Alum Brake Drums

[railroad]

Scored on a set of Buick drums, brakes, spindles and wheels. Any advise on attaching them to early Ford spindles. I also have a set of 50s F-1 brakes if the insides will work with the drums.

 

[Unkl Ian]

Check the tech archive on the Hamb.

 

[Blue Eyed Devil]

The F-1 brakes won't work. You need 12" backing plates from an early Ford or Lincoln and '46-'48 Ford hubs. There is a good bit of work involved with this swap, including machining. Lots of info available out there...

 

[dmw56]

Check the tech archive on the Hamb.

Ditto... lot of tech articles on this subject.

 

[donsrods]

Two ways to do it. First is to use just the Buick drums and 46-48 Ford hubs (the ones that fit on the outside of the drum) or Wilson Welding makes hubs for this application now. It involves some machining if you use the Ford ones, and only drilling new holes for the wheel studs if you use Wilson hubs.

Second way is to adapt the entire Buick backing plate and drum assembly to the Ford spindles. Never done it this way, but I have seen threads on how to do it on the HAMB.

The ones on my 23 were done using original 46-48 hubs, but the ones on my Sons RPU were done using Wilson hubs. His went so much easier, but if you do those buy the $ 5.00 jig so you can drill the wheel stud holes right on your drill press. I didn't know that jig existed and a local shop charged me $ 175.00 to drill 10 holes!

Buick drums on a hot rod are just as cool as it gets, and people are constantly commenting on mine, asking what the heck they are.

Don

Here are the stock 40-48 Ford backing plates and hardware. You need this 12 inch size for the Buick drums, the F1 brakes are only 11 inch.

And with the drums machined and installed.

 

[35Mastr]

The cheapest way is to get the adapter rings from 29RAT Or you could go the routes suggested above.

 

[railroad]

Thanks for all the options, advise and great pictures, Don. A lot of what you have looks like where I want to go with it. I have both lengths of axles with spindles, round and square. I was thinking of putting ALL of the Buick brakes on the spindle, but I will have to see what the mating surfaces look like. Anything that says, the easiest way sounds good. I know there are a lot of coating for the alum drums, Don what are using ? and does it do well ?

thanks,

 

[donsrods]

Mine are just sprayed with silver paint that I did 20 years ago. Nothing special, but it's been so long I forget exactly what it was. Probably rattle can Rustoleum or something similar. I ran them on my 27 for years then pirated them off to use on my 23 when I built it. They were still in good shape so I simply cleaned them and put them back on. I did respray the black portion, again rattle can black. and that area doesn't show but had some wear from the wheels being bolted to it.

Don

 

[Gastrick]

I just cleaned mine with Aluminum Jelly a couple of years ago when I installed them and they have stayed looking nice. By the way, I used the Wilson Welding hubs.

 

[donsrods]

Nice thing about the Wilson hubs, as shown in Bills picture, you have a choice of Chevy, late Ford, or early Ford bolt patterns. Looks like Bill is using the Chevy pattern.

Don

 

[Gastrick]

Yes correct Don and there is a method to my madness. As you know, me, my dad, and my brother, usually travel to shows in a small caravan. We try to make all our wheel bolt patterns the same so we don't have to carry a bunch of different spare tires.

 

[donsrods]

Very smart.

Don