i am shopping for the front disc conversion on my 65.some vendors say you must use 15" wheels,and some dont mention it.are the ones that dont mention it clueless or can you go 14"?wheels will cost half of the kit,on a good day!
I'll share with you what I know. The approach that uses GM metric calipers and 10.5 inch disc installed on the modified hub from your skylark's front drum brakes, fits. Its cozy, but there is room all around the caliper. You can see the caliper in the upper right opening of the 14 inch wheel. I had concerns about the same thing. I wanted discs brakes, but I didn't want to buy 15 inch wheels in order to do so.
Curious about the 10.5 inch disc and the metric calipers, what cars can they be found on, or how much are the parts from the local parts store? What machine work didja have to do to your steering hub/knuckles? Also, does this setup change the width between the front tires (move them in or out) at all?
The parts are readily available. The rotors were used on a lot of cars. I used 84 Eldorado for lookup. They also came on S-10 pickups in the 80's The Allsafe brandname part number was 5036RGS. Around 10 dollars online but they make it up in shipping because of the weight. I pulled off my old drum/hub, sprayed it with penetrant, and pounded the old studs out with big hammer. With the studs gone the hub didn't take much beating to drop out too. A press would've been less violent, but not as much fun :laugh: I was lucky that we have a back-shop at work and was able to chuck the hub in a lathe and turn the flange diameter to fit inside the new rotor. I'd say it was "around" an eigth inch. I pressed out the old bearing races and degreased and bead blasted the hubs. I pressed in new races and longer studs, shot them with some cast paint.
After a lot of head scratching I settled on Dorman pn 610-105 wheel studs. The shoulder area of the stud was a few thousandths too big. I took a taper reamer and enlarged the holes until the rotors dropped onto the hub. That could have also been done with the right size drill bit. Just another thing to remember when getting new rotors for the next brake job, but not a big deal.
The discs are going to move the wheels out the thickness of the disc minus the thickness of the old drum mounting surface. Probably 3/8 inch. I'll make a note to measure that this weekend.
yep, the only mod to the car is the hub diameter. I used the braket from www.scarebird.com You have to get a shorter bolt for the top ( the gold one in the picture ) That took some looking around at a tractor supply store. The adapter plate has nuts welded on to accept the bolts from the caliper so it attaches normally.
Tom, thanks for all of the info and pictures, this totally seems like the way to go for me. On my old '65 Skylark convert. I went with Global West arms, mid '70's spindles 15" wheels and 11" discs. That was fine for that car as I didn't mind straying far from original on it. I want to keep my GS pretty close to stock and this seems like the best way to go! Thanks again!
