I was wondering did anyone perform the conversion from rear drum brake to disc brake for Honda City?

Any good recommendation on what brands to get for the mod?

I never like the rear drums on my honda city and for better safety, I'm planning to change it.

Hopefully sifus here can guide me and give me some advise

Need to change whole subframe from halfcut which include disc brake configuration and similar width as your Honda city.

There is one shop specialized in upgrading brake around Batu Caves, can't recall the workshop name.

Just curious why you think the rear brakes for the city isn't good enough?

Are you tracking your car or drive in a way a lot harder than the car was built for, or carry a lot of passengers all the time?

I would make a case of keeping your original drum brakes unless the points above applies to you.



1) The car is relatively light, and the rear brakes actually only do 20% of the braking. So just doing the rear upgrade isn't really going to do much.
2) going to rear discs is a fairly complicated affair, at the very least, you will need to replace the hub and hub carriers, and find suitable donor car if a subframe/control arm replacement is necessary. parts needed are the calipers, discs and maybe the handbrake cables. Has there been any city models with rear disc brakes that can be the doner car?
3) ABS calibration can be thrown off. Brake bias will likely be off also. Unless you are a track junky and know how to deal with oversteer well, having more powerful brakes at the back will throw the brake bias back, on hard braking, it may cause tendency to oversteer.
4) reliability. Drum brakes are often much more reliable than discs requiring almost no maintenance and last almost forever.


any upgrade to your brakes is still going to be limited to the available braking traction from your tyres. Any modern brake system, will be able to overpower the grip of the tyres. Maybe upgrade to better tyres?

Well, I'm going genting for work often, hence the safety issue in mind, worried about the overheating issue.

wondering is it possible to find a halfcut of old city or front disc assembly to put on rear.

FF (front engine, FWD) car not much benefit changing rear drum to disc, your brake bias is to the front since thats where most of the weight is anyway

Old Honda that was very easy to convert, as many parts were shared and one could easily swap in Integra GSR parts for example into a Civic with little to no mods needed.

Newer Hondas no longer have the level of customization and mod potential that its forefathers did

Overheat also front disc will overheat first, since its doing probably like 70% of the braking. And the car dives to the front anyway, so even more load on the front disc. The rear drums barely do any work, you convert to disc you also increase your maintenance cost as now you have 2 pairs instead of 1 pair of brake pads to change

You mentioned safety and you want discs at the back? Which kampung tuner told you that?

Better Upgrade front brake to bigger disc, 4/6 pot caliper & 2 layer brake master pump..

Pro..
Disc - dry
Drum - wet

This post has been edited by Oldskolboyz: Sep 25 2019, 04:03 PM

You mean drum brake didn't use brake pad/shoe ka?

Have, but rear drum brakes rarely need to be serviced.

I had a car with rear drums, I owned it 4 years I think only twice the mechanic opened the drums but he said nothing to replace anyway
Brake pads for front disc I went through the first set that came from factory after 25000km, the 2nd set was almost done when I sold the car to my friend at about 45000km

As some have mentioned, most of the braking job is done by the front brakes, and this will be even more apparent if you drive down places like Genting where gravity and momentum puts more force to the front.

Personally, I would consider upgrading the front brakes (eg. better fade resistant or bigger brake pads), paired with maybe bigger/cross drilled/slotted disc. Plus probably fit the car with a set of good tires.

I'm not here to argue the pros and cons of drum brakes vs disc brakes bro, just asking for the feasibility of upgrading the rear from drums to disc brakes.

My front is using a ceramic brake pads already, others are stock standard calipers. If upgrade front disc, what are the options? As 15" tyre does not have much room to spare for bigger calipers n disc.

The cons of drums are during wet condition and it doesn't function as well as disc and heat dissipation is not good, hence the concern on safety especially doing downhill drive from genting.

hopefully this clears up the doubt from everyone.

When you want fade resistant braking over stock calipers, your only option is better disc and pads. There is also an option of better brake boosters and braided lines.

The only other way to get massive braking performance up front is changing to 4 pot brakes. Usually comes with bigger discs. That means bigger wheels and lower profile tires.

About the rear drums, they are not designed to lock up in the first place. You lock up the rear lets see how all your magical ABS, ESC will deal with that. You will have your first drift feeling.

And how many workshop you know that has brake distribution measurement hardware besides JPJ?

Aren't brakes supposed to brake all 4 together to prevent fishtailing?

Well, let's just say that if I'm that well informed, I won't be here asking for help bro.

They are supposed to clamp at the same time. But the clamping force must be different because of weight balance of the car. Even when brakes are not used, most cars weight is at the front. When you stop, all the weight would be even more. Then got so many factors why front brakes are always more stronger than back. If the brakes to small for the car weight they won't slow down fast enough because of friction surface, slow heat dissipation, etc.

You also do not want it to lock immediately hence ABS. At the back you do not want the brakes to lock up at all if possible. Because skidding force are unpredictable. No you cannot say drift cars initiate by locking up the back wheels to your logic. Yes they can do that because they know where/when force that changes the car trajectory is being used. On regular driving when you do heavy braking you seriously do not want that.

If you find that when brake so hard downhill that when you start to lock up the rears instead of the front, you are just going too fast. Drive slower.

This post has been edited by netmatrix: Sep 25 2019, 08:39 PM

brakes dun mod mod lor... later insurance dont cover if anything happen

if this is your reason for wanting rear discs....rear disc conversion is just wasting money. even with rear discs ur brakes will still overheat coz primary braking is done at the front and the front pads are the ones that are overheating..so instead of concentrating on the rear.. concentrate on the front instead....the rear is more of "additional support" with clamping force much lesser than the front. which is why u see the rears are always smaller than the front.

if this is ur worry, get higher temp brake pads instead...even bendix metal king will be more than sufficient for genting... be it normal drive... or spirited driving. optional would be steel braided lines as they will help improve pedal feel and maybe even dot4 racing brake fluid like the Motul RBF660 or EBC BF307+ to ensure the fluid can take more heat and doesnt over heat.... but to be honest... just the brake pad alone will give a significant upgrade already. i wouldnt even bother upgrading to a bigger disc brake setup.

if anything, along with better brake pads, better tires should be on ur list instead.

for your fishtailing comment...when u brake, weight of the car is transferred to the front (ie u see the car nose dive). this means the rear will have less weight putting pressure on the wheels which means less traction on the rear tires. which means the rear is easier to lock up. u do not want any of ur tires to lock up as a lock up means loss of traction. so if ur rear brakes bites hard when u have minimal traction at the rear, this will lock up easily... and lock up... more fishtailing, spinning, round n round etc.

for drums + wet conditions... actually.... i think the drums would do better in the wet than discs mainly coz the drums are enclosed and water will not interfere with the friction surface/ contact area whereas the discs will have water coming in between the pad and disc contact area. plus, the water will actually help to cool the entire drum brakes down. my own experience with my old bike (yes, bike, not car, but same concept applies) which had drum rear and disc front...the drums will actually improve and performed sooo much better than the front when i ride in the rain whereas the front bite is significantly lesser (sometimes almost non existent).

so... my advise.. FRONT brake pad + tires.

This post has been edited by mADmAN: Sep 25 2019, 09:48 PM

You have probably installed unsuitable brake pads to experience such thing.
I used to change my bike brake pads myself - double disc brakes in front. One day, I tried a set of cheaper pads and they were useless in the wet. Had to periodically dry them by braking.

they were original suzuki pads on my suzuki bike... but yes... it may still have been unsuitable for the conditions

so put the effort on front more effective than changing on back? That's the conclusion?

another question is why some cars like vios are front and back disc brake?