How difficult would it be to (or how many hours of labor will I be charged):

1.Change the front discs and bolt patteren with another set.

2.To change from drum brakes in the back to disc brakes in the back.

 

probably will cost a bundle to swap it over if someone else does it. ( I speak as a former professional wrench.)

If you do it yourself it is fairly simple. Everything is bolt on.
The front strut/spring/spindle/brakes all comes out and goes in as a package, as does the rear axle assy.

Beware the differing pinion bolt patterns. You'll need to swap e-brake cables. probably want the master cylinder and proportioning valve.

Good idea to upgrade the brake lines to stainless and the pads to hi performance(speedbleeders?). also easy to put hi-po struts/shocks/springs at this point.
Maybe urethane bushings.

I put a disc LSD on my GS and it was just simple. big bolts and a brake line. driveshaft and e-brake cables and your done.

Good luck

 

I changed the rear end too,on my 82 GS. went to the junkyard,found a
83 GSL, disk's and LSD,cost me $ 120.00 for the whole rearend,depending on your year,the drive shaft flange on the 3rd member,my need the drive shaft too,,at the junkyard i disassembled
the whole thing to see what condition everything was in,and to make it
easy to carry out,,use WD-40 on bolts,,ETC,,before,to save time,,and keep every bolt and nut,,to install,,,i rebuilt the rear end first out of car.
WD-40'ed everything,,first,,took about 1 hour to remove old rearernd,,
1 person doing this,,,take new one and place it and align everything
then start bolting up everything,,may need new brake lines and LSD
fluid,took about 1 hour to install and bleed system..a very good upgrade
and worth the money and effort to do it right,.

 

will an 85's drum diff internals fit a 83 drum diff housing?

 

yea go to a junkyard or the mazda recycling center,mazda recycling sells them for $200,and they will ship.shouldnt take long to do the back,no special tools or skills required,dont know about fromts,wouldnt imagine that they would be that hard though,but would think that you would need a front end alignment though.

 

I am in the process of swapping out a completed GSL-SE system into my GS. 17 years of rusty was a real bitch. Took two weekends to get the rear end swapped over, and just 4 hours to do the fronts. I did pick up some 86 phone dial rims to put on it also.

I will be bleeding the brakes this weekend, and we will see how it goes from there.

The one problem I do have is, I didn't get the E-Brake cable from the junker GSL-SE. So I am going to have to rig something one day.

 

i was thinking about doing a complete rear end swap so that i could get disk brakes in the back of my 79, but i may have found an easier and cheaper way. i need to double check on everything, but the owner of a seven racing shop near me says that he builds a plate that you can mount (i guess) the calipers to. from how he explained it to me before, it would be a fairly simple swap.

once i get more info, i can let people who are interested know.