# How to Convert Drum Brakes to Disc Brakes

## Метаданные

- **Канал:** ChrisFix
- **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0sBIQqsZ0E
- **Дата:** 08.06.2026
- **Длительность:** 37:37
- **Просмотры:** 231,989
- **Источник:** https://ekstraktznaniy.ru/video/52768

## Описание

Learn how to convert drum brakes to disc brakes. This drum to disc brake conversion is very simple to do. There are two methods to get the parts: one method is to get parts off a higher trim level car that came with disc brakes. The second method is to get aftermarket drum brake conversion kit adapters to allow brake calipers to fit onto the spindle. 

Checklist: https://bit.ly/DrumtoDiscChecklist

Tools:
Extendable Ratchets: https://bit.ly/ExtendableRatchetSet
Ratcheting Flare Nut Wrenches: https://amzlink.to/az0Gt2bFUdPHH
Brake Line Stoppers: https://amzlink.to/az0c9ISSllHQb
Cold Punch Chisel Set: https://amzlink.to/az0HgPIpRVYQ5
Brake Line Clamp: https://amzlink.to/az0JMGoHZHvM4
Rust Paint: https://amzlink.to/az0IQkjFYXE0z
Safety Glasses: https://amzlink.to/az0rZy3UAf2RT
Brake Pressure Tester: https://amzlink.to/az0yU1nqV1HGV
Oil Absorbent Mat: https://amzlink.to/az00SogUIfCfO

Products for Honda:
Copper Antiseize: https://amzlink.to/az08KkzRLZgAp
Cir-clip Kit: https://amzlink.to/az

## Транскрипт

### Segment 1 (00:00 - 05:00) []

Hey guys, Chris Fix here and today I'm going to show you how to convert your drum brakes to disc brakes. And don't worry, this is going to be an in-depth guide so you can convert your drum brakes to disc brakes no problem at home using common hand tools. As always, let's get our safety glasses on. And although I'm working on a Honda, this process is going to be very similar, if not the same, for most vehicles with rear drum brakes. So, with that said, let's get started. And no matter what car you're doing this on, the first thing you need to do is make sure you have all the parts to go from drum brakes to disc brakes. And there are two main methods to do that. The first method is to find the higher trim level of your car. In this case, we have the lowest trim level, the Dell Soul S. And that is why we have drum brakes. But the higher trim level, the Dell Soul SI, has disc brakes from the factory. And that is exactly what this is right here. These are parts from the junkyard from a Deloul SI. And you can see the trailing arm with the factory disc brakes are installed. So all you would have to do is unbolt your old trailing arm, bolt in your new trailing arm, connect all the components for the brakes, and you're good to go. So that's the first method. Find the higher trim level of your current vehicle. The second method is to find an aftermarket solution. There are tons of companies out there that make drumtois conversions. And the nice thing is they kind of did all the research for you cuz they want their parts to work. So they come up with an entire list of parts that you might need. And in this case, the kit comes with just these two adapters with some fasteners. You have to buy everything else. And the parts here are all from a Honda Del Soul SI. So, we have the caliper, rotor, e brake cable, the brake pads. Everything here is from a Honda Del Soul SI. That way, we know it'll bolt right in. So, this is actually what I'm going to install. So, you can see the entire process. Also, all the parts are brand new, which I'm really excited about. And the last thing I want to cover is very important because a lot of people don't even do this when they convert their brakes and that is replacing the proportion valve. This is super important. If you don't replace this, your drum brakes are actually going to perform better than the new disc brakes. Now, not every car has a proportion valve. Usually the newer ABS cars don't have it. It's built into the ABS and you don't need to change that. It's good to go. But on the nonABS cars, you usually either have it in your master cylinder or if you follow your master cylinder, you follow the brake lines down, then it comes up here right there to the proportion valve. And the reason why you want to change it is because drum brakes take less pressure to work than disc brakes. Disc brakes take more pressure just because of the design. So if you keep your old proportion valve that works for the drum brakes, you're going to have less pressure and these aren't going to work properly. So, I got this proportion valve from a Honda Del Soul SI, which has front and rear disc brakes, which is exactly what we need. And finally, I did make a basic checklist of all the parts that you're going to need to go from drum brakes to disc brakes. And this is free to download in the description. I'm just trying to make this as easy as possible for you guys. So, let's get started. Okay, so the first thing I want to do is head to the track and do a quick brake test to show before and after the conversion. And yes, I know, ignore that smoke. I'll fix that in the next video. The valve seals are bad. So, I'm here at Bradenon Motorsports Park to do a 60 to zero braking test. And the goal here is to do three backto-back stops and see what the distance is with the drum brakes, then go home, do the conversion, come back and do the test again with disc brakes and compare the distance. So, I raced down the drag strip and held 60 mph until I got to the cones where I jammed on the brakes and stopped as quickly as I could. Then, I grabbed the measuring wheel and I started measuring from the cone and went as straight as possible to the center line of the front tire because that's a good repeatable reference point. This is my first practice run, so let's see where we're at. Okay, so 141 feet. Now, with the practice run done, I repeated this test three times back to back, and the results are 140 ft, then 141 ft, and then 143 ft. So, pretty consistent. And it makes me wonder if the new rear disc brakes are going to improve this at all. So, let's head home and find out. Okay, so back at the house, the first thing to do is chalk the front wheels. That way, the car doesn't move when we jack it up. Next, we want to move to the back wheel and with the tire on the ground, break all the lug nuts loose. Then we can slide the jack under the rear of the car. And for this car, I'm jacking it up right in the middle of the rear subframe. And you want to lift the car up high enough to get the rear tires off the ground. That way, we could get underneath to replace the parking brake cables later on. Now, put your jack stands on each side under the subframe. And carefully lower the car down onto the jack stands like that. Good. And finally, pump the jack up to lightly touch the frame just as backup just in case the jack stand fails for some reason. And anytime you jack the car up before you go underneath, make sure you give the car a good shake. And that is solid. So, now let's remove the wheel. So now we could unscrew all the loosen lug nuts and the wheel could come right off. And I like to slide the wheel under the frame. That way if the car falls for some reason, it won't fall on you. It'll fall on the wheel. All right. And with the wheel removed, you get a good look at how bad and rusty this suspension is. It definitely needs to be replaced. These bushings are shot. And I also know that from driving the car. The rear end feels all loose. It just doesn't feel good. And since we're going to be adding power with the turbo, not only do we want better brakes, but we're going to want a good suspension. So I'm going to do an entire video on how to rebuild your rear suspension. But for this video, we're focusing on the conversion. Now, in order to get the drum off, the first thing to do is make sure the E bra's not engaged and that this spins

