Rear brakes 49 Ford

[Frank Miller]

Investigating a noise, turned out to be wheel bearing, but found these cracks in the brake shoes. Never saw something like this before. Brakes worked ok. These are rearward shoes on the back.

[Frank Miller]

The worse one

[50fordcoupeman]

Wow!! Have seen this before on one of dad's cars years ago. Looks like it was ready to come apart. Definitely time for rear brake overhaul and time to check the front ones. Good luck!!

[Alaska Jim]

I think that this is most likely from excessive heat probably from heavy braking and continuous brake fade from the heat. has this car come from an area where there were a lot of hills or mountains?

[corvette8n]

Originally Posted by Alaska Jim

I think that this is most likely from excessive heat probably from heavy braking and continuous brake fade from the heat. has this car come from an area where there were a lot of hills or mountains?

He did just drive it coast to coast.

[Frank Miller]

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Those were driven only by me and while there may have been a few hard stops I try to use the brakes sparingly due to things like brake fade. