Brake Upgrades

Hi Guys,

Had my old SWB series III wagon for over 13 years now and periodically I go through the pondering on how I could upgrade the front brakes. I have the LWB drums on the front, so it's already uprated. However, they are still manual adjust drums and prone to pulling when you least want it, needing TLC, etc.

Does anyone know of a Self-Adjusting Drum conversion that might be available? A while back there used to be a disk brake conversion , does anyone know anything of that? I like to keep the old wagon authentic and looking normal, but brakes seem to be a fair subject for modernisation.

Cheers,

Rob

Rocky Mountain do a disc brake conversion but it's about £800 IIRC

never heard of any self adjusting shoes for a land rover.
There are a few different disc brake kits around but you need to be rich.
A servo assisted master cylinder will improve things if you havn't got one already.

G'day

There are some other disc Brake options, Zeus Engineering, Rocky Mountain Offer two types a vented disc which is the more expensive and a solid rotor for about 300 less. There is also a bloke in the US doing the Timm Cooper conversion for about 1500 USD, and the only other kit I am aware of is Heystee's.

Links
Zeus Engineering
Rocky Mountain Spares UK > Improved Engineered Parts and Accessories for your Land Rover (scroll down)
LR-Parts.com: View Items
Heystee Automotive BV


There was an interesting article on the Rovers North Website
The Rovers North News Online

I have been looking at going down this road. I installed a dual system with vacuum assit from a series 3 last year. That alone made an incredible improvement but even after getting a Land Rover specialist to fine tune it I can't eliminate the pull under braking.

The main thing to be aware of with some of these kits is you may not be able to use your standard LR 16" Wheels let alone 15 inch white spokes, I have a set of Bridgestone Duellers 33 12.5R15s that are perfect for soft sand and long road trips, I will be sad to see these go. From what I have heard - Not from the manufacturer mind you but reading around is the problem is that the LR wheel has less space on the inside than other 16" wheels and it fouls the brake caliper.

Good luck with what ever you decide.

Jonathan

Thanks for the replies guys,

I actually run a LWB servo assisted dual circuit already, on the SWB. The braking power is as reported, great! The problem is that with extra power on both sides any imbalance is also more noticable. I have snails on both my front wheels that will need replacing soon and given this is a gas axe job until you have done it once already, I was quite keen to evaluate my alternatives all be it more expensive. I would love to brake hard without feeling it was a game of Russian roulette. Having said that, I have found that under truly hard braking the pull doesn't happen much. I think it may be that under soft braking the partial contact of powerful brakes is more of an issue than the hard press of both sides in full on emergency stop.

I have heard back from Heystee about their kit and apparently they have a new one coming out that uses Defender brake components, rather than the previous Santana/Iveco one. They do mention though that it will step my wheels out by 10mm, which when running on 130 rims may be just too much... they also mention I would have to ensure the rear brakes were balanced with the new front, the back must not brake harder than the front. This is an issue as Drums are actually more powerful than disks, but have all the cleaning and balancing issues. Disks in general operate much nearer their red-line than drums. Again, if the wheels are stepping out by 10mm I may be forced to fit front and rear to avoid looking a bit odd anyway... At least if they are Defender parts they may be justifiable as "modern replacements" as opposed to "modifications".

Cheers,

Rob