Can I pull the front 4-lug drums off my 72,and swap them with the 5-lug off the 73 GRABBER doner car. I guess that would be to easy right? Is there some changes in the bearing sizes and stuff? John
wow I didn't know mavericks came with 4 lugs. Mine is a 76 with a 200CI straight six and it has 5 lugs.
You will have to swap the spindles i believe, not a hard job but those ball joints are a little hard to get apart after a long time, i bent a pickle for getting mine of but the job only took me 3 hours to do(minus the time to run to a parts store to grab a new pickle fork)
i think you can do it if you take the backing plates off of the 5 lug car as well. if im not mistaken the 5 lug drums are a bit bigger.. if it involves taking the spindles as well just find some disc spindles and do the upgrade, you will be happy you did..
john steve is right. it's better to just go disc. an easy swap. may be a lil scary at first but once you get going, you'll see it is an easy swap. i (er todd) did it to both our mavs. driving around with drum brakes is kinda scary. if you are hell bent on swapping from your parts car, i'd take the whole spindle. best of luck.
Hey John, I'm in the process of putting discs on mine right now. Discs are the way to go for street driven cars, but drag racers like drums because they can be adjusted not to rub and slow you down. If you're interested I have my complete drum setup, everything from tie rods, hoses, spindles, drums, hubs, brakes. Still all assembled. Bolt 'em on, bleed 'em, and go. These are slightly larger brakes originally from a '70 351 Mustang.
BTW, all '70 - '73 Mavericks used the same spindle, so yes, you could just pull the hubs and drums off the one car and slide them right on to the other. Won't need to do a wheel alignment that way.