I am just about at the point where I need to start converting my 38 Ford front drum brakes to disc brakes. Yesterday I had some ideas on how I could possibly do that without the use of a conversion kit. DUE TO MY LOCATION A CONVERSION KIT IS NOT AN OPTION. We have to improvise. So, I came up with the following two options but I want to know if either or both is feasible? 1. Cut the stub axle off the stock Ford spindle and drill / bore a hole for a new stub axle. Take a later model car's (GM in my case) front stub axle measurements and turn a new stub axle. Press fit the new stub axle into the new hole in the stock spindle. 2. Cut the stub axle off the stock Ford spindle and machine the outside face smooth and flat. Take a complete later model car's spindle, cut off the kingpin arms and machine the back face smooth and flat. Bolt or weld the "new" late model spindle to the modified Ford spindle. My mind tells me that option #1 above is the better option of the two.
Aieee! Don't cut the stubs off! Look through this ancient tech article, which has several VW/Volvo based swap ideas from the days before many kits were available: http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=200&showall=1
Look through that for cars available as donors...you say GM; if you are doing a swap using the various 1970-1985 types used in kits here, all you need is info from someone here on bearing numbers and a xerox with some dimensions of one of the flat brackets, I would think. Someone here is likely a dealer for that stuff and can get the numbers.
The original lathe centers should still be on the spindles. You should be able to have the spindles turned down to accept the bearing you want to use. I've had a set of willys spindles turned down like this before. Also, I put a '49 chevy straight axle in my willys sedan. I just bought a kit to convert it and the kit came with a spacer which had to be pressed onto the orig. spindle thus making the the stub match up with newer style bearings. If you cant do the kit, your best bet is going to be getting an accurate measurement of the spindle shaft, get accurate measurements of the I.D of some popular ford or chevy bearings & then seeing which way you need to go in size. Carl Hagan I still have all the documentation on the willys spindles I turned down and what chevy bearings I matched that too. At least thats a few figures to work with. Your plate to hold the caliper just needs to be shaped to bolt up to your spindle and then drilled for whatever calipers you want to use.
I'm looking for that same info Yeah, I could buy the kit, but man, they're pricey for what you get if ya got some fab skills Tim D.
A few months ago I posted a series of pics from a 70s HRM showing how to adapt Volvo discs to Ford spindles, complete with dimensions and part #s. The only machining was a spacer and caliper brkt. pretty simple actually. Do a search and see if you can find it. If not I still have them on my puter and can post them again.
Thanks! I appreciate it. This is a very good article but for some reason I can't get a good enough picture in my head. A few months ago I found some bearing numbers and dimensions. Will have to go and try find them again. I think I must then go to the parts store and page through their wheel bearing catalogue to try and see if any use the same I.D. measurements or something a touch smaller. What PCD does the Volvo discs have? Other's with the same PCD as GM I know are BMW and Jaguar. Both could be pricey though. Then, because Opel is also GM I could look at those also. The one problem with most of our late 60's and 70's Chevrolet's is that they are rebadged Holdens and those parts are getting quite scarce. Jaguar will be a bit difficult too and pricey but Opel and BMW will be easy. I'll post back once I've found something.
OOPS...I didn't read al the way down in that article. Did a search on that page for VW. From what I understand one only needs to turn down the drum flange on the early Ford hub so it can fit inside the disc. I also didn't even think of redrilling other discs for the GM bolt pattern. I assume he was referring to VW bug discs? I'll have to phone around to find out which bugs (in South Africa) had factory discs as my wife '76 1300 has drums.
Machine the stock hub to take a Chevy bolt pattern and use S10 4x4 hat style rotors that fit between the wheel and the hub...make flat plate brackets for the matching Chevy calipers. The rotors aren't huge...but my buddy loves the setup I made for his 57 Chevy 2 door. Huge improvement!
Can I safely assume from the above mentioned article that the actual bearing inner diameters of the Ford and VW Bug are the same? It turns out that VW Bugs with front discs are very few and far in between here in South Africa. Nowadays, to convert a Bug to discs there are many guys making up hubs that actually use Golf discs. With this in mind it should be fairly painless to have someone make me two hubs that take something like BMW or Opel Rekord front discs rather than Golf discs. The Opel is GM and the BMW has the same PCD. Further, discs can be bought over the counter and callipers can easily be found at breaker's yards.
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