Here's the low down on the wheels/hubs/brakes swap.
Those wheels are stock '96-'97 Cobra, 17x8. I had to change the hubs to '99-up Cobra. I couldn't swing the added costs of full on Cobra 13" brakes during the swap but I wasn't about to bolt those big mags over the standard undersized Thunderbird brakes so I scrounged up a set of salvage yard '97 Thunderbird V8/Sport front brakes which are also installed on all Mark 8's. It gave me another inch of rotor size. I had all the rotors redrilled with a SN95 Mustang type 5 on 4.5" bolt pattern in between the existing 5 on 4.25" MN12 Thunderbird holes. The Mustang hubs have slightly larger hub-centric rings than the MN12 so all the MN12 rotors had to be bored out slightly to slide on them. I used MN12 rear retainers and Cobra fronts. The rear hubs look slightly different in the back but went on right and function identically. The Mustang front hub's ABS tone ring was slightly too far out board for the MN12 spindle's sensor reach. This was remedied easily, though carefully, with a large three jaw puller. I used the puller and a stopper plate to pull the tone rings as far in as there was hub diameter. This is how the Helms manual said to remove a damaged one for replacement but I only moved it out as far as necessary instead of all the way off. George Davenport's article on the subject in the March 2000 Chargin' Thunder was an invaluable reference though I did a few things differently.
