After reading all the posts, this seems very complicated. I would advise you to carefully remove these defective parts, box them up and ship them to me for proper disposal. All kidding aside, 40 brakes work fine when set up correctly. I have many , many miles on 40 brakes, all 3 of my cars run them with no issues. The HAMB guys above have provided you with a perfect roadmap to success.
I'm overwhelmed. Pretty sure I'm gonna call So Cal and be done with it. Posted using the Full Custom H.A.M.B. App!
This might be a stupid question.... won't the shoes automatically arc to the drums after a few hard stops? I'm not being lazy, I'll probably arc them the right way, I'm just curious.
That was the original idea. I've got about 500 or so miles on the car. The brakes stop the car but noticed not much of the pads are making contact. And the drums now are not round and thump the pedal when applied. Posted using the Full Custom H.A.M.B. App!
Not a stupid question and it depends on how far off they are. In theory, Eventually the shoes will wear into perfect contact. But until then they are at best partial. You'll be gambling that they auto correct before you really need them and smash your shit up in the 10,000 miles or so it may take. The fitting process gets you to "really close and mostly" contact right out of shop allowing them to wear into perfection. A few hard stops isn't going to do it without a proper fitting first.
It would take a very long time to wear in to shape. The material on the shoes is designed to NOT wear much. Think about how long a set is normally going to last you - thousands of miles! The brake surface of the drums is smooth as.... Plus you'll be loading up only a portion of the surface area to stop - so they won't be working as well as they should. This also causes the drums to warp due to the small pressure point and hot spot. Just get some 40grit emery cloth and sand and fit until they match. Don't have to be 100% perfect but get them pretty good and you be surprised how well these old brakes work when they're set up right. Easy as - really.
Excuse my expression but it seems more tech is going into the brakes then then entire build. Was this arching thing a practice every time you rebuilt the brakes? This is crazy. Or is this crap products that we deal with within the last 20-30 years that needs to be addressed? I'm not going to chase these piles of shot when I can just fix it with a phone call. It's traditional enough! I wanna stop. My kids ride in this thing. Posted using the Full Custom H.A.M.B. App!
I remember my dad cutting corners because of cost. Shops turned drums and guys like my dad did things to get by. I expect shit to work after I pay a shit ton of money for the parts. These parts are built in China and the only thing real is the backing plates. It shoulda worked better than they have without arching and grinding and re engineering the entire brake system. Posted using the Full Custom H.A.M.B. App!
My brake lathe and arc grinder was built in the 40s,NEEDED to do it then, NEED to do it now !!! If you don't want to put in the effort, heard new Kia's have Great brakes! Chris
HI; Look at an old "Motors" manual, mine has pics of the Ford tool, I made mine, it centers on the spindle,make a bushing for front and rear, with a arm that is adjustable, spin it 360 degrees and center the shoes , and adjust to the diameter of your drum. with the shoes arced to the drum, and the shoes centered and adjusted, your brakes will work the fist time out! another thing I do is keep another backing plate with adjusters on it, so you can look which way to go when you have to adjust with the drums on, can't remember anything!! Chris
I'm not trying to insult anyone but damn! I just don't have the support some of you all do without sending out everything. It is just not worth the money. The past few builds ive done have had the aftermarket brakes that worked out well. I'm really fighting these things and not getting a real return. Posted using the Full Custom H.A.M.B. App!
Not trying to insult anyone on hamb, but the amount of bad brake threads are quite common on hamb. A true old time mechanic or skilled traditional hobbyist will tell you all the things that were mentioned here by people trying to help. The modern "tech", replaces drums or rotors on a brake job these days. Back a few decades, all shoes needed to be checked for radius inside the drum, by hand and eye. before installing the shoes. Most shitty mechanics never did that and told the customer to "let them wear in". Old rods usually have non self energizing brakes, so fit is more important if you want good brakes. I just pulled apart a dually diesel truck rear brake today; it had way oversize drums, but they just slapped new shoes on it. Duh, very little shoe contact. Do I condemn Dodge Dually rear brakes as sucky? No, the last guy that did these brakes sucked bigtime. He was clueless or did not care.
