I have a 65 F100 4x4 with a 9" axle. I have a leaking wheel cylinder and plan to do the brakes soon. The warranty tag shows a 5600 GVW. I'm thinking that means I likely have the 1 3/4" brakes but haven't checked.

Couple questions.

First as old as this truck is I'm planning on replacing the drums and hardware along with the wheel cylinders and shoes. Can I simply order the 2 1/4" wide stuff if I replace everything?

Second I have a dana 60.3 I'm planing to use in the future and want to use these brake parts on. It's 5 lug and has the 1 3/4 hardware now. Is there any reason the drums and other hardware wouldn't bolt onto that axle? Are the backing plates, wheel bearings and retainers the same between these axles?

 

Edited original post. I was thinking of the 2 1/4" brakes that usually came on large bearing 9" axles I think.

 

Is the inside of the brake drum wide enough for a 2" shoe? If it is, I would get the wider shoes and a little bigger wheel cylinder and go for it.

 

I'm guessing my drums are near the limit and would have to replace them anyway. So I'd be getting everything drums included.

 

The short answer is yes, you can swap out to the wider '68 up 2 1/4" drums, but you will also need new backing plates as they set in a little farther and 68 up axles. The offset of the axle is larger for the '68 up. This will pull the axle out 5/16" on the inside. Ford kept the overall dimension the same by making the housing 5/8" shorter overall beginning in '68. That probably isn't enough to matter, but I had custom axles made because I was upgrading to 31 spline axles at the same time. So verify that 5/16" isn't going to reduce the contact area inside the spider gears before using stock axles, or have custom axles made.

 

Thanks for the info! Wonder if that extra 3/4" of brake shoe surface is worth it?

 

I just installed a top to bottom new drum brake system on my uni.
I went all stock on the truck. I used inline tubing's stainless kit. They worked great. I replaced the 3 flexible brake hoses, all the wheel cylinders, new master cylinder, new shoes, and had the drums turned.
Whole thing cost around 350 bucks.

I suggest ordering your parts online at Advance Auto. If you purchase online and enter promo code p20, you get twenty percent of your entire order. You can pick up in store or ship to home.

Last suggestion is to shop ebay or similar sites. Look for a tool for adjusting drum brakes. The one I bought was from aamco. It is a large caliper tool. You spread it open across the inside of the widest part of your drum and tighten the ****. Take it out and flip the caliper. Slide it across the widest part of your shoes and use the brake adjuster to adjust the shoes to hit the caliper.
Do it on all 4 corners and you will stop straight. I got to drive mine last weekend. It felt good to stop. The pedal wasn't hard and the wheel didn't try to fly to the right on me.

 

Is it worth it? I think it is...

 

Thanks for the code! I'll look into that.

 

Look up ammco 8650 on ebay. That is the tool to adjust the shoes to fit your drum.

 

This may be a bad idea and I'll tell you why....
The stock system is a very simple system. How does it acomplish braking where most of the braking is done by the front? It accomplishes this by the rear brakes having smaller cylinders maybe even slightly smaller shoes.
If the rears were the same size or exactly equal in this simple system the rears would lock up. If they were bigger than the front it will nearly always lock up on the rear first. As you may know, if the rear wheels locks up first, they tend to want to swing around. Not good.

These trucks share front drums through 1967. 1968 is slightly different. This makes swapping to 68 front drums a problem.

Bottom line....if you put bigger brakes on the rear, you have to go bigger on the front as well unless you are hauling around a bed full of logs.

This may can be adjusted with a proportioning valve as it limits or mediates rear braking....If so what's the point?

 

If I had to pick an axle to lock up, I would pick the rear end any day of the week. If the rears lock up, yes the back can come around but at least you can still steer the front end. Lock up the front, you have no control. This is why older big rigs didn't have front brakes at all and the ones that did often had a switch on the dash to disable them.

Going to a bigger shoe in the rear will work perfect provided that you size the wheel cylinders correctly. What's the point if the bigger shoes technically don't give you any more stopping "power"? Well, the bigger shoe will provide the same braking power with less force to the shoes which will build less heat which gives you more stopping time before the brakes start to fade. The bigger shoe will also last longer.