Thanks! Nice Riv! Where did you get the disc brake conversion? Thankfully @Nailhead in a 1967 pointed me to someone who had a 70 parting out which surprising has disc brakes I am looking to purchase. I had a hard time finding anything new.
My adventures of disc brake conversion are long, but ultimately to get off the shelf components I went with scarebird. I actually don't recommend converting it can be a waste of time and money. For the stopping power, the aluminum drum brakes are great and lighter than Disc. https://www.scarebird.com/
Ah ok. I heard of them, they seem to be out of stock on everything. I worry about the availability of the front drums, and I hate working on drum brakes as well.
Its just a fact when owning these unique cars. I think parts availability for the drums are ok, but OEM Disc components..... So, I'll share a little more to my story. I have not priced other aftermarket kits in a while, but I had no desire to spend the prices at the time I did mine. I did use a 1981 Cadillac DeVille set up, reversed the spindles and sized the lower ball join hole. Braking power was OK, but not Aluminum drum like (they were better at stopping). Next, I sourced a spindle and disc setup from a Riviera junk yard. That was a mistake. The spindles are the same between disc or drum, so the only value was the two disc rotors I got. I then did a Scarebird install. Brakes are good but not great. My frustration was high, I almost when back to Drums but did not want to take my car off the road. I am still tempted to just do a complete drum rebuild and put them back on. The issue: After doing even more research not wanting to replace more parts I believe the reason stopping power of a Disc brake set up installed onto a non disc brake car isn't great is because of the fluid flow. There have been people that attempted to argue the point that flow doesn't matter but these folks don't own a Riviera and probably haven't thought through their statements thoroughly. Use caution when people give you advice here and elsewhere that don't own a Riviera. The Riviera is a different car, chassis wise there are unique and careful design considerations. Now to my point, After years of running discs out front I believe the engineers for the drum brake cars deliberately reduced the hard line diameter because the Aluminum Drums up front combine with weight of this body style require a little more thoughtfulness to reduce the likelihood of locking up the front brake. Yes, they can be that good when working correctly. My ABody convertible drum brake hardlines are larger than the Riviera - its a different chassis and the weight distribution is different as well. Counter intuitive until you think a little more about it and comparing both cars. So this, I believe has translated into an insufficient flow issue for my disc set-ups on the Riviera. I don't have a true Disc brake option Riviera to substantiate my theory, but it would solidify it factually beside the empirical hard-line measurements on my cars. The Riv stops fine, but not like it did with drum brakes. This is only my theory. So, for me if I want to take the next steps, I make newer larger hard lines for upfront or return to a drum set-up. I am omitting all the details about the other brake components to keep this response concise.
Thanks for sharing. I was hoping for better stopping with the disc setup, but it sounds like even if I go with a setup from a parts car with disc brakes (Master cylinder and booster too) I may not get that and it may be worse. ugh When I picked up the car I knew it had brake issues. Before leaving the showroom we had to put fluid in the master. When I drove it home I drove slow and had to pump the brakes. Its probably just a wheel cylinder or 2 and a bleed that's needed, but I figured instead of investing in fixing the 4 wheel drum setup maybe doing a front disc swap would make sense since I preferred disc anyway. Sounds like that may not the best thing for me to do.
Yeah, my advice is to just dive in and clean up/rebuild all four corners. I hated the idea about drum brakes even on the rear but reality is I am never putting thousand of miles a year on my car as a DD and haven't since the 90s. So a brake job on drums will last years to come. It kinda equalizes desire, cost and vehicle enjoyment in my mind. Enjoy the car nevertheless!
