I'll like to share how I installed the affordable 11.75" fullsize Chrysler discbrake rotors on my '62 Chrysler NewYorker stationwagon.
My '62 Chrysler NewYorker stationwagon came stock with 12" drumbrakes all around. When I bought the car some 10 years ago, the brakes on the car where working fairly good. At least, in the city that is at lower speeds.
On the highways, you had be aware of the longer braking distance one would need because of possible brake-fading.
In the years, the brake fading got a little worse because the drums wore out more and now had a larger diameter than the brakeshoes were designed for. So the actual contact-area between shoes and drums became smaller and smaller as time went on.
Anyway, about 2 years ago, the wagon started to develop an issue with the right front drumbrake when still cold. When the brakes were applied ever so lightly, the rightfront wheel would lock up immediatly. One had to put the car in Neutral or reverse to get the brake to release again.
As this issue got more serious every time I got the wagon out, one day I decided I wouldn't drive the wagon again unless there was a discbrake system on it.
Since there are no good AND affordable discbrake solutions available for pre'65 Chryslers, I decided to make my own solution and got to work.
In the past I had already drawn-up an adapter for '63/64 Chrysler spindles, to take on the caliper-bracket from a '73 Chrysler caliper.
I re-used a pair of early designs I had made, which weren't good enough for the '63/64 spindles and decided to redrill them for the '62 and earlier spindle.
Here's some info and some mock-up pics of the setup and the work involved;
Since the original drums used smaller bearings, I created sleeves for the original drumbrake spindle, so the larger bearings of the '73 rotor would fit properly.
(Note: if you decide on using '69-'72 rotors, the bearingsizes will be the same as the drumbrake-bearings, so you wouldn't have to make sleeves for the spindles. But these rotors are higher in costs.)
The rear-sleeve is lightly pressed into the inner bearing-race and the smaller outer sleeve is pressed onto the spindle itself. The larger sleeve can still be seen in this pic;
Pic of the affordable '73 discbrake rotor
After the rotor was fitted properly on the spindle, I 'clamped' the caliper-bracket, caliper and brake-pads all together onto the rotor, and measured where and how thick the spacers would be needed to weld them to the adapterplate.
On the '64 spindles I needed 22mm thick spacers, but on the '62 spindles I found 30mm spacers were needed.
So I cut 4 pieces of roundbar down to that size, drilled and tapped them with 1/2"-20 thread for the caliper-bracketbolts, and finally tacked and welded them to the adapter-plates.
Here's the rough adapter-plate mocked up on the spindle with the caliper-bracket in place
One little snag I found when mounting the rotors, was that the original 4 spindle bolts would interfere with the inner rotor-hub.
Two options were possible; I could just go out and buy smaller headed bolts like Allen-head bolts, which would be enough to clear the rotor.
But since it was weekend and UNF/UNC bolts can't be bought that easily overhere, I decided to turn down the inner hub on the lathe slightly.
No structural material was removed, just 3mm around the inner hub, just before the hub's strengthening and cooling ribs ended...
Here's everything bolted into place...
The '73 caliper uses the same brake-hose as the original one on the car, so this was a simple matter of reconnecting it again.
The only issue with a swap like this is that one can't use 14" wheels anymore, since the '73 discbrakes were designed for 15" wheels to begin with. But I'll also doubt that if you're willing to do a 12" discbrake-upgrade like this, that you'll still be using the 14" wheels anyway.
To this moment I haven't exchanged the single pot master cylinder yet, but testing the brake system in my garage showed it 'might' work very well.
Ofcourse for added fluid-displacement and safety one should upgrade to a dual-pot master cylinder.
