A friend of mine recently picked up these early Ford Lockheed style hydraulic backing plates. He's been working with this old Ford stuff for 50 years and has never seen another set like it. What makes them different than the regular '39 to '41 hydraulic backing plates is that the the bottom halves are ventilated. They have Factory Ford script stamped on them and they look like factory stampings, not modified hydraulic backing plates. They are for standard 12" drums and have grooved brake shoes. What were they used on and what years were they made? Have at it guys!
I have seen backing plates opened up like that for racing, but as you say these look to be factory made. I've never seen any like this before.
Racing use is to obvious . How about something strange like clearance issues or such for a railroad car or vintage fork-lift or airport /plane tow vehicle .
I'd have to say, nicely modified by a stock car racer. In my younger life I had similar ventilated brake shoes on a '55 Chevy with a big block that I used to drive fast and hard. Tom
One thing for sure is driving through deep water the water will run out just as fast as it came in , won,t have to pump much .
I'm using a pair of aftermarket skeleton backers on my avatar, not sure if your Ford examples were modified or actual Ford components, & I agree a bit thin in the support area of the wheel cylinder, in fact one of my aftermarkets have additional support in that area undoubtably intended for the right front use in circle track &/or possibly any of the four corners in road race applications. Well done if home brewed for sure, however appear to be the first generation with the lower adjustments.
You would think that, but what's odd is you can see the cutouts are stamped out by a stamping die by the cut on the edges, and because I don't see any evidence of a cut and a smooth ground edge there. After seeing them up close in person. I think they are a factory piece. Either way, I think they are a cool looking piece. It will be interesting to see how they perform in regard to the missing pieces and if there is a noticeable loss of rigidity. They may be used on a flathead powered '34 roadster. I checked the pics of the brakes on the 8N Ford tractors that were sold at that time and they aren't even close. I also wondered if they might me a hydraulic version of the mechanical "Rocky Mountain" brakes, but no one has heard of anything like that either.
These are actually the '39-'42 versions, because the bottom pivots are adjustable, not fixed like the '46-'48 versions.
They did a really good job on modifying them because there's no sign of them being cut or ground that I can see, but the consensus is that they are modified originals so I'll go with that.
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