If you’ve been driving or racing a higher-powered late-model Mustang for any length of time, you’ve most likely encountered issues one of the weaker links in the drivetrain – the factory 8.8″ rearend. Of course, when beefed up, an 8.8″ rear can be a perfectly serviceable unit, but by the time you get done spending the coin on that you can get pretty close to what it would take to swap in a 9-inch housing and put good parts inside.

These days, 9-inch Ford housing swaps are only as far away as a phone call to your leading supplier of choice, but getting street-oriented braking systems for the 9-inch housing has not always been so easy. Thankfully, one of the leading innovators in the aftermarket braking industry, the team out at Baer Brakes, has assembled quite a lineup of systems to fit the Ford-style 9-inch housing end design.

There are currently five different designs they offer, from the opening-price-point Ironsport kit all the way up to the real-deal Extreme+ system, each supplying different options to help you make the correct braking decision for your Mustang rear-end swap.

The Ironsport kit is a basic, single-piston caliper that uses the same pad found on a ’94-04 Cobra, making replacements easy to come by. There are a pair of 11.625-inch directionally-vaned, slotted, and drilled zinc-washed rotors included in the package, along with the proper bracketry, hardware, braided hoses, and pads. The parking brake assembly is built into the caliper.

In the middle of the five systems sits the SS4+ rear brake package, which features a pair of whopping 13-inch rotors (which means you’re going to need some big wheels to clear them!) and billet, four-piston, two-piece calipers. The rotors in the SS4+ kit are a two-piece hat-and-rotor design and have an internal parking brake assembly.

And for those of you who simply need the biggest and best of everything, Baer offers their insane Extreme+ six-piston rear braking system.  The Extreme+ system runs with radial-mount, one-piece forged monoblock calipers that have been engineered with staggered piston sizes to minimize uneven pad wear. They are available with 14- or 15-inch rotors that have the same drum-in-hat style parking brake as the SS4+ system.

If you’re in the market for 9-inch brakes, check out the offerings Baer has at www.baer.com.