Just so you don't think I'm not doing any mechanical work, I've been working on the disc brake conversion too.
Here's the stock setup. Two wheel cylinders per front wheel and to correctly adjust them, you need an obsolete and expensive gage that centers the shoes in the drums. There's two adjustment bolts on the top and bottom between the shoes. On the backing plate there's two more that adjust the angle of the shoes. There's some alternatives to work around the gage, and when adjusted and working correctly, they are supposed to be pretty good, but doing a conversion to disc brakes made more sense for me. BTW, disc brakes were an option in 1953!!
I had to replace the king pins and bushings.
The top is a needle bearing and the bottom is a bronze bushing. Of course... none of the shops around here could ream the bushing and I had to buy an adjustable reamer and do it myself.
NOS needle bearing from 1945, 8 years older then the car!
First set of brackets. These were a prototype set that were patterned from Desoto spindles. The guy that makes these said "yep.. they'll fit"
They didn't fit, turns out the Chrysler has a longer spindle then Desotos.
Another set of brackets came in the mail.
First the notch for the steering stop wasn't big enough so that was enlarged.
Then I noticed the caliper didn't sit right. It's crooked.
Clearance between caliper bolt and rotor.
I welded the bolt hole closed and redrilled the caliper bolt hole so the entire pad now contacts the rotor. I also had to saw out the notch for the caliper.
Finally on the car!! Rotors are Volare/Aspen and the calipers are GM. I still have to finish redoing the brake lines and mount a new dual master cylinder, but at least this part is done.
