Question about hyd brakes- early version

Tom in TN

Tom in TN

Senior Member
I have a set of (I think) early 40's brakes and I am asking if you guys know if these brakes can be set up to stop the car pretty good?

Would it be unreasonable to expect them to be able to lock the tires and leave skid marks in the road?

Here's a pic of the left rear...
LRbrake.jpg
 
Just looking at the picture, you have the brake shoes in the wrong positions. With the Lockheed style here, the shoe with the longer lining goes to the rear of the car, unlike the more "modern" Bendix brakes where the shoe with the longer lining goes to the front. Ford used this style on the FORD CARS because they were less expensive. He used the "better" Bendix style on Lincolns and trucks. So, yes, there are better brakes than what you have. Many will argue, however, that when these are properly set up and adjusted, these should be OK.

BRAIN FREEZE!! MY COMMENT ABOUT POSITION OF LONG WAS WRONG! PICTURE IS CORRECT! THANKS 41FORD1!! SORRY!
 
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The "spring" on the emergency brake cable going to acuator arm is too long. Something like 5 to 5 1/2 inches long is best. You won't be able to set your emergency brake properly.
 
Looks like a clean set of 42-48 backing plate units. Issue that needs to be addressed is the length of the emergency brake cable.

Since you have to adapt the 39-40 emergency cable to another year car you will find that the throw of the stock floor mount emergency brake handle is short. You will have to shorten up the cable throw as much as possible to get good emergency/parking brakes.

One of the issues with the repro emergency cable is that the return spring is too long for the application. You need to readjust the cable return spring length. Before you do any cutting of the spring length do a trial run brake adjustment getting the shoes and anchors positioned correctly. Just pop your drum on and follow the procedure for adjusting the Lockeed style brakes from service bulletins or old Motors Manual. Pull the drum back off and pop off the cable ball from the E lever and rock the lever slowly forward to remove any slack in the lever and bar, note the position of the lever ball end. This is the point where the brake starts to function. You should adjust the cable return spring length so that it is just long enough to push the lever rear ward of that spot by about 1/2" and maintain a tight tension between the cable stop in the backing plate and the e- brake lever. This will prevent the cable from being to long inside the drum and create a poor e-Brake application and give you enough free play not to drag the brakes. You will have to do this on both sides to balance the system. The additional length of the cable will be pulled forward under the torque tube and allow you to make a shorter intermediate connection between the emergency brake handle and the cable.

Adjusted correctly these are very adequate brakes but nowhere near the response of a modern disc brake vehicle. Just remember when the driving shool instructor told you to remain at least 1 car length back from the car in front of you for every 10 mph speed traveled, with these cars they mean it..
 
Nice and clean, they really do not look much different than the brakes on a 70 mustang at first glance, 30 years later, I am sort of surprised. Cool .
 
PeteVS said:
Just looking at the picture, you have the brake shoes in the wrong positions. With the Lockheed style here, the shoe with the longer lining goes to the rear of the car, unlike the more "modern" Bendix brakes where the shoe with the longer lining goes to the front. Ford used this style on the FORD CARS because they were less expensive. He used the "better" Bendix style on Lincolns and trucks. So, yes, there are better brakes than what you have. Many will argue, however, that when these are properly set up and adjusted, these should be OK.
Click to expand...

I think you may have the positions of the shoes backwards. :confused:

Lockeed (Ford) fixed anchor brakes had the long shoe on the front and the short shoe to the rear. With these brakes, the front shoe does most of the work.

Bendex Self Eneggizing Brakes used the long shoe on the rear. The rear shoe does most of the work.

Chris
 
Tom in TN said:
I have a set of (I think) early 40's brakes and I am asking if you guys know if these brakes can be set up to stop the car pretty good?

Would it be unreasonable to expect them to be able to lock the tires and leave skid marks in the road?
Click to expand...

The "Ford" Brakes will do an adequate job of stopping the car. There were Millions of cars made with Fixed Anchor Brakes. In a panic situation, you can lock the wheels but it will take a lot of pedal effort.

A "Roadster" or early light weight Hot Rod usually will get along just fine with "Ford" Brakes. The "Heaver" later cars were OK. "In the old days" people did not tend to drive as fast as they do now.

Your brakes look to be in very good condition except for the emergency brake cable spring which is a minor issue that is easily corectable. I would drive your car with these brakes and at some later date, when you feel you would like to have better brakes, you could consider up-grading to Lincoln (Bendex) self energizing. These are definately superior to the Ford brakes.

By the way, your brakes look to be 46-48. With this design, there is no adjustment for the anchors as with the earlier brakes.

