Small bolt pattern disc upgrade

Dana67Dart said
Last thing I'll say about keeping the stock parts. A bunch of engineers worked out the calculations for the stopping power of the front brakes and the rear brakes and designed the correct portioning valves to get the best stopping distance in the safest manner. Can aftermarket or Frankensteined parts do a better job ... maybe, but there is a lot of trial and error and maybe extra parts and in the end who knows!

Yeah, but keep in mind that those engineers worked out the calculations figuring that the tires on the car would be a set of rock hard bias ply's that had a tread width of like 6". And they did it in the 70's, when the available technology was completely different.

The logic that "factory engineers designed it so it must be better" doesn't hold up at all. That was over 45 years ago. There's all kinds of things the factory engineers totally dropped the ball on if you're talking about comparing original parts to modern aftermarket parts.

I like the 73+ disks, they do work pretty well. I think that for the way most of these cars are used nowadays they're plenty good enough. In fact they worked well enough that Chrysler used the same exact brakes all the way up until 1989 on some models, on cars that were heavier than the A-bodies ever were. So that particular design actually held up pretty darn well. But that's just this particular case. If you said that the factory engineers did the calculations and found that a 100 lb/in torsion bar was a good idea- so it must be a good idea, I'd tell you the factory engineers totally pooched it on that one, because they did. That wasn't even that great in the '70's with bias plys, and it's a total mess with radials, even period correct stuff like BFG T/A's. So in that case referring back to the factory calculations is a terrible idea.