Rear brake upgrade: 11” to 13”

[DirtyLarry]

Yeah I know, most people are busy jumping through their own pie hole junking rear drum brakes on their 4x4's for rear disk brakes but I don’t totally buy into the rear disk swaps especially with using El Dorado calipers. I hated working on El Dorado calipers when they were on El Dorados let alone to bolt those turds on my toy. No way! The late model GMT800 rear disk swaps are worthwhile but the parts are too pricy.

Anyway, as many of you know, I scrapped my dad’s K20 wrecker last week and plan to swap the wreckers axles into my Suburban but the wrecker had 13” rear brakes. My heavy K10 could benefit more from the larger 13” brakes than the Suburban so I renewed everything on the 13” brake system and swapped them over to the K10 today. WOW! With the combination of the hydroboost I swapped on a couple years ago along with these 13” brakes the big heavy truck stop on a dime now! The dang park brake finally works now too. Actually, it feels like it stops better than my stock Silverado HD with rear disks.

On with the pictures…

Off with the little 11”s




Check out the difference when the 11’s are laid next to the 13’s. I installed the new shoes, hardware and e-brake cable on the 13” backing plates last night so it make the job quick and easy today. That 13” drum is a heavy mofo!








The big 13” drums stick out much further behind the wheel


Rear view of the 11’s before tear down


The only downside is the truck gained more weight but on the other hand, Sunday I replaced the rear winch cable with Viking winch rope so it somewhat balances out with losing some weight and gaining other weight. The junk Smittybilt winch broke yet again so while it was apart I figured it was time to ditch the wire cable...that is where the Viking winch rope came on the scene. I’ve used the Smittybilt winch about 3 times and it has broken 2 of those times. This past time the motor wouldn’t stop running once I hit the switch. This time it needed a new relay pack. Errr

Now I have to get to work on rebuilding these 11" brakes and finish getting the D44 front axle ready for the Suburban.