Below are pictures of the emergency brake system components in a 2000 ford crown victoria police interceptor.

Here is the driver's side e-brake backing plate and brake shoes with the axle removed



Leaving the caliper hanging by the flex hose like this is a bad service technique that can cause flex hose failures later on



Not only has the axle shaft been removed from this side of the rear axle assembly, but the wheel bearing and seal are also out.





Here is the other side of the car, this side does have the axle shaft removed but the wheel bearing and seal are there.











Here's the other side of the car again





You do not normally have to remove the carrier to pull out the axle shafts. But this car is having some repair work done to the differential side gears.









Here's the e-brake backing plate



And the e-brake backing plate on the other side



Here are the axle shafts



This axle shaft has a little bit of wear where the bearing normally rides



This axle shaft is in very good conidition in the wheel bearing area



Here are the rear brake rotors. These do not have cooling vanes like in the 2003+ cars.



Here are the rotors from the back. Normally, the parking brake shoes will ride inside the rotor hat.



Here's the carrier assembly from the rear axle











And a collection of various parts that had to be removed to pull out the carrier and the pinion gear









Here's a new wheel bearing seal to install



The 2L1Z-4215-EA differential side gear kit. This one is intended for "locker" carriers rather than "open" ones.









Here are the parts which you'd remove to pull out just the axles. To pull the axles:
-remove the lock bolt
-slide out the locking shaft
-remove the antilock brake sensors
-push the axles inwards
-slide out the c-clips
-the axles will then slide out of the axle tubes





Here's the driveshaft



The bearing caps



An identification tag. The "3L55" stands for 3.55 locker.





Here are the differential side gears again



Here's another picture of the differential pumpkin with the carrier and axles out





In this picture you can see where the watts linkage connacts to the differential. You can also see the hole where the pinion gear would normally be installed



The e-brake backing plate has scaly rust all over.



If you look closely, you can see a hole in the metal that isn't supposed to be there too.









Below are some pictures that chevyguy on www.crownvic.net took during insallation of a 3.55 locker rear axle assembly from a wrecked 2000 crown victoria police cruiser into hit 2001 civilian crownvic.

Here's the rear axle from the wrecked donor car at the boneyard. The axle assembly had been sitting unused for a couple years outside exposed to the elements, so the galvanized coating on the control arms has worn away allowing the underlying metal to rust.





Here are the axles showing the area that the wheel bearings would normally ride on







The e-brake backing plates on the junkyard rear axle assembly were bent from rough handling at the salvage yard, so they were removed









chevyguy wanted to reuse his existing e-brake backing plates, so he left the e-brake cables attached













Here are the messed up junkyard e-brake backing plate assemblies. Damaged e-brake backing plates seem to be a common issue at the salvage yard because the rims & tires are usually removed from cars when they arrive at the junkyard, leaving the cars sitting on the undercarriage metal parts.







Here's a closeup of the tools that you use to remove the watts rear linkage nut.



If you're shopping a used police cruiser rear axle assembly, pay close attention to this area. Sometimes, the stud breaks during aggressive driving, but it's almost never a problem in civilian use.



Normally, a rear axle assembly would be attached to these control arms.







Here's how the rear axle assembly looks from the side with the springs removed



And from the other side of the car





This is a 3.55 locker rear axle. You can tell by the s-spring in the middle that it's a locker



And if you rotate the gear over, you can find stampings to tell you it's a 3.55 ratio gear set









Here's the identification tag from the rear axle assembly







The hats on these new aftermarket brake rotors are powder coated to slow corrosion







Here's one of the new axles next to the old ones. OEM ford axles with antilock brake tone rings only came on cars with a factory installed antilock brake system. But aftermarket ones for cars without antilock brakes sometimes have the abs exciter rings on them.







Here's the rear axle assembly ready to slide the axle shafts in



And here's the rear axle assembly with the cover removed and the carrier rotated so that the lock shaft and lock bolt are accessible.