Posted by MattR on February 08, 03 at 09:30:48:
Good discussions recently on brakes and lights. I remain addicted to this board because of this free exchange of interesting information.
Brakes: We all know that the '92-99 Suburban brakes are under-engineered. Especially the 1500 series where the even the components are undersized. I would argue that the 2500 series components are basically adequately sized, but the whole system was not optimized. I.e. brake balance, ABS algorithims, pad/shoe materials.
Both 1/2 ton and 3/4 trucks suffer from brake calipers that are undersized in terms of friction material area, which translates to short pad life. Couple this to rear brakes that won't stay adjusted and a caliper/mount design that tends to stick, and the result is a high probability for short pad life.
Check out the pad sizes on the '00-up Suburbans, they have 3-4 times the surface area. In addition, the new trucks use PBR type calipers, so-called pad-guided technology. This is a superior floating-caliper mounting system, first used (I think) on the C4 Corvettes.
For me, a far more interesting hypothetical question than rear disk brake conversions is: How can the new front brakes be adapted to the '92-99 trucks?
Headlights: Last spring I installed the Headlight Booster kit from Diesel Services Group on my '97 K2500. This kit is produced in Sweden and is a very well made product. I purchased it on the advice of a product test article posted a couple years ago on the Diesel Page. It has large wires (guess is about 12 and 14 AWG, but actually metric sizes), relays, brass battery post adapters that replace the goofy factory set-up. It allows all four lights to stay on in high-beam mode and clearly brightens the output of each lamp. Don't remember exact price, but >$100. Overall I am satisfied, but there were two short comings:
1) No fuses/circuit breakers were provided for the power leads to the headlights. This worried me. So I bought a couple of 20 Amp automatic reset circuit breakers (the type used for electric trailer brakes). These I mounted to the fan shroud near the battery, then cut/spliced the power leads from the battery, through the breakers, to the headlights. Simple, works great, no more worry about burning wires in event of short.
2) The installation instructions were poorly organized. If you want to retain the DRL feature, you have to do some rewiring of the harness at the relays, before you install the harness. I have to go back and do this some day.
Cheers,
Matt