### Segment 2 (05:00 - 10:00) [5:00]

freely. Now, as you would expect, this drum is going to be seized on there and not come off easily. So, one method to get this off is to hit the edge with a hammer, making sure you don't hit the studs. And this is really seized on here and doesn't want to come off without a fight. Luckily, some brake drums have threaded holes like these, which take an M10 1. 25 bolt. So screw them in and then tighten each bolt down back and forth little by little to separate the drum from the rust. And if you listen, you're going to hear it break free. Perfect. And now tighten that down just a little bit more and the drum should wiggle right off. Okay, now we need to remove the axle nut behind this dust cap. So get a punch or chisel and place it in between the dust cap and the hub right there. Then you could hammer it a couple times, turn the hub, hammer it again, turn the hub. Now, this has probably never been removed, so it's been on here for over 30 years, so I didn't expect this to pop right off. Perfect. Now, you can see it start to get loose. And there we go. The dust cap is off. So, now we have access to our axle nut. And I'm actually really impressed at how well this cap sealed out all the moisture. There's no rust in here at all. Now, to remove the axle nut, there's a little indent here in the axle that the nut is hammered into. So, we need to hammer that out. And the easiest way to do that is to get a pointed punch like this. You want to place the edge in there like that. and then hammer it to bend the edge of the axle nut upwards. Now that we have some good space in here, the end of the pry bar fits in here really nicely. So, I'm just going to use that to hammer it upwards. And again, bend the edge of the axle nut up. And now you can see we bent the edge of the axle nut up out of the indent so it's clear and free. So, to remove this nut, we need a 32 mm socket. Let's get that on there. And then you want to use a breaker bar or extendable ratchet like this to break it free because axle nuts are always on there very tight. Good. With that broken free, it should come off the rest of the way by hand. And don't lose this washer because we need this when we reinstall everything. Now, the hub bearing assembly should come right out like that. And next, we need to remove the drum shoes and all the hardware. And as you can see, some of the hardware is already removed itself, which tends to happen when you remove old drum brakes. So, let's slide the right side shoe out to free it up. Good. And now we need to remove this hold down spring right here. So, press it inwards with the pliers and then turn to release the pin. Just need to line this up like that. Good. And now it should come right out. And then let's push the pin through the backing plate. And with these pieces removed, now we can remove the brake shoe assembly. And the only thing to disconnect is the parking brake cable right at the bottom here. And to remove this, just slide the end of the cable stop out of the brake shoe arm like that. Now, to remove the E brake cable from the backing plate, there's a retaining clip right here. This is a pain to remove, but a little trick to make this easier is to use the box end of a wrench and just slide it over the retaining clip. And you can see how it compresses the fingers of the retaining clip. That way, it's easier to remove. Now, get a large pliers so you have some leverage and pull the rest of the cable out. I like to use the backing plate to pry against to help you pull it out. Now, you can slide the wrench off and pull the cable through the rest of the way. Beautiful. So, with the emergency cable removed, we can tuck that under out of the way. And now, we need to remove the brake line that's connected to the wheel cylinder. And the brake line nut is so rusted, I'm not even going to bother trying to remove it. I'm just going to cut it right here. This is going to get replaced anyway because we need a soft line connecting to the floating caliper. And it's worth trying to crimp the end of this brake line to stop it from leaking. But if that doesn't work, another thing you could do is find the rubber line off to the side here. And they make this tool that works really well to pinch off the brake line and stop it from leaking. Now, I never recommend squeezing the brake line like this if you aren't going to replace them because it can damage it internally and you wouldn't be able to tell until your brakes fail. Now, with that said, I am replacing these brake lines. So, this tool is perfect to stop the brake fluid from leaking out, as you're about to see. Good. Okay. So, the last piece we need to remove is this backing plate, which comes off with these four bolts right here. And a 14 mm socket should fit, but it doesn't because of all the rust. So, hammer it on that way it doesn't strip. Now, we can break this free. Good. And then remove it the rest of the way. And we're going to repeat this process for each bolt. Hammer on the socket, break the bolt free, and remove it the rest of the way with a ratchet. Good. And once all four bolts are removed, hit the backing plate with a hammer and we can remove that as well. All right, so there's two things left to do. One, we have to remove and replace our old E brake cable. And two, brake hose. Let's start with the E brake cable. And as you can see, if we follow it back, it's bolted in right here. So, let's head under the car and remove it. Now, there's three bolts holding this parking brake cable in. And this first one is really rusty. Okay, good. I'm glad that Honda uses zinc coated fasteners because even when the head is rusty, the zinc coating keeps those threads in decent shape. That way it isn't seized in there and it doesn't snap. Good. So, that's one bolt and this comes off. And now with the cable loose here, let's follow this back to the next bolt, which is right back here. And this bolt takes a 12 mm socket, but since it's covered in paint and rust, I'm going to hammer the socket on. That way, it fits and doesn't get stripped by mistake. Good. And now we can remove the bolt the rest of the way like so. And then get the mount loose. and it took a little bit of paint off with it. Now, with this removed, if you follow the cable behind the heat shield here, there's one more bolt holding the cable in. But first, we need to remove

