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I'm in the middle of putting 122 disc brakes on the front of my PV. (really, no farther than having the 122 parts sitting on my garage floor near the PV). That isn't quite a bolt on procedure, but it is pretty close. The theory is you strip the PV down to the bare spindle, removing the drum brake back plate. Then you strip the 122 donor down to the bare spindle as well. Then, although the bolt holes on the caliper mount don't really line up too well with the PV spindle you can redrill the caliper mount and dust shield and put them on. Then the 122 rotor and hub fit the PV spindle normally. And the caliper goes on. Voila'!
Side issues:
1) Shock absorber clearance - with the caliper hanging off the back of the rotor now it will hit the shock absorber well before reaching steering lock. The option I've gone with is to unbolt the shock mount bolts and reverse them, so the shock mounts on the front. Then there is a slight clearance problem at full lock with the steering arm and the bottom shock mount. You can cut and weld the shock mount bolt at an angle so it points inward slightly to provide the proper clearance. Other options I've seen/heard of are to replace the shock absorber with a 122/144 style one running up the middle of the spring or to swap sides on the calipers and mount them to the front of the rotor, sort of in a 10 oclock position when looking at the driver's side.
2) Minor niggles with the brake lines. I haven't worked that out yet, I just plan on taking a few parts into a parts store and hope to be able to find a hard line to go from the caliper to the dust shield flex line mount, and hook to a flex line that will go the the original hard line on the PV.
There isn't really much wrong with the drum brakes, they were a little over-specced on a 90 HP 2200 lb car. I was perfectly happy with mine for years until I gradually upped the HP in my car to (just guessing) around 170. Now it's not so incredibly hard to overheat and fade the brakes.
As for the rear axle the issue is a bit clouded by the PV's odd handling of axle twist. 122's and all later cars used two trailing arms on each side to locate the arms and handle the torque twist. But the PV just uses two diagonal arms that go from near the wheels to the center of the driveshaft tunnel as well as a couple of short links off the top of the differential forward to nearly the same spot as the arms. (As well as a Panhard rod in a pretty normal location). Those mountson the top of the differential would be the hardest thing to fabricate on a newer donor axle that doesn't have them. I'm not sure how well it would work if you just left those off and instead more firmly attached the axle to the two diagonal arms, so that any axle twist is just channeled into them. I think the 444 models were built like that, I'm not sure why they added them to the 544 models. Another issue would be the location of the panhard rod mount. I once put a 142E rear axle into a '63 122s and had to remove and replace that as it was on the wrong side. Monior quibbles like brake lines and diff flanges would be child's play after resolving the axle links. As well as the different bolt pattern on 1800E/140/240 axles. And is there a track difference as well - might it be a bit too wide for the PV?
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