I was going through some of my pics I had saved and came across this photo of how a guy drilled his backing plates when I noticed that it is upside down. Why would this be or do you think it is a mistake?
Some people like to be different. As long as you put the primary brake shoe to the front this should work. Short shoe to the front is what I am told.
Not in this case ! LOL This is a Lockhead design that is not a self energising one, thats why Early Fords had the step W/C with the big bore to the front. And usually but not always had a shorter lining to the rear. The upside down backing plates would have need the W/C to be swaped side to side and the bleeder screw would still have been on the bottom. Lets hope it was a mistake.
como guys alot of medium duty trucks from the 80's had the wc on upside down, but if i had to guess this guy didnt have frt brakes maybe
I think there is also a clearance issue with the steering arm, Can't see it from here. Anybody care to set me straight?
The pin that holds the kingpin in place isn't installed. He probably put it together to take the picture cause it looked so cool.
maybe its a raised axle and not a dropped axle and he just took the pic upside down? ok mabye not! JEFF
My backing plates are mounted like this. I did it because I did'nt like the brake lines showing through the top. Looks a little cleaner. No big deal.
Actually if you did rotate the backing plate 180*, the short shoe would be on the rear but it would still be correct. It's the direction that the drum is turning that determines where the short shoe goes. If you reversed the location of the shoes but did not change the rotation of the drum, then the forces would be applied in the wrong direction on the backing plate and you get less self energizing effect. Putting the short shoe to the front (on Bendix systems) just orients the shoes for the proper rotation of the drum on that side. Rotating the backing plate 180 won't change the rotation of the drum. The short shoe would be on the rear but correct for the rotation of the drum. Bleeding could be a challenge but not insurmountable.
You could make a "power bleeder" setup (mildly pressurized) with a spare master cylinder cover, or even a flat piece of .125 plate & some spare gasket material, plus some fittings.....that would make it a lot easier to bleed the system.
You could use a C clamp to hold the pistons in place with the cylinder not yet mounted to the backing plate but with the hose through the backing plate. Turning it so that the bleeder was up. Once it's bled mount it to the backing plate.
No trickery needed on the bleeding...just swap the cylinders from other side so big end points right way and bleeder port is up. Plates have 4 holes, cylinders have three, so any cylinder can go anyhow. This is actually a fairly routine practice, one of the common traditionalways of dealing with spring and shock perch clearance issous on Model A rear ends. Never noticed upside down ones on the front before, though...maybe a clearance issue I'm not seeing, maybe just going for uncluttered look up top?
The rear cylinders on an MGB have the bleeder at the bottom. (Crazy Limeys) Yea, they are a ***** to get all the air out. I found it works best to set the parking brake which pushes the pistons **** up to each other making the gap no bigger than what;s in a line anyway.
Before inverting the cylinders was discovered, many early rodders shipped their Model A's to New Zealand for brake bleeding!
perhaps you dont have the space!!! with the newer backing plates usally you have to gind the kingpin a little to get them to fit right side up??? or they rub on the backingplates
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