Disc brake brackets are being manufactured and will be available in January.

There will be three new designs. Each with its own Pros and Cons but all are improved and overcome previously experienced problems and come with a refined parts list and instructions. There will be one for the budget challenged Vanner, then my best design, also a larger rotor option.

These brackets are in limited quantities, if you are interested in having a set of brackets you must Email me at m1dadio@shaw.ca to have your name on the first come first serve list.

Happy New year to everybody.

M1D

That rim sitting in the picture looks to be a drum brake rim. It has a major deep "V" in the middle that goes almost all the way to the inside beed of the rim reducing the inside diameter to about 12". The purpose of the deeper V is to facilitate installing the tire. Newer rims made that V much narrower, only about 1.5" wide. Just enough to fit the tire bead during install and the V grove got put way over to one side of the rim. This made it so the tire had to be installed from one side only but it also made for much internal clearance to facilitate disc brakes.

You have an 11" rotor and if the bracket is designed right (which it looks to be) the caliper will be aproximately 1.032" above the rotor. So 1/2 of 11 is 5.5 + 1.032 = you should be measuring roughly 6.5" . That means most 14" rims with an internal dia of 13" should fit over over if the V area is offset to one side, especialy the alluminum rims which tend to be machined quite squared off. Many 14" rims will not fit especially older pre 1972. That is a 74 Nova rotor which places the caliper where it does, the 74 nova came with 14" rims.

Alot of rims that drag or get cought up just need some crappy gob of weld ground off and/or some calipers have a crappy gob of slag on them that can also be ground off to make the wheel turn free. Just like the old dodge drums that had to have the ballance wieght knocked off so mag wheels would sit flat, don't be shy to do what it takes to make it work. This is not your basic 1968 Chevelle "off the shelf""out of the box " brake conversion.

Next week I will be producing a large article on brakes which will adress this and many other problems G Vanners have encountered.
M1D

That wheel is a good example of the earlier drum brake wheels. The smaller dia bead clearance area is more to the midle where the center piece is welded on the inside making it quite filled in the inside.

Early disc brake rims tryed to open up the inside to make room for the rotor and caliper. This was acomplished by opening up the inside and moving the bead claerance area closer to the front and changing how the wheel disc was welded into the rim.





You can see on this disc brake rim how the inside is opened up and the bead area and mounting center are moved towards the outside.



Alluminum wheels have more clearance because they are machined and there is no need for welding. The bead clearance relief is cut close to the front and the inside becomes one wide open bell. Here is my 15" wheel with an 11" rotor. My wheel will fit a 12" rotor set up but its tight, the ballance weights can't be in a certain spot or they hit the caliper.



Heres a 14" rim that will likely clear any disc brakes.



Many people going to disc brakes on any hotrod may have wheel fit issues. On these vans so many people have so many different wheels that there is no way to tell if your wheels will fit after changing to disc brakes. You have to just deal with it as it turns out. Like I said, some wheels may almost fit and can be cleaned up a little to make fit , others will fit no problems and some will not.

M1D

I have never actually seen how those calipers sit on the rotor with the BZ bracket.

Are the pads sitting 100% contact on the rotor face? Do the top of the pads match with the top outer dia of the rotor? or are the pads hanging off the edge a little?


If the caliper is mounted correctly and not standing too high , a 1974-77 Nova factory steel 14" rim should fit on without problem. I do see however that the BZ bracket has a lot of extra meat directly above the threaded hole where the caliper bolt is and that might hit a rim. I think that brackets top could have been contoured to equal the calipers top curve.


M1D

theres no way that 14" drum brake wheel is ever going to go onto a disc set up. Its got too much crap in the back.

Have a look at this old 14" Indy slot. Its made with lots of room on the inside and is 13.5" across. An 11" disc set up should fit here.



It does look like the top cornners of thoise brackets are larger diameter then the caliper itself and might catch on a rim.

And what the hell is a Beaumont anyway??? LOL!!

M1D

Thats kind of cool lookin wheel!
Kind of a rat rod/ drag racer look.


You can sure see how they built that wheel to clear disc brakes.

What year cady is that and what is its total diameter?

M1D

There will be a "Brake " article comeing up soon with much usefull gathered imformation. Particularly dealing with many problems people have expirienced doing conversions. If you are in the process of converting to disc brakes there will be much pertenant information in the article you can use.

Disc brake brackets are being manufactured and will be available in January.

There will be three new designs. Each with its own Pros and Cons but all are improved and overcome previously experienced problems and come with a refined parts list and instructions. There will be one for the budget challenged Vanner, then my best design, also a larger rotor option.

These brackets are in limited quantities, if you are interested in having a set of brackets you must Email me at m1dadio@shaw.ca to have your name on the first come first serve list.

M1D

I currently have the BZ design on the front of my Early, but do have your first design as well sitting here, awaiting install. What does the new design encompass over the previous one? I may just want to use it instead???
B.W.