I've made a little more progress with my 68' fairlane sedan over the past week or two, namely pulling the tired 289/C4 combo and transferring over some parts to my new engine.
While Im waiting for everything to fall in place for the new engine installation I have been looking into the brake system. Currently I have 1968's finest: manual drums on all four corners. While the shoes and wheel cylinders are new parts I think once I have more power under my right foot I'm going to need a lot more braking to match up. I want to use scarebird brackets on the front with the suggested S10 calipers and ranger rotors and possibly crown vic discs in the rear. I also want to upgrade to a power booster but Im not sure what kind of vehicle to pirate that from. I should have plenty of space to mount a big flat booster with my small block.
One other thing I want to clarify is the use of a adjustable proportioning valve for the rear brakes. If I use one of these I will no longer need the stock distribution block, correct? Not that it would distribute the right amounts of fluid for discs anyway. If I go this route I can also adjust the braking force if there is some time between swapping rear discs in.
can you pull discs off a 71ish car and just swap them?
i tried to use scarebird brackets for a rear conversion and they did not fit the calipers they said they would and the part that bolted to the axle flange was way too thin for my liking. i sold them at loss because they refused to give me a refund.
It's been a few years since I added discs to my 65 Mustang, but as I recall, I think you need the stock d-block to operate either the brake warning light or the brake lights. I left mine in place and used the adjustable valve as well.
I'd consider raiding everything from the same car (M/C, booster, prop valve, calipers, rotors, knuckles, rear axle, you get the picture) to take advantage of all the time and effort AngryCorvair's brake engineer predecessors and bretheren put into the thing in the first place. The Lincoln Versailles and Ford Granada were both available with rear disc, that should be a pretty easy swap. The only difficult part would be the leaf spring perches and E brake cables.
You might also look into early '70's Mustang stuff, it should all be a bolt up. You'd still have rear drums but that's not neccessarily a bad thing.
with the setup you describe, i'd grab the booster and master as an assembly from the explorer that provides the rear brakes. discard the original prop from the fairlane, discard the original prop from the explorer, plumb in an adjustable prop and start your tuning with the knob cranked to the max front bias and work rearward from there.
I wish I could get my hands on granada parts of other stock parts for the front but they just aren't available in my area anymore. The supply has dried up so I am going to try the next best thing for hard parts, everything will be new or rebuilt this way too.
Woodyhfd, I'll look into that brake switch. I know they changed how it works over the years, I think it may have coincided with the switch to bigger master cylinders in 67/68.
