10" Drum Conversion
Rocco, are you saying that 10" spindles won't take the large ball joint? Also I recently picked this kit up ,do them pads look kinda small to you? Everyone seems to always want bigger rotors, would'nt it stand to reason bigger pads are better also? I do like the weight savings? I would estimate stock 73+ up pads are another 30% larger? ( Just a couple questions I've had on my mind) thanks
Not necessarily; bigger pads may be better or worse, depending; you spread the available force across a larger area, and thus reduce the pad pressure which gives you less braking force. But, this is compensated to some degree by the larger swept area; the end result depends on what direction the pad size is increased.
With a small pad, you can get a higher braking force on the car with the same pedal pressure, by just changing the compound to a higher coefficient of friction. The pads in this kit is the BP-10, which has a moderately high coefficient of friction, which I assume is how they get decent brake torque out of this.
A larger pad with larger rotors increases heat capacity of the brakes (and increase braking torque, all else being equal), but this is a trade off that may or may not be useful for the street, depending on how aggressive you are on the brakes; it will be good for the track. However, with 14" or 15" wheels, you are stuck with just so much rotor diameter. The heat dissipation out of a disc setup should certainly be better than the old, non-finned drums. For daily moderate-to-hard driving here in the Appalachians, that is a big deal. Fading drum brakes are pretty scary!!
Just as a pure guess, I would not expect as much life out of these pads as the pads in a stock Dodge disc system.