Is there a straight forward way to add front disc brakes on my 1/2T stepside?
Thanks

Just reminds me that one of my guys at work is restoring a 1970 Dodge Truck, the front brakes came in box and 50% of the necessary parts were missing (slave cylinders especially). He was curious what other years would have the hardware or what other years had disc brakes he could swap in. I'm not into trucks (other than scavenging 8 3/4" pumpkins and A-833OD's, and maybe tow gears from 8 1/4" rears too)...


thanks,

-D.Idiot

A '70 would have the solid front axle. I am not sure what transfers over from the IFS trucks. I know that '72 had a one year disk brake setup, '73 and later were the same and quite possible used the same brake hardware as the 12" car setup. You can transfer the later stuff to the '72, if you change the spindles, ball joints and steering linkage (everything got bigger). I did this with my '72, when I found out that new rotors were $200 apiece, especially since I had an '80 with new rotors and a blown \6 sitting in the driveway.

I guess I should add that my truck is a 65, so IFS is NOT there.

I searched for a disc conversion for my 71 D100 and found there are none. 1961 to 1971 are almost identical. Seems most of the ones out there with disc have been front clipped with something newer. There was a company that was making a disc conversion for these trucks and the people that tried them thought they worked well. When I contacted them they said they were moving the shop and would be down for a month. That was over a year ago and they are still not in business as far as I know. You could check again to make sure. I got tired of waiting and rebuilt the drums. All this information is available at
http://www.sweptline.com/ You can find articles about the frame clip and a link to the brake conversion. There is also a discussion forum you can search for a lot of information about the trucks.

Wish the guy and I had known that 3 years back when we both had to report to a job in Ashland, which is just south of Central Point/Medford...we could've picked up a kit for him on the way home on Friday's...

Will let my guy know, thanks everyone!

-D.Idiot

Uglytruckling.com is who I was talking about. I hope you can get something out of them but I think you will find they cannot deliver.

I told my guy at work, he showed me a few pictures. It's a nice 1970 SWB 2WD truck, that came with a 383-2V. The thing that's 'sunk' the project is he bought it from another guy 'half assembled' and the guy lost the front brake parts, the worst part is the front brakes are 11" drums and there are no matches for pre-71 trucks with 11" drums within 250 miles of here...

thanks for the info,

-D.Idiot

DI, I had a problem finding front brake parts for my 71 D100. What I found is that most parts stores cannot find anything for a 71. But they can look up earlier trucks. I evenually found that most if not all of the previous few years trucks used the same brake parts. I ordered from Rockauto.com everything I needed. I used I believe a 1969 model. They were by far cheaper and I received everything in 2 days. You could look over at sweptline.com on the forum and search for brake information and find out everthing you will need.

Disc brakes on early trucks came up on the 62/65 Mopar list and it appears that AAJ Brakes has a kit for them. Believe the site is aajbrakes.com Good luck