Hond Drum to disk swap

Most CB7's came from the factory with sad little rear drum brakes. These are fine for your mom, or drag racing, but if you're going to be driving fast for more than a couple corners, you're going to fade them, along with the stock front brakes. The solution is simple, if involved. Buy the EX model rear disk brakes, hub or knuckle, and everything from a junk yard and swap em' in. Be sure to get the parking brake cables intact. There is also the option to buy the Fastbrakes rear conversion or make your own wilwood/brembo rear setup. If you've already got rear disks just put good pads on. Consider buying reman calipers too if the junk yard units look bad.

For initial cost reasons I went with the factory rear disks from a wrecked EX model. Make sure to look at it first if you can, mine was dinged up pretty bad. Its common JY practice to just plop cars on their brakes and sell the wheels.

Supply's

• rear hubs+brakes or whole knuckles w/brakes+ parking brake cables out of a 90-93 Accord EX (duh)
• parking brake cables for 90-93 Accord rear disk model
• Brembo rear rotors
• Rear pads (EBC, Porterfield, Ferodo, Hawk HP+)
• Stainless braided brake lines
• Remanufactured calipers if necessary
• 90-93 Integra proportioning valve
• Accord EX model master cylinder(w/abs I think?- which ever is bigger)

Hint on getting the lines loose on a used proportioning valve and the one on the car. Put a flare nut wrench on the fitting (box end wrench for the one out of the car) and hit the end of it with an extension and a hammer to shock the fitting. If you just muscle it the line is going to bend and you'll probably round the fitting off.

 The rotor screws on the JY rotors were stuck of course, just drill them out and don't put any back in.  The way to back the caliper piston out of the way is to turn it clockwise with some bent nose needle nose pliers or one of those little box tools from an autoparts store.

Next I had to decide how i wanted to install the assembly. You can just unbolt the hub or take off the whole rear suspension and swap it in that way. I decided to swap most of the knuckle leaving the strut, lower control arms, and the trailing arm in place. A ball joint puller is priceless here if your rear suspension is originial.

Be sure to be very careful installing the upper control arm if you're replacing the knuckle as a unit. I nearly stripped out those body holes because the holes on the upper control arm wouldn't line up parallel with them. It's easiest to take off the upper control arm, bolt it to the body, then bolt it back to the knuckle. Or if it won't come loose, like mine, I jacked up the suspension arms, sans strut, until the holes were parallel to each other. Good luck. Its best to just replace those with the ingals adjustable rear upper arms while you're in there. There is a piece of non-structural steel on the other side of the chassis nut so you can't easily just drill out the body nut and put your own nut on the other side if you strip it!

On the drivers side you can install the parking brake cable without taking the exhaust off. On the passenger side you do have to remove it though, along with the heat shield. You can really just push them through the holes in the floor up into the cabin. They work great! I did have to cut the old ones to get them through the trailing arms that I left on the car. 

Torque the suspension bolts with the car on the tires so there isn't any pre-load on the bushings, which can actually act as a sort of additional spring rate. I think it kind of does this anyway, but the less it does it the better. Aftermarket bushings don't do this so that is another good argument for those.

Bleed the system

Ideally you want to put the master cylinder (1" prelude or Accord ex model), proportioning valve (90-93 integra), and stainless lines on at the same time so you can do all the bleeding at once.

Finished!

Before you take the car off of the jack stands test the parking brake and adjust it if necessary, then pump up hydraulic brakes. Start it up and check for leaks. You may have to pump them up some but the pedal shouldn't have a slow sink or feel mushy. Done, now go break in your rotors and bed in your pads. For good info on that go to the Wilwood or Stoptech home page.

Accord Front brakes

Honda Accord front disks are funky. Honda decided that it was a good idea to put the brake rotor behind the hub. That is In fact not a good idea because then you have to press the hub out every time you want to turn or replace your brake rotors. You can fix this problem permanently by pressing out your old hubs and replacing them with hubs from an Acura 2.3l cl base model and using disks from that same car. Or you can replace the entire mess with a big brake kit like I did!

Big brake kits: 

There are a lot of options. At the time of this writing these are the most readily available BBK's for the ACCORD hub. The 11" Honda setup should fit the CL hub with the right 23t bracket. Do a search on some forums for the info on that.

• Honda 11" rotors with 2 piston Acura Legend calipers
• Brembo 13" two piece floating rotor, 4 piston aluminum calipers
• KVR 13" two piece rotor, 4 piston AP calipers
• Fastbrakes 12.2" two piece rotors, Wilwood 4 piston Dynalite calipers (optional 6 piston calipers, I'm assuming Wilwood Superlite 6's)
• Revolution brakes 13" or 14" (13" is really = 325mmx22mm) two piece rotors, Wilwood 4 piston Dynalite calipers (or pretty much any size rotor and any Wilwood caliper that you want/can afford, they work with you and are very helpful.)
• Powerslot (13"?) two piece rotor with stock relocated caliper

Good brake pads:

• Ferodo DS2500
• Porterfield R4S
• EBC Greenstuff or redstuff depending on the weight of the car and uses
• Hawk HP +

What I did

After deciding on a bbk the real problem was getting wheels to fit over them. I spent months scouring the internet for info on wheels, writing wheel manufactures and wheel retailers, emailing them the template for the big brake kit that I'd decided on.

Precision Brakes Kit

The Precision kit that I decided on is very thorough. I ordered the two piece 325mm x 22mm slotted rotors with Wilwood forged Superlite (FSL) calipers. Note: Precision brakes has become Revolution brakes.

Precision sent everything that you need to put these monsters on including longer wheel studs (to my surprise), spacers (more free of charge if you need them) and very thorough instructions. They include everything you need to put these on the outside of the stock hub-over-rotor setup. Simply press out the hub, take out the old rotor and press the hub back in to mount the kit on.