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Sometimes you get lucky and find really good deals and today was one of those for me. Scored a full set of C5 corvette brakes (front & rear) including rotors, calipers, pads and lines for $50 for my '69. I've been searching here and online and am unfortunately, not coming up with a ton of information as to what else will be required in order to swap these in place of my current four wheel drum configuration. Going up from 14" wheels is an obvious must, but in regards to the fitment of the calipers and rotors, I'm assuming I'm going to be looking at updating the spindles to a rotor-style spindle, but am ignorant to where I need to go there. Also, the same can be said for what would be required for the rear setup. I know there are a few guys here and there that have upgraded to the C5 setups, so hopefully some firsthand input can be provided. Outside of the rain, not too bad of a day.
TIm:
Tobin at Kore3 can set you up with brackets to mount the C5 calipers. You'll need to run an 18" wheel to clear the C5 front set-up and his website also has full-scale templates you can print out to check wheel clearances. On the fronts, you can use your stock drum hubs but you will need to machine down the diameter to fit inside the C5 rotors. Kore3 also sells a nice aluminum hub that is stronger and lighter than the stock drum hubs and shaves about 1.5 lbs unsprung weight of each side. Here's a link:
As said, Tobin @ Kore3 is awesome. His pages have plenty of info.
Did you get abutment brackets (front and rear) and backing plates (rear)? The abutment brackets determine whether you'll run the stock size discs or the Z51 discs.
The fronts are straight forward - brackets adapt the stock spindle to hold the caliper abutment brackets and you replace the drum/hub assembly with a hew hub that holds the C5 disc in the right place.
The rear is more of a problem assuming you have an Olds bolt-in axle rear. The stock C5 parts do not address the axle retention because they were made for self-retaining axles. You need to choose whether you want the C5 drum-in-hat parking brakes or not. Regardless, Kore3 does have kits that work for the Olds rear but you have to contact them to order. It's very similar to the Ford 9" kit. The c-clip folks get to just bolt the stock C5 backing plate to the rear and they're done. You also have to re-cobble the rear axle brake lines. Brackets to hold the flexible lines need to be added about 6" from the axle flange and the fixed lines shortened to match.
The parking brakes can be a long discussion based on how you want to do it. There's plenty of ways to do it, it's just that the cable ends are different than stock. Search around for how the Chevelle guys do theirs- it's the same.
Good news with drum/drum is that you don't need to change the combo/prop valve. You may need to add an adjustable proportioning valve to the rear if the rear locks up before the front. You'll know if this happens.
I’m going with a similar setup, C6 brakes. I bought a set of fbody backing plates and parking brake cable for the rears. I’ll mount the backing plates on the wrong sides so the parking brakes pull from the front. I had a buddy cut 1/8” aluminum bearing retainers and spacers from a drawing I found online. My rotors don’t quite fit over the ends of the axles. When I look at rotors on rockauto it looks like there are some with a bigger center opening that should fit.
Fir the front im using drum spindles and hubs. The hubs have to be turned down to fit inside the rotors. The top of the spindle needs to be cut down so the caliper is parallel to the rotor. My buddy cut brackets that I drew up based on some stuff I found online. I’ll know soon if they work. I’ve read the vette rotors wont work on the front and you need to use fbody rotors. They say the better rotors have a different height. We’ll see at some point.
I bought a master cylinder from er from a fbody and haven’t bought a proportioning valve yet.
June 20th, 2019, 01:09 PM
