COE Rear Brake Conversion

Thinking of converting the rear shoes to disc`s.Its a GM 14 bolt full/floating axle with 16 inch wheels.Can buy the bracket on-line and the rotors and calipers local.Trying to figure out if I have to change the master cylinder and anything else.Any of you done it??

 

I have done this several times with off road rock crawlers. We have always changed the master cylinder and proportioning valve to one from a truck with similar sized brakes. The main reason we do the disc swap is to save weight, ease of maintainance because dirt and mud likes to get wedged in the drums.

If you are looking for increased brake performance I think you will be disappointed as you will not notice a difference unless you are really heavily loaded and on the brakes hard and often.

The most common swap is to use the intermediate Chevy front calipers for the rear. The downside is the lack of a parking brake. Caddy rear calipers are available but they really ****.

For the labor and cost you are going to go through, check a local wreaking yard for a late model axle with discs that have the good internal parking brake drum built into the disc. The GM 14 bolt was available until 02 or 03 and was replaced by another AAM 14 bolt that is found under Chevys and Dodges currently.

 

Thanks for your advice "enginebloch" pretty well sums it up.I think I wll stick to the originals for now.It would take some work to put a newer diff in (4 link) but stranger things have happened