Discussion Forum - Northstar Chevelle Club

To do the 11” rear drum swap you would need to find a wagon or full-size car from the late 80’s to get the backing plates. The drums a used where for a 1973 Chevelle wagon and then had to file the opening on the drum a bit to get them to fit over the axle. The problem you are going to run into is with the parking brake. The later cars the cables come into the backing plates one front and one from the rear which makes the pulling lever face the wrong direction for a Chevelle. I could not find anyone that makes those levers, I got lucky and found a used set out of a 1974 impala at a junk yard. You might be better off to buy the kit from master power brake and bolt it all on. I don’t think you are going to notice much difference if your car has front disc brakes already. I did it on mine because I kept mine a manual non power brake set up.

I used 65-70 Impala brakes, they work great, much better than the original. They are the same size shoe/drum that Chris P. has but the wheel cylinder is larger 1 vs 7/8 as I recall. There is also a brake factory installed proportion valve on my car, which was part of the disc brake package. Would still like better braking as a don't think I could lock them up if needed.

I've also been looking into taller ball joints but upper to help with improving caster/camber. An alternative is taller spindles, than maybe larger rotors, want to keep my wheels, they will fit the Corvette which is an 11-1/2 rotor vs 11 on the Chevelle,  but the steering arm is on the wrong side. Could the spindles be swapped from side to side?