'53 Plymouth Cranbrook w/ disc brake conversion

Hey guys.

I picked up a '53 Cranbrook, and it's got a disc brake conversion on the front. All put together nice and correct, but because of the new setup, the front wheels stick out further than they did with the stock drums. This means, when I turn the wheels to either side, they tire hits the inside of the fender. I cant turn the wheels all the way to either side, or it wants to push the fender out.

Any ideas on how to fix this problem? This can't be the only '53 Plymouth with discs on the front haha.



-Allan

 

Some pics would be nice of the brackets and rotor so it can be identified.

 

different offset rims?

 

Alrighty I'll snap some pics and post em later tonight. The rims are the originals. The car is lowered all around, but that wasn't a problem before the conversion. Anyway, I'll snap some pics later.

-Allan

 

i converted my 51 regent to disks and wound up using Dakota rims with the right clearance and offset.... original rims rims would not clear the calipers n my set up.

 

What kind of a kit did you use? I've done a few disc brake conversions in my day. Two things have always happened. 1) The original wheels would not clear the calipers, and most "disc brake" wheels had a deeper offset. 2) the conversion itself only moved the wheel mounting surface out about a 1/4" on each side. If that 1/4" made as much of a difference as you mentioned, I'm thinking it didn't really clear before. I'm thinking we are not getting the whole story here.

If you still have the 4 1/2 wheel bolt pattern, A stock Dakota steel wheel from 86 through 90 will give you an extra couple inches, per side, of clearance over the standard disc brake steel wheel. Gene

 

Not sure if this is relevent, but I did a subframe in a 54 for a friend, and it was a bit too wide. Went the whole route, with narrowed A frames, metric rotors, Finally got it fitting nicely. Then he lowered it just ONE more inch, and it was hitting the fenders pretty badly. Those cars are narrow to begin with, and extreme lowering really makes fender clearance a problem. His car sat low to begin with, just an inch more made it almost un-driveable.
Put a jack under the front of it, raise it an inch and see if your fender clearance issues go away. If so, raise it up!

 

Maybe a tire with a lower profile, it would have a smaller outside diameter.

 

To my knowledge all kits use the 73-89 Mopar intermediate rotor, so offset will not change much between kits.