At a minimum, a wheel senor at every corner, some way to have the reluctor rings on each wheel hub, an ABS computer, an ABS pump and a whole lot of custom plumbing. Other than that, it should be simple. Personally, I only feel the ABS kick in on my vehicles when I am in a hard turn and the inner front tire is crossing the painted "stop" line on the road. Other than that, they don't really offer me much and even then they don't really affect my driving.
I've never had ABS kick in other than driving in snow and ice in ND/MN winters. I assume you won't be doing that.
How do you get disk brakes not to lock up on a hard stop. ? Im looking into fiting my car here with disk. Is there a way to do it with hydra boost?
First of all, discs are harder to lock up than drums in my experience. Power brakes aren't always required on drum cars but disc are a lot stiffer pedal without power. Drum brakes are also self energizing on the leading shoe due to the rotation dragging the shoe into the drum. Disks are not. You have to keep pressing harder on disks to get more stopping power. When my 71 350 4sped was 4 wheel non-power drum, I could still lock them up. My 1970 GS S1 car with 4 wheel disc brakes and no prop valve will just barely lock the rears on a panic stop but it comes down so much faster than a 4 wheel drum car that it is scary. My 1971 GS 350-4spd car now has front discs with rear drums and no prop valve (going to put rear discs on eventually) and it will lock the rears if you panic stop them. A prop valve will cure it but it still stops way better than when it was 4 wheel drum.
Putting ABS/ESC on an old car is possible and has been done before; see this article as one example: http://www.hotrod.com/articles/hrdp-1108-abs-for-hot-rods/ As others have mentioned, it's a complicated, costly install. To answer your question regarding hydroboost - the hydroboost unit only provides brake boost (amplification of the pressure your foot puts on the pedal), usually in place of a vacuum brake booster when engine vacuum is not available. You can use a hydroboost with ABS; the ABS unit doesn't know or care where it's input pressure is coming from. However, vacuum boosters are generally preferred (when vacuum is available) because they offer better pedal feel, lighter weight, and are simpler to install.
Ahh forget boost, I have 4 wheele drum power brake. So if i start with front I may have to change my rims. Anybody have disc with rally wheele. The inner ring would need to fit over the rotor hub.
If your car doesn't face wet/winter driving conditions, a lot of the benefit of ABS won't be realized.
thats a good point Len. My Riv stays is the garage year round. And i dont drive it much in the winter in Sacramento.
I did my conversion to front disc, keeping the rear drum. I removed the center ring in ralley's (not all ralleys have the ring). The wheels are lug centric anyways. So not problems so far.
