Everybody has commented on the possible problems. Before you condemn the brakes for being a dangerous vintage design you need to ride iin another Early Fords to see that these brakes can work decent. Here is another one of my stories.
The first Early Ford brakes I drove was when my Dad bought a '32 Roadster. I drove it home on a 100 degree day, about 80 in stop and go freeway driving. Not knowing what to expec,t at the beginning of the journey I was worried about that flathead getting hot. It has a modifed 8BA in it. It never got over 180 degrees, I was amazed. The temperature worry was soon replaced by the fear of running into the back of somebody. Those brakes were scary in stop and go freeway driving! Twenty-year's later they are still that way because dad never pulled the drums off to investigate. The car never moved so I never had an incentive to go down there and fix it. The steel brake lines are a dangerous mess. I've never looked to see what they did to mount the pedals and master cylinder? I'll worry about that stuff when it comes here to live and I can get it up in the air on the hoist and get a good look at what scary work was done under it.
Everything I had read in hot rod articles pretty much all said the same thing, those early ford hydraulics are dangerous of course they were promoting the brake upgrades of the parts manufacturers that advertised in their magazines. Every time one of those brake stories was published you will just happen to see a large add for the upgrade parts. What a strange coincidence. I had only driven one vehicle with Early Ford brakes at that time. So I started thinking maybe there was nothing wrong with the brakes on the '32 roadster, maybe that's just how they are. The articles had me convinced they would eventually get you killed. If they were as bad as those articles claimed you would think there should not have be a single '39 to '48 Ford frontend that didn't run into something and get smashed.
Then one day I was the passenger in Bernie Couch's '32 Roadster he had owned since around 1937. So I said, Bernie, how bad are these Early Ford hydraulic brakes you have on here are they as bad as everyone says? He didn't say a word and kept driving. I'm thinking that 's kind rude. Why doesn't he answer my question. We had just left stoplight and he was quickly accelerating with the same exact flathead that ran 130 mph at El Mirage around 1950. All of a sudden he stomps on the brake pedal and it
violently threw me hard into the windshield, it hurt! Then he said, "what do you think about them?" That day I realized there was nothing wrong with Early Ford brakes. There was something wrong with the brakes on the cars people were complaining about.
Its no doubt that Bendix self energizing brakes are superior at stopping. But I don't think the Early Ford brakes are unsafe. Also, If your running skinny original tires with a small contact patch on the asphalt your brakes do not need to be any better than the ability of your tires to"not" lockup and skid. Its all about stopping distance without skidding the tires. I'm thinking the self energizing brakes require less pedal effort but the stopping distance is probably close to an Early Ford with original hydraulic brakes and tires. It would be a neat comparison test.
This is something interesting. The required stopping distance of an automobile is the same as it was in the 1930s. I have a bunch of CA vehicle code books. The old ones just have a few pages. You can do just about anything you wanted to a car and still be legal. The new ones are thick as a telephone book, that's if your old enough to know what a telephone book was.
Here is my opinion on Early Ford Brakes. If you can't see them like on a full tendered cara and you drive a lot and your running modern radials the reproduction Lincoln brakes are the way to go. If you don't drive it much I would just keep the Ford brakes.
If its a hot rod, I love the look of those Early Ford backing plates. I would definitely run them on the front. You can stick the Lincolns on the rear where they will not be seen. A lightweight highboy coupe or roadster does not need anymore stopping power than that. I have a Model A roadster pickup with a 324 Olds, a '50 Olds rearend and brakes and the Early Ford Brakes up front. They also used the '50 Olds master cylinder when this car was built in 1950. It will easily lock up the tires and skid with very little pedal effort. This car is what makes me think Lincoln brakes on the rear and Early Fords on the front would be perfect for a period correct hot rod.
If the brake pedal is hard the hydraulics system is good, no air. I don't know who engineer the brakes on this car? Something you need to consider is modifying the original brake pedal and master cylinder setup can change the leverage you are applying to the master cylinder. The pedal length and the rest of the linkage multiplies the force you apply with your foot. If you modify the setup it needs to be designed to multiply the same force as it originally did, like on a '39 Ford pedal setup.
If the brake shoes had fluid on them they do the opposite of what you would think, They lock up very easily. At least they do on self energizing brakes. The fluid causes the shoe to stick to the drum like a drinking glass sitting in water on a table. Its hard to pull off.
If one wheel is locking up the first thing I did was look under the car for fluid on the backing plate. Either gear oil or brake fluid had gottn onto the lining. They cannot be cleaned. I've soaked them in acetone until they looked clean. Then I drove it and took the drum back off, There were little dots of fluid that had come up out of the lining. The other thing as other have said is to fit the shoes to the drums. Its possible your shoes are only touch in the center of the shoes or the very ends. You have to remove the drum and hold the shoe up against it to see how much of the lining is making contact.
You need to make sure the long shoes goes to the front. That is your forward braking shoe. More force is applied to it so it needs to be longer. It is the opposite of the self energizing brakes.
Also,as others have said your brake shoes may not be centered. Axle housing bearing race wear can allow the drum to move up and not be centered with the shoes. The second generation of brakes allowed the shoes to move up and down to center themselves with the drum. Ford advertised this as a big improvement, calling them self-centering brakes. An obvious attempt to confuse people into thinking they were just as as self energizing brakes like all the other manufacturers used.
