A note about Cherokee disc brake swaps
I recently did this conversion on an original unmodified 1973 8.25 rear end housing.
All went really nice until I had a nasty little intermittent scraping sound that would come and go.
At first I thought the backing plate was too close to the rotor, so I got in there with a flat blade screwdriver and opened up the gap a bit (1/4 inch or so)
Still had the exact same intermittent metal to metal scraping sound, and even noticed a bit of metal dust on the wheel.
Found it.
In this picture a red arrow points to a ridge on the inside of the disc surrounding the emergency brake drum built into the disc.
This ridge was hitting the raised rib pointed out on the backing plate.
I took a 4 inch grinder to the ridge on the drum taking it down flat and that solved it.
Taking that ridge off has no affect on the E brake surface or shoes.
Just in case someone does this swap this might save them from the same head scratching.:D
Other than that the entire swap bolted up flawlessly with zero mods other than longer wheel studs to make up for the disc thickness.
I recently did this conversion on an original unmodified 1973 8.25 rear end housing.
All went really nice until I had a nasty little intermittent scraping sound that would come and go.
At first I thought the backing plate was too close to the rotor, so I got in there with a flat blade screwdriver and opened up the gap a bit (1/4 inch or so)
Still had the exact same intermittent metal to metal scraping sound, and even noticed a bit of metal dust on the wheel.
Found it.
In this picture a red arrow points to a ridge on the inside of the disc surrounding the emergency brake drum built into the disc.
This ridge was hitting the raised rib pointed out on the backing plate.
I took a 4 inch grinder to the ridge on the drum taking it down flat and that solved it.
Taking that ridge off has no affect on the E brake surface or shoes.
Just in case someone does this swap this might save them from the same head scratching.:D
Other than that the entire swap bolted up flawlessly with zero mods other than longer wheel studs to make up for the disc thickness.
