LetsTurboSomething

did you have the machining work done to the hub/rotors of the s-10 to slip the camaro rotors on or is there a kit out there for that?

LLLosingit

iTrader: (4)

I had my stock rotors machined to turn them into hubs and bought longs wheel studs, I bought the brackets that bolt onto the spindles after you cut off a section.
I'm actually swapping back to a smaller setup so I can run a drag style setup on the truck.

Michael Yount

iTrader: (1)

A word about roll cages in street cars -- if well designed and installed properly, there's no doubt about the benefits they can add in terms of stiffening up the structure and protecting occupants in the event of....

However, there are also risks/downsides. They're generally placed where all sorts of body parts - including driver's/passengers heads - can come into contact in the event of an incident. They create a bunch of "rock and a hard place" spots inside the interior that weren't there before. The kind of hard spots that can do a ton of damage even in a relatively modest impact. It's particularly noticeable in newer cars where a great deal of safety design work has gone into making the places where hands/feet/arms/legs/heads could normally hit less damaging in an impact. After years of rattling around in race cars when I was younger, I've concluded that using a cage only makes sense if it's properly padded AND you're strapped in with a proper and properly mounted racing seat, a six point and have the proper rated helmet on.

You could design a system for a street car that adds stiffness and some rollover protection while keeping the hard bits further away from the driver/front seat passenger. But hardly anyone does. And no way to make it work safely on the street for rear seat passengers.

And don't get me started on skinnies on the front for the street.....

thehpw

Im planning a LS swap for my 68 camaro and Im a little hesitant to go from 200hp to 400 hp. These old cars have the worst chassis, bad brakes, poor steering. Unless your last name ends in Steilow your car's chassis is just a mish-mash of a variety of aftermarket parts and it has nad no real tuning whatsoever. This is why my daily driver is a sports car and my classic car is more of a cruiser. When I want to go fast I drive the modern sports car. And dont get me started on people who are runnging 400 or more horsepower with rear drum brakes, old shocks, 20 year old T/A radials. Lots of death traps out there. Be careful.

RPM WS6

iTrader: (3)

Rear drum brakes are on your "death trap" list? LOL. I can't even count how many guys I've known with 11 to 9 second Turbo Buicks that still had rear drums and absolutely no problems bringing those cars to a safe stop even at that power level. Rear discs are a nice upgrade for fade resistance, but I definitely have a very different concept of what constitutes a "death trap" (the only thing that term really brings to mind for me is a motorcycle, or maybe a car with a milk crate for a front seat).

As for 200 vs. 400 horsepower, whether or not the power increase itself is dangerous has everything to do with how you operate the car. Nothing within that range is outside of the realm of what a car designed in the late '60s should be able to handle when kept in a proper state of maintenance.

LLLosingit

iTrader: (4)

Any car is a death trap on the street, Cars have always gone faster than what is considered a truly safe speed. Tree's and telephone poles are very unforgiving. As the saying goes, Speed kills, It doesn't matter if you have a 100 or a 1000hp either will go fast enough to kill you.
You could buy that generation of camaro new with more than 400hp and a heavy big block. lol and as already pointed out rear drum brakes are fine. Rear brakes do only a small part when it comes to braking and honestly there is nothing wrong with rear drum brakes as long as they are maintained.

EddieK

My 70 Chevelle has a 680hp (at the crank) BBC N/A, mated to Autogear Muncie 4 speed and built up 12 bolt, and it's been just fine for last 12 years. Somehow I survived, with rear drum brakes, many trips down 1/4 mile and hundreds if not thousands of local cruises.

I'm sure my both my Cutlass (and I) will survive 6.0/4l80E swap.