My opinion,

Chris
 
The brake shoes are installed correctly. The long shoe goes in the front and matches up with the larger diameter front half of the wheel cylinder. The larger piston applies more force to the forward braking shoe. The hydraulic pressure applied to both pistons are the same but the larger surface area exerts more force. The best way I can describe it is if two 200 pound guys were pushing a car and then a third 200 pound guy came along, they are all pushing with the same 200 pounds of force but three guys pushing on a larger surface area can push more than two.

The rotation of the drum tries to force the rear shoe and piston away from the drum so it does not do the same amount of braking as the front shoe does. That is why the front shoe is longer, it is also thicker because it wears faster.
 
Tom, Lockheed brakes are first generation, Id give em a 4 Wagner brakes are second generation and self energizing, Id give em a 6 Disc brakes are maybe a 8-9 depending on if they are 2W or 4w and manual or power.
 
CWPASADENA said:
I think you may have the positions of the shoes backwards. :confused:

Lockeed (Ford) fixed anchor brakes had the long shoe on the front and the short shoe to the rear. With these brakes, the front shoe does most of the work.

Bendex Self Eneggizing Brakes used the long shoe on the rear. The rear shoe does most of the work.

Chris
Click to expand...
I was (when younger) ASE certified in brakes, etc. I no longer need the certification (retired). That being said, I have a "test" question:

As this type of brake system isn't truly self-energizing as the shoes are fixed in place (lower pins), what real difference does it make which shoe is front and which is placed to the rear?
 
After you learn how to adjust these, they will stop very good. The first time I adjusted mine, braking was quite an experience; which changed after I adjusted them correctly.
 
Kube said:
I was (when younger) ASE certified in brakes, etc. I no longer need the certification (retired). That being said, I have a "test" question:

As this type of brake system isn't truly self-energizing as the shoes are fixed in place (lower pins), what real difference does it make which shoe is front and which is placed to the rear?
Click to expand...

You can put the "Long" Shoe on the rear of Fixed anchor (Ford) brakes. What will happen is that you will wear out the front shoe (short) linning well before the rear (long) linning. Also, under hard or extended brake application, you may pick up more fade because of less front shoe linning surface.

The opposite is the case for the self energizing (Bendex) brakes except the lingth of linning on the leading shoe will effect to some degree how the trailing shoe is applied. In Vintage Road Racing, with Bendex brakes, we will run full length linnings on both the leading and trailing shoes to get as much "self energizing" as we can. The rear linings will wear a lot faster then the fronts but we just swap positions when the rear shoe starts to get a little thin.

Chris
 
Tom in TN said:
I have a set of (I think) early 40's brakes and I am asking if you guys know if these brakes can be set up to stop the car pretty good?

Would it be unreasonable to expect them to be able to lock the tires and leave skid marks in the road?

Here's a pic of the left rear...
LRbrake.jpg
Click to expand...

To answer your question about stopping the car with these brakes......I had to "panic" stop my '40 coupe one day when a jerk ran a red light......I was about to T-bone him when I jumped on the brake pedal with everything I had. All 4 wheels locked up and my '40 skidded to less than one foot from his door. I do not know if I left tire marks on the road...I was too concerned about "tire marks" in my underwear!! So......yes, if they adjusted properly, and all parts are in good condition, these brakes will work just fine.

I should add that I was traveling about 40 mph through a green light at an busy intersection.
 
Tom in TN said:
Thanks for all the replies. Now I know that they 'can', I've got to make to "DO".
Click to expand...

Tom, you don't sound too confident about your brakes. In order to enjoy yourself while driving your car you must feel confident that critical items, like brakes are the best they can be.

I added a booster to my system, 39 brakes in a 38 dlx. That helped a lot. As someone else said, we drive faster now, and keeping up with traffic means our brakes have to perform that much better.

My next build, a 36 pickup will have disk brakes, as it will be a daily driver.
 
My '38 pickup has bone-stock set of '39 hydraulics in it. I built the engine, put 3:54 gears in it and a '39 ******. Other than one instance with a leaking wheel cylinder these brakes have done a great job. The pedal stays solid, there's no brake fade and they haven't overheated yet. The best advice I can give you is to make sure those wheel cylinders are clean and properly honed after rebuilding them. Don't accept someone elses work on this unless you don't mind trusting that person with your life. Then be certain they're adjusted properly and you'll not have a problem. Happy motoring -Mike
 
For years I had read stories about how bad these early Ford hydraulic brakes were, usually from magazine articles trying to sell one of their advertisers products. The first time I got to go for a ride in a '32 roadster with early Ford hydraulic brakes I asked the owner, I have read nothing but bad things about how poorly these old Ford brakes stop. He did not say a word, he just kept on driving. I'm thinking this guy is in his eighties, maybe he did not here me. Then without any warning he locked up the brakes and literally face planted me into the windshield. Then he said, "what do you think." Don't believe everything you read, especially if they are trying to sell you something.
 
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