Narrowing b-body axles
Maybe I'm old - slow and dumb but I just don't get the rear disc thing.
eye candy is all it is mate. the rears only do 20% of your stopping anyways. i got 150 plus thousand miles on my old chevy pickup. never replaced the rear pads ever. bought it new too.
i was going to do rear discs, till i figured out what it would cost. i a built up a set of 78 cordoba BBP 10x2.5" drum brakes with finned severe duty kelsey hayes drums, and going BBP 11.75 cordoba rotors, with 2.75" diameters piston calipers in front. this will work well, and is all stock parts.
i would love to do the rear discs, just dont have the cash, and a properly set up and operating set of rear drums will work just as well.
i think the only advantage with the rear discs is ease of maintenance, simplicity over drums, and lighter weight, less fade with multiple panic stops (not real world).
stopping power is still about 20%, and a rebuilt drum setup is way cheaper with all new parts, plus parking brake is a bolt on setup, where as with discs you have to figure out how to hook it up depending on the caliper you use.
i prefer the bolt on cheap upgrade, with no guesswork myself.
Dont forget you will need a disc / disc master cylinder, or an adjustable proportioning valve to set up the front to rear line pressures, otherwise you may hit the brakes hard one day and the car can swap ends. With the jeep setup id recommend using the jeep master cylinder, and proportioning valve, id also measure the jeeps front caliper piston diameters. If they are 2.50" diameter id use the jeep master cylinder providing you are using stock A body discs in front. My cordoba setup uses 2.75" pistons up front which meant i had to buy a master cylinder with a bigger bore for the fluid.
You need to remember this as a rear disc caliper requires more fluid than a drum wheel cylinder to.operate properly. The bore on a disc/disc master cylinder will b different than a disc/drum master cylinder.
i got a brand new pair of race car weld on rear brake caliper brackets for GM metric calipers they fit a 3" axle tube. want $22.00 plus the ride. these will fit with the GM sliding pin caliper with integral parking brake.
just my .02 and some facts from my own research.
matt
