak, it was not easy and it was
a real pain in the a$$/wallet. For me to put the truck to stock brakes
again, it would be easy, just swap stock spindles and brake parts back
on the front and put the stock drums back onthe rear. A lot easier than
putting it together!!
I would not buy the SSBC kits for the Dakota. Not worth the money and
the headache. If you do buy it, then keep an extra few hundred around
to fix the other problems with the kit!
Jim
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Jun 20 2003 - 12:03:21 EDT