The car has 10" manual drums now.

A pal is selling a rusty 1980 F-body, but the brakes still work, so......

That is why I am asking.

I have already agreed to buy it, but the final price is flexible depending on what all I can use.

And you keep saying they're readily available...maybe in your neighborhood, not mine.

you can use the spindles, just do the research so you get the right calipers and hoses (or just order them from doctor diff).
if your car has a factory sway bar then you want to mount the calipers to the rear, no sway bar or aftermarket, then you can front mount the calipers (swapping the spindles on each side) and the brake hose routing will be cleaner...

if the calipers on the donor car are good, you can just use all that stuff and mount the calipers on the rear like factory.
i would buy some firm feel upper control arms though so you can run more modern alignment specs since we aren't all driving on bias ply tires anymore like the cars were originally spec'd for...

Go with the FMJ stuff, it will work fine.

I've done a bunch of cars with both A and FMJ stuff, none drove as through they were going to toss you off the road from bump steer.

One had about 50K miles on an FMJ swap when I sold it.

The scare mongers still exist from the article written in the 90's where IIRC, the author has said he'd never heard of a ball joint failure directly related to the additional spindle height. A friend ran the numbers and the additional angle at ball joint was 1.5* at both ends IIRC, 3* total through the swing. I'm pretty sure the ball joint tolerances were not built where an additional 1.5* was going to jam a stud to housing. This garbage is like a scary movie that isn't so scary...

Barry
take the spindles and caliper adapters from the F body and lovingly install them on the B Body. Buy new rotors, calipers, bearings and seals from rock auto, get some carbon metallic brake pads from firm feel and never worry about stopping. Dr Diff for brake lines. The naysayers are misspoken about the geometry as the evil spindles actually improve the roll center of the vehicle. I did not invent this reality but this is from very smart people who have analyzed the geometry of the spindles and my practical experience of using the evil spindles to run many laps at warp speed at my favorite road course. Otay?

Got it.

Thanks again all.

I have an appointment to see the brakes in person in the morning.

I've done this swap many times. Yes the spindle is taller. But what does this impact? If you study front suspension geometry you can see. It raises the the upper ball joint. Actual measurement is close to 3/8". As the upper control arm is normally angled downward this raises it causing the top of the tire to tilt outward. Is this a bad thing? Not really. Now the rear cam can be moved inward adding positive caster without creating excessive negative camber. This similar to adding offset upper bushings to add positive caster. It gives more range of adjustment. My background? ASE Master tech, my specialty? Front suspension and body shop wrecks for over 30 years. Yes I've aligned plenty of them myself. I can tell you it works because I've tested it, not just theory. Dizusters 140 mph turbo 62 Savoy runs FMJ with no issue, I've made passes in it. No difference between it and my 150 mph 64 Belvedere that has the toe pattern optimized to .10 degree though out total travel.
Doug

Thanks for the votes of confidence from everyone . . . I know from my experience, that this is a no brainer swap !! As mentioned, 10k miles of real world driving . . . go for it

F body knuckles on this car. It went 150+ mph at Portland International on the front straight and corners as well as the Vipers and Vettes.

I've had spindles from a '77 Volare on my '71 Charger for over 20 years. In that time, I've run them with stock control arms, CAP (now QA1) control arms, and, currently, CAP lower and Hotchkis upper control arms. I just used '73 Charger brake hoses.

You need everything in between the ball joints.



True, but the 10.5 F body units are not too shabby for a cruiser.



Uhhh, how long have you been on moparts? This topic has been beat to death on here every few years since the mid 1990s from every angle possible. Significant research has been done into it and for all intent, it is a non-issue for all but a few small minority.

OK, I went to look at the doner car. The entire brake system is complete.
The metering block is all there & the brakes do work.

So, I feel that we have the front discs covered, so what about adding the power booster setup?

Car is a manual brake car right now, so what would be needed to swap in the power goodies?

Thanks again!

I swapped over the entire 1975 Dart booster, brackets, knuckles and everything to my 70 Charger in 2002. The Charger was a 4 wheel 10" drum car. I just attached the 75 Dart power brake pushrod from the Charger pedal to the booster. It all bolted in. Now, there were changes for the F body cars. The Dart had a standoff bracket that moved the booster away from the firewall. I'm not familiar with the F body booster mounting.

It will be at least two weeks before I can get the car here for a look at how the booster mounts, but here is a photo from the front.

My Sport Satellite was manual drum brake, and I left it "manual" when I went to disc brake . . . used the aluminum 2 bolt master cylinder with adapter. . . . no issue with brake pedal feeling "too" hard, works great without the power. . .

I want the power & a closer to stock appearance, just because.

(For my other 1970 B, I may have some cruise control questions for you in the future.)

no worries . . . ask away . . .

one thing you may run into using the F-body booster is, it might be too big in diameter causing interference with ????. you may also have to modify the firewall hole and the booster mounting holes. with that said, i used a diplomat booster when i switched over to discs on my 64 belvedere. i believe it is real close to the diameter of the F-body. i had to enlarge the rod through hole, and drill two extra holes in the firewall to mount the booster. there wasn't anything in the way to cause interference, as this was a low option car. just some things to consider. and yes, i used the taller spindles with no issues what so ever. if anyone would read up on roll couple and handling issues, the taller spindles would be the ones they would only consider. remember, ALL factory suspension systems [with only a few exceptions such as sporty, handling types] are a COMPROMISE so the masses can "drive" the car without getting into trouble. the factory engineers spend big bucks on design as has been stated, but for "joe average" ONLY, not for hot rod or sports car guys like us. this does not in any way reflect on the latest stuff out there today, only the stuff available "back in the day".

I did this swap about 15 years ago on a 67 Satellite. The only effect of the taller spindle is a little more camber gain as the suspension compresses.
The brake hose wants to be on the opposite side of the spindle so I fabbed up a bracket in the correct new location (such that the brake hose passes through the spindle pivot axis) and made a short section of hard line to connect from the new bracket to the old.
Worked great.