I bought a new 2011 silverado lt 4x4 and just noticed it has rear drum brakes! I thought they stopped using drum brakes in the 90s. Now im going to ...

I bought a new 2011 silverado lt 4x4 and just noticed it has rear drum brakes! I thought they stopped using drum brakes in the 90s. Now im going to do a conversion to rear discs, 37000 truck you would think it would at least have disc brakes!

I agree that disc's would be good all around but im ok with drums personally... had them on my jeeps and never had issues with them so Im ok with them for now. The additional stopping power from the discs would be nice... but im mostly highway so for now ill take the extra $ i didnt spend for discs and put it somewhere else. On a side note... let us know how the conversion goes if you do that ... id like to see how it works out and what kit you go with.

Ya probably wont buy a kit, ill just go to the junk yard and pull the discs, backing plates, and calipers off one like mine.

It might be easier just to pull the whole rear end than trying to retrofit parts from something that wasn't designed to except the parts in the first place. I do know that a few companies have conversion kits though, they are not cheap though (I think SSBC maybe?).

Yea, Sadly the 1/2 tons have drums again, I really like my dad's 99 with 4 wheel disc. If you think bolting on the hardware will work, you might want to verify the mounting flange's width. I know on S10's, the disc rears are slightly wider 1" (just for reference, dimension isn't correct) which means you need a 1/2" spacer to mount the caliper and center it over the disc. The full-sizes are probably the same in respects to disc vs drum, so I'd check into that.

dcmock wrote:I bought a new 2011 silverado lt 4x4 and just noticed it has rear drum brakes! I thought they stopped using drum brakes in the 90s. Now im going to do a conversion to rear discs, 37000 truck you would think it would at least have disc brakes!

This was another reason why we chose the 2500HD. 14" Discs on all four.

Sorry you didn't see that before purchase, it was something that caught my eye on the 1500's, and that was the rear drums.

Not all 1500 have rear drums. You can get rear disc brakes in certain option pkg's.

JD9 Brakes, 4-wheel antilock, 4-wheel disc
1 - Included and only available with (NHT) Max Trailering Package
or (L9H) Vortec 6.2L V8 SFI engine.

From what i gather rear drums have less issues and stop better in the rear for GM.

^^ Yeah I thought the same that rear drums were better than discs on a truck....

I've had two different 1500's and I can say that the one with the drum brakes in the rear stops much better and has a much better feel than the one with the 4 wheel disk brakes. One advantage to drum brakes is they take a little longer to heat up/overheat than disk brakes do. The disadvantage is, they also take longer to cool than disks do. I personally would not change to the diusk brake set up. From my experience you will not be happy.