What is my best plan of action to improve 94 ranger brakes?

[lucaswolfgang814]

I have a 94 2wd 4.0l 5 speed ranger. I am going to use it to tow my bass boat and trailer and am concerned about braking. What would be the most cost effective way to improve the braking system?

 

[tinman_72]

95-97 front brake swap and 10" drums in the rear if you don't already have 'em is a pretty easy swap. Or swap to an Explorer rear end with disc brakes.
You used to be able to buy brackets from someone on this forum that would let you mount larger discs in the front, but I think those are no longer available.

 

[Shadowrider6661]

Welcome to the club.

 

[MikeG]

Trailer brakes.... after all, that is where most of with weight of the boat and trailer are. On the trailer axle.

 

[Dirtman]

I have a 94 2wd 4.0l 5 speed ranger. I am going to use it to tow my bass boat and trailer and am concerned about braking. What would be the most cost effective way to improve the braking system?

What Mike said. Trailer needs brakes. It's law over a certain weight anyway but on a light truck like a ranger, even a small trailer needs brakes. They simply were never designed with towing much in mind.

On the truck itself, use quality rotors and you can get some higher grade pads like EBC on the front. On the back you can swap the drums to a slightly larger size but I have my doubts how much of a difference that makes. Keeping them lubed and properly adjusted is the key. Disc rear swap is an option but not cheap.

 

[fastpakr]

The larger drums would certainly provide an improvement in capacity (just in their ability to vent more heat). But for sure - if the issue is related to trailer towing, get trailer brakes.

 

[Guanfy]

Another option for the rear is to convert to disc. You can use Mustang rear disc brakes and with a little work get them mounted and working. That's what I did. Also +1 for the 95-97 front brake upgrade. Much better and much more variety in pads and availability of parts over the single piston '94 brakes.

 

[gw33gp]

I have towed my race car many miles all over the country with both my 89 and 02 Rangers. I think my 02 brakes came from the factory with less adequate brakes than my 89. I upgraded both with better friction pads and shoes to improve braking that I feel was more than satisfactory for towing with trailer brakes.

I don't remember what I used on the 89, but on my 02 I went to Raybestos Super Stop friction material for both the front pads and rear shoes when I needed new front pads at around 50K miles. I was very happy with the improved performance and planned to continue using them. After about another 60K miles I replaced the pads and was happy to see they wore a little longer than the stock pads.

The next time it needed new pads, I discovered Raybestos no longer had Super Stop pads available for my Ranger. I did some extensive research of reviews online and decided on Akebono brake pads. I found they were just as good if not better the Super Stops but they had even longer wear life. Neither pads were hard on the rotors. I bought a spare set of rotors when I did the first brake job and I am still using those same rotors with almost 260k miles on the truck with resurfacing and alternating them each time I change pads.

I am still running the same Raybestos Super Stop rear shoes that I installed at 50K miles and they have many miles left on them.

The advice to run trailer brake should be taken seriously. I towed for a couple years with my 89 without trailer brakes and had to be very cautious and be 100% alert at all times to make sure I could get stopped in time when needed. Being a ex-big rig driver, that was not difficult for me to do but was marginally safe. When I could afford to install a new trailer axle with brakes, I did it and was so happy I did.

 

[don4331]

Another option for the rear is to convert to disc. You can use Mustang rear disc brakes and with a little work get them mounted and working. That's what I did. Also +1 for the 95-97 front brake upgrade. Much better and much more variety in pads and availability of parts over the single piston '94 brakes.

The only advantage Mustang rear brakes have is they are usually better set up than drum brakes. And if the drums weren't doing anything because they weren't set up right, discs seem a lot better.

For the cases below, I will use 1,000 psi for front brake pressure (reasonable value for disc, and easy number to work with); Rear brake pressure is lower value as per the 2000 Ranger Tech specs document page 8 which gives figure of 400psi lower value out of Prop valve, so 600 psi. All values are per wheel.

Choices:
Front
'94 Ranger front brakes: 10.28" diameter rotor, 66mm single piston caliper * bunch of engineering math ~20,400 in lbs of braking force
'95-97 Ranger front brakes: 10.28" diameter rotor, 46mm twin piston caliper ~21,800 in lbs of braking force - about 7% additional braking force from '94 baseline
Hybrid 1: 11.28" diameter rotor from '98+ 2wd Ranger, 46mm twin piston caliper + spacer ~24,400 in lbs of braking force - about 20% additional braking force from '94 baseline
Hybrid 2: 12" diameter rotor from '01-05+ 2wd Explorer Sport Trac, 51mm twin piston caliper, again from Sport Trac + spacer ~31,600 in lbs of braking force - about 55% additional breaking force from '94 baseline!!

Due to liability reasons, no one will sell you a spacer, but I have the dimensions somewhere. There may be issues with '94-97 rims fitting on '98+ hubs as the hub register increased from 2.5" to 2.77"

Rear
'94 Ranger small rear brakes: 9" diameter rotor, 21 mm dual piston cylinder, little different engineering math as drums ~7,000 in lbs of braking force
'94 Ranger large rear brakes: 10" diameter rotor, 21 mm dual piston cylinder ~7,800 in lbs of braking force - about 11% additional braking force from '94 small brake baseline
'95-00 Explorer rear brakes: 11.21" diameter rotor, 48mm single piston caliper ~7,850 in lbs of braking force - about 12% additional braking force from '94 small brake baseline
'10-11 Ranger rear brakes: 11.65" diameter rotor, 48mm single piston caliper ~8,200 in lbs of braking force - about 17% additional braking force from '94 small brake baseline
'99-04 Mustang rear brakes: 10.50" diameter rotor, 38mm single piston caliper ~4,750 in lbs of braking force - about 32% less braking force from '94 small brake baseline. Ya, I was disappointed after I had done it too. But it had bling for the red 4x2 RC flareside.

So the best braked RBV (best fronts, best rears) would have an additional ~12,500 in lbs in braking of baseline '94.

Adding trailer brakes, assuming single axle, 10" drums and surge brakes (electric brakes and boat trailers don't often play nice in sandbox together) can add up to ~13,000 in lbs additional braking. And they provide a whole extra set of brakes to dissipate heat into when maintaining speed down the hill to the lake.