### Segment 3 (10:00 - 15:00) [10:00]

this heat shield. So, let's break that bolt free and then remove it along with the rest of the heat shield. And then that'll give us access to our last bolt. And again, this is so rusty, the correct size socket doesn't fit on it. So, let's hammer the socket on so it's less likely to strip. And now we can break it loose. And I'm just glad none of these bolts are snapping because that would make this job a lot more difficult. Okay, so with all three bolts removed, now we could disconnect it from the assembly here. So here's the left and right parking brake cables. And when you pull on the parking brake, it engages the rear brakes. And to remove these cables, we need to disconnect it from here and up here. So first, let's remove the spring, which you could do by hand. Now, we need to remove the cables from the bracket. And if you look at the back of the bracket, these cable ends need to slide out of these slots on the sides. So just align the cable so that it fits through the slot. And we'll try to wiggle that cable end out. Just like that. And now, I don't want to jinx it, but I was nervous this would be impossible to remove because it's corroded. But it actually isn't that bad. So, with that removed, finally, the cables need to come out of here. And since this is so corroded, I'm going to carefully tap this with a hammer just to hopefully break up that corrosion and make it easier to remove. Now, you're going to want to use a punch and hammer this out. Okay, beautiful. I was concerned this was going to be a pain to remove as well, but it's actually coming out pretty easily. And once this is out, you could squeeze the cable through the little slot right here. Good. And now we want to do the same thing to the other side. All right. And this is going way too smooth. So just slide that cable out of the side of the mount. And finally, the cable is completely detached. So we could push it through here and get it out of the way. Okay. So this is pretty rusty down here and I want to get it cleaned up so I could paint it. So I'm going to use a metal wire brush to remove all the flaky rust. Now I'm going to use some compressed air to remove any dust from brushing the rust off. And finally, the rust paint could be directly applied to the car. I know you guys are going to want the link to this, so I'll put it in the description. And this paint works amazing at coating the rust, converting it, and then sealing it away so it stops any future rust. As long as you remove the big flakes of rust, this paint absorbs right in and works incredibly well. I use this all the time on my other vehicles, and it's lasted years on my pickup truck, which was really rusty. And since this is under the car, we want it to look nicer, but more importantly, we want to stop any future rust. So, make sure you coat every surface and work that paint in there. And that looks really good. So, now let's let it dry. And as that dries, let's pull the parking brake cable out the rest of the way. And it's out with the old and in with the new. And these two parking brake cables are almost identical except for the ends here. So this is what fit into the drum brake. And this is what's going to fit into our brake caliper. And that's why we need to swap these out. So besides the end here, everything else is the same. So let's go get the new one installed. Okay. So I waited for the paint to dry. And this is looking really good. So now we can get our passenger side parking brake cable in. Good. And same thing for the driver's side. Get that cable in there and slide it the rest of the way down into the mount. Okay, so now let's get the cable ends into the bracket. So, slide the cable through the slot and then turn it sideways. Same for the other one. Get the cable in through the slot and turn it sideways. Good. And the last thing to do is reinstall the spring. Beautiful. Now the cables are installed. So, let's finish this up by mounting the cable to the chassis of the car. And instead of installing old rusty bolts, I'm installing some nice new ones. So, handtighten that in there and then tighten it down the rest of the way with a ratchet. so that it's snug. Now, let's get the heat shield in place. And notice I painted it since it was a rusty mess. So, let's tighten this down until it's snug. Good. Now, let's move over to the next mounting spot. Get the bracket aligned and tighten this down as well. Good. And with that snug, now we can move to the last spot on the trailing arm right here. So, get the bracket in place. Then, we can tighten the last bolt down all the way. And finally, the last thing to do is feed the parking brake cable through the trailing arm and pull it all the way through until the rubber bushing fits into the hole. Good. All right. So, with our new parking brake cable installed, the last old part that needs to be replaced is this brake line. But right now, we have it sealed off really well. It's not leaking at all. We want to keep it that way so we don't lose brake fluid. So, in the meantime, we're going to install all our disc brake components, starting with our caliper adapter. And this is going to mount right about there. But the only thing is, you can see this is really rusty. This needs to be cleaned up before we could mount this. So, let's clean this up. And the reason why we need to clean this up is because the rust is going to create an uneven surface. So, with the bracket installed, you can see it doesn't sit completely flush, and that's enough to create vibrations and also misalign the brakes. So, let's go and clean this up. Now, normally I'd say that you could clean this by hand with a metal wire brush, but it's very important that we get all this bubbling rust removed. So, I'm going to use an angle grinder with a wire wheel attachment to knock off all this rust. We want this surface as smooth and flat as possible. That way, the brake caliper adapter sits flat and is aligned properly. If not, the actual brake caliper isn't going to sit right. So, just try to get all the rust off. Now, there's still some stubborn bubbled rust here. So, I'm going to use a hammer and a chisel to chip this rust off. You can see it leaves behind a flatter, smoother surface. Same for up here, but the back of the hammer is actually working really well for removing this rust. Now, let's go over it one more time with our wire wheel. Again, just trying to get this as flat and even as possible.

