I've been planning this conversion for months now, and it's finally time to get stuck in
The car is a 1970 hydro K with a warm 1152, twin 1-1/4" SUs, BL 731 cam (I think), 12G295 head, and 3-1 extractors into a 1-3/4" stainless exhaust.
What I'm doing is ditching the spaced drum setup, in favour of a set of Mini Spares' alloy 4-spot calipers, clamping slotted 7.5" discs. This is purely a road car, but the aim is to get the car stopping
really well before I start belting the thing around inner-city Melbourne traffic again.
In its current state the drums stop reasonably well, but only just after they've been adjusted after which they deteriorate pretty quickly. I hate adjusting drums all the time, hence the discs
While I'm swapping hubs, CVs, etc. I figured I'd also throw a set of adjustable lower arms and caster rods on at the same time, with the intent of dialling out a bit of a geometry problem resulting from a whack in a PO's life.
When researching the conversion, I took a bit of a gamble on the Mini Spares alloy 4-pot calipers. Their documentation says they're designed to fit under
most 10" alloy rims, but no specifics. I've got a set of ROH S-offset Contessa's, so I figured they'd be the most common wheel for this setup and the calipers should fit.
Hopefully.
The other gamble is that Mini Spares specifically mention that there are "clearance problems" fitting these calipers with adjustable lower arms & caster rods to hydro cars, but again they don't like to elaborate. Umm...
So, anyhoo. Enough ramble, the horde wants pics
This is a wheel. Hey, I had to start somewhere
This side of the car has about one degree of negative camber, but the other side is about 0.75° positive. Can't wait to get those arms on...
Oh, this is my home-made camber gauge. Take one piece of MDF, three screws, some fishing line, a washer and a brush up on high-school trigonometry and viola!
First cab off the rank after measuring the existing camber was to bench assemble one hub, drive flange, disc, caliper and CV, and throw the lot in a wheel and pray it will fit. This is the assembly ready for its test fit.
Man, those alloy calipers are pure sex incarnate
I was really nervous at this point.. the whole project hinged on what happened next:
Woooooooooooooooo HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! It FITS!
.. but only JUST:
The outside edge of the caliper is probably only 2mm from the inside of the rim... now I'm hoping the wheels are true
So, now that there's a chance this is all going to work, it's time to get hands dirty and pull the drums off.
She's a bit road-weary...
It took only about half an hour to get from that, to this:
This is all going too well, surely?
And there we are. One fully disassembled Mini front suspension. All the ball joints split really easily.. I expected a much tougher fight.
Tomorrow we start pulling down the other side.