How to change 41 Ford Brakes to Bendix .

Is there a Bendix (self energizing) brake kit available whereby one can mount the Bendix backing plates to replace those used up to 48 on a 1941 Ford without any grinding of the spindles to make the backing plates fit? I would still like to use the 41 drums as they are still good. The 12" Lincoln brake kits now being sold are just a bit too pricey. Thanks, jim

 

No easy or cheap way to do it to my knowledge.

 

The Lincoln repop brake kits may be pricey but they are complete and work extremely well. After seeing how well these units work I'd save up for a while and then go for it. If you add up all the time, restoration effort, new part buys, and gas money spent rounding up all the needed vintage parts the new units won't seem all that expensive.

 

That set that Speedway sells is from Wilson Welding. You still have to grind a bit off the top of the stock spindle for the backing plates. The nice thing is that you can use your stock drums. For about 400 bucks and save yourself the trouble of rounding up all the used parts for the same price or more.

 

Somewhere on here is a post from someone who built a setup using 12" backing plates from the rears of 1970's big GM station wagons...quite interesting approach for a good fabricator. Lots of work, of course, and around here it would be just about as hard to find a '75 Chevy wagon as it would be to find a junked '41 Lincoln!

 

I have done 4 pairs using 12 in shoes, 48 backing plates by using later model wheel cylinders in a lower mounting position and installing a GM pivot pin spring post where the ford wheel cylinder was orginially.

 

I feel it depends on your car whether it's even relevant. I run a 28 roadster with a flatty and bias plys. I've come down a hill on rough pavement and had a car turn in front of me going through in intersection. I pounded on the brakes and I'm DAMN glad I was the only one in the car because they would have mashed their face against the windshield.

you can only stop as fast as your tires will let you. 4 12" drums 2" wide is ALOT of brake. in about 10k miles my 42-48 brakes haven't been adjusted and the above incedent happened last summer. light cars with low performance tires don't require any more stopping power IMO

 

Another thing to remember about stock early hydraulics is that you might well need and education in early procedures or a really old brake man to optimize...if you just buy a bunch of parts, you probably have poor contact area because your new shoes and your ancient drums are nowhere near the same arc. And the centering process for the prewar version is often poorly understood...brake shoe arcing is hard to get because of our genral fear of asbestos dust.
These brakes need to be set as close as possible to actual contact with drum, after establishing correct curvature.