Technical 45 fin drums on a pre-war Buick

While there is a lot of info about these on early Ford spindles, not much that I can find on adapting these to the early Buick spindles. I want to run the 45 fin drums on one of my 40 Supers. I have a set of brake assemblies from a 64 Electra, with nice drums. Using a 64 spindle for dimensions, the plan is to adapt the backing plates to the 40 spindle, and spacers for the bearings as required. Scarebird has a disc brake kit that has spacers for the Timken set 3 and 5 bearings, which the drum hubs use, so the spacers should work. Am I going down the right path here?

 

What would be the purpose in replacing drum brakes with more drum brakes? Looks?

 

I used the finned Buick drums which I took off a '62 Buick and couldn't use the '62 backing plates but then this was for the usual Ford spindles. Since your Buick would have kingpin spindles, see if your existing brakes fit the later drums. I remember the feature way back on Joe Wilhelm's Wild Dream show car. It ran the finned Buick brake drums but I couldn't recognize the backing plates. They were most certainly not the '58 Buick backing plates that I used so I'm guessing they must be from some earlier Buick. Do you have 12" brakes?

 

It’ll accentuate the calf’s

 

I would imagine that the later drums would be larger and therefore provide more braking

 

^^^^ while both are 12" diameter drums, the 40 is 1.75" and the finned drums are 2.25".

Edit: plus the fact that roller bearings will be upgraded to tapered roller bearings.

 

Plus better heat dispersant.

Ben