Front brake shoes...something ain't right...see pic

I am now in the process of sorting out the front brakes and axle, etc. When I pulled the drum off something didn't look right. See if you can spot it. For you gear heads, it will jump right out at you.

The whole thing is rotated 90 degrees to the left. :eek:

Anything else skewed or bassackwards?

Bleach,

You win the cookie.

My best guess on this is it's a 1938 which someone in the past converted to hydraulic brakes. Since the shoes are at the 12:00/6:00 o'clock position on mechanical brakes, that's the way they put them back on. Tomorrow I will see if the backing plate will rotate 90 degrees clockwise. Sometimes I get a laugh at what these guys did, but most of the time I cry as I know it gonna cost me big bucks to make it right.

Well, time to cry. Yes, they converted to hydraulics, but they didn't change the '38 spindle to a '39 or later. This means that the hydraulic backing plate will not rotate 90 degrees. When you try the part of the backing plate just below the slave cylinder hit's the top knuckle of the King pin.

There's an old Hotrod trick (my background) that I might try. When you try to mount Lincoln backing plates to Ford straight axles, they will not fit for the same reason. The cure is to carefully remove material from the top of the knuckle, sort of a pie slice looking thing. The only problem is the Ford knuckles are much larger than the Lincolns, if I remember correctly. I'll let you know what I find out.

Excuse me, I have grab a tissue and wipe my eyes.

You can always convert back to mechanical brakes. You'd need less tissues then.

That ain't going to happen dude. I like stopping faster than I'm going. I'll be getting around this one way or another as I'm building a driver, not a show car. Thanks for your input.

I believe the brake will work just fine in this position. The problem is the brake hose. I believe it might be possible to route a solid( tube) brake line from the wheel cylinder back and up to a location against the backing plate near the top of the spindle. Then a regular brake hose might be able to be used? The fitting necessary to connect the hose to the short solid( tube) brake line might be a challenge.

My concern is getting the front slave cylinders bleed. In the vertical orientation, the top piston will not bleed I believe. I'm going to visit a friend tomorrow who is putting Lincoln backing plates on a Ford woody. I'll see what he is doing to slove this problem. Stay tuned.

Bleeding may or not be a problem. I've never seen a bleeder screw located at the topmost area of the cylinder so if it is rotated it make not make that much difference.

If driving is your ultimate goal, might as well go with a disc brake set-up.

Bleeders are located at the top of horizontal cylinders because that is where the air is. I was once able to bleed a cylinder after snapping off a frozen bleeder screw, by inserting and removing a hat pin past the aluminum plunger and rubber cup near the top of the cylinder, in a fashion similar to how you would work a bleeder screw. You may want to attempt this at the top of your now verticle cylinder.

Bleeders are always on top, can't bleed air any other way. Won't work with cylinder cocked 90* to vertical instead of horizontal.

Well, after visiting serveral hours with a very long time restorer/hot Rodder (the guy with the one of one 1932 Ford boat tail speedster) I think I have my solution. It will take some time to do what's needed to get it to work as I have to machine some parts. I will update this post with pics when the machine work is done. Thanks to all for their input.

When I mounted Zephyr brakes to my 1939 pickup, I had to grind away the interfering part of the spindle base. This was a common action to take in the day when converting old Fords to hydraulics.