What disk brake upgrade for a 74 duster, not Wilwood

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Dave999 said:
None of them
but the suspicion is enough.

I lived in NSW for 5 years a long time ago now, i'm a white european. I had a number of cars all of which were none standard in one way or another and all of them might be considered of a style that marked me out as coming from a greek lebanese or italian background.

I got ticketed twice for having a towing hitch/ball on my car that obscured the licence plate. didn't matter that it was standard factory fit tow bar on a valiant with a standard licence plate in the correct position

they pulled me over, and maybe when they spoke to me i wasn't what they expected but they still ticketed me.
local cop pulled me twice in 2 weeks for the same thing.

country NSW/ACT boarder there is a big police collage Goulburn is the place

the freeway splits and has a huge central median with trees and bushes. ideal for cops to hide in with vehicle

driving that area at 2am one night, in a hurry, and on a deserted road out of nowhere a pickup truck (UTE) covered in hunting lights CB antennas etc past me at what must have been 120MPH

being an idiot i upped my speed to maybe 90 thinking, he's right, why hang about out here in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night still a good few hours from my home

I carried on for maybe 3 or 4 miles and he was long gone...
nothing in front nothing behind

At which point from a place where i assumed nothing behind me
the cop car switched on full head lights and blue flashers
that one was expensive
i tried to call them out bad move
i.e you are breaking the law by driving behind me with no lights on

yeah mate but i'm not the one whos getting points removed and a fine am I.

Don't mess with NSW police

so my experience has obviously coloured my view :)

dangerouse and standard no problem
My car passed its roadworthy with noisy wheel bearings and ripped engine mounts

modified and safe you are in some cases a target for bored cops

Or you were it may be totally different now :)

at the time sydney police had 2 pickup trucks with rubber bumpers specifically for pushing cars off the road that were parked in a position they didn't like....! which always had me baffled and amused :)

Dave
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Yea cops can be pain in the *** but honestly never had an issue and always had highly modified cars. Even know none of my cars are legal but left alone as white, my greek mates all sook if they drove my car be ticket in two minutes haha. Has become more of a nany state. Speed etc all most impossible to speed without getting a ticket
 
roccodart440 said:
Most states have inspection regs.

So once you make it through that inspection, couldn't you just do what you wanted?
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Outside of emissions testing and vin verification, none of the western states require a safety inspection. Having been in the Automotive repair industry previously, I’ve seen some horrendous repairs/modifications.
 
I like to think there is a subtle difference between the
"Keepers of the Peace"
and the
"Enforcers of the Law"

whichever of these mantra's your cops follow i think dictates how you are treated

once you tell a man he is to..... "Enforce"

Well..... that implies a level of power that means you don't have to worry about "The Peace"

We got some bad apples in the UK force but not a lot anymore. Most i have had to deal with have been reasonable i might not have liked the interaction BUT i was usually being an asshole and deserved everything i got.

i.e in hindsight i don't feel, badly done to, i can say they were doing their job... even if it pee-d me off at the time.

have a good weekend gents don't be speeding...... :)


dave
 
Dave999 said:
well the standard "Add disks to your A body with drums" set up is the later claw slider caliper disk set up used on later 70s US A/MFJ body cars

now that is just a slightly bigger version of what you get on a VJ valiant a Girling Lockheed style single piston caliper on a claw like bracket

you can buy the parts from rockauto

and when i say bigger i mean that the caliper is about 1/16 of an inch different so it won't fit onto an Aussie claw slider bracket used on the VJ VK.

i.e the VJ caliper is local and you can get some off an Aussie Val. id do that and bolt them to the US stub axle and use a US hub/rotor


other option would be second hand 4 pot calipers and rotors off say a 68 barracuda with disks but expensive and hard to find and rotors work on small inner bearing stubs as far as i know.... if your duster has disks currently it has a stub with an inner taper for a bigger inner hub bearing than an Aussie valiant uses.