### Segment 4 (15:00 - 20:00) [15:00]

And finally, let's test our adapter bracket to make sure it fits flush. Perfect. Nice and tight. And check that out. All that thick bubbling rust is gone. That is much smoother and much better. So, our bracket sits on here flush. Now, the only downside is when you remove rust, you also end up finding stuff like this. There's a big hole here, and this needs to either be replaced or repaired. Now, I am going to replace this entire suspension, but that's not for this video. Right now, we're just doing a drum to dis conversion. So, I'm going to show you guys how I'm going to repair this pretty quickly and easily. So, to fix the hole we're going to weld, and anytime you weld to a car, you want to disconnect the negative cable on the battery to help protect the electrical components. Now, I'm MIG welding this hole. And my first goal is to build up some metal around the edge because this is a big hole to fill. And now, once you build up enough metal and that hole is filled, we could run some beads with higher heat in them without burning through. This is probably a little bit overkill, but I'm not a welder and I just want to build up this material to be sure it's solid. Beautiful. So, now that hole is no longer a problem. I'm not a professional welder, but I'm able to get the job done. There is penetration. It's built up nicely. That's not going anywhere. So, now the last thing to do is to paint this. That way, it doesn't rust again. So, tape off anything you don't want to get paint on. Then, spray it down with some brake cleaner to remove any oils and dust. That way, the paint has a clean surface to stick to. And after that's dry, we could paint the part. Now, I'm using a special rust spray paint. So, as long as there's no loose rust, you just want to get complete coverage. That way, the paint could absorb in and seal off the rust. That way, you don't get any future rust. And that's looking pretty good. A few hours later, let's remove the tape from the spindle as well as the parking brake cable. And now we can install our adapter bracket, which fits in right here. Now, on all four bolts, I'm going to use some medium strength thread locker. That way, they don't vibrate loose. And then, we're going to handtighten these down. and that way the bracket could be held in place without falling off. Then I'm going to tighten them down the rest of the way with my ratchet. And you want to tighten these down in a criss-cross pattern. That way the adapter plate is evenly seated against the mating surface. And then finally, you want to torque these bolts to spec, which the instructions say is 45 ft-lb. And with the adapter installed and on there good, you can see the race is stuck on the spindle. So the race is what goes inside the wheel bearing here. That's why you could actually see the ball bearings. Normally you shouldn't be able to see that. And that's what happens with old bearings. Just to give you a better view, here's the spindle. And there's that race I'm talking about. And this is probably the original bearing hub assembly. These bearings are getting old. The grease in there is all dried up. It's inexpensive to replace. We're right here. So, it's out with the old and in with the new. And you can see the new one has the race inside. So, we need to remove this race. And the easiest way to remove a seized race is to use a cut off wheel and cut a diagonal slot into the race. This cut not only relieves some of the tension in that metal, which will hopefully loosen it up, but also gives us something to hammer against. Just do your best to not go all the way through the race and cut into the spindle. Now take a chisel and hammer that race outwards. Well, doesn't always go smoothly. A piece of the race just broke off. Not a big deal. Let's just cut another slot into the race. And I'm going to use a torch to heat up the race to expand it and hopefully make it easier to remove since this is pretty stuck on here. And now that it's smoking hot, let's try this again. Beautiful. The heat did the trick. So, let's remove this completely. All right. And now we can get this off the spindle. Just be careful, it's hot. Now, I'm going to use a scouring pad just to clean this up a little bit. And then we can install the new hub and bearing. All right. Now, we can tighten down our axle nut. And it's very, very important that you do not forget about this washer. I'm going to get this in. Now, if you forget that washer, even with the axle nut tight, the wheel bearing will be loose and that won't be good. So, get that washer in there. Now, for the axle nut, I highly recommend that you replace it. Some axle nuts are torqued to yield. Some have a lip that you have to indent into the spindle. Either way, it's cheap insurance. These aren't expensive, and it prevents your wheel from coming off. So, it's worthwhile to replace this. So, now let's get some medium strength thread locker on the spindle threads. Then, we could get the axle nut on there and start those threads by hand. And once it starts getting difficult to turn by hand, you could use a ratchet and tighten it down until it's snug. But don't overtighten this because it's very important to finish tightening with a torque wrench. If it's too tight or too loose, you're going to damage the wheel bearing. So, get your torque wrench. And this car, the torque spec is 134T-lbs. So, torque it to spec. Good. Now, all we need to do is indent the edge of the axle nut into the gap in the spindle using a chisel. Perfect. And now that's locked in place and can't loosen. Finally, let's get our dust cap in place and tap it in with a rubber mallet. Okay, so now we can add our brake disc. But first, we have to clean the braking surface here. Don't skip this step because the factory coats brake rotors in grease. That way they don't rust in the packaging. And you definitely want to clean that off with some brake cleaner. That way you don't get it on your new brake pads. And that's just one side. Now flip it over and do the other. And only the braking surface needs to be cleaned off. Just make sure you don't skip this step or you will contaminate your new brake pads with all this grease. Now let's get the cleaned rotor on the hub. And then tighten down two

