Technical Problem? Fitting 37 Wide Five Front Drums to Speedway 37-48 Self-Energizing Backing Plates

Decided to mock-up my front axle yesterday, and ran into an issue when installing my 37 (two-piece) drums. The drums are resting about 1/4” too far away from the backing plate. There is a lip on the backing plate that appears as though it should fit between a space on the drum. At first, I thought the drum was just catching on the shoes, but that’s not the issue. I’m now thinking the shoes are too wide (2”) as the original 37 shoes according to Google are 1.75” wide.
Here are the details:

1. Speedway 1928 - 1948 Ford straight front axle (P/N 91035125)
2. Speedway 1937 - 1948 Ford Style Self-Energizing Juice Brake Kit (P/N 91065423)
3. Speedway 1928 - 1948 Ford Milled Forged Spindles (P/N 916432111)

When ordering the backing plates and spindles, I mentioned to the Speedway sales folks that I was going to use the Ford wide five drums/wheels and asked if they would fit. They said they would, and the site says the backing plates are for 1937 - 1948.
Am I missing something, or are the shoes too wide?

 

Decided to remove the backing plate, and then remove the shoes to see if the 2” wide shoes were preventing the drum from fully seating. Re-***embled the backing plate to the axle, installed the drum, and voila! No issues. Backing plate lip sits in the “groove” space on the edge of the drum and spins freely without interference. So, I guess I’ll be taking a 1/4” out of the shoe width.
I did some more digging, and found this Speedway vid on YT where he talks about mounting a wide five front drum to their spindle and backing plate. IIRC, he doesn’t describe the type of backing plate specifically, and no P/N is listed in the ***le or in the vid, but I think they refer to the backing plate in the vid as their “Lincoln” style. It definitely looks different from mine, and on their website they offer it in both 2” wide shoes and 1.75” wide shoes. Interesting though, in the comments, someone asks if it will work with his original 1939 Ford drum, and they say “no”. So, WTF is going on!? I’ll call Speedway on Tues to see what they have to say.



Speedway YT vid.



Speedway backing plate that looks like the one in the vid.





Question about using an orig 39 Ford wide five drum where they say it won’t fit.

 

I’m not sure about the speedway backing plates but I’ve used the Boling Brothers backing plates. When you use original drums you have to run stock Ford 1.75” pads with original drums. If you run the Boling Brothers drums you can run 2” brake pads. I would guess the speedway setup is the same.

 

My car runs original 39 brakes. I thought that you had to use 39 drums on hydraulic brake setups. The 37-38 are cable, and they dont fit at all on my 39 backing plates. I dont know if this matters when using after market backing plates.

 

My whole experience anything wide five related has been frustrating to say the least. I always liked the look of them, and it was my preferred choice, so when I happened upon a rare 15” x 6” wide five wheel at Hershey in 2023, that cemented the path I would follow. That followed up with getting 3 sets of 36 front drums at Hershey as well without knowing they were distinct from 37 - 39. Still didn’t know there were differences between the front and rear drums up until about a year ago. Lol! Then found another 15” x 6” one a few months ago and had it shipped only to find out that it was likely too rusted out to repair. Luckily, a month later I found a pair of 15” x 5.75” that came with an adapter to mount them to a regular Ford bolt pattern, but then both got damaged in shipping, and luckily I found a local mobile tire tech that fixed the larger of the two dents. Now this “mishap”. You would think there would be some sort of hot rod “Bible” somewhere detailing all these very important nuances. In the end though, I’m glad I persisted in going this route.
My Firestone 8.20 x 15 rear tire mounted just last week.