A Body Disc Brake Swap 101

dgc333 said
One more thing to take from the doner car is the master cylinder.

Also, I don't recomend that the master cylinder, or calipers be used but they are good to use as cores when getting rebuilt parts.

Unless the rotors are very good I would recomend new ones, they are relatively cheap. I got Canadian made rotors for about $45 each.

Another item that should be new are the wheel bearings. They are about $5 each and $3 for the dust seal.

One more item; if you happen to have new lower ball joints on the car already they can be reused. You will need to drill out the mounting holes to accept the larger spindle mounting bolts of the disk brake setup.

NO, they can't. You can drill them out if you are feeling adventurist, but it's not a good idea as there is not much material left on them to hold the bolts. Did it today on my 66. luckily Carquest had a set of lower ball joints for a 74 scamp in stock and I was able to get them on and works fine.

Blownfish said
Great thread. This swap works on the early A's as well, just use the early center link, pitman arm, idler arm and inner tie rod ends and then the same 73 up parts used in this thread.

I know some had said you can use your stock outer tie rod ends but that is not the case on the earlier A's they need to match the lower ball joint/steer arm.

yes you can actually if you use the bbp large spindles. same story as above, just put the scamp lower ball joint on and it went right in.

dgc333 said
The 73+ disks had the caliper to the front. I have heard that with it mounted to the front on a 72 down car with a factory sway bar the caliper can it the sway bar at full lock. If you swap sides with the spindle so you can mount the caliper to the back you need to swap calipers side to side too or the bleeder winds up being lower than the hose and causes all kinds of bleeding issues.

yep, true. You also can't use the stock brake hoses as they aren't long enough.

There are a couple misconceptions that must be cleared up.

First, the lower ball joints unless you don't mind drilling them out will NOT fit the larger spindles if you are going from 9 in drum brakes. You have to get the lbj from the 73 and up cars. Also, the dust seals that you get will not fit. you can try but if they are anything like mine were, the seals fit fine on the spindle but wobbled around inside the caliper and would have allowed dust to get in there eventually. the part number for the seals that you'll get from an auto parts store is 6815. What you need is the seal part number CR (chicago Rawhide) 19226. It doesn't look like the original seal, but fits right on the spindle and tight in the rotor. Other than that, this thread helped a lot. Belated thanks Bruce.