I have a 2001 1500 with rear rear drums and rear wheel ABS. Can I grab a rear disc axle from a junkyard? Will the proportioning valve work with that axle? Has anyone done this before?

 

I have an unrelated question for you. How did you do an extended cab to 4 door conversion? That is the one thing I don't like about my 96 is having to slide the seats to let my kids in the back. Thanks in advance.

 

HAha im curious now on both questions!

 

Proportioning valve, and possibly master cylinder will be different on 4 wheel disk vehicle, as compared to rear drum.

 

Grab the MC, proportioning valve, and rear parts from the boneyard as Hey You said.

You may need new soft lines in the rear too, and if you are doing the MC (i.e.- losing all the fluid) you may as well do the front soft lines too as you will probably need to bleed those after swapping the MC.

Other things to check:

Is the e-brake cable and attachments different at the rear?

Is the booster different (I would think not, but I am not sure)?

Do you need the whole axle, or just the brake components? Or is the axle type better / heavier duty on the donor?

This should be fairly straightforward, I would think.

 

Ha Ha! I love getting asked that question!! I was VERY lucky. I found a wrecked quad cab of the same year AND COLOR, and happend to have a large excavator to use as a crane. All the bolts are the same, and a 98 should have the same wiring harness. If I'm not mistaken, 99 was a shift year, but you should be able to swap your wires into the new cab.

As for the axle, does anyone know anything else?

 

Make sure the width is the same or it may look funny. And be certain to run the same gear ratios. I'm getting ready to do this for my truck with the 3/4 axles. I bought weld on brackets from ruffstuffhttp://www.ruffstuffspecialties.com/...pters-c-9.html, and got the rest of my stuff from the parts store. The guy here is pretty friandly and helpful, you may want to call him for some info. It may be cheaper and easier to use your existing rearend rather than swapping.

 

You may want to check on the proportioning valve design between the drum setup and disc setup. If they are the same valve, you can just replace the drum pintle valve with the disc pintle valve (from the donor truck) on the rear side of the prop valve. You definitely shouldn't need to swap the master cyl if your prop valve is correct.

Now I haven;t done this on the Dodge yet, but I have done it to four Jeeps. Might be worth looking into, or trying before swapping the entire prop valve and MC.

Ex: http://go.jeep-xj.info/HowtoPvalve.htm

 

With just the plate adapter, wouldn't I lose my e-brake and be illegal? Or does this system use different callipers? And I'll rather get a junk prop valve than risk tampering with the brakes....

 

Uh..but you're talking about doing a BRAKE DISC SWAP. You are tampering with the brakes.