The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Engine Shop 3/4 ton AD front disks. mastercylinder .....

over the weekend i finally got to replacing a leaking wheel cylinder and a questionable master cylinder on my '52 3/4 ton chevy. i've been pondering making my own adapter brackets to mount disk brakes on the front and having gotten a really good look at what kind of space there is and how things mount i don't believe the bracket and caliper clearance will be difficult at all.

my questions for the stovebolters are these:

8 lug rotors are easy enough to find, are there different "offsets" which i'm calling the height of the mounting surface to the braking surface? if so is there a certain one that is more common? how about diameters?

putting disks on the front means a new master cylinder again. will the brackets that adapt a dual circuit chevy M/C to a 1/2 ton truck that classic performance offers work on the 3/4 ton? i'd like to avoid the firewall mount systems, the firewall is one of the few straight pieces of metal on my truck

what about tapered roller bearings for a 3/4 ton, even if i don't pull off the disk swap?

anyone have more insight to things i'm missing?

thanks

Not sure about the different offsets on rotors,
but I've heard of a couple guys using around
1990 or so 8 lug 4wd rotors for this. I was
contemplating this retrofit myself on my 52 3/4 ton but ended up getting a 1/2 ton front axle and a 6 lug disc brake kit. Also got a 1955 1/2 ton rear axle. (to match the 6 lug front hubs)
The spring perches on the 55 axle have the same
spacing as the original rear, so no cutting and welding is required.

i considered going after 1/2 ton axles, but i want to preserve the load capability of the truck. that bigass axle in the back looks cool to boot

good to know about the spring perch spacing though. thaks

The dual MC from a modern 3/4T should bolt to the 1/2T brackets. From what I've seen in junk yards, the MC mount to the servo is pretty standard. I saw a ford 3/4 or 1T in the yard with slide-off disks, rather than bolted to the hub. It also had a bolt-on caliper carrier. I never got the chance to see if the pattern was even close to the backing plate on my 49, but wouldn't that be a dream com true (not ford, bolt-on disks for a 3/4T).
If you find a good method, let the rest of us know!

highflyer, i'm planning to make brackets. i'm lazy, and going to the boneyard looking for recycled brackets is way harder than a little quality time with the new mill here at work

i'll definitely keep y'all posted if i get to it.... be prepared to wait though :rolleyes:

If you can mass-produce, I might be interested. I would also like to go with disks, but don't have the manufacturing skill or equipment (I'm a bolt-on kinda guy). Did you see the website of the guy who put disks on the 3/4T burb? there should be a thread here somewhere with his website.

I'm also interested in disc brakes for the 3/4 ton. Let us know what you figure out please .

i haven't seen the 3/4 ton burb setup.... gonna go search

producing them for use by others has liability ramifications but maybe.

The guy who did the conversion no longer has his website up. I tried e-mailing him while it was still up, but he never responded. I cannot recommend following his instructions, he made the brackets from cold-rolled plate.

One of my brothers has recently invested in a garage full of machine tools to set up his own shop.

I've been talking to him about creating a disk brake conversion for 1-ton and 3/4-ton Stovebolts.

The liability issue has stopped me cold. I don't think designing a conversion would be a big problem, but between the size of the market (I'm sure we could sell six or eight of them) and the liability exposure I think I now know why there isn't a kit available for the bigger trucks.

what would you use and why? IIRC cold rolled has better grain structure than hot rolled

yeah.... i'd consider making a drawing of whatever bracket i come up with available to someone to post but parts retailing.... darn lawyers

another of my automotive addictions involves a small german car with 4 rings on the grill.... there is an organization out there that had to deal with the same issue in order to make brake bracket adapters available. they ended up having a non proffit organization set up, and by joining you forfeited all right to sue those that provided the info to make the brackets, or whomever you bought them off of. if i actually pull this off, i'll look into piggybacking on that.