SLROC Forum

Hello!!

Touch wood!, I've hopefully reached that point after buying my cottage, that I think I might be able to spend some of my cash on converting to disc brakes on the front of my Series 3!!!    Rather than rebuilding another part of my house!!!

Has anyone out there done this conversion? And if so did you buy a kit to do it or did you fabricate your own?

Any info would be much appreciated.

Cheers Mike

there is a conversion made by zeus - look them up on t' internet 
not cheap - but very good 

Heystee in Holland is best, uses standard defender discs and pads so servicing is easy

Cheers, I've checked them out, but they are on the deep pocket side of things  If I go that way I'll need a spot of saving!!!

Have either of you done this conversion?

They are but its a far better solution than cobbling something together, it is the brakes after all!

What engine etc do you have? Twin leading 11in shoes are a decent upgrade from standard and will cope with most things

Yeah, I know what you mean about not cobbling something together!!! I was just curious on what options were available that was all, didn't know if it was possible to work something out with Defender hubs and discs?

As for my Landy its a Turner 2.25 Petrol and has twin leading 11" shoes, which apart from being a touch squeelly when first used, are actually very good. It's only when they get wet or filled with mud, that they become brown trouserish!! That's why I was considering the disc conversion.

If there was a way of sorting the randomness of them after getting them full of water or mud, I'd consider that?

There's no path for putting defender parts on a series casing..... absolutely everything is different: swivels, axle-casing flanges, half-shaft diameters.... everything
(if it was easy, more trials boys [and girls!] would have fitted disc brakes to [parabolic] leafers)

I have seen, but never close-enough to find out how, a complete defender axle on leaf springs... and I've even got a casing I'd started preparing to try making something fit.... but again, if it was easy - why aren't more people doing it?

you can get the brackets to weld onto a coil axle to accept leaf springs, possibly from yrm metal cant remember , but ithink the issue is you need to do front and rear axles for track width.
i decided against it and put lwb six cyl brakes on and found a servo peddle box from a late series three and added servo assistance, much simplerto do, maybe an early 90 peddle box would do ,not sure

There is an advert in some of the landy mags for the swivel hub with an additional casting included to mount I think the defender brakes.
My wee series has a Chris Perfect brake conversion and what a difference there is to the drum brakes I had before.

A word of caution - I was reading a string of forum articles a while back about people who were hunting high and low for spares for disc brake conversions done in the past where the producers had gone west - I'm not sure, Fr'instance, that Chris Perfect still sells his kits and the older Haystee kits were based on Santana parts - stopped production ages ago.  What is that wrong with the originals - set up properly they should be more than capable of stopping a 2.25 anyway. Bottom line, I can think of better ways to spend the money ! 

G.

Cheers for the info on the Defender brakes, I did kind of suspect as much other wise it'd be common knowledge. But as I've always thought, best to ask a stupid question, rather than do something stupid!...... Mind that doesn't always stop me 

Ruaritreble cheers for that, I'll have a rummage in the small ads.

Genem, that had crossed my mind about spares, and as there's nothing wrong with my brakes currently you're right to a degree about finding something else to do with the cash. But! my thinking behind the conversion, was basically the drum brakes no matter how good they are can be terrifying when they get loaded with water or mud. If there was a way of stopping this, I'd certainly give that a go first.

I've heard of people enlarging the existing drain holes but I would have thought the manufacturer's would have optimised the hole size in the first place. But a quick Google brought up this http://www.chtopping.com/CustomRod4/

Cheers
Luke

Ah! Cheers Luke, that link was spot on! I'll do a bit more research on this mod, but think this could be a very good place to start. 

Also have a look at:
http://www.heystee-automotive.com/
They do all sorts of series upgrades. Power steering looks a bit OTT

I've heard of people enlarging the existing drain holes

Old triallers trick - did that to my 109 and my 80.....