Accidentally building an LJ

I somehow took one single picture of working on the swaybar mounting yesterday. It’s welded, painted, and the bar with the arm brackets is reinstalled now. Next up is attempting to bend the arms.

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I’m sitting here deep in researching adapting Tesla electric parking brake calipers onto the back of this thing. There’s a thread going on Irate about it that got the gears grinding in my head. And this YouTube video:


How I use Tesla Parking Brakes in my Jeep!

I’m gonna wait for the guy on irate who ordered a set of calipers to share some measurements to be sure I can squeeze the actuator motors in. I’ll probably do something similar on my C10 at some point too.
 
I’m sitting here deep in researching adapting Tesla electric parking brake calipers onto the back of this thing. There’s a thread going on Irate about it that got the gears grinding in my head. And this YouTube video:


How I use Tesla Parking Brakes in my Jeep!

I’m gonna wait for the guy on irate who ordered a set of calipers to share some measurements to be sure I can squeeze the actuator motors in. I’ll probably do something similar on my C10 at some point too.
Brennan Metcalf has a rear brake kit that uses Ford Fusion calipers for flat fender jeeps. I remember talking to him about doing a kit for your typical one ton brake conversion. He said he had researched it and a F150 had a rear electric parking brake caliper that would take a full size vented rotor. I tried to talk him into making a kit but he was to busy.
 
That’s a cool idea. I’m going to use the UCF bracket that bolts in place of the factory parking brake bracket underneath and uses the cable to activate a remote Wilwood MC to lock the rear brakes. I’m just going to delete the factory parking brake on the 10.5.
 
Brennan Metcalf has a rear brake kit that uses Ford Fusion calipers for flat fender jeeps. I remember talking to him about doing a kit for your typical one ton brake conversion. He said he had researched it and a F150 had a rear electric parking brake caliper that would take a full size vented rotor. I tried to talk him into making a kit but he was to busy.

He’s weighed in on the irate thread with some info. I looked at the F150 stuff for my C10 and it’s an option for that truck still. If I remember correctly, the F150 used the same or very close rotor thickness to what’s on the floater 9” I have in the truck. And I think the piston area is only a tiny bit smaller than the GM D52 1/2 ton calipers that are commonly used in the off road world so they’re a solid option for sure. The C10 has a Tilton pedal assembly that I’ve not yet mounted or bought master cylinders for so it’s a nice blank slate starting point.

That’s a cool idea. I’m going to use the UCF bracket that bolts in place of the factory parking brake bracket underneath and uses the cable to activate a remote Wilwood MC to lock the rear brakes. I’m just going to delete the factory parking brake on the 10.5.
All of the parking brake stuff was missing from the TJ when I got it so I’d be starting from scratch to use that bracket. I did consider it for a bit though. I’d also like to build an aluminum center console in this at some point so I’d rather wire a switch than have to build around the e-brake handle.


I caved into my impatience and ordered the Tesla calipers last night along with a few of what I’m fairly certain are the right plugs to wire them.


irate thread on the electronic e-brake if anyone feels like reading it.

 
Got a few minutes to mess with this pile this afternoon so i made the bendy tool for the sway bar arms. Some 1” solid round bar, a piece of steel plate, and a little section of dom. I welded it together and tacked the upper part to my 20 ton press. I ended up bending them in 3 places the way Tony from TK1 told me he does it. It ended up working great and was even pretty easy to get the arms to match. Now I need to make shorter links to connect them to the axle as my guess for that was pretty far off.

I‘ve also managed to find time to get the Swag air/hydraulic stuff set up on my bender. Now I’ve just got to make a stand for it so I can use it. The steel to do it is laying in the floor so I’ll hopefully get that knocked out soon.

Tesla calipers are here too. I’m going to split them and make a 3/16” spacer between the halves to fit my 1.25” rotors. Wiring connectors, a dpdt rocker switch, self resetting breaker, and a reversing relay are sitting here to try and make something that works if I can get them to fit back there somewhere.