### Segment 5 (20:00 - 25:00) [20:00]

lug nuts to hold the rotor flat against the hub. That way we can test fit our brake caliper. Okay, the moment of truth. Does it fit where it's supposed to? And check that out. How cool is that? Now, let's just get the caliper bracket on there and make sure it's aligned properly. And with that where it needs to be, get that top bracket bolt handtightened as well as the bottom bracket bolt. And let's give this rotor a quick spin. And I'm not seeing any contact, so that's good. But we are a little too close on this side here. And as you can see, that side is really close. And we have a big gap here. That's not within spec. We have to have this relatively even. It doesn't have to be perfect, but it can't be off this much. And the reason why this is off is because when we sanded that rust, we lost some material and that caused the bracket to move inwards. And that's why it's very tight over here. But the good thing is there's an easy solution using stainless steel washers as shims. This is 1 mm thick and that'll be just enough to move it over so it fits right. So let's unscrew the caliper bracket bolt on the bottom. Then swing the bracket up out of the way. Get some medium strength thread locker on the threads. Get the bolt back in the hole of the adapter. And now we need to slide this washer carefully over the bolt. Good. Then we could drop the bracket back down and align the bolt without losing the washer. And then handtighten that back in there. Let's do the same thing for the top bolt. Remove it all the way. Add some thread locker. Put the bolt back in. And then carefully add the washer. Then load the caliper bracket over the hole without losing the washer. Handtighten it. And finally torque down to spec, which is 28 ft-lb. So now let's get our brake hardware into the bracket. And we're going to be using copper antisees to make sure the brakes don't squeak. So, get a thin coat of any sees on the machine surface where the brake hardware is going to sit. Then, let's install the brake hardware, which snaps in. And finally, get a thin coat of any sees on the brake hardware surface where the brake pad ears slide against. Good. Now, do the same thing to the other side of the caliper bracket. Snap the brake hardware in and get some anisees on that brake hardware. Next, let's install our brake pads. And for our brake pads, we don't want to get any on the braking surface here. We only want to get the anyes on the backing plate and on the ears. So get some antisees on the backing plate and rub it in. So it's a very thin coat. You don't want this to be gooped on there. The anisees will lubricate any of the touch points on the brake pad and that'll help prevent it from squeaking, which is why we coated the backing plate. And now why I'm coating each of the ears of the brake pad. Now when installing your brake pads, if your brake pad has a wear indicator like this, this is designed to rub against the brake rotor once the brake pad material gets too low, and that'll make a squeaking noise, and it'll let you know that your brake pads are low. Well, this brake pad with the wear indicator has to be on the inside for it to function properly. And that's pretty much for all cars. So, put the pad on the inside. It should slide right in. And then the other pad goes on the other side. Finally, let's install the brake caliper. And you're going to want to add some anisees to the part of the piston that pushes against the back of the brake pad. It's also a good idea to add anisees on the other side of the brake caliper, which again presses on the back side of the brake pad. And then the last piece of brake hardware fits in right over here on top of the caliper. And you could get a thin coat of anisees on here as well since it's going to be touching the top of the brake pads. Now we can install the caliper by sliding it over the pads. And then we want to get the top slide pin bolt handtightened in. Do the same for the bottom slide pin bolt and then torque both to spec, which is 17 ft-lb. And just to verify using the correct brake caliper on the correct side, you can see right here it says R for right, but let's just say yours doesn't say that. You always want to make sure your bleeder valve is at the top. So, the brake line comes in down here and the bleeder valve is above that. That way, any air that gets in here could escape when you bleed it out. So, we're good to go. All right. And check it out. This is looking amazing. So, with our brake caliper and brakes installed, the last things we need to do are get our parking brake cable installed. I'll show you that in a second. And then we also need to get our brake hose installed, bleed the brakes, and then we're good to go. So, let's get the end of the parking brake cable through the bracket. And right here, we need an E-ype circlip. And I have a nice kit of these, which I'll link in the description. just in case you need it. So, we need a 12 mm circlip and that fits right into the slot of the metal piece on the cable. Then, we just need to tap it into place so it fully seats. Perfect. And that's not going anywhere. Now, we need to get the end of the parking brake cable to line up with the hole in the parking brake lever on this caliper. And this could be kind of tough to do with just two hands. So, a little trick is to use a wrench and that gives you a bunch of leverage. That way, you could use your other hand to line up the holes like so. And then just get the pin in the hole and that holds it in place. Good. And finally, under that, we just need to get the cotter pin into the hole. That way, the pin can't pop out. Good. So, with our parking brake cable completely installed, the last thing to do is install our new brake line. And that means we have to disconnect this rusty mess right over here. And I really don't want to strip this. So, get a metal wire brush and brush away all the dirt and rust from the threads and the surrounding area. Then, you want to add some heat to it, which is going to help expand the metal and make it easier to remove. And finally, I'm going to add some homemade ChrisFix penetrating fluid, which is just 50% acetone and 50% transmission fluid, shaken, not stirred. And now that penetrating fluid is going to work itself deep into the threads. And this works amazing. And instead of

