Disc Brake Conversion, Part 4 - Back To The Known - 06/25/2006

Finally all of the master plan is coming together. The vacuum assisted master cylinder is in and the calipers and rotors are ready to go. All that is left is to install them!



Rotor is ready to go! It's been sitting outside since being rebuilt so it has a healthy dose of pepper tree flowers and spider webs on it. Easy to remove.



Passenger side drum stands last...



The tie rod boot wore out. Replacements are generic.



Drum assembly has been removed! It's quite heavy (how heavy is it!?).



The empty spot. All three bolts were 3/4, unlike the A-body where every bolt requires a different size wrench.



Everyone says drums weigh less than discs and that means disc brakes suck for performance. How much does a drum setup weigh? 45lbs according to the scale...



...and a complete rotor setup weighs 50lbs. A whopping 10lbs extra is added to the front end of the car by going to disc brakes. That extra 10lbs can't possibly make that much difference to your weekend warrior racer, but what do I know?



Passenger side rotor is installed.



Driver's side drum is removed. No boot damage here.



Driver's side hose is installed. Funny story here, Supposedly disc brakes used a different mounting bracket. The '69 donor car definitely uses a different bracket than the '67 does. So we got them from the Arizona donor. Time flies by and the old hoses (with bracket still attached) disappear like magic. We had one bracket (used for reference and was stuck in the toolbox with the unique Pontiac parts) but we couldn't find the other. Steve and I looked for almost an hour and a half for that other bracket. We decided to not worry about it. Then we look at the '69 bracket vs. the '67 one and there is no way the '69 bracket would work anyway. The '69 bracket only has a metal tab added in place of a circle to hold the hose in place. Once it's tabbed in and tightened down, it doesn't move. So we wasted all that time looking for a bracket we didn't even need...



Another boot was located in the used suspension parts. This will help tide us over for the time being.



New(er) boot is installed.



Checking for binding of the hose. Don't want that to happen during a turn and shorten the life of my $50 hose...



Passenger side hose is checked as well.



Driver's side is completely done!

This was a quick day compared to yesterday. The whole process took only 2.5 hours with a 1.5 hour break for hunting down a non-needed part. The brakes are much improved over the power drums and lightyears beyond what they were with the manual drums. The '69 donor car was a 4-door Catalina and had a hold-back valve and a different proportioning valve. Neither were installed right away. I don't know if they need to be or not... The brakes work quite decently with the existing 1967 parts.

Back to '67 Catalina

Last updated June 25th, 2006