Hey guys Have any of you replaced rear caddy seville brake calipers with metric front gm brake calipers (1977 to 1988 monte carlo )? If so how did it work. I was thinking of doing this using a manual in-line park-loc (speedway) for parking brake. This is on a 1934 glass body ford coupe which is not a heavy car. I value you guys opinion. Thanks
Expensive aren't they? You need some additional parts that don't come with the new ones, so you need to dig up an old set usually...but you can bring them in for the core charge. I wouldn't rely on a park-loc as it doesn't give you emergency braking if you lose the main system. For that reason its also illegal, AFAIK. Bite the bullet and get the calipers with the E brake setup.
I converted my 10 bolt Chev rear to the Cad rear discs and calipers. They are not an e-brake! They are a parking brake. Also if I had it to do over I would stay with the drum brakes. Why? Because unless you use the e-brake constantly your rear brakes don't stay adjusted up. So you find yourself constantly pulling the e-brake handle many times to adjust them up.
Yup. Which is why most Caddys go through front brakes so fast - owners don't bother reading the owner's manual. The manual DOES state that the parking brake needs be used often. Though I don't really see the problem, as using the parking brake IS good practice. Oh, yeah, nothing but a Citroën really has an emergency brake. Cosmo
Sooooo if your brakes failed completely you'd wait till you stopped against a tree before you applied them? Sure you would...LoL You'd be stompin' on that pedal just as fast as the rest of us!!!! I agree they're marginal, but I don't care how good/bad they might be, they WILL work better than a "Line-Lock" in an emergency situation, because that won't work period. They WILL also save you a ticket and a tow bill if the car gets a roadside inspection from the local Police. All that said...I'd MUCH rather use regular drum brakes and parkbrake cables.
If you compare the Caddy disc e-brake effectiveness to drum e-brake effectiveness you'd say they were really only a parking brake also. I'm speaking from experience with both on the same car. There's no way they will stop you like my drum E-brakes did. Also if you read my first responce I never advocated him using the line-lock.
And you should have read my full post instead of getting offended at the first two sentences. I was kidding around with you...not calling you out. In the main paragraph I said EXACTLY the same thing as you just said...drums are better for sure. Many 4x4 rear disc swaps use the same Caddy P-Brake calipers as an easy way out. The one consistant thing about them is they are universally hated by the 4x4 crowd for being so ineffective! The only real saving grace for the Caddy P-Brake rear caliper is it satisfies the inspectors, whereas the non P-Brake front caliper swap won't. Phat... Don't be so serious...you'll get frown lines. < smileys...(means I'm kidding around.)
Please do a search over at Team Camaro, Team Chevelle and even NastyZ28 for my "pdq67 CBB " set-up that is on my car now. I give away cardboard front caliper templates that fit the '69 and Van big single piston calipers that fit 1988 "Vette 13" dia front rotors as well as instructions on how to do this conversion. Free and I mean free, just pm me. Now, BTTT, my 12-bolt has 1988 Cad Seville mechanical cable pull e-brake calipers mounted to 11.75" dia 1989 rear Camaro rotors so I know a schosh about this along w/ a 1.25" dia M/C....... To feed the BIG calipers! And if I'm wrong on my numbers, don't worry about it b/c everything is on my car.... pdq67
I was thinking of doing similar as well with my '54. I have the Seville discs on the rear. The caliper chassis are the same and IIRC both are 60mm pistons. As long as you currently have the correct front to rear brake bias, I see no reason why using the simpler and far cheaper front calipers on the rear wouldn't work.
I run Cadillac ('77-'79) Eldorado parking brake calipers over 13-inch rotors on the rear of my 4x4 rig. They are defiantly NOT an emergency brake. I had to make all of the cable related hardware from scratch. The internal "self-adjusters" are also prone to getting stuck. I have even found rebuilt ones with the adjusters pre-stuck, in the box. If it weren't for needing to replace 60 lbs. of 12" x 3" dually drum assemblies, and having to stop 36's, I'd just run drums.
Well I have had my run with them. After trying different bore m/c's, talking to numerous brake company people including where I got them. And trying what they said to do. Then the straw that broke the camels back was when I got back from a trip and discovered I only had front brakes. DONE. I am going to try metric brakes w/o E=brake on same 11" rotors and use separate mechanical spot calipers for the E=brake. If this don't work I will just have to find drum brake setup for an 8" Ford. Thanks guys
FWIW I'm running crown vic rear discs on my ford 8". they have a built in drum style e brake which I removed, but its there if you want to use it .
Another option for a park brake would be a rear end yoke mounted disc brake type. It would be a lot better in an emergency situation than a micro lock.
bump this up. chop32, where would I get the e-brake set up? what calipers will swap for the seville calipers? got the rear apart on my 56 and its time to fix it right. advice??
GM disc brake calipers have the same pin spacing, front and rear, per the age of the caliper. Front and rear non-metric mid-size calipers (1969-1977) have the same pin spacing. Front and rear metric calipers have the same pin spacing (1978-1988). You can put a front caliper on the rear. You would just need to figure out which rear calipers you are trying to replace. The distance between the caliper mounting pin holes is 7.05" on the non-metric mid-size caliper, and 5.46" on metric ones. Brackets can be had from most race suppliers, in bolt on, and weld on varieties. Wilwood makes nice spot calipers for parking brakes. TSM, Speedway Motors and others sell pinion mounted parking brake setups. Keep in mind, all are limited to rear axles that have a removable pinion support (i.e. bolts there to hold the caliper mount), so for 8", 9" etc. They also require clearance above and below the rotor. The bottom of the rotor could be susceptible to rock strike.
C3 Corvettes used a cable operated small drum parking brake on the rear discs. Kind of a cool setup. I've thought about trying to adapt these to a regular 10 or 12 bolt, I'm sure someone out there has done it.
The Jalopy Journal