LetsTurboSomething

There is nuance to the drum brakes though. I feel a lot safer with a GM axle with drum brakes than I do with a Ford 8.8 because I don't want to shoot a shaft out the side at 60mph on 700hp. The discs on the 8.8 hold that sucker in lol. That has less to do with brake performance i know but still.

thehpw

Drum brakes are mostly garbage. I know because I daily drive my 68 Camaro for 9 years with rear drums, they almost killed me many times. I now have C5 Corvette brakes front and rear on my camaro so I can absolutely tell you there is a huge difference. Drum brakes don't dissipate heat well (because the heat gets trapped in the drum) and they are difficult to modulate because of the servo effect (they tend to grab too hard or not grab much). There is a reason that no car companies use rear drums anymore (except on the absolute cheapest entry level price point models). Rear drums are much more likely to lock up and when they do you can lose control of your car. But yes, any car can kill you, but a car with outdated brake technology is much more likely to kill you. : )

RPM WS6

iTrader: (3)

It's the upgraded fronts that are responsible for the majority of the difference you notice.

I daily drove cars with rear drum brakes for about 20 years, ranging from models built in the early '70s to the early '00s, never once did the performance/operation of those rear drums "almost kill me".

That said, I've driven my current '71 with drums both rear AND front for the last 12 years. I've rebuilt the entire system so I'm very familiar with how they operate as well as how to set them up. Here is my experience:

Yes, I do agree that discs are certainly superior at fade resistance. There is no question about this. Finned drums do cast off heat a bit better than their non-finned counterparts, but no drum will dissipate heat as well as a disc. This particular aspect, however, doesn't become a serious safety issue unless you're stopping from very high speeds and/or doing repeated stops without a cool down period. For normal around town driving, using modern friction materials and finned drums, I don't experience any significant fade. Initial (panic) stopping power at typical surface street speeds is comparable to the 4-wheel disc setup on my 2010 Malibu (granted, that car does have small discs). But yes, with rapid repeated hard stops the braking performance does deteriorate until the drums are allowed to cool. This is a significant consideration with a 4-wheel drum setup, but not a major concern for the majority of rear-only drum setups used in non-competition applications.

While pedal modulation is not exactly comparable to discs (I do agree that drums are more prone to locking up), I wouldn't call them difficult (especially not when it's rear drum only). On my 4-wheel drum setup, when pedal modulation became particularly bad (meaning the brakes operated more like an on/off switch) it was due to a leaking booster/deteriorated diaphragm. Pedal modulation became surprisingly manageable after I replaced the booster. With rear drum only, this shouldn't really be a major operational issue unless something is marginal or has failed.

To be sure, I'm not in any way touting drum brakes as superior - especially not 4-wheel drum setups like mine (even though I have been surprised by their stopping power after a complete rebuild with modern friction materials, I still wouldn't specifically recommend it). In addition to drums being inherently more prone to fade, it can be difficult to get properly balanced braking from side to side (thus causing pull) with front drums. This is mostly due to limited availability of arcing machines (thus difficulty in grinding/matching a new shoe to a new drum) and lack of understanding about initial setup with self-adjusters (they won't make macro-adjustments in short order under normal operation, some folks leave them much too loose initially).

With all that said, the various issues listed above are MUCH less of a concern with a rear-only drum (front disc) setup used for normal street or even street/strip duty. Again, to be clear, I'm certainly in agreement that disc brakes are superior, but to state that rear drums are a "death trap" or "much more likely to kill you" is just sensationalized rhetoric in my experience. By that same logic, even if you upgrade the brakes and suspension on your '68 Camaro it's still not going to be as safe as a 2018 Camaro, therefore that car in general is, comparatively, more likely to kill you. If risk mitigation is paramount, then I would suggest not driving any vehicle from that era regardless of the power level or braking system.

RevGTO

iTrader: (12)

I daily drove 64-72 Pontiac LeMans, GTO's and a 69 Grand Prix daily for about 10 years. My experience with 4 wheel drum brake cars was looooong stopping distances, fade, and very poor stopping power if they got wet. With the front disc/rear drum cars, the problem was premature rear lock up. The factory bias was to the rear, although reportedly this could be corrected by an aftermarket proportioning valve.

5.7stroker

iTrader: (36)

It's all fun and games thinking you are going to build your son a fast car for his 16th birthday until he wrecks it.
If only you would have used a different engine instead of an LS engine.
Start off small and slow. Use Ford or Mopar.

