In response to inquiries, I put together a single post on how you can make simple rear disc brakes. With or without a parking brake. I hope you find it useful.

Typical rear disc set up

http://chevelles.com/showroom/FO_FDYFO/pic1.jpg
This is for a typical 68-72 Chevelle, Camaro… 10 or 12-bolt rear disc brake conversion. I was attracted to rear disc for the ease of maintenance, the additional stopping power and additional safety factor of the caliper being able to retain the wheel from falling off if an axle breaks.

I found Doug with steel tech solutions inc. (DJLevesque@webtv.net) selling rear disc caliper brackets for about $80/pr. Or you can make them yourself out of 3/8” steel with the drawing I have made. Scale the drawing to the proper dimensions and trace. The only thing critical is the center-to-center hole locations.

http://chevelles.com/showroom/FO_FDYFO/pic2.JPG

They utilize the 82-88 Camaro front calipers, positioned so the bleeder screws are at the highest point, for easy bleeding while mounted on the rear. These brackets could also use ’85 Cadillac Seville rear calipers with the built in parking brake. I did not like the Cadillac’s caliper because of the dual cable complications, expensive calipers and the caliper parking brake requirements of needing to be used often or it gets out of adjustment. The ’82-’88 Camaro front calipers are cheep and simple.
There is an exposed “nub” in the casting of the Camaro calipers that have to be ground down to clear the mounting brackets in the rear. If you try to mount it, you will quickly see where the interference is. No big deal.
Bolt these up with grade 8 hardware. I assembled the Camaro calipers with new Z-Rated ’82 Camaro front caliper pads, hardware kit, which includes the clip that retains the pad to the caliper piston. Mount the 1980 Camaro rear rotors, slide the assembled calipers over the rotors into the brackets, lube the new ’82 Camaro caliper pins and recheck for proper available caliper travel. Perfect fit!
Parts list:
-Caliper brackets
-Mounting bolts
-Rotors 80 Camaro rear
-Calipers 82-88 Camaro front calipers
-Pads 82-88 Camaro front

Now to address the parking brake. I wanted the simplicity of the non-parking brake front calipers mounted on the rear, so I designed a separate cable actuated pinion mounted parking brake kit.

http://chevelles.com/showroom/FO_FDYFO/pic3.jpg

http://chevelles.com/showroom/FO_FDYFO/pic4.jpg

And this kit for 10-bolt rears. Contact me for a 10 or 12 bolt kit. I was able to keep these kits at $300. This kit will allow you to use calipers on the rear discs brakes that do not have the parking brake built in them. This eliminates all the complications of having to set the parking brake frequently and running multiple cables. Especially on tubbed cars where the cables cant make the turn inward to clear the rims. This brake applies its clamping force on an 8" rotor before it gets the torque reduction of the rear end ratio. Also works with rear drum brakes.

http://chevelles.com/showroom/FO_FDYFO/pic5.jpg

Parts you get with the12-Bolt kit:
(1) Bracket
(1) Caliper Assembly
(1) Rotor
(2) Caliper Tubes
(2) Caliper Bolts
(1) Moroso Girdle Kit
(4) Thin Nuts
(4) Mounting Screws

Parking brake installation Instructions:
1. Remove existing U-joint and girdles.
2. Fit Rotor over yoke. It may be necessary to grind a very small amount at 4 points shown in picture below to be able to get the Rotor to fit over the yoke. The other option is to remove the yoke, install the Rotor, then put the yoke back on. Try to grind all 4 spots equally to keep rotational mass balanced.
3. Put the supplied Moroso aluminum girdles and screws in yoke with out a u-joint present. It might be necessary to clean out or chase a thread tap thru your yoke to ensure good clean threads.
4 Place rotor over the 4 girdle bolts sticking out of the yoke. Some round filling may be necessary to align the bolts thru the rotor mounting holes.
5. Put the supplied 4 thin nuts over the screws to capture the rotor. The round pinion seal cover might be a little close. Simply wedge the nuts in, the cover will flex out of the way. Rotate the yoke and check for wobble in the rotor. Sometimes yoke castings are different and it could be necessary to True the rotor by either shimming between the rotor and the yoke or machine the backside of the yoke.
6. Remove the 2 bolts holding the caliper together.
7. Put the supplied tubes and long bolts on the caliper. (The side with the lever).
8. Put the caliper tubes with the caliper thru the tubes in the bracket. Tighten the 2 nuts insuring the tubes assembled to the caliper slide freely with in the tubes of the bracket.
9. The nut on the back of the caliper adjusts the pads. Open adjustment of caliper pads and place caliper and bracket over the rotor.
10. Take out adjustment in caliper pads and pull lever to clamp rotor in place. Slide bracket away from rotor until the bracket is about 1/8” from the closest point of the bracket arch and the rear housing.
11. Use small c-clamps to hold bracket in it’s mounting position.
12. Match drill 4 clearance holes for 5/16” bolts in fins of housing and bracket mounting tabs.
13. Install all 4 supplied mounting bolts.
14. Once pre assemble is completed, disassemble everything.
15. Slip rotor over yoke.
16. Attach u-joint and drive shaft.
17. Assemble the girdles as specified by Moroso.
18. Mount the rotor to the girdle bolts, apply lock tight to thin nuts and tighten.
19. Put caliper and bracket assembly over rotor again and install all 4 supplied mounting bolts from the top, and put the lock nuts from the girdle kit on the bottom. The bolts are polymer coated Cadmium-plated grade 8 high-strength steel.
20. Adjust caliper pads and add your own parking brake cable. Since the cable has to make a 90-degree turn the easiest way to hook up a cable is to use an enclosed cable like a motorcycle cable. Be sure to have a return spring feature. With the cable hooked up, it should be adjusted to fully release when the emergency brake lever is off. Adjust the pads as loose as possible. If the brake doesn’t lock up the rotor when it is applied try using the lower hole in the caliper arm, this will give more movement to the pads.

The rear disk brakes look great! If I were to do this I would like to have the calipers with the parking brake. The cadillac calopers are expensive!!! Are there any others that will work (such as Camaro real calipers)? If not, what features do the cadillac calipes have that others do not?

Thanks,

Chris

I have those exact same rear caliper brackets. I have yet to use them. Now I just have to figure out if they'll work on the oldsmobile rear I bought. I had intended to use the caddy calipers, but now I think I'll do what you did. My E-brake hasn't worked for 3 years anyway.

Another advantage is that now you won't need C-clip eliminators as the caliper will keep the wheel from coming off in the event of a broken axle.

Here's another pic of a similar (my) setup on a 12 bolt. This uses the Caddy calipers.

http://www.chevelles.com/showroom/JohnD/RearEnd.jpg

thanks i will probable try that this winter on my nova disk brakes are heaver but they sure stop better and at 100 in the 1/8 i need to stop

as for the olds rear end the backing plates have the same bolt pattern as a chevy .cutlass chevelle same thing.only thing olds axles bolt in .why didnt chevy think of that

i dont know anything really about the calipers with the parking brake built in, other then i dont like them. graemlins/angry.gif
these should work fine on the olds rear. one thing i did on one rear where i put new stronger axles i had to offset the caliper bracket. i cut the bracket away to clear the rear's flange and made an adapter. to see this look here:
http://hometown.aol.com/smartasreality/page11.html