Drum to Disc Brake Conversion on a Chevy Classic Car

Brent, this is quiet the array of power brake conversion parts. And before we launch into this, talk a little bit about why, in addition to just helping the vehicle stop, but a good compelling reason for changing from what this vehicle has now, to what we're about to do. A lot of the older vehicles, well all the older vehicles, had single reservoir brake systems, which means if you lost pressure for any reason, anywhere in the system, anywhere in the brakes, you lost all brakes. I mean, they were gone. Except for your emergency brake, which may or may not work. I mean, you blow a front brake line. You step on the brake. All the fluid is going to pump out that hole. You're done. It's gone. You have no brakes at all. So they came out with double reservoir systems, and yeah, which means the one reservoir controls the front brakes. One controls the rear brakes. So if you lose a front brake line, like we just talked about, you still have rear brakes to get you stopped in an emergency situation. So, much safer. Much better. Plus disc brakes. Obviously you get much more stopping power from disc brakes versus drum brakes. Than the drums that are out there now. And we've got power here. So you don't have to have the endless leg press to cut the brakes to stop the car. Yep. The power brakes pull vacuum off the carburetor and just help. You don't have to push quite so hard to try and stop. Yep. Yeah. Absolutely. Now, if I were shopping for brakes, which we were, where would I go to find such thing? Cause it seems like kind of a daunting task. What you don't do is go out and buy a master cylinder, and the rotors, and the calipers, and the lions and the... It's a lot simpler than that. Right? Yeah. In this for a lot of vehicles, they have power disc brake conversion kits, which includes everything you see here, except for the catalog of course, which speaking of the catalog. Let's talk about the catalog. Cause it's good to know to find this stuff for your car. Right, right. And this particular catalog from Year One is in 1955-1957 Chevrolet. We're working on a '56 Chevy. It's funny how that worked out. Yeah! If you're working on a Camaro, they've got a catalog for that. If you're working on a Mustang, a Charger, a Firebird. I mean, they've got many, many different catalogs for vehicles specific for, you know, I mean they've got a power disc brake conversion kit for a Mustang. So, and they've got I mean for 55 to 57 Chevy, they've got, I mean you could almost build an entire car out of this catalog. You've got everything. So step one is we find, we hook up with the catalog. Yep. Hookup with the catalog. Find the kit. Yep. Classic performance products, as this particular brake conversion kit seems to be very complete. Obviously we haven't started putting it on yet, but it's looks very complete. It looks like a really nice kit. I think it will go together beautifully. And what's cool. What I like about this is that, like other stuff we put on this car, you know, think back to the wiring harness, it's the same concept here. It's kind of plug and play. The lines have been formed to match this particular body. So Brent and I don't have to get in there and bend every line just so. They're going to drop right in there just the way they're supposed to. Everything is set up, from the brackets to the calipers, to work with this '56. Right, right. Yeah. Special brackets specifically designed for this car. So it's a great consideration for you to make for your vehicle. If you want to think about changing to power brakes and get that extra benefit of safety by going to the double reservoir rather than the single reservoir, a brake conversion kit like this might be something you want to entertain. And next thing we can start looking at is how to get this on there.