I've spent the last couple years putting this together, thought I'd share, this looks like a place it might fit in. It's my daily because it's all I have...other than my wife's Vanagon, which she can have all to herself.
Body: Original NW car, almost no rust, except where the water sits. One door and the tailgate have been resprayed.
Suspension: Doubled spring rates front/rear using AFCO 175lb coils in the front and some no-name mid-eye Mustang 195lb/in leafs in the rear. Well-greased poly bushings all the way around. KYB's 'cause that's all I could afford.
Brakes: Disc; '98-02 Ford CVPI front, '97 Explorer rear, manual master.
Wheels/Tires: Ford BBS 16x7 w/ well-used Bridgestone 225/50/16 Potenza's.
Exhaust: 2&1/2" single with a free 3" LOUDMaster.
Engine/Trans: '95 Jeep HO 4.0 w/AW4 hooked up to factory column shift.
Interior: Original, home to secret cat-fighting ring before I bought it.
Pics to follow.
Nice! Looking forward to this one.
Drive by at the end of the road, Bonneville Speed Weeks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rwilEa-k_4
Feel free to hit me up with any questions.
mndsm
MegaDork
2/19/14 4:26 p.m.
That is an excellent way to introduce oneself around here.
Nashco
UberDork
2/20/14 12:23 a.m.
It's ok, I guess, but it could really use some boost!
Welcome to the fold Sam. Be careful, you're treading deep in enabler territory. 
Bryce
In reply to Nashco:
Yeah, I think I like it here. The blower will happen...soon.
A Rambler wagon with an inline six. Firing on all cylinders!
You need one of these:
Very nice! Welcome to the party, you'll enjoy it here! I love budget builds, especially when they have mesh wheels! 
Fantastic! Looks perfectly executed to me.
4Msfam
Reader
2/20/14 9:19 a.m.
Nice! What did you use for the electronic ignition? Factory Jeep ecu? Do you have a detailed build thread somewhere? Great Rambler!
In reply to 4Msfam:Factory OBD1 Jeep Cherokee ECM and Trans controller. Re-used the harness and PDM too. I've never had an extremely detailed thread on the build, but I'll add more here as time permits.
More pics of the Crown Vic front brake swap. I've done a similar swap on a buddies '65 Riviera, which was a lot more work. That entailed re-drilled hubs and adapting the original drum backing plate pattern into a caliper mount. I always look for ways to use Ford calipers because the caliper floats inside of a threaded cage. Once you get the knuckle pattern, which can come from the original drum backing plate, and the caliper pattern, you can build a simple laser-cut flat plate to mount the caliper. It gets a bit more difficult when the two mounting planes don't measure up to a readily available A50 steel plate thickness.
I now look forward to picking up drum brake cars. AMC's of this era are especially fun, because they used a bolt-on spindle. I knocked the studs out, which hold the drum onto the hub, installed new longer studs, which I x-referenced to a 90's Ford van rear axle using Rockauto, and slid on the Vic rotor. Used a '98-02 setup because it has a good offset, a lot of the newer cars use a front wheel drive offset, which creates a lot of packaging issues on older cars. From there, I secured the rotor with a couple lug nuts, checked for interference to the control arms at lock-to-lock, and swapped the Ford brake lines side to side so I could hook them up to the original AMC hard lines with a metric to sae adapter from Oil Filter Services in SE Portland. The original master had the same bore and stroke as the Crown Vic, made sure there weren't any residual pressure valves in the master, these are used to keep the shoes close to the drums, and are bad juju with discs.
Oh, and being an engineer has taught me precisely two things when doing this kind of conversion; use the good E36 M3, make sure it's tight.
Original 9" Drum:
Laser Cut Caliper Mount:
Hub Installed:
Finished Product(Mocked Up):
Found that I needed 0.100" off the mounting surface of the caliper cage to center the caliper on the rotor. Since I'm working in gravel and my favorite tool is a dry piece of cardboard to lay on, I dropped the cages off with my buddy Jesse, who has a complete machine shop in his garage(that he used to build his own 4wd '69 Ford SuperVan with a ZF 5 speed, he was tired of getting stuck in playgrounds, it rains a lot in Oregon)
Gratuitous Machining Photos:
Another way I cut costs is in the cooling department, pricing for re-coring the original copper-brass was over $400. Buddy of mine who owns a shop found that an aluminum x-flow pos out of an 80's S10 was a little over $100. Even if it loses a few I'm ahead. Used junkyard Volvo mounts that hold/isolate the rad at the header. Ugly, but no issues in almost 2 years.
Upper Mount:
Welcome! You are going to fit in great around here.
Javelin
MegaDork
2/20/14 10:50 p.m.
That brake conversion is shear genius! The Ford caliper ought to be a huge improvement, even over my Javelin's Bendix caliper. You wouldn't be interested in selling a set of those brackets, would you?
Also, do you have any details of the rear disc swap?
