I am thinking about doing a rear disc brake swap on my car and other than the obvious of better braking, what other advantages are there to this swap? Is the weight loss significant with drilled/slotted rotors from 11" drums, is the rotating mass that much less and would I need a new prop valve other than the stock disc/drum style? Trying to see if its worth the $$ and effort. Thanks for your input and everyone have a Safe and Happy New Year!! Greg

Personally, I would not do that swap unless I was racing every weekend on tracks with a short shut down area and going through the traps at 140+. And if I was going that fast, I would want to have a chute besides.

If you make the swap you will have to come up with some form of e-brake system and most of those involve an internal expanding brake within the rotor, that is if you want the safety of an e-brake and the convenience of one if you trailer the car.

High performance brake shoes and finned brake drums are the answer for me on my Ramcharger, but I am working on a '72 Cuda in my shop that has Wilwood discs on both ends and we will see how that works.

I put discs on my car, and I can't say it stops a whole lot better then it did with the big 11" drums.

Drums are lighter.

Ive been tossing this up as well, right now, unless I was auto cross blasting every weekend i cant see the gain in the pain of changing it out, sure it looks cool but right now my 10" drums work too well, I'm putting smaller diameter slave cylinders in to minimize rear brake lock up so if Im getting that sort of grip they are working a treat,,,,, only too well, that will be fixed soon.

Going to Strange four wheel disk brakes on my 69 Cuda dropped 40 lbs of rotating weight with no noticeable decrease in ET.

However it will now stop at MoKan without scaring the bejesus out of me.

Once I went to the disks I had problems holding it against the converter. Not too long after the kits became available I changed it to dual rear calipers and that problem was solved.

Bill

Not in my experience. My 11"x 2" drum set up weighed 54# and the Wilwood disk with internal parking brake weighs 38#. So my disk set up is 16# lighter.

The one thing I am not worried about is the E-brake as I dont have it on there now with the drums. I appreciate the info, Im looking to do some upgrades for more safety and reliability on the car this year.Thanks!

I just got my Strange Race brake kit for the rear to replace my 10x2" drums.

Another member here just did the same swap and saved 26#. I'll see if I can weigh everything and confirm that number.

I've actually been thinking about swapping out my stock front disc's for the strange fronts. Reason being the rear drums have very little drag where as the font discs have quite a bit more drag/resistance and the race brakes offer less rolling resistance.
Gary

I was saying that the factory setup drums are lighter than the factory discs, Wilwoods are obviously lighter.

I use a Hydraulic hand brake for the e brake.I don't like the internal disc type.

I just did the aerospace rear and lost 30. I had 10/2.5 and the 30 includes e brk set up.

My Dart had a 73 disk set up on the front, I changed them out to Strange and lost just over 50 pounds.

Depends on a lot of factors. There are not a lot of kits available for Mopar axles. Only kit I know of that actually fits and works is from Doctor Diff. If you are building a race car from scratch then you can build a rear axle with Ford ends and tap into a more popular range of kits.

There are some advantages to rear disc brakes but it is pretty low on the list of things to do to a car unless you are either really fast or super concerned with weight.

Andy my Wilwood rears went on without any issues. The calipers have to be fitted but the kit comes with shims so it's not hard or time consuming.

I agree

I want discs for the back of my Duster just for the fact that I hate changing shoes on drum brakes lol.

I have Strange Engineering 'race' disc brakes on the front and I don't really like them. The rotors are thin, not vented, I'm sure their probably rated for a car lighter than my street car but I have the 9" drum spindles and it seemed like that was the only kit available for that application.

What rear disc kit is the easiest and most affordable, the Doctor-Diff kit?