finished up my ls1 rear brake swap and finally took it out for a spin today to checy things out. aside from needing an e-brake adjustment and a little more bleeding im really impressed. my car stops soo much better and evenly too, no more bonzi runs for the ditch whenever i stop. i would highly reccomond this upgrade for anyone with rear drums. thanks tech section!

 

i will be doing mine next month. How did you hook up the e brake cables?

 

you dont want to know. i made and "adapter " for the ls1 cables, then made up some extensions with 1/8 ss cable to connect to the trans tunnel. works well, but im waiting for edmiller to get the custom cables made so i dont have to rely on my creation. i would hate to post pics, although i am proud of the adapters made, but i would probably get flammed by the safty police.

ooooo i forgot, i had to shorten the springs on the brake side of the cables to get them to function properly in the given ammount of space between the mounting bracket and the brake arm

 

I'm still waitig on the word on the cables, sorry fellas.

Ed

 

oh, hey ed, thanks again

 

The natives are getting restless.

 

i wanna see some pics
please?

 

sure, what would you like to see?

 

whatever you've got, but most importantly the finished product, what wheels are you using?

 

Yep, me too. I just spoke to Jim yesterday and he's on it.

Ed

 

 

yeah! ed

anywho, about the pics, im working my a$$ of this week and have no time, but i should be able get them this weekend.

 

here are some pics, they didnt come out too well, but its cold and i wasnt going back out.

got a pic of my adapter, the e-brake spring shortening, and the brake line hoops

 

and another from the outside or a dirty wheel

 

looks good, maybe i'll do the swap on mine then.

 

i would recommend it.

there are usually rear disc setups on ebay complete with brake cables for around 200

and the whole job isn't too hard.

the only bit of info i found that would be helpful over the tech article is this, in the article on how to swap brakes, it shows you clamping the backing plates to the axle flange and then drilling the top two holes first. i found this to be a major pain in the a$$. what i did notice is that, while the original lower bolt holes for the drums are smaller, and threaded, they are in the right place to line up with the new ls1 back plate. so i just drilled them out first to 13/32, put both the lower bolts in and then lined everything up based on that. it worked great. using the clamp method is a pain because there is not much surface area on the backing plate, and the clamp kept falling off.

other that that everything went pretty smoothly

 

can i put those ls1 brakes on a strange rear end?

 

sure, why not, you can buy the rear setup for ls1 brakes. if you already have the rear and its setup for something else, i would not know.

 

i thought the bolt pattern from a 82-92was slightly different from the 98-02f-bodys?? or am i wrong? used set ups seem to go for decently cheap on ebay. sure as hell beats strange eng. drag brakes for almost 600!!

 

i believe it is different, why?

 

did your rotors still slip onto the studs?

 

nope, the bolt pattern is the same from 82-02... 4.75, the only real difference is the width of the 82-92 rearends compared to the 93-02 which are wider

 

yes

 

thanks for the help

 

how long did this take and how difficult was it?

 

well it took me a good part of a weekend to do, not including the e-brake cables. most of the trouble was that i have/had lakewood traction-lift bars, and they interfered with the e-brake bracket so i had to take them all off. i could probably do the whole swap in a day, now that i know what im doing. i found out during the swap that i had no sharp sawzall blades and all my drill bits were wasted, had to run out and pic up a new set. i painted the parts about a month beforehand while it was warm, and spent the time getting the flex lines ordered from edmiller.

the e-brake "adaption" took me another day.

and changing the prop valve was a little rough. all the nuts were so f-ing tight i was amazed i didnt break any. i was actually standing on the engine to get more leverage.

 

Thats what I did as well.

 

I have LS1 Rear disk in the back... it is funny because they are bigger than my fronts.... kinda embarassing really.

 

well now you can stop faster when you're going in reverse!
it's better than the drums though

 

lol anything is better than drums. My other firebird has 83 T/a rear with disc brakes, the calipers are interchangeable so on the right one is in the front one on the left is in the back... it looks stupid... but better than drums :P

 

yeaq, im in the same boat. probably in the spring when the car gets back out im going to get a ls1 front setup from bigbrakeupgrade.com

 

Why not EB miller he sells them cheaper

 

the same setup? really? i did not know... price?

 

12" C4: $700
12" 1LE: $850
12" LS1: $775
13" C4 HD: $900
12" LS1/C6 combo (uses C6 caliper): $900

 

PM or e-mail me and I'll give you a full parts breakdown..and don't forget the price of shipping after the total, it pays to have all the info you need before you buy.

Ed

 

Yeah I did not factor in shipping are the prices I listed still fairly accurate?