### Segment 6 (25:00 - 30:00) [25:00]

using a normal wrench like this, which only touches two sides of the nut, I'm going to be using a flare nut wrench, which touches four sides, so it's less likely to strip. So, here goes nothing. Let's see if this comes off easily or if it's going to fight us. Okay, that's a good sign. Try another turn. Beautiful. the nuts spinning and the hard brake lines not twisting. So, we could loosen this all the way. And they do make these flare nut wrenches in a ratcheting version, which I highly recommend. It just makes this so much quicker. Good. So, with that loose, now we can remove it. And I'm going to use a brake line stopper to prevent it from draining fluid all over the place. And this tool is pretty inexpensive and it works amazing. I highly recommend it anytime you need to disconnect brake lines. Now, let's use a pliers to remove the retaining clip from the soft brake line. Good. And then hammer it out because it's so rusty. All right. So, with our brake line loose, there's one more spot right behind the control arm right here that needs to be unbolted, and then we can pull the brake line out. So, let's cut the hard brake line in the back since we're not using it anymore. And with that cut, now we can remove this retaining clip and then hammer out this soft line or not. Okay, so that's really rusted in there. So, instead, let's unscrew the two bolts holding in this bracket and then we can remove the bracket with the brake line. All right. So, with our brake line removed, I can't believe that brake line is seized into the bracket. We need to reuse the bracket. So, I need to pop this out. And I think hitting it with the hammer in a vise is going to do the trick. So, let's lay the bracket on top of the vise and then hammer this out. Sheesh. There is no way that was coming out inside the car. So, I'm glad we took that out and hit it with the hammer. Okay, so now let's install our freshly painted bracket onto the control arm. And then handtighten both of these new bolts in. And finally, use a ratchet to tighten them down the rest of the way. That way, they're snug. Good. Now, we can feed our new stainless steel brake line back here. And this plastic part here, we're going to mount to our bracket with a nut and bolt. So, slide the bolt in. Then, get a washer on the other side. And then, get the nut on. Now, you want to tighten this down so it's snug. But don't overtighten it because it's just plastic. Now, we can feed the brake line up to the other mounting point. And that'll fit in right here. Like that. And we don't want to get any dirt or rust in the brake line. So, I'm using an ear plug to seal it off for now. Then we can install the retaining clip and just tap that in there with a hammer until it fully seats. Good. Next, I like to get a little silver anise on the threads of the flare nut. That way, it's easier to remove in the future. Trust me, you're going to thank me later. Now, we can remove the stopper. And this worked great to prevent all that brake fluid from leaking out. And let's get the flare nut into the new brake line. And once it's centered, we could tighten this down. And this is a pretty long flare nut, so it'll take a couple of turns. And then once it starts getting tight like this, get a wrench on the bottom brake line to hold it in and then tighten the flare nut about an eighth of a turn. And that's tight enough. There's no need to overtighten this. All right. So, with our brake line tightened down all the way, if we come to the other end of the brake line, you can see over here I have it dripping down into this cup cuz I want to kind of flush it out. Here's brand new brake fluid. Here is the brake fluid that's coming out. Now, you can see a clear difference. So, I'm going to put a fresh cup down here to make sure it's all fresh new brake fluid coming out of the brake line. And you're going to want to head over to the master cylinder and top off the brake fluid. That way we don't run dry. So make sure you're using the correct brake fluid. In this case, it's DOT 3 or DOT 4. Either one works. Dot 4 is just a little bit better. And fill it up right to the top. And now that is much better. Our brake fluid is coming out nice and clean. So that brake line is flushed. So let's go tighten it down against the banjo bolt. Now notice the banjo bolt has two copper washers. This is very important. So, when installing the banjo bolt, one copper washer goes on one side of the brake line, and then the other copper washer goes on the other side of the brake line to sandwich it. This acts like a gasket to prevent leaks, so don't forget it. Now, we can thread the banjo bolt in, being sure not to cross thread it. Then, tighten it down until it's snug with a wrench or a ratchet. And then, once it's snug, you want to torque this to spec, which is 25 ft-lb. Good. Now, the copper washers are crushed down and they won't leak. So, let's take the cover off the bleeder valve. And before we go bleed the brakes, I have a trick to help prevent air from getting past the threads. So unscrew the bleeder all the way. And the trick is to add some grease to the threads of the bleeder valve. That way when you bleed the brakes, air can't easily get past the threads because it's clogged with grease. Plus, this prevents the threads from seizing to the caliper and then snapping off down the road, which is a real pain. Okay, now we're ready to bleed the brakes. So get your wrench on the bleeder valve. Then you can get some 3/16 inner diameter clear tubing. That way you can see the bubbles coming out. Now get someone to help you press and hold the brakes. Okay, press and hold. Then crack the bleeder valve loose and close it. And look at all those bubbles. Okay, let go and then press the brakes again. Now, you're going to want to repeat this process until there's no bubbles left. And a little trick to really force that air out is to have your helper pump the brakes three times and then hold. And you can see all that air getting forced out. And just so you have an idea, after doing this about eight times, there's no more bubbles. So, remove the tube, clean off that bleeder valve, and then put the dust cap back on. So, with all the air bled out of our brake caliper, we are completely done going from drum brakes to disc brakes on this side. So, now follow the same exact process on the other side. And it's as easy as that. All right. So, with both of our rear brakes officially converted from drum brakes to disc brakes, there's one more

