Project: Big brakes for a big car
 

I kicked off a project this past winter that I'm just wrapping up now, and thought
folks here might enjoy seeing it. My '70 Bonneville was an original front-wheel
disc car from the factory, and I updated the rears to discs many years ago. I'm
running the 17x8" version of the Year One aluminum Rally IIs and have wanted
to install bigger front brakes ever since the new wheels went on. I finally got
around to putting the pieces together to make it happen.

What you see are 330mm x 32mm thick rotors from a mid 2000's Mercedes AMG
along with matching Brembo 4-piston calipers. These were the biggest I could
manage to squeeze under the 17" wheels.

I'm just getting everything buttoned up and bled now. Might be able to go for
a ride this weekend if the weather cooperates. I've attached a few pics showing
the setup.

Nice,

Details Please. Custom Brackets? What kind of spindles or hub did you use? Rotors redrilled for 5x5" >

The spindles are stock, which means this can be done on any '65-70 fullsize.
I made the hubs by turning down a set of scrap '70 rotors. I had converted
the car to 5 x 4.75" years ago when I first installed the RallyII's, so I already had
a bunch of dual-drilled rotors to pick from. The caliper mounting brackets
are made out of 316 stainless, the front adapter from 0.250" plate and the rear
from 0.500". The rotors did need to be redrilled for the 5 x 4.75" pattern.

Couple more pics showing some of these details attached.

Looks very impressive. I also like the idea of the more modern overdrive transmission. Sounds like a highway dream machine. Regarding your fabbed MB system, did this increase the front track width? Also when you say it could be done on any 65-70, did you mean drum spindles as well, or just with the 69/70 disc spindles? The redrilled bolt pattern certainly opens up a lot of choices in wheels. What did you do for a master cylinder and such?

This needs to go over to the '61-'66 and '67-70 groups!

The fab work is very impressive - and finally our big cars can stop as well as they can accelerate.

What did you do for rear discs?

The front track width was increased but only ever so slightly. Because the hubs
are just turned down stock rotors, the width increased by the thickness of the
hat section of the 330mm rotor, which is ~0.2" per side. I suppose if someone
wanted to duplicate this, they could take that much off the face of the hub/rotor,
as there is more than enough material there.

This setup should work with any 65-70 fullsize. The spindle assy was the same
whether the car came with discs or drums. The booster is just a stock 70 assy,
while the master is from a 94-96 Impala SS. I selected that unit a few years
back when I retrofit rear disc brakes from the same application. The single
piston D52 style caliper that came stock on my '70 is effectively identical to the
one that was used on the front of the '94-6 Bbodies, so it made that choice easy.