You have a number of brake choices when building a custom axle or upgrading an old one. You can upgrade your existing equipment's components, or you can completely replace them. You can use retrofit pieces made to adapt an existing design to your application, or you can step up to a custom brake kit.
We've tried upgrading with factory-style stuff, and we've tried retrofitting existing brake kits where they were never meant to be. And nothing's really given us the impressive performance that a complete custom brake kit gives. One of the most important aspects of an aftermarket brake kit for a daily driver is being able to mimic the stock system's capabilities. There are many high-quality rear disc-brake kits on the market with no parking-brake provisions, but for our prerunner/daily driver, we needed a kit like Wilwood's Dynalite Pro Series rear-parking-brake kit with a drum brake inside the hat of the disc rotor. Keeping the parking brake/emergency brake feature of our stock braking system is integral for everyday driving and always a comforting backup plan as well.
The real beauties in Wilwood's kit have to be the Forged Dynalite (FDL) calipers. They feature four stainless steel pistons housed in either a polished, black, or red aluminum caliper. There is a bleeder on each corner of the FDL calipers since these are universal calipers (front or rear, left or right side). You will have to bleed each side of the caliper, using only the top (pointing toward the sky) bleeders to release the air in the system. | 
Packed with the FDL calipers are Wilwood's BP-10 high-performance brake pads. Their compound is said to give a fast response and carry a high resistance to brake fading. One thing they did not have was a lifetime warranty. We usually run away screaming from pads and rotors with lifetime warranties. It seems crazy to want a brake that doesn't wear out, as there is a direct correlation between brake wear and brake performance, no matter what compound of pad you're using. We'll take the ones that wear out in 5,000 miles, thanks very much. | 
The FDL calipers are designed to utilize a top-loaded brake pad, making removal of the caliper unnecessary when changing brake pads. The bottom of the caliper has two feet that hold the bottom of each pad while they are kept from slipping out the top with a retaining codder pin. |
The 12.19-inch-diameter rotors don't come drilled unless specifically ordered with a certain bolt pattern. Currie utilizes the Wilwood brake systems for a number of its custom axles and has made up rotor jigs to drill the correct bolt pattern into the rotor, depending on what the application is. The folks at Currie simply put the rotor in their drill press with the correct pattern and drill the holes. The one-piece iron rotors serve double duty, as their hats actually house the twin-shoe parking-brake system that the shoes brake against. | 
The backing plates and twin-shoe internal system bolt onto the housing of a semifloating axle using a standard four-bolt mounting pattern. | 
Before the plate is bolted in, you must slip the axleshaft in, loaded with the bearing and the retaining plate. |
Wilwood provides a retaining plate with its brake kit, but Currie uses a tapered bearing setup with most of its axles and makes its own much more robust retaining plate for the rigors of off-road. | 
Once the axle is slid in, there is an access hole that allows you to tighten the bolts holding the whole package into the housing. | 
The Wilwood Dynalite calipers mount directly onto the backing plates using two bolts. The brake line feeds directly into the middle of the caliper (under the sticker in this image). |
Currie uses the Lokar universal parking-brake cable kit that Wilwood suggests. It allows you to cut your lines to the needed length, so you can retain your factory parking/emergency brake lever or pedal. | 
The brakes did not take very long to put together. We think more time was spent putting new bearings on our axleshafts than actually building the brakes. Not only did we have some really nice calipers that would improve the rear braking system of our vehicle, but we were also able to retain the parking/emergency brake, and as a separated system unaffected if the disc's hydraulic pressure is lost. | |