I have a 1966 Toronado, want to change front drum brakes to disc. What year of Toronado's can I choose from. From what I've read, I need upper control arm, spindle, caliper and caliper mounting hardware. Also wheels, brake booster and master cylinder, with lines.

 

69-73 Toronado and Eldorado are pretty much a bolt-in. 74-78 will work using outer tierod ends and ball joints for those years. You will need to get the proportioning valve from the disc brake donor car as drum cars do not have it. That or get a Wilwood adjustable one.

 

Mike, you PMed me and mentioned that you found two different ball joints when converting your Toronado to front disc. Unfortunately, I don't know the specifics of this conversion. I do know that upper ball joints provided by manufacturers for many Oldsmobile applications are either a wrong part number; or at the very least, a cheap Chinesium part.

Not to complicate things; however, I know the B/C bodies during the 60s had two different tie rod ends (Sagniaw and Tecumseh). They had a different taper and different measurements and aren't interchangeable. I'm not sure if this applies to the difficulty you're having with your Toro. Let us know what's up.

 

I'm not a Toro expert, but the factory parts book shows one set of upper and lower ball joint part numbers for the 66-70 Toros and a different set of part numbers for the 71-75 Toros.

Um... That's Saginaw and Thompson.

FYI that "Thompson" was the "T" in TRW (Ramo and Wooldridge were the two satellite guys, Thompson was the car guy).

 

I thought it was Saginaw and Tecumseh after the cities near Detroit, MI.

 

Here is a page with a lot of information on this subject - I am planning this project myself too

http://www.breznick.com/toronado/brakes/index.htm

 

Kanter AUTO PARTS sell kits for this. Look in their Catalogue. I just noticed the other night as I was looking myself for a kit. About $1,200 bucks

 

Or, you can get used original disc brake parts for about $120.