you could fashion something or buy a kit that uses viper calipers... at least its all mopar

keep in mind that your upper ball joints are the bigger ones (don't fit aussie stubs)
if you already have disks on the car the stub axle you have has a wider taper for the inner hub bearing so Aussie rotors won't fit as they are small inner bearing rotors.
you could use Aussie calipers but you'd need US rotors

alternatively you can fit US stuff to an aussie stub, the caliper brackets and caliper will fit
but your need the inner bearings sleeves from Dr Diff to use US rotors and you'd need aussie upper arms and balljoints or you'd need to ream out the upper ball joint taper to use the 74 upper arm and balljoint currently on the car
.
I guess the first thing i should have asked is what are you upgrading from and what do you want to achieve

your modern hemi is probably lighter than what was there previously

and if it has disks already i'd look to get them working right, designed for narrow crossply equipped 70s car. with radial tyres, get some proper proportioning in place first and see how ya go

otherwise

Brakes :: Front

you could try Home - Hoppers Stoppers Custom Brake Upgrades

other option is sumitomo calipers off a landcruiser hilux 4 pot caliper with the same mounting as a valiant some messing to convert metric holes to imperial sized mounting bolt and you need imperial to metric brake pipes.. i can supply details


Dave
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FWIW, I upgraded the front discs in my '79 Aspen with the 11-7/8" discs from a '79 Cordoba. Both cars use the same front spindle, so for the sake of a caliper adapter from the Cordoba, you can go from the stock 1 0.5" discs to the 11-7/8". Both setups use the same caliper.
 
Hey Just a qick question, would the kesley 4pot calipers from a 72 duster fit onto a aussie valiant brake hub, say a vg-cl or a cm?
 
Well... the mounting of the caliper onto the stub axle is the same across the board
2 holes about 3.5 inches centre to centre for your caliper or its caliper bracket depending on vintage (same as Australia from VC-VE-CM

that leaves radial distance from the stub axle centre (rotor size) and offset of the rotor to worry about.

there is a good chance it would work and if it didn't, you'd probably be able to get a rotor combination to make it work either the subtle difference in Aussie Rotors for the last few years i.e the CM stuff with the late aluminium slider caliper and 10 inch drums at the back, compared with different offset of the the middle years VH-K, or a US rotor that could be made to fit
anything earlier is going to be 4 inch PCD if you source from Australia, regardless of if the offset or rotor size suits.


however for a 5 on 4.5 PCD hub and rotor from the US , you will find the inner hub bearing is too big for the Aussie stub axle and you would need the conversion sleeves supplied by Dr diff or some kinda none standard bearing (which you probably could find but get bearing and cone as a package)

'70 - '72 Mopar B/E-Body Disc Brake Spindle Sleaves

i.e sleeves created and sold to cater for a mismatch between B and E can be used on A body stubs and i know this because i asked DrDiff a few years back

Australia kept
small upper balljoints
small inner hub bearing
into the 4.5 inch PCD era

when in the US when they went to 4.5 inch PCD It looks like they put on a balljoint at the top with a fatter taper and a stub axle with a fatter bearing area for the inner bearing

Basically small balljoint big PCD is an Australia thing not a US thing

the 4 pot brakes were used on European imports of the barracuda in 68-69
and there is little or no difference between a stub axle off one of them, and an australian stub axle.
RHD Barracudas in the UK depended on parts from Australia and South Africa to stay on the road once US sourced RHD spares dried up.

I believe Australia was a customer for these RHD barracudas as well, i don't know about NZ , and id suspect that given that these were 68/69 cars that they would have small ball joint and small taper for the stub axle dunno what their PCD would be id suspect 4 inch

the 4 pot calipers where expensive and awkward to rebuild for many years
i think things have improved in recent years
i have never had a 4 pot caliper car, so the explanation above is based on what i know about stub axles rather than these specific calipers.

