|
/\ /\ /\
That post covers all the corners, I think.
I did this many years ago. Very easy to do. Got some complete donor 122 prakes (smoke wrenched off the 122 by cutting upper and lower A-arms) on eBay.
Stripped the 544 down to a bare spindle. Then had a mightly struggle with the shock bolts. Honestly, about 1/2 to 3/4 of the effort I put into the task went toward fighting with those things. Large fine threaded nuts that hadn't budged since they were put on at the factory in 1963. They weren't cooperative at all. Luckily I had one spare after replacing a bent upright earlier. As is, I ended up mangling two. And figured the odds of me needing to easily remove and replace them later on was slim, so I actually lightly tack welded one of them back in. It will take an angle grinder to remove it should the need ever arise.
With the lower bolts off, I cut a deep 'V' into the thick section on the shock side, bent the V closed, then welded it together again.
Did the L to R swap on the caliper mounts, bolted them up, and drilled the 3 new holes. One was trickier than the others because it partly overlaps an existing hole. Bolted up the calipers and dust shield. Put on the rotors and caliper. And I was even able to initially attach the flex lines that had gone to the wheel cylinders to the calipers. No leaks, just a slight potential for rubbing on the line at one point. I wrapped it with electrical tape as a wear indicator and proceeded to drive it like that for a couple of years with no incident.
Eventually, though, I noticed a little light rubbing occuring, so I redid that part. Got some generic 12" domestic brake lines from a parts store, and a couple of short hard lines, and hooked it up like it was on the 122 - short hard line to the dust sheild, where it hooked to the flex line. Although on the PV the hole for the line had to be trimmed off, so I had to drill a new hole on the remaining stubb And after some experimentation I found the position of bracket wasn't that great for the PV, it made the flex line bunch up and move too muuch, so I cut the bracket off and moved it back some so that the end of the flex line was at the center of rotation of the kingpin.
I didn't do anything to the rest of the braking system, still whatever rear cylinders (brand new cylinders from a few years prior), same master cylinder with a rebuild kit. I think some very old rebuild kits included a valve that held some slight backpressure in the system to make the drums feel more responsive, if you have one of those you might need to install a new rebuild kit. I have wider and modestly stickier tires on my car, and brake testing shows that the fronts lock up a litle less in advance of the rears, but not by much.
In normal driving, you really don't notice any difference at all, there wasn't that much wrong with the drums. But drive it hard and do 3 or 4 hard stops in quick succession, and the discs will continue working normally, where the drums will fade and lose effectiveness.
--
'63 PV544 rat rod, '93 Classic #1141 245 (now w/16V turbo)
|
