I addressed my worn out rear brakes yesterday.
Off with the old
On with the new
The conversion was fairly painless. First i pulled the drum and backing plate off. From the front of the drum i used an air hammer and drove the studs out freeing the hub. Bearings and seals looked good. The rotors used in the conversion are 1973-1987 3/4 ton fronts found on Dana 44's and Corp 10 bolts. I lined up the new rotors to the hubs and rattled the wheel studs back in replacing any that looked ruff.
Next I bolted the DIY4x caliper brackets to the backing plate brackets on the 14 bolt positioning them 45* to the rear. Then i installed the new disk/hub assembly and torqued the spindle nuts.
Calipers used are also from 73-87 3/4 ton fronts. I used non ebrake calipers which there are two to choose from. The difference is the banjo bolts used for the hoses. From what i found 73-78's use SAE banjos and 79-87's use metric. I used 7/16" SAE here. Load the pads in the caliper and bolt them on the brackets using the supplied hardware.
I had one slight hiccup in the process here. One of the DIY brackets was bent too shallow by about 1/16" which ended up being enough to not allow the caliper to clear the mounting tabs and slide over the rotor. I made sure the piston was pressed all the way into the caliper but it still wouldn't fit. So I made a quick trip to the local alignment shop for shims. A 1/16" alignment shim behind the caliper bracket bolts brought the bracket into position for the caliper to properly fit over the rotor.
Lastly I installed my brake lines, bolted in the axles, bleed the brakes, and slapped the wheels back on.
Currently i am running a 1 ton brake booster/master cylinder combo and an aftermarket proportioning valve that is designed for both disk/drum and disk/disk combos. I may have some questions about this later today as there might be proportioning bugs to work out. I'll monitor the braking action as im running errands. I'll address that as i experience it and seek advise. All around though i hope the conversion performs as well as it looks.
