C-Body Brake Upgrade - Stopping The Titanic

The new studs are tapped in lightly and will be fully seated when we install the wheel and torque the lugs. We cleaned and packed our axle bearings and slid the axles back in place; then we installed the caliper mounting brackets before tightening the axle retaining nuts.

Next we installed the dust shield, the rear caliper bracket, and the parking brake cable bracket. All of the parts in our kit fit perfectly; the assembly was really a no-brainer.

The rotors in our kit were coated with a light oil to prevent corrosion, so we cleaned them in the parts washer and blew them dry with compressed air before installation.

We also installed our flexible brake lines onto the calipers before mounting the calipers to the rearend housing.

This bracket holds the parking brake cable. We had to install ours reverse of what was shown in the instructions in order for our cable to reach the caliper. We're not sure if the picture in the instructions is backwards, confusing, or if the bracket wouldn't work since we're installing a B-body kit on our C-body. Either way, by simply turning the bracket around, our parking brake cables worked fine.

With the rotors installed on the axles, it was time to test-fit our caliper. Our kit had shims, which can be used to center the caliper over the rotor. This is accomplished by trial and error, mounting the caliper, measuring, shimming, then re-mounting the caliper until it's centered. We had to use all of the shims in our kit, but we did get both calipers centered over the rotors. Once centered, everything was torqued and we moved on to the installation of our brake lines.

The disc brake kit includes new steel brake lines for the rearend housing. Bend these to fit by hand before installing them, taking care not to kink them. We used the factory clips on the rearend housing to retain our new brake lines.

Since our factory proportioning valve is designed to regulate the brake fluid to drum brakes, we had to install the kit's adjustable proportioning valve in the rear brake system. By bending the rear brake line slightly for clearance and using the supplied short line, we placed ours between the factory proportioning valve and the factory line to the rear brakes. Then we bled the brake system beginning with the wheel furthest from the master cylinder and adjusted the proportioning valve to maximum pressure. So that the rear wheels lock-up in conjunction with the front wheels, we'll do a final adjustment of the rear brakes when the car is back on the road.