RPM WS6

iTrader: (3)

Can't say that I had any particular trouble with this when I used to daily drive a '71 Cutlass and a '78 Caprice with factory disc/drum combo. They both still used the old master cylinder design, and I never installed any aftermarket proportioning valve. I do seem to recall that some of the earlier disc/drum combo cars didn't even get a prop valve, or perhaps it was just a poorly designed one, and that was likely the reason for premature rear lock-up on those examples.

All the other disc/drum combo cars I've owned (model years ranging from 1983 to 2004) used newer MC designs and probably better designed factory prop valves as well. All of them had adequate braking performance for all street duties including spirited driving, none of them ever felt dangerous to me in the least (even compared to the 4-wheel disc setups on my various LS1 cars).

RevGTO

iTrader: (12)

I've owned at least six 69-72 Lemans/GTO's and the one Grand Prix, and they all have suffered from the identical problem - premature rear lock-up. Even my 69 Judge, which I converted from 4 wheel drums to the factory disc setup, behaves just like the others.

A little personal history here. Back in 97, I bought my first LT1 Formula and drove it and its nearly identical successor for four years. Then I sold the second one to generate the funds to purchase and get my 69 Judge up and running. In the meantime, I daily drove the 69 Grand Prix. One afternoon I nearly rear ended another car in the GP on a quick stop because the rear brakes locked up. Right then and there I decided I was done daily driving those old cars. Soon after, I saw a classified ad for a 2000 Formula in a strewn about newspaper in a repair shop. I had a strange sense that this would be my next car. And so it is 17 years later.

EddieK

I own 1970 Chevelle, 1970 Cutlass and 1967 Impala, for years all 3 have had disc front drum rear. Chevelle factory disc brakes, Impala and Cutlass I converted. Cutlass has hydroboost. I have never had issues with premature lock up, and I drive my cars hard. You must be doing something wrong. With a proper proportioning valve and correct M/C there should be no rear lock up.

Recently I installed rear disc on my Chevelle, and to be honest I can't tell the difference between disc/drum and disc/disc.

RevGTO

iTrader: (12)

What can I say? The only car I converted was the 69 Judge. I replaced master cylinders on several, but other than that, the setups have been factory. Perhaps they were just old, but all the pieces were there in the factory configuration.

And it's not as if I just mash on the brakes and hope for the best. Being old, I know how to modulate a brake pedal. But in certain surprise situations, you don't get that opportunity.

But my experience isn't unique. I've been around the Pontiac/GTO scene a long time, and have talked to plenty of others who've experienced it. This is why HO Racing developed an adjustable proportioning valve decades ago. I often thought about installing one, but because the cars tended to come and ago and for concerns of originality, I've never gotten around to it.

RPM WS6

iTrader: (3)

Odd that some of us have had such vastly different experiences with the same setup on very similar cars.

All I can say is, my experience has been similar to EddieK in this regard. I've owned at least 9 different cars with factory disc/drum combos as daily drivers, only two of them were modern enough to have ABS, while the oldest two were from the same age group/system design as the cars referenced above. I never experienced dangerous levels of premature rear lockup as a prevailing condition on any of these cars. I've also owned some older, non-ABS 4-wheel disc brake cars ('76 Eldorado, '89 Formula) at the same time as those disc/drum cars so I am familiar with how both setups feel, sans ABS, with back-to-back driving. Either arrangement can experience some amount of lock up in a true panic stop situation. That said, nothing about the disc/drum combos I've owned have ever felt vastly more dangerous or unacceptable to me in typical street situations.

LLLosingit

iTrader: (4)

I've owned or worked on many drum brakes over the years. Most drum brake issues I've fixed were due to being over adjusted or drums out of spec/ broken hardware/ leaking axle or wheel cylinders and so on. I still have four vehicles with rear drums and never had issues with them either.

5.7stroker

iTrader: (36)

Most people out there have no clue wtf they are going, I'll agree with that lol.

upflying

Actually it is more accurate to say the stop kills.