TJE

I use my truck mostly for towing. What would give me better braking, rear disc conversion, or 3" rear brake shoes?

Thanks for the help, Tony

BC847

All else being the same, the disc brake is gonna provide the same braking effect (if not more) Longer than the equivalent drum before "Brake Fade" sets in. (Brake fade is where the friction material get hot enough to evolve gases which act like a lubricant making the brakes seem to fade).

The disc (fully exposed) is able to dump the heat of braking much faster than the drum (50% enclosed).

Keep in mind though, 70% or so of the total vehicle braking effect is provided by the front brakes. Make sure they're in top shape.

Hope this helps.

Charles C. Stan

should all be same. Save your money and put good shoes on the front and three inchers on the rear. If you are in an area where you encounter many grades then an exhaust brake is money well spent. I hardly touch my brakes as attentive driving and juducious use of the exhaust brake seem to be great as I am on 60,000 miles since new brakes. The last time I checked they should go another 60,000.

TJE

Yes it does help. One thing I'm wondering...I put the "Wagner Best" quiet brake pads on the front. The ones with no squealing, and no brake dust. Maybe these are not the best pad for towing..... Any suggestions?

Thanks, Tony

TJE

Thanks for the info. Exhaust brake... the truck in your sig. has an exhaust brake? I didn't think you could put one on with a non lockup torque converter. Help clear the fog on this please.

Thanks, Tony

Diesel Junkie

With properly adjusted drums, you will have the same power with disk and drum.

Disk brakes are far superior to drums though.

All new trucks are all disk.

Disks self adjust well, drums don't.

Disks will give you good fade free power their whole life. Drums wont.

I think the pedal will feel better with disks. Drums retract the pads, and require some pedal travel to get the shoes back out before contact. The stock 1st gens have metering valves that hold off the pressure to the front until pressure is up in the rear. With disks you can throw this thing away and you have a great feeling pedal.

Drums also have major issues with mud. Get a little in there and it just grinds the shoes down in a hurry. Mud is not good for disks either, but disks probably do 100x better in mud than drums.

I just finished a disk conversion mine.

TJE

Good info thanks, man. I'm sending you a PM also

Later, Tony

Jim Lane

That looks nice,
Can you get this to work with duals?

Do you have any problems when you bleed the calipers with the location of the bleed screw?


Jim

wannadiesel

It won't work on a dually unless you upgrade to 19.5" wheels.

BC847

Thanks Jim.

If having to remove the calipers to bleed them correctly isn't a problem, . .. . then no, it's no problem to bleed them.

As you know, the vents do have to point up during bleeding.

I only had to bleed them with the original install and haven't touched them since. It's just as well though (to remove them) as it appears to be common for the calipers with the built-in parking brake feature to "hide" air in the nooks and cranny's of the ratchet mechanism. It's recommended to smack them often with a hammer to aid in displacing the bubbles trapped within. With that, bleeding them four or five times initially did the trick.

Diesel Junkie

I mounted my calipers the same way.... Taking the calipers off to bleed is no biggy. I took them off, and rotated them around the rotor until the bleeder is in the right spot, but kept them on the rotor during pressure bleeding, just prop them up with an extra jack stand... Its more of a pain to HAVE to take the wheels off to bleed the rears.

No one seems to offer disks conversions for duals, cause of the deep backspace reach of duals, but I wonder if there are some ways to make it work besides big wheels? Pretty good excuse to go 19.5 though....

I DO have disks on my 17" wheel 07 dually... maybe I should check out how the factory did it some time.... Gotta wait till the next tire rotation though cause I rarely work on that truck.

Ilikebikes

What is this thing I can throw away? I'm going to toss discs on the rear of my heap soon and would like to get rid of whatever junk I can.

Diesel Junkie

Its the valve that is mounted to the bracket on the master cylinder mounting bolts. It has inputs and outputs for the front and rear brake lines, and an electrical connector.

It has a floating piston between the front and rear systems that will actuate a plunger that will turn on the brake warning light if one side had considerably more pressure than the other side.

The thing also has a metering valve that holds off pressure to the front lines until rear line pressure is up. That functionality is specifically for Drums so that fronts dont grab before the rears, so the brakes feel better, and the truck wont dive the instant the brakes are applied. Totally unnecessary with disks.

I had to do a lot of research to figure this thing out and what it does. Mine somehow failed causing a low pedal in the fronts. I junked it.

In my research I found a lot of experts telling me it was unnecessary and I agree.

I think that you will have better pedal feel with disks vs drums, i doubt that a properly working metering valve would cause much of a problem, but it has unnecessary functionality.

Ilikebikes

Sounds like I may pull it off. I'm assuming that the brake warning code doesn't show with this off?

My piece of junk is probably going to be fast enough (for now, lol) but I can't wait for it to stop like it should.

Diesel Junkie

The plunger completes the circuit when it senses a problem, it does not open it. So disconnect it and forget it.