This page for the people who have been considering the swap from rear drum brakes to the more effeciant rear disk. Now this is how I did it and you may find easier ways, but in no way shape or form do I take responsibilty for the work you do on your own vehicle. Any work is done at your own risk.
As you can see these are all the parts you will need to complete this conversion. MINUS the struts and trailing arms. In the picture are 2 rear calipers, 2 rear spindles *GT*, 2 E-brake cables, Brake lines for each caliper, and 2 rotors.
In this picture you can see that with what I received from the junk, I assembled everything out of the car, so when it was time to put in all I had was one big peice to bolt in. Now like I said before you might not get what I have in the photos! All you need are the key parts that were listed above. Also you can see the brake pads box and hardware box. The hardware box was for the springs that hold the pads apart like up front and for the silver clips that the pads ride along. There are not needed if your setup came with them, mine did not and I oppted to get them.
This is the starting picture of the convertion! Ugly drums!!!
Now before I go any further I want to discuss some of the "DO's" I did. If you are going to do this converstion you will need! 2 jack stands, a jack, of course tools, time and alot of of patients!! This is not for everyone and there will be times when you will run into a snag that will keep you haulted from your progress. What needs to be done to get the drums off the spindle is you have to take the drum off and undo the E-brake cable. This can be alittle tricky because even with the E-brake off, there is still alot of tension on it. After the cable is off, you will have to then remove the brake line that is running to the wheel cylinder in the drum. *NOTE*If you have never undone the brake line from the wheel cylinder there is a possibility snaping the line off. If you are not keeping the old drum brakes or any of their parts then there is nothing to worry about! You will be using different brake lines for the calipers any how.
Now once you have removed the brake line from the wheel cylinder all you have to do now is undo the four bolts that are holding the back part of the drum onto the spindle. AGAIN these may snap off but since you are using new spindles there is nothing to worry about. Once they are out you can now remove the drum assembly from the rear spindle. Once I had this done I then turned my attention to the rest of the "old" brake line! You will need to take the old drum brake line off from the car. When I say this, I mean where the brake line running from the Master cylinder to the rear brakes. Again this is important that you try not to brake or mung this up because even though you will not be using the old brake line, you will still need to have put the brake line for the calipers where the old line was! So be careful! After I got done the swaping of the brake line's I then took out the strut bolts that hold the strut assembly to the spindle! Not hard at all, although it may take alittle muscle and cursing to get them loose! Remember they take alot of pounding and absorb alot of stress from the road.
Okay in this picture you see the old spindle resting on a jack and the trailing arm still attached. Now this is where you might loose time on getting the conversion done! The through bolt that attaches the spindle to the rear suspension gets stuck in the spindle! You will have to bang the bolt out!! *NOTE* In the process of banging the bolt out you will mung up the end of the bolt and possible some of the threads! This is okay because there is enough of the threaded area to play with!!I found using a long 3/4 extension to be best when trying to get the bolt out, it fits fine in the hole where the through bolt goes! Also soaking it down with PB Blaster or some kind of penetraiting oil will help too!! Once you get the through bolt out you can remove the rear trailing arm off the spindle and remove the spindle
Okay I want everyone to pay attention to this picture!! That is where the through bolt went. And like I said before it is the biggest ASS to get out!! I had problems with it on my car and problems with it on Patricks car of NoVaPOC!
Okay this is that damn bolt that does not want to get of the the rear suspension arms!! Also you can see the rust spots where it was stuck, and the damage to the the threaded area of the bolt. I still had enough area that I cut the damaged part off and it worked fine. What you can't see is the 4 beer bottles in the back ground that me and my father drank trying to get this damn thing out!! Good luck!!
Now once you have removed both drum assemblies and through bolts and spindles its time to do the E-brake cables. You will have to remove this heat sheild to gain access to the E-brake "T" that the cables hook into.
