Liberty Rear Disk Brakes for A-Body

aeonmcallister said

Can someone who has these parts take a measurement of the stock thickness?

*********

I have an A body 8-3/4 with resplined C body axles in my 68. 10" x 2-1/2" BBP drums.
I'm happy with what I have but always interested in reducing weight and improving performance. If I come across the Liberty parts I may check it out.

Stock is .25" so you taking it from quarter inch thick to .10 which is equivalent to 12 gauge which is what the drum backing plates are pressed from.

Click to expand...

The stock backing plates are 11 gauge, .1196" thick.

They were also designed to be 11 gauge. The caliper brackets for the Liberty brakes were designed to be ~1/4". There is some kind of reason for that, because if the factory could have cut the amount of material in half they would have to save money.

Now, that reason may not just be the strength of the bracket, but we don't know that. Typically factory parts have a large margin of safety built in, but cutting the bracket thickness by more than half is very significant. Like I said before, maybe it's fine. But unless you're doing an analysis on the strength of those brackets it's all just speculation. Brakes are kinda important, and that's a fair amount of speculation.