Our '78 Malibu was a less-than-stellar braking performer, so we decided to toss out the pathetic 10.5-inch discs and do the popular 12-inch conversion. All that’s required are new calipers, rotors from an ’88-’92 1LE Camaro, and larger spindles out of some ’78-’90 GM fullsize cars such as the Caprice, Delta 88, Caddy, and Pontiac (typically wagons, heavy-duty towing packages, and police cars). You should also go with a set of aftermarket upper control arms like those from Hotchkis Performance or else you’ll end up with way too much camber—the Hotchkis units feature a tubular construction and come with the ball-joints already pressed in and ready to bolt-on. Although Hotchkis does offer a complete kit that’s ready to be assembled, we wanted to see how hard or how easy it would be to sort out the individual pieces for ourselves. Finding the spindles was a cakewalk, and so was pulling the correct dust shield and calipers out of an ’84 Caprice wagon. Unfortunately, the calipers looked as if they had seen better days, so rather than trying to salvage them we decided to purchase a refurbished set and gathered the rotors and miscellaneous parts at our local Kragen.
