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Drum to Disc conversion

57K views 12 replies 7 participants last post by  plato442 
#1 ·
I have a 2006 2wd crew cab 1500 with disc front and drum brakes in the rear. My previous truck was a 2001 sierra Ext cab, but the truck had 4 wheel disc. My question is...would it be possible to find a disc brake rear end from an older model (01-05) or from a Z-71 and bolt it right up? If not, what adjustments would need to be made to make this swap work? would i need to make changes to the computer or ABS system or is this really a possible upgrade?
 
#2 ·
I'm sure it would be possible, however, I don't know why you would want to do it. GM went back to drum brakes in the rear in 2005 due to poor stopping performance of the previous years 4 wheel disk setup. When they went back to the drum brakes in the rear they also increased the size of the front disks. I had a 2004 2WD with all wheel disk brakes, and now I have my 2005 4WD with front disk/rear drum. The 2005's stopping power is a lot better than my 2004's was.
 
#5 ·
I don't like working on drum brakes, but purely from a stopping perspective, the drums do just fine. Converting to disk would be a lot of work, and likely no gain.
 
#6 ·
im still a big fan of four wheel disk, i meen come on guys if drums were any better they'd use them on the front(minus the bulkiness), thats were 60% of your braking power goes. i'll even go as far to say that big rigs would use disk brakes if someone made them air operated. anyway back to the op, i would keep the rear drums unless you plan on taking your truck to the local stockcar races or driving in any nearby rivers, drum brakes will serve you just fine. and if you plan on replacing the springs and pads yourself just take both drums off and do one side at a time, use the other side for reference and you'll be set.
 
#7 ·
adams99z71 said:
i'll even go as far to say that big rigs would use disk brakes if someone made them air operated.
They do have air operated disk brakes for big rigs. One advantage of drum brakes is that they take longer to heat up (overheat). However, they also take longer to cool down once they do heat up than disk brakes. Yes, they are more of a pain in the butt to work on. Like I said, speaking from experience, my 2005 with disk front/drum rear stops a lot better than my 2004 that had disks all the way around. That is the one complaint I had about my 2004. It never felt like it was going to be able to stop well in an emergency situation. My 2005 stops really, really well.
 
#9 ·
Yes, it is possible, but it's going to be expensive. You will probably have to change a lot more than just the stuff on the rear axle (possibly uses a different ABS pump and all that stuff. It probably has a different program in the ECM for that ABS). I think it would be too costly to do it.
 
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