Crippleduck

Not sure if this is the right spot but I wanted to drop in and say hello.
My name is William. I just picked up my first 81 Toyota pickup so naturally I'm going to have a lot of questions.
A little about he rig:
1981 Toyota pickup
6" rough country lift. 35" Cooper discoverys
5.29 gears. Stock motor and 4 speed manual trans
950lbs wench
Right now I'm having problems with spongy brakes. I've read I can replace the booster with a dual diaphragm and that will make a huge difference. What years will retrofit into my truck? Also any cheap ideas on how to replace my rear drums with disk? I've read you can use land rover disks and they are vented. I'm really just trying to go to a junkyard and snag some used parts rather than spend 400+ on a conversion kit.

Please be gental. I'm new to the Toyota world.

Thanks in advance.
Will

gsp4life

Have opened up the drums yet? They seize and become useless. A minor rebuild could make a huge difference and the brake spring kits are very cheap. The shoes and drums might even be in useable shape, what often goes wrong first is the bellcrank gets seized or the cylinder goes bad, also cheap part.

Crippleduck

Yes I have. They are completely shot(as in nothing on the pads and no movement from the cylinder), I figured this the where the spongy was coming from. But I was just thinking? If I could do an upgrade to disk with junkyard parts, I'd rather do that.

gsp4life

Makes sense to me. I have no experience changing out drums to disk, so I'll let someone else give it a shot.

Crippleduck

Right on. I'm gonna do more research and see what I can figure out. Thank for the help anyway.

Bingle

This is what I did with my '81
https://www.yotatech.com/forums/f105/economy-rear-disk-brake-brackets-lror-288399/

I didn't upgrade the booster. Went with the Landcruiser Master and did the V6 brake upgrade up front and swapped my front stuff to the rear.
I guess you COULD scrounge some early rotors and calipers, and possibly a LC Master at the junkyard, get this kit and leave the front alone. At least for now. Oh, you WILL need a proportioning valve if you go to disk rears.
Let us know what you end up doing!

Crippleduck

Hey Bingle! I actually just broke down and bought everything for the drums today. Let me tell you. What a pain in the a**. But I got everything together and it made a world of difference. I think mostly because the 900 lbs of mud and dirt are now removed. I did have a problem, when I put my drivers side drum back together; the old drum didn't want to go on with the new pads. The adjustment screw or whatever was all the way in and I couldn't see where anything was out of whack. I ended up just using the impact and lug nuts to force it on hopping a few drives around the block will wear down the pad enough. Which I did. And the drum was definitely hot but not smoking so. Fingers crossed I guess!