After reading about the Land Cruiser caliper conversion that was recently linked here, I'm going to go forward with that (I think I still have the front calipers from my truck that I can use, so there's some money saved right there) when I do the R&R on my brakes. To do so, I'm going to need 15" wheels, so since I plan to put 17" wheels on in the future, I'm going to get a set of 15" wheels from a junkyard and use those.

I'm thinking with those I'll use 215/60R15 tires in the front, and 235/70R15 tires in the back. The fronts are just a hair over 25" diameter, and the rears are almost exactly 28" diameter. Think this is a good size, or maybe a bit too much difference between front and rear? An advantage I'd have to using 28" tires in the back would be I can get a speedo gear that'd be an exact match to that and my 3.55 gears.

Thoughts?

_________________
'74 Duster w/ HEI ignition, beat to snot suspension, A904, 8.25" 3.55 SG rear, still being tuned up and gets 17 MPG

Know how they always build a better idiot? That's me

Are you sure that Land Cruiser calipers fit US and Canadian built cars? The Aussie cars have different spindles and brakes.

215/60R15 will fit the front fine. Since you have a Duster the 235/70R15 will fit in the back, but, if you ask me, it's going to look goofy.

_________________
Joshua

I had been running P215 60R 14's in the front and P235 60R 14's in the rear and recently went to P225 60R14's in the rear. The rake looks good with either one and is not exaggerated. I am with Joshie225 on this one........bad handling and a little odd looking.

_________________
Aggressive Ted

http://cid-32f1e50ddb40a03c.photos.live ... %20Swinger


74 Swinger, 9.5 comp 254/.435 lift cam, 904, ram air, electric fans, 2.5" HP2 & FM70 ex, 1920 Holley#56jet, 2.76 8 3/4 Sure-Grip, 26" tires, 25+MPG

_________________
Casually looking for a Clifford hyperpak intake for cheap.

Ooohhhh good point. I didn't realize that the spindles were different. I'll have to check my truck's calipers against the spindles on my Duster and see if it'll work.

It's hard for me to visualize how these tires would look, but going off the sizes Ted mentions, I'll take a look at what he's using and, if the TLC caliper conversion will work, look into the same size for 15" wheels. If not, it'll save me having to buy new wheels and I'll just get them for my 14" wheels.

_________________
'74 Duster w/ HEI ignition, beat to snot suspension, A904, 8.25" 3.55 SG rear, still being tuned up and gets 17 MPG

Know how they always build a better idiot? That's me

Doesn't your Duster already have disc brakes? If you're going to use 15" wheels you can get rotors and caliper adapters from a late B-body and go from 10.87" rotors to 11.75" rotors. If you use the late B-body, F/M/J calipers they have a larger piston than the '73-'75 A-body so it decreases pedal effort and moves the brake bias forward a bit which can help reduce premature rear lockup.

Most folks don't ever use the 10.87" disc brakes hard enough to fade them. Dart270 (Lou) and I are about the only ones on the board I'm aware of that punish brakes on the race track. The best pads I've found for the sliding caliper is the Raybestos Super Stop SSD84. They make some dust, but are quiet and are at least as fade resistant as the carbon metallic pads I tried and outlast the carbon metallic pads many times over under racing conditions.

_________________
Joshua

Good idea on the B-body rotors and calipers. I'll have to look into that. From looking on Tire Rack, the 15" versions of the tires I've looked at have been slightly cheaper than the 14" versions, so maybe it'll be worth it to get the 15" wheels either way. Wish I could afford to go ahead and get the nice 17" wheels I'm eyeballing, but I've got other stuff (like refurbing my brakes!) to prioritize first.

Have you tried ceramic pads? I went from metallic pads to those in my truck and noticed no decreased stopping performance or increased fade, but the noise went away completely.

_________________
'74 Duster w/ HEI ignition, beat to snot suspension, A904, 8.25" 3.55 SG rear, still being tuned up and gets 17 MPG

Know how they always build a better idiot? That's me

If there were still some good high performance 15" tires in the sizes we need I'd still use them. In fact I have a set of cop car wheels just collecting dust. I've gone to 17s on the Valiant and have 17s for my Dart too. The wheels for the Dart are actually Mustang wheels with the center bore opened up to the Chrysler size.

From everything that I've learned ceramic brake pads as they exist today are designed to be quieter and less dusty than other pad types, but do nothing positive for actual brake performance. Noise is bothersome, but I'd rather have good brakes I have to clean up after once in a while than so-so brakes that are cleaner.

I have faded the brakes on my '01 Dakota (it's a heavy pig compared to my '96 short bed) and will be improving it's brakes. My Dakota had it's rotors resurfaced a couple of times due to warping while under previous ownership and other Dakota owners report frequent rotor warping. Thankfully there is an easy upgrade. The '03-'04 models got 12.125" rotors and two piston calipers while the '98-'02 models have 11.3" rotors and single piston calipers. All the newer stuff bolts on directly. The later rotor is 30% heavier than the earlier one so I expect better stopping and less rotor warping.

_________________
Joshua

I'm looking at BFGs for mine. Just a good all-around daily driver type tire to last me while I'm doing all the other work and driving it around. I figure anything will be better than the worn out pizza cutter tires I've got on there now.

Too bad I live practically in the opposite corner of the state, or I'd offer to take those cop car wheels off your hands...

_________________
'74 Duster w/ HEI ignition, beat to snot suspension, A904, 8.25" 3.55 SG rear, still being tuned up and gets 17 MPG

Know how they always build a better idiot? That's me

If you are considering BFG Radial T/As, I'm pretty sure they stopped making a 215/60/15 a year or two ago.

Those are the ones. Tire Rack still lists them in both sizes I settled on for front and back (in both 14" and 15" flavors), so hopefully they're actually in stock still.

_________________
'74 Duster w/ HEI ignition, beat to snot suspension, A904, 8.25" 3.55 SG rear, still being tuned up and gets 17 MPG

Know how they always build a better idiot? That's me

i wish i knew how to bookmark this chart on my google chrome browser. anyone have a spare kid i can borrow?

The stock rims on my 74 dart sport are 14x7. I'm thinking about using BFG's 255/60/R14 in the rear and 195/60/R14 in the front. Do I have any cause for concern as far as clearance between the edge of the rear fender and the leaf springs with the back tires?

As long as the leaf springs keep the suspension at proper height and the rim offset is stock you can put a 10" wide tire under a Duster/Dart Sport...the problem will be if the rim can support it....at the track I run a set of Nitto 255's on 15x10 centerline rims and they are very stable for launch but I would not want to drive around on them in the rear with skinny tires up front...

If your car is equipped with the mopar large bolt pattern, look on craigslist or at your local salvage yards and see if you can fins a set of stock 15x7's to give you a better selection of tires to choose from, you also will need to calculate your new rear tire size to determine if you need to swap out the speedo gear in the tranmission so your speedo is reasonably accurate....

well the leaf springs I have are the hotchkis sport leaf springs. I also have a 2.5" leaf spring lift blocks so the ride height is already taller than stock lol.

I found a BF Goodrich T/A Radials on Summit for about $150 a tire in 245/60/R14 which has an overall width of 9.80" and should fit because it says minimum recommended wheel width 7" which is what my wheels are.

I'm not sure what the big bolt pattern is, mine is 5x4.75 bolt pattern. So then would I be correct in assuming that the entire width can be no more than 10" total?