15" Wheel, Flanged Rear Axle, Disc Brakes. How?

Thought I was being clever, did all my research and determined rotors off a Dodge Ram 1500 were the correct bolt pattern and had a large enough center for the flange to fit in. Went to pick n pull and bought rotors and calipers and they are the correct bolt pattern, flange fits in rotor but guess what I didn't think about? My calipers don't fit in the wheel .

Here's the pics of how close it is.

Rotor fits in the wheel


Flange fits in the rotor


But this is how far off I am from fitting the caliper


Trying to think of all my options to make it work.

• I could turn down the rotor so the caliper rides lower but the pads probably wouldn't sit right on the smaller rotor.
• I could turn down the flange so it fits inside a smaller rotor but it doesn't look like it can be turned down very much. Although it was really close to fitting inside my D30 rotors.
• I could grind a bunch off the caliper, it's really fat on top, but that's a lot of grinding.
• Maybe I can find smaller calipers, these are huge.

Any ideas?

 

I ground the heck out of my calipers. They still have plenty of metal but they really lost some weight. That was after installing 1 inch wheel spacers too, but I have the wide Renegade 1 wheels.

 

So you got rotors off a modern truck? You have to remember to stay with disk brakes from the 70's or very early 80's when trucks still used 15" wheels.

 

I used the same setup on my rear as for the front D30 chevy/jeep setup

 

How about going to 16" wheels? Or, still not enough room?

 

That's why I did the Geo Tracker conversion, but won't work for 15" rims either. 16" barely clears.

 

I don't know if he still has the brackets but Richard from R&P Customs had units that used S-10/Camaro calipers that would fit modern 15" wheels.

 

I know you're building a flanged axle, but.........FF with D30 discs. No reason to do this twice.

 

Yeh I hear you, you are probably right . Everybody's FF's are coming loose and breaking spindle studs tho .

The flange is more my issue than the 15" rims, well... I guess either is the issue. It's hard to find a rotor that the flanged axle will fit into. Do the older trucks have large enough openings in the rotors for a flanged axle?

 

Yep off a modern day Dodge.

I am making my own weld on brackets so not too worried about finding those, if the S10/Camaro calipers are small I may look at those. My D44 has the Big Ford bearing flange, and a drain plug which is weird. I'm assuming the drain plug will drag across a rock and I'll lose all my fluid. Anyway I think I can find smaller calipers, these are huge. If I find a smaller caliper I can probably massage it to fit... maybe. It's not too far off.

 

Your rear is a flanged axle? Wait, you have a FF. That would totally work, well... obviously

 

I mounted my rotors on my 3B on the inside of the flange. I pressed my wheel studs through the CJ rotors, then through the axle flange. This process won't limit your rotor size.

 

Hmm, not so much original... sorry.

 

Does that make them more exposed to the rocks, I guess they are still down in there pretty far. What's the downside? I'm seriously thinking about this.

 

I'll get a pic tomorrow. The 'bearing plate bolts' access hole in the axle flange had to be followed through into the rotor, and the downside is that you have to pull your axle to swap rotors, but otherwise it works fine.

 

Makes sense, so easy to pull these axles tho.