### Segment 7 (30:00 - 35:00) [30:00]

thing left to do, and that is to change out the proportion valve with one from a car that had rear disc brakes. But before we do that, I have a really nice brake pressure gauge set. That way, we could compare the fluid pressure with the drum brake proportion valve and then with the disc see if it actually does anything. So, to do this, we need to remove our bleeder valve all the way. And then I'm using a custom bleeder valve, which is two bleeder valves welded to each other. So screw that in all the way and then snug it up. Then we could thread our gauge onto the custom bleeder valve and then snug that up as well. Finally, we need to bleed the gauge so there's no air in the line. Okay, so with all the air removed, now let's see what our brake pressure is. Press as hard as you can and hold. Okay, so 700 PSI for the drum brake proportion valve. All right, so now let's install our disc brake proportion valve. And it goes right there. So, first let's get an absorbent mat under here because it's going to leak a bunch of fluid and there's no way around that. Now, we want to break all these flare nuts loose. Starting with the top one. Good. Now, do the other top ones. And this one is very tight and we don't want to break this because this would not be fun to fix. So, let's use a little heat on the nut and then let's try this again. Good. A little heat goes a long way to make these easier to remove. Okay, so now break these nuts loose and then we can loosen them up completely and pull the brake line out. And this would be a lot easier to do with ratcheting flare nut wrenches. So if you need to do this job, definitely get some. Trust me, this is very tedious with normal flare nut wrenches. And now we have the last two flare nuts in the back that need to be removed. So get that bottom one out. And finally, let's unscrew the top one. And this nut is completely loose. Now with all the brake lines removed from the valve, let's remove these three 10 mm nuts holding the valve to the firewall. And these are pretty rusty, but this first one broke loose really easily. Oh no. Okay, so I spoke too soon and I broke this stud. So, uh, let me show you how to prevent this from happening again. Okay, on the other stud, the first thing we're going to do is wire brush all that rust so the nut isn't getting forced over chunks of rust as you unscrew it. Next, add some heat to the nut to expand it and also help break some of the rust free. And finally, add some homemade penetrating fluid onto the nut and threads to lubricate it. Now, with that soaked in, let's give this a try. Oh well, it's a shame I had to break that other stud because this one came off so easily once it's prepped properly. And then do the same thing for the last stud at the bottom. Brush it clean, heat it up, and then hit it with some penetrating fluid. And finally, unscrew it. And again, this comes right off. Okay, so now the drum brake proportion valve should come right off. Good. And it's out with the old and in with the new. And I'm going to use new fasteners on this. That way it's not a rusty mess. And just snug these down. And don't overtighten them because it could snap off. Now for the other side, we're going to give something a try. Let's add some red thread locker and work that into the threads. And there should be enough threads for this nut to grab onto. Okay, good. And then just carefully tighten this down. You don't want to overtighten this. You just want to engage as many threads as possible. Good. And I think that'll work. And finally, let's finish up by getting the bottom nut on there and snugging it up. And that's not going anywhere, even with the stud that got broken off. So, now let's get all these flare nuts tightened back up. Starting with the back ones. And you're going to want to hand tighten to start the threads. That way, you don't cross thread them. And I actually went out and bought a ratcheting flare nut wrench set because of how tedious this was when I was unscrewing them. And already I could tell you this is going to pay for itself. And when tightening these, you just want to snug it up. Do not overtighten them. They don't need a lot of force. All right, so this is great. I will repeat what I just said. get ratcheting flare nut wrenches because I know on camera it looked like removing them was fast, but it was really a good 30 to 40 minutes of bending over the engine and loosening each flare nut little by little. And now this is going to take me less than 5 minutes to tighten up. Good. Now, with all these flare nuts tight, let's add some brake fluid. That way, we don't run dry. So, with the brake fluid topped off, now what you want to do is get somebody to go in the car and press the brakes as you look and make sure there's no leaks at the proportion valve. Go ahead. Press the brakes. Let off. All right, I don't see any leaks, so we're ready to bleed the brakes. And we're going to have to do all four brakes because we removed all four brake lines. Now, the best way to do this is start with the furthest brake away from that proportion valve, which in this case is the rear passenger side right here. So, you're going to want to bleed the brakes the same way as before. The only difference now is even though the brake fluid looks like there's no bubbles in it, just keep bleeding. Those bubbles have to travel a long way from the front of the car. See, there you go. Now, we want to bleed all this air out. So, keep bleeding the brakes until the brake fluid has no more bubbles. Good. Now, there's no air in this brake line. So, this caliper is done. So, with the rear passenger caliper bled, now we're going to go to the next furthest brake caliper, which is over here on the driver's side rear. And we're just repeating the same exact process for this brake. Keep bleeding it until you see air. And then bleed it out until it's bubble free. Good. And now we're done back here. So, let's give this parking brake a test. Oh man, this is way tighter now. And now we could get both wheels on the rear since we're done back here. And I did set that parking brake. That way I could torque them to spec without them spinning. And with both rear wheels on, now we can remove the jack stands and lower the car down

