Conversion - Finishing Touches

As with any hot rod project, it’s never really finished. One of the next things I wanted to do is converting to rear disc brakes. That opportunity presented itself sooner than I thought when I went to Cleveland to visit Tom Lippert. He had just bought all the Vega stuff Gary Derian was selling due to his job transfer to N.J.  Part of what Gary sold him was a Monza rear with '98 S-10 Blazer 12" rear disc brakes, Moser axles, and Torsen diff.  I bought if from Tom for $400.00. Since the rear from Gary has a Cosworth 3.73 gear set rather than the larger S-10 pinion, I pulled the axles, Torsen diff, and brakes and put them into my rear end. This made the front brake system unbalanced. After consulting with "Vega Man" Larry Heagren, I decided to upgrade the front brakes and the increase the system capacity as well. I used Bob Gumm’s ball joint adapters, S-10 front spindles and rebuilt calipers, a rebuilt ’76 Cadillac Eldorado "Hydro Boost" disk brake master cylinder, and its matching proportioning valve. The master cylinder is 3" x 5 ¾" and about ½" deeper versus the 2 ¾" x 5" one in the Vega now so it adds about 50% additional fluid capacity. It bolted up to the stock Vega power booster with no additional modification. I got Autospecialty Power Stop cross-drilled and vented S-10 front rotors from Summit Racing ($65.00 each) with VGX metallic pads. These are about ¾" bigger than the Monza rotors. I took Bob Gumm’s recommendation and used ’76 Nova hoses that adapt to the S-10 calipers and Vega keyways with minimal modification. The biggest challenge was parking brake cables. I used ’98 Camaro cables, which were almost 12 inches too long. Rather than trying to modify them, I decided to take up the additional length by crossing them over to the opposite side—that worked perfectly! The 14-inch wheels were dangerously close to rubbing on the rear calipers. I had been thinking how nice the ’98-’01 S-10 15x7 inch alloy wheels would look on the car, so I decided to swap the 14’s out. The problem was finding a set for a reasonable price. After several tries, I finally won an eBay auction and picked up a set for $300.00 including shipping. I mounted Bridgestone Potenza RE-910 205-55HR-15’s that are the same outer diameter as the 14’s that came off the car to minimize clearance problems.

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