I've reluctantly held back from intervening but here is my take on this. First there really is no problem with 40 brakes on a Model A if done correctly. After reading all the posts I seem to agree that the issue with the brakes seems to center around a lumpy set of drums. If the drums were turned correctly they wouldnt be lumpy so somewhere somebody screwed up. Next the Lincoln style brakes wont cure anything with lumpy drums other than make adjustment a slight bit easier. Yes you need to arch the shoes but first you need to correctly adjust the brakes according to the recommended procedure for the style backing plates you have. As I've posted before the best book you can have is an old Motors Manual pre 1955, these are less than $20 at the swap meet and have all kinds of service instructions and specs. Now if the drums are turned excessively like .060 over size or more the drums are borderline useable even if you arch the shoes as the wheel cylinder travel is about maxed out. After you posted the picture of your coupe the striking point is the low position of the master cylinder. This would lead me to think that most of your problem is not with the brakes themselves but the poor pedal ratio that you are trying to use to get the brakes to work. The ratio should be between 5:1 or 6:1 and I guessing yours is more like 3:1 with that low hanging cylinder, thats why it stops like crap and you have to apply excessive pressure to even feel like its working. My suggestion is to search out some bettter drums, take a tape measure and check that they are close to 12" dia before you shell out any $. Then Check your pedal ratio by measuring from the center of the pedal pivot to the center of radius of the pedal arc and then measuring from the center of the pedal pivot to the center line of the master cylinder push rod. Divide the master cylinder measure into the pedal measure for your ratio and see what you get? example 10" pedal arm/ 2" master cylinder arm is 5:1. Whats yours?
When I was working in a autoparts store in the 60s part of the job when turning drums was ARC the shoes to fit!! We also took a skim cut on new drums that were not mounted to hubs [ie rears] to make sure they were round before shipping to customer.
This thread has a lot of great tech. However, the OP has had the mentality of junking the 40 brakes and buying aftermarket since his very first post (which was only yesterday afternoon). Seems he's made up his mind and no amount of good advice or proven tech is going to sway him. Not sure why it's up to the HAMB to convince him otherwise when he seems dead set against even trying the suggestions.
Dude, seriously!!! An 18 year old kid in the 50's would have been able to do it without access to the Internet (GASP! NO INTERNET? HOW DID HE DO IT?) or whining like a baby on a message board.
I agree. Throw out all that stupid terrible Lockheed stuff and buy some brand new Bendix. Just send me the Lockheed stuff and I'll dispose of it properly.
Yes, for EVERY BRAKE JOB. Not crazy. It's what you did. You probably Relined the shoes yourself too and rebuilt the master or wheel cylinders as needed. Non of this replace it with new cheap china shit we do now. You probably don't have a problem using NEW drums and NEW shoes because both of them are close to fitting when new. If you want you can send them to me, with the drums and I will have my shoe reliner arc them, but shipping might be killer... Another idea would be to join your local Model A or early V8 club. I bet someone there knows where or can do it for you.
Don't understand how you can build the car and the biggest problem you run into are getting the brakes to work. Never ran into a problem with overhauling the motor, rebuilding the transmission, building the front suspension, body work, etc.? Waiting to see what 1-800-brakes you are going to use. I have the same style brakes in my Model A and they worked fair. I readjusted them in the correct order and now they work fine. Neal
Dicks right, check your pedal ratio. This will change the entire feel of the system because you won't be smashing the pedal through the floor on every stop. That is of course presuming the system is adjusted properly to begin with. Different style drums may not fix your problem, if you just say fuck it and keep throwing parts at it you could wind up deep $$ still not be satisfied. Lots of good info here to get you fixed up, be smart about it. That's hot rodding right.... good luck, keep us posted if you decide to get em fixed up the right way.
constantly adjust brakes is not "all part of the experience" the 42-48 brakes on my 28 roadster are on their 21st year with zero adjustment. Not that I'm advocating going that long but the brakes still do not require adjust at this point. I do however need a new left rear wheel cylinder
Every time I hear what people do to their early Ford brakes I don't ask "why do they work so bad" but "why do they work at all". I have a '46-'48 brake set up on my '32 and am very happy with them. Charlie Stephens
I talked to my dad and yes he did all that. Ok I will take all this advice and give it a big O College try. I will keep you posted. Posted using the Full Custom H.A.M.B. App!
Welll...he's talking about repros of traditionally desirable brakes...it would already likely be better to pop for new drums, with a fair amount of trouble to mount onto the old hubs... and the arcing will likely have to be done rather crudely, perhaps with several test runs and re-do's to get everything in contact...and if he can afford all the stuff that is at proper diameter...what's the fuss??
The Jalopy Journal