You could swap stub axle with brakes on it onto your car if you got the upper arm and balljoint as well.

however as i mentioned to the other guy its easier just to whack on a set of VJ calipers and rotors provided you buy your spares from someone who is focused on holden/ford you will avoid the Mopar tax i think the holdens used the same caliper

i usually use the bendix australia catalogue as a cross references so i can buy the pads by what holden called them... :)


Dave
 
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MidnightSwinger said:
Outside of emissions testing and vin verification, none of the western states require a safety inspection. Having been in the Automotive repair industry previously, I’ve seen some horrendous repairs/modifications.
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NYS has a safety and emissions inspections. Pre 1998 and diesel vehicles are safety only.
 
If you're willing to step up to 17 inch rims then you can use 13 inch rotors. I put 13 inch rotors with Viper calipers on my Duster. That setup worked really well.

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roccodart440 said:
So, when are you thinking of offering these to FABO members?
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I made a batch of them a few years back but they were very hard to sell so I stopped making them. I had to explain over and over how they worked, had people argue with me about them, told me they were too expensive, that they hadn't seen anyone else use them, that they didn't need them, etc. Decided it wasn't worth the hassle.
 
AndyF said:
I made a batch of them a few years back but they were very hard to sell so I stopped making them. I had to explain over and over how they worked, had people argue with me about them, told me they were too expensive, that they hadn't seen anyone else use them, that they didn't need them, etc. Decided it wasn't worth the hassle.
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I don’t get that. If someone doesn’t see the need or doesn’t want them, then keep your trap shut and don’t buy them. The “hard to sell” part is different, must be a small group that were interested, but the arguing? Completely unnecessary.
 
Oh I get a fair amount of arguing about my products from "old time Mopar guys". They tell me that "nobody needs a fancy timing cover", or "nobody needs to upgrade their alternator", Or "we never needed parts like that when I was driving my 440 dual carb Hemi back in the day". I hear it all the time, especially at swap meets or the track.

I don't usually pay much attention but if I have a slow moving product that people really ***** about then I just kill the product. The motor dollies were one product that I killed due to people constantly whining about them. I thought the dollies were a cool product. I used them all the time and everyone I know who bought dollies from me liked them and used them. But they were almost impossible to sell at swap meets or shows. People would say they just use an old tire to haul their spare motor or "all it takes is an old 2x4 to make a stand".

I had one guy tell me that he just stole a shopping cart from the grocery store to use as an engine dolly so he wasn't going to buy an engine dolly from me.
 
AndyF said:
Oh I get a fair amount of arguing about my products from "old time Mopar guys". They tell me that "nobody needs a fancy timing cover", or "nobody needs to upgrade their alternator", Or "we never needed parts like that when I was driving my 440 dual carb Hemi back in the day". I hear it all the time, especially at swap meets or the track.

I don't usually pay much attention but if I have a slow moving product that people really ***** about then I just kill the product. The motor dollies were one product that I killed due to people constantly whining about them. I thought the dollies were a cool product. I used them all the time and everyone I know who bought dollies from me liked them and used them. But they were almost impossible to sell at swap meets or shows. People would say they just use an old tire to haul their spare motor or "all it takes is an old 2x4 to make a stand".

I had one guy tell me that he just stole a shopping cart from the grocery store to use as an engine dolly so he wasn't going to buy an engine dolly from me.
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Hhaha worst thing about owning a Mopar is the Mopar crowd. Stuck in their ways, think if it doesnt have Cragars and original condition its for the tip. The Australian mopar guys the same was warned about them by my mates before purchasing my Duster haha
 
roccodart440 said:
out of curiosity, what did a set of those stands cost?
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I don't remember, probably $50 for the pair. It is a simple design, just two pieces of laser cut steel that are welded together. Bigger problem was how much it cost for shipping. I think shipping cost was as much or more than the stand cost.
 
AndyF said:
I don't remember, probably $50 for the pair. It is a simple design, just two pieces of laser cut steel that are welded together. Bigger problem was how much it cost for shipping. I think shipping cost was as much or more than the stand cost.
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Take my money...
 
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