Jonas

Has anyone in here ever gone from drum brakes to disc brakes if so was it hard and what all did you have to do? Because right now i have disc brakes on the fron and drum brakes on the back.

damien8618

unless you are going to do full out racing and need help dissapating heat I'd stay with drums in the rear, drum brakes have more stopping power then disc brakes. drum brakes are self energizing, when you push the brake the shoes push out into the drum and then the drum grabs onto the shoes creating a wedge action. with disc brakes when you push on the brake the shoes just push against the rotor. this is why when cars had 4 wheel drum brakes they had manual brakes and when disc brakes came out they had to use brake boosters.

cc82z-28

I'm in the process of converting from drums to LT1 rear discs on my 82 Z-28. I'm also converting to C-5 Corvette front disc brakes. As for the rears, on my 82 I have to make a mod to the axle flange so that the disc backing plate will bolt up properly, beyond that, I am told and have read that the conversion is pretty straight forward and those I have talked with said I will be amazed at the change in braking ability of the car. I am looking forward to this conversion and seeing for myself the difference, since my disc/drum brakes are not very good at all.

MyShibbyZ28

Drum brakes are not better than disk brakes. Manufacturers went to disk brakes for a reason. The "wedge" action you are talking about is not as powerful as the "grip" action of the disks. Brake boosters are not mainly to gain more stopping power; they are meant to put more pressure against the pedal so the pedal is not needed to be pushed as hard to gain the same stopping power.(a car without a brake booster will have to push the pedal down further than a car with a brake booster to gain the same stopping ability. This has nothing to do with stopping power of the rotor)

The back wheels do not have as much stopping potential as the front brakes do. The front brakes are mainly what matters, and that is why a lot of cars that are fairly old have front disks and drum rears.