By Tony K
I have seen this topic bantered about in several places so I figured to throw my two cents on the fire.
Realistically backing plates on a 60 serve a dubious purpose. They may keep dirt out but they also have the possibility of trapping mud and rocks against the rotor. Maybe even causing some heavy damage to the rotor. And the bad part about this is that there is no easy way to get a rock out from between the backing plate and rotor without removing the hub and lots of other parts.
This possibility is what got me to pull my backing plates. I just didn’t want this to happen on the trail. Besides Eric had already removed his and I liked the idea. Monkey see, monkey do.
Even though I had 62 backing plates with the ventilation scoop on them, I feel that the brakes actually are more efficient at cooling off and drying off on the road without the plates installed. And the same goes for off road use as well but more for the quick drying of the rotors after a water crossing. And speaking about those scoops they are actually in the wrong place. All the research I dug up said that to be efficient, any cooling air should be directed into the center of the rotor so air will pass through the vents of the disc (you know, that space between the two braking surfaces). And the one thing it did point out was the fact you should never direct cooling air at one side of the rotor which is exactly what the scoops do on the backing plates from a 62. For some reason Toyota never did put scoops on 60’s which run the same rotors.
Another thing I always disliked about the backing plates was that you can’t check the wear of a rotor without removing the brake caliper! One of the few engineering errors that Toyota committed. By pulling the plate you can now put a caliper, the measuring kind, around the rotor to check the remaining thickness. And the only thing you have remove to check it is the tire and wheel.
The best way to remove your backing plates is to buy a kit from one of the numerous suppliers that offer them. You could cut up your backing plates and just keep the center section but that is a bit of work and the kits are not all that expensive. I got mine from SOR. It included spacers that take the place of the backing plates as well as longer brake lines that connect directly from the axle housing to the caliper since you no longer have the attachment point for the original two part brake line set up.
And this brings up another benefit of the change to a longer brake line. One of the big inconveniences of the stock set up is having to remove the brake lines from the caliper whenever you have to do maintenance or make a trail fix. The original configuration means you have to bleed the brakes once the fix is made because there is no way to remove the caliper without removing brake lines. Longer flexible lines allow you to pull the caliper and lay it on the spring pack without disconnecting any brake lines. My birf replacement at Rubicon was a bit more pleasant because of this feature.
Was it worth the expense and time to make the change. Absolutely. If anything the brakes are a bit more efficient but this could be the new shoe effect, as a kid didn’t you feel like you could run faster with new shoes… But the best part for me is the longer brake lines and the fact that it is now impossible to get anything trapped against the rotor.
