Since our '68 GTX is really a cloned Satellite, it came with 10-inch drum brakes on all four corners. Severe nosedive and the inability to stop in less than 170 feet made up our minds for us. Follow along as we improve our stopping distances by installing Master Power's four-wheel disc brake conversion. |
We've had our heart rate accelerated one too many times after being cut off by a newer car, so we decided to pull the wheels of our GTX clone and install new disc brakes. This conversion is easy and offers a great improvement to the car's stopping distance. |
Our original 10-inch drum brakes were marginal even if properly serviced and adjusted. In addition, the drums trap heat in the brakes, glazing the pads and boiling the fluid. This is not what you want when the car in front of you gives you a brake check. |
We began in the front by removing our drum brakes. Master Power provides everything needed, including the spindle and hard lines so the entire front brake assemblies are replaced with new parts. |
Pump and pray-that's what we think every time we have to stop quickly in our '68 GTX clone, thanks to the factory's barely adequate 10-inch drum brakes. It seems no matter how often you adjust or rebuild four-wheel drum brakes they just don't seem to work well in today's driving conditions. Aggressive braking generally leads to one side of the brakes grabbing before the other, pulling the car to one side, and requiring opposite steering input to keep the car straight. Repeated stops with drum brakes will always lead to brake fade and ever-increasing stopping distances. Let's face it, drum brakes were ok when the roads weren't clogged with go-cart-size cars that can cut you off and stop on a dime. Driving a classic car on the road these days can be a frustrating and scary proposition as fewer drivers respect, or even care, that you may not be able to stop nearly 4,000 pounds of '60s technology as quickly as they can bring their modern, lightweight, ABS-equipped car to a halt in front of you. Not wanting to hide our car in the garage just because we feared a rearend collision, we decided to take matters into our own hands and upgrade our brakes with a four-wheel disc brake conversion from Master Power Brakes. This kit comes with high-performance, vented, slotted, and drilled rotors, as well as all the hardware and parts necessary to complete the installation, and will bring our car's braking into the modern era. Converting our car to four-wheel disc brakes should put us in a good position to do battle with the more modern automobiles and take some of the fear out of driving our classic car on the street.
After making the decision to convert our brakes to disc, we had to decide what avenue to take. We could hit the junkyards searching for A-Body front discs to do the conversion, but we dreaded hunting for hours or days only to find parts that need a complete overhaul before they could be used. Finding a B-Body with factory discs would be even harder. Also, these cars never came with rear disc brakes so the option of finding used parts is definitely out of the question. We decided to find a high-quality, complete kit with all new parts so there would be no question about the safety of our braking system. We drive this car regularly and want our brakes to work every time we push the pedal, without fail. Having well-maintained, high-performance brakes can mean the difference between stopping with inches to spare or needing a new front clip.
We consulted the experts at Master Power to see what was available. After discussing several options, we chose their manual front disc brake kit with cross-drilled and slotted rotors for the front of our Satellite and their standard rear kit for out back, also with cross-drilled and slotted rotors. The front kit is very complete and comes with 11-inch vented, cross-drilled, and slotted rotors, as well as calipers, spindles, and caliper brackets. Also included are the brake pads, rubber hoses, bearings, seals, dust shields, dust caps, and hardware. Surprisingly, especially for the cost, the kit comes with a new master cylinder and proportioning valve as well. The rear kit comes with 11-1/8-inch vented, slotted, and drilled rotors, as well as the calipers, brackets, pads, hoses, parking brake cables, and hardware. We were pleasantly surprised at the completeness of both kits since we've become somewhat used to making parts store runs while installing other "complete" kits. Master Power thought of everything, even the cotter pins for the front spindle nuts!