### Segment 8 (35:00 - 37:00) [35:00]

to the ground. So, we're done at the back. Now, let's move to the front passenger side. And now is a good time to check your master cylinder and top it off. That way, you don't run it dry and pump air back into the brakes. Next, we're going to bleed this brake caliber just like the others. And you can see up front there's barely any air in the system since we bled most of it out of the rear. Good. Now, let's finish up here. torque the wheel to spec and lower the car back onto the ground. And finally, we only have the driver's side brake to go. So, let's bleed the air out of here. And as you can see, there's barely any bubbles coming out, which is good. So, we're completely done bleeding the brakes. So, let's finish up by torquing the wheel down. Then, grab that jack stand and lower the car back to the ground. All right. So, with all four brake calipers completely bled, now let's top off our master cylinder here. And you just want to fill it to the full mark on the side of the master cylinder since the rear brakes are new and the front brakes are pretty much new as well. And the last thing to do is to check the brake pressure because we have our brand new rear disc proportion valve in here, which is not leaking, by the way. That's nice and dry. So, I want to see if the brake pressure actually increases like it's supposed to. So, let's get this wheel off. And with our gauge connected and all the air bled out, press the brakes. Oh, man. Look at that. We have a lot more fluid pressure now. And just so you can see the difference, the left is the drum brake proportion valve at 700 PSI and the right is our disc brake valve at 1100 PSI. So about 60% more pressure, which makes sense because the disc brakes need more pressure than drum brakes. Okay, with the brakes and proportion valve installed and bled, let's head to the track and see if there's any improvement on our stopping distance. Now on the drive over to the track, the brakes felt great. So let's see if we could beat that 141 ft stopping distance we got with the drum brakes. And our first 60 to zero was a disappointing 137 feet. And that was followed by 133 feet and then 129 feet. And I think what's happening here is the new brakes are betting in because the distance keeps getting shorter and shorter until finally it started getting consistent. So our next three stops were 111 ft, 112 ft, and 111 ft again. So that's about 30 ft better than our 141 ft average with the drum brakes. So, after the conversion, this car now stops two car lengths shorter, which is a significant amount. So, there you go. That's everything you need to know on how to convert your old rusty drum brakes to these nice new disc brakes. They look so much better. But not only do they look better, as you just saw, they perform better as well. Plus, these will be a lot easier to replace when you need to replace the brake pads and rotors. Now, I hope this video was helpful. If it was, remember to give it a thumbs up. If you're not a subscriber, consider hitting that subscribe button. And as always, all the tools and products are linked down in the description so you could easily find