So, this past weekend I had planned on fixing my brakes and changing out a buncha stuff (rotors, pads, bearings, etc). Nothing too hard, right? Noooooo, a f'ing hassle insued the rest of the day after I made, I dunno, 5 trips to one parts store and 2 trips to another parts store having no luck finding the right size parts (4 cyl rotor fit on the axle fine but was waaay smaller than the stock one currently on the car). Tried to frankenstein 4 cyl w/ 5.0 brake parts only to come up short.

Anyway, I was putting my worn front brakes back on at the shop when a friend of ours pulls up (we were closed). I explained to him what had been going on and why I was putting my stock stuff back on. He says back to me, "dude, maybe you got the police edition."

Sooooo... I did some research. I read through the SSP Mustang site to find out how to see if my fox is an SSP/Police Package Mustang. Well, according to my VIN, it sure enough is. I have yet to check buck tags or search for build sheets, but my VIN so far matches what should be printed on SSP Mustang VINs.

What I'm confused about is that my fox is a hatch. According to the SSP Mustang site, mine should be a coupe. There are a few things that don't add up on my car, I'm getting more and more curious to find out more about it. I suppose a CarFax is in order for this thing.

 

+2
However, I am not sure what brakes the pre-86, 6 cylinder stangs had? Maybe someone got there first and done a little Frankenstein project?

 

+1 to the Frankenstein Install, there was no brake difference in the SSP's and the Stock Mustangs. They were specific to the year they were made.

 

The rotors look like they are the original equipment on the car, very very worn and have the Ford engraving on the inside of them. Calipers, not sure. I'm going to go back to the shop and do some diggin around and comparisons with some stock fox parts we have lying around the shop.

At this point in time, I'm not sure if the current 302 powerplant is the original motor. My car has bondo work on the roof and if you look closely enough you can see the paint mismatching near near the rear quarter windows. We thought it was originally a car that had a sunroof or someone tried to install a sunroof in it and failed.

Is it possible someone switched around VINs on the car?

 

disregard that last question, I'm a moron. Still looking into the history of the car and some of the numbers from the door sticker.

About the brakes, first I bought all parts for an 88 lx 5.0, but the inner wheel bearing is too small for the spindle. So, I then tried 4 cyl LX inners and they fit on the spindle fine. The problem with that are the 4 cyl rotors are too small, way smaller than the rotors that are on the car now. So this means the calipers/pads won't be fit on the 4 cyl. rotors properly. After this, I tried to stick the 4 cyl. bearings in the 5.0 rotor but they are too small for 'em, slide right through.