Hey guys, I couldn't find any posts with the search function about this.

Was wondering if anyone has found performance or upgraded rear drum shoes for the 87-96 trucks. I know they sell performance brake pads for the front of our trucks. I'd like to try and match the upgrades for the rear brakes.

 

I looked into this before, and all I could really find was a guy on another forum putting an f250 booster, master cylinder and rear wheel cylinders on his truck. Says it stopped way better.

 

FSB.com has some rear disc info under thier tech section for broncos but I never really wrapped my head around the success rate and moved it down on my bucket list. Hoping for a better how to to be posted someday.

 

Rear discs would be nice if they came from the factory, but I'm just looking for oem replacement upgrades so to speak. An upgraded brake material would be nice. Kinda like EBC green stuff brakes except I know they don't make rear drum brake shoes. It's not like my truck doesn't stop well enough because it does. I'd just like that extra margin of safety added by upgraded brake material. I can see the bigger booster, master, and wheel cylinders making a big difference, but that's out of my price range at the moment. 😞 Maybe sometime in the future I can just buy SS braided brake hoses as I know they increase the hydraulic braking force because of less hose bulge.

 

I've read, though haven't tried, that the 18 wheeler truck shops can install "pink lining" material in brake shoes for big trucks and can do the same for our smaller pickups. I looked into it a little bit because my '64 has drum brakes at all 4 corners.

Something to keep in mind is the "best" brake lining material or "heavy duty" or longest lasting shoes might not necessarily be what you really want. "Racing" brake linings too, may not work very well until they get very very hot. Cheap linings that wear out right away, produce lots of dust, a little noisy, might be just the ticket, at least in terms of stopping power.

Brake linings really need to be arc'd or ground to fit the drums they are being installed in. The idea is to provide a full contact patch to the drum surface during braking. This was a common practice, but the brake arc machines spewed asbestos dust around, interfering with everybody's smoke break and were effectively banned. I'm told a few swipes with a file to bevel the lining at the ends helps a bit.

Brake shops also used to have a couple different oversized linings to be used with drums that had been turned a few times, this makes for good brakes right away. New shoes in oversized drums won't work very well. Most of the stopping power, maybe 70 per cent, is done by the front axle though optomizing the rear axle drum brakes will not hurt anything and makes a very noticeable difference in braking.

 

Wow, that was a lot of info. Thanks!

I've never heard about pink linings before. Wish I knew more about braking materials. Generally the cheaper brakes are semi-metallic and the more expensive brakes are ceramic. Obviously there's other materials like Kevlar and the like for race brakes. Dunno if one is actually better than the other. I don't even think I can find anything but semi-metallic drum brakes. So, I guess I'm stuck unless I do some serious sleuthing and drop some cash to try things out. Wish I had the money to just buy a bunch of different brand drum brakes and do a routine of testing with stopping distance, changing nothing but back brakes. One can dream. Lol