F100 brake upgrade....

Since the '40 has been on the road, I have never been quite satisfied with it's stopping performance.  The original 40-48 juice brakes have been nothing but trouble.  Seemingly constantly out of adjustment,  I am always fiddling with them to get an acceptable, but by no means a great pedal. Well...I'm tired of it.  I built the truck to be able to cruise at highway speeds and it should be able to stop from there as well.

Several weeks ago, I was at an auction and picked up an entire '56 ford truck front axle.  It was complete from drum to drum but I was only interested in the backing plates and drums.  The reason for my interest is that from '53-'56, Ford used the same bolt pattern on the backing plates as the '37-'48 spindles used.  So, they will essentially bolt up and still give me the 5 on 5 1/2" Ford truck bolt pattern.

You still might be asking yourself "why does this matter?"  Well, in '48 Ford started using the Bendix style self energizing brake design on F2 and larger trucks and by '53, Ford's entire line were using them.  Here are a couple of videos from YouTube explaining drum brake operation and the effects of self energizing...

One disadvantage to the the F100 brakes are that they only 11" in diameter compared to the original 12".  This might be pose a issue on a fender less hot rod, but no-one will noticed on a fully fendered vehicle.  However, they are 2" wide compared to the original 1 3/4".  The other problem with the F100 brakes is that they are not self adjusting.  That is easily fixed however, with using the self adjusting components of mid-60's Ford trucks.

Don't work, I will follow with assembly pics shortly...