The only other thing that’s changed on this thing is that I ended up trading a kind of rough set of half door lowers for a set of full hard doors. I drove the Jeep to Colombia on Saturday in a monsoon with the full soft doors on it so I could stuff them in the back and drive home with the hard doors on. The passenger door is tweaked a little bit but it shouldn’t be too bad to get it back right. And they’re already black so I don’t have to mess with that.

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I’m sitting here deep in researching adapting Tesla electric parking brake calipers onto the back of this thing. There’s a thread going on Irate about it that got the gears grinding in my head. And this YouTube video:


How I use Tesla Parking Brakes in my Jeep!

I’m gonna wait for the guy on irate who ordered a set of calipers to share some measurements to be sure I can squeeze the actuator motors in. I’ll probably do something similar on my C10 at some point too.
I would love to add a parking brake to the Ghost. I thought about the Eldorado Calipers but have heard they were getting hard to source. I've got a lugnut kit on the D60 rear. I'll have to see if I can find some info on brackets.
 
I would love to add a parking brake to the Ghost. I thought about the Eldorado Calipers but have heard they were getting hard to source. I've got a lugnut kit on the D60 rear. I'll have to see if I can find some info on brackets.
apparently Lugnut has a new ebrake kit that doesnt use the eldorado calipers but has a mechanical ebrake. I am following along with all the electric brake work, although 1 caliper that is hydraulic & electric, and large enough doesnt seem to exist.
 
apparently Lugnut has a new ebrake kit that doesnt use the eldorado calipers but has a mechanical ebrake. I am following along with all the electric brake work, although 1 caliper that is hydraulic & electric, and large enough doesnt seem to exist.
Late model f150 stuff might be an answer to that. They’re real close in size to the GM D52 calipers that pretty much every rear disc conversion uses and have an electric e-brake built in.
They use a thinner rotor but there’s some stuff out there to fix that. The Irate thread has some good info on that. You’re pretty much locked into a custom caliper bracket to do that as far as I know though.

I would love to add a parking brake to the Ghost. I thought about the Eldorado Calipers but have heard they were getting hard to source. I've got a lugnut kit on the D60 rear. I'll have to see if I can find some info on brackets.
I don’t think there’s an off the shelf bracket out there yet. I’ve got a set of motobilt brackets sitting here to try out on my main calipers. Whatever the ones on my axle right now are, they’ve only got 4 position options for the calipers and 2 of those are on the bottom side of the axle tube. I’m hoping the motobilt stuff will give me a couple of options to be able to move the main calipers and hopefully open up some space to squeeze the Tesla e-brake stuff in. I’m planning on adding tabs to the motobilt brackets to hold them if I can find room to fit them.
 
apparently Lugnut has a new ebrake kit that doesnt use the eldorado calipers but has a mechanical ebrake. I am following along with all the electric brake work, although 1 caliper that is hydraulic & electric, and large enough doesnt seem to exist.
I wasn't aware of this. Going to go look up those lugnut calipers.
 
Late model f150 stuff might be an answer to that. They’re real close in size to the GM D52 calipers that pretty much every rear disc conversion uses and have an electric e-brake built in.
They use a thinner rotor but there’s some stuff out there to fix that. The Irate thread has some good info on that. You’re pretty much locked into a custom caliper bracket to do that as far as I know though.


I don’t think there’s an off the shelf bracket out there yet. I’ve got a set of motobilt brackets sitting here to try out on my main calipers. Whatever the ones on my axle right now are, they’ve only got 4 position options for the calipers and 2 of those are on the bottom side of the axle tube. I’m hoping the motobilt stuff will give me a couple of options to be able to move the main calipers and hopefully open up some space to squeeze the Tesla e-brake stuff in. I’m planning on adding tabs to the motobilt brackets to hold them if I can find room to fit them.

The f150 calipers are the same size piston as the small (jb6) eldorado calipers, but smaller than the larger (jb7) ones (2.497"). If someone is currently running a Chevy 1/2ton caliper (2.934") or 3/4 ton Chevy (3.146") it is a good bit smaller. I am currently running a Gm metric caliper (2.375") in the back, so its not too far off. I would like to upgrade to a larger rotor and caliper at some point, once I swap in power brakes.
 
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