The '48 sat in an old barn for a long time and a new pole barn as well - and the mice build a fortress in the bell housing. It was packed almost as tightly as a hay bale. The smell did not go away until well after we finished bead blasting the bell housing and etch priming the sheet metal.
Top temporarily installed and moved the Jeep last evening. Hate to stop working as it seems to be getting close to a "first drive". Also a picture of why the Jeep needs to move. Gotta make some truck repairs! IMG_1791.jpgIMG_1757.jpg
Working on brakes. does anyone know which shoe goes towards the rear? Appears each pair has one shoe with more friction material. when I disassembled the shoe smaller amount was towards the rear? just want to make certain this is correct.
This is a great question. Somewhere we had a discussion about this.
In the Universal manual, it states, "Note: On some vehicles the lining on the forward shoe is longer than the lining on the rear shoe."
Through the years, general mechanics practice has always been to put the small shoe to the front and the long shoe to the rear. In the early 40's and 50's it was either way. Eventually the general consensuses among manufacturers was, the forward shoe received more pressure from the force of the stopping vehicle compressing the drum rearward, therefore requiring less surface area than the rear of the drum. The older thought was the extra brake material in the front of the drum will provide more stopping power because of the weight of the vehicle compressing the drum rearward. In the end now a days if you are working on drums, the small shoe goes to the front.
I personally think it makes little difference. I always put the small shoe forward because that's how I was taught.
Google search regarding proper orientation of mismatched brake shoe configurations seems to indicate the small shoe should be mounted on the front while the larger one is to the rear. When I diassembled / removed the rear drum on this Jeep, the large shoe was towards the front / small towards the rear. I noticed the wear characteristics were very disproportional as the big shoe had much more friction material remaining while the small shoe is extremely thin. Which is why I questioned if the previous mechanic installed the shoes incorrectly. I'm going to reassemble with small shoe forward.
There are a few different types of drum brakes that were and are used on automobiles. Here are some. Simplex, Duplex, Uni-servo, Duo-servo, and Duo-Duplex. There are even a few other modifications of these. In general the force generated changes somewhat depending on the design. The attached illustration from Wikipedia shows how the force relates to the design. The distribution of the force is highlighted in black. So the design matters but, which shoe goes where is still up to how you want the brake to behave. If the long shoe is placed in a high force area for the design you have, the brakes will be more aggressive than if the shoes are reversed. Will you feel the difference, I don't think so. It could effect the wear. You would want the "most shoe" in the high force area for the best length of wear.
When I did brakes on Flossy. The old shoes were larger towards the front/smaller towards the rear. The new shoes I got (raybestos brand) were all equal.