Now once you have gotten that heat shield down and the cables off you can put the other E-brake cables in that are used for the calipers. *NOTE* There is another heat shield peice that runs around the gas tank but is not important. You can take it out but I managed to root it around there with out taking it out! ALSO since none of those bolts that hold the heat shield up have been ever loosened you might break some!! I broke two on patricks car. Just be careful. Run the new E-brake cables and reattach the heat sheilding.
Now you are almost done!! All that is left to do is to put in the GT spindles, calipers and brake lines if you haven't done that already! I found that if you have any anti-sieze that you should coat the through bolts before putting them back in. This will help in having them stick again. Reattach the trailing arms to the spindles and tighten. Do not forget to put the spindle nut on and tighten. Put on the rotor and attach the caliper, attach the brake line if not done already and the E-brake cable. It should look like these two pictures.
Now that you have everything together and bolted up, its time to bleed your brake system. You will have to bleed all four calipers to ensure that the air in the system has been purged!*NOTE* If you only bleed the rear two calipers you can end up with air trapped and inturn suffer from poor brakeing like Patricks car!
This is the final product with my old GT swirlies on. As you can tell its not very noticable with the rims on, but if you had drums like most of us do, its VERY noticable! The performance is 10x better then with the drums, you will immediately notice the stopping power! I myself am please with them and will do the install for other people at a nominal cost! I hope everyone got what they needed from this, and if there are any questions just direct them to me at www.probetalk.com my user name is "Jose18" or at locoforadidas@yahoo.com
A NOTE about patricks car! I had no problems with my car, but with patricks it was the fact that I was trying to get the install done as fast as possible because he had to leave the same day!! It was cold and we had an idiot walking around scaring the living day lights out of me! Ask patrick he will tell you!
On another NOTE I have found another way to do this install with out having to remove the through bolt on the rear suspension. If any of you have looked at the whole rear suspension you will see 4 body bolts holding it up against the body! If you remove those four you can just drop the entire suspension and bolt it up the other car. But that would probably cost more. I am not sure how much. Like I said any questions can be directed to the above places! I hope you enjoyed!
As you can see these are all the parts you will need to complete this conversion. MINUS the struts and trailing arms. In the picture are 2 rear calipers, 2 rear spindles *GT*, 2 E-brake cables, Brake lines for each caliper, and 2 rotors.
In this picture you can see that with what I received from the junk, I assembled everything out of the car, so when it was time to put in all I had was one big peice to bolt in. Now like I said before you might not get what I have in the photos! All you need are the key parts that were listed above. Also you can see the brake pads box and hardware box. The hardware box was for the springs that hold the pads apart like up front and for the silver clips that the pads ride along. There are not needed if your setup came with them, mine did not and I oppted to get them.
This is the starting picture of the convertion! Ugly drums!!!
Okay in this picture you see the old spindle resting on a jack and the trailing arm still attached. Now this is where you might loose time on getting the conversion done! The through bolt that attaches the spindle to the rear suspension gets stuck in the spindle! You will have to bang the bolt out!! *NOTE* In the process of banging the bolt out you will mung up the end of the bolt and possible some of the threads! This is okay because there is enough of the threaded area to play with!!I found using a long 3/4 extension to be best when trying to get the bolt out, it fits fine in the hole where the through bolt goes! Also soaking it down with PB Blaster or some kind of penetraiting oil will help too!! Once you get the through bolt out you can remove the rear trailing arm off the spindle and remove the spindle
Okay I want everyone to pay attention to this picture!! That is where the through bolt went. And like I said before it is the biggest ASS to get out!! I had problems with it on my car and problems with it on Patricks car of NoVaPOC!
Okay this is that damn bolt that does not want to get of the the rear suspension arms!! Also you can see the rust spots where it was stuck, and the damage to the the threaded area of the bolt. I still had enough area that I cut the damaged part off and it worked fine. What you can't see is the 4 beer bottles in the back ground that me and my father drank trying to get this damn thing out!! Good luck!!
