1968 Bonneville Brake Installation
(begun 12/29/05)
Installation Gallery
Installing 1968 Bonneville 4-piston fixed caliper brakes onto a 1965 Bonneville with single reservoir, four-wheel drums.
Step
1: Raise the front end, set the car down on sturdy jack stands and get
the front wheels off. Now step back and look at the car. Contemplate
what you're about to do. Are the disk brakes really necessary? The car
has survived over 40 years already and she's only a weekend cruiser,
really. But then there are those times when you really need to stop
and the sharp, half-lane changing jerk of four-wheel drums that preludes
into severe fade and loss of all braking power causing panic. And then
there's that hopped-up engine under the hood… maybe it is a good
idea so install a dual master cylinder and disk brakes after all.
So now that the car is in the place where it will potentially rest for many moons, it's time to start getting dirty. This is the story of how I am going about this job. There may be other ways, better techniques, smarter mechanics out there that have done this before but I think I can handle it; the removal of parts at least.
First I removed the sway bar. Remove the end links from each lower A-arm and then remove the sway bar brackets. The sway bar will need to have its ends pointed towards the front of the car to remove it. Pick a side (passenger's or driver's) and start wrestling with it. It will require a little jiggling here and there but it does come out- really.
Next, the tie-rod ends need to be separated from the spindle. First, remove the cotter pin and the king nut so you can separate the tie rod from the spindle. I have a pair of pickle forks for use with a hammer, and an air chisel with more forks available if I need some help. I have found that the good old hammer (or mini-sledge) and some muscle works better than the air chisel but sometimes the air chisel makes starting the separation much easier. My tie rod ends luckily came off with relative ease, but I've had to break out the BFH and really pound on others to separate them so your mileage may vary.
Now
the scary part begins- separating the spindle from the A-arms. Take
note that you should wrap some chain, a tow strap or something strong
around the spring BEFORE YOU START ANYTHING ELSE as the spring packs
A LOT OF FORCE just waiting to escape; violently if allowed. Make sure
that if the spring comes loose, your straps will retain it. The last
thing you need is for that spring to suddenly come out and start bouncing
around, breaking things and possibly hurting you severely.
Next, another IMPORTANT step in spring safety: put a hydraulic floor jack under the lower A-arm and jack it up to compress the spring slightly. The weight of the car will be on the spring now, and when the ball joints are separated the spring won't come flying out.
Once the spring is safely retained, undo the top ball joint's cotter pin and king nut and grab those pickle forks again. Sometimes the fork will "bottom out" on something behind the ball joint so if you're hammering and nothing seems to be happening, check your clearances. I ended up jacking up the lower A-arm a few inches to gain more clearance behind the upper ball joint because the pickle fork was about to hit the frame.
Once
the ball joint is loose, start lowering the jack very slowly. You might
be amazed at how long the spring is when it's uncompressed. The lower
A-arm traveled so far that the drum was on the ground and the spring
still wasn't completely uncompressed. I then took the jack and placed
it under the frame behind the wheel opening and started raising the
body of the car. The garage floor was keeping the spring compressed.
I raised the car until the spring was loose enough to where I could
wiggle it but the lower spring perch was still holding on. I grabbed
a pickle fork and used it for leverage to knock the spring loose. It
bounced out a little but since I had it tied to the car, it didn't go
anywhere.
With the spring removed, I then raised up the drum and lower A-arm with the hydraulic jack to gain access to the lower ball joint. Once again, remove the cotter pin and king nut and use the pickle forks to separate the ball joint from the spindle. When it breaks loose, you may be able to simply drop the jack and the drum/spindle will be loose or you need to wrestle with them a bit to get things separated.
Repeat
for the other side, and congrats; your car has no front brakes.
Step 2: Installing brake booster, hard lines, etc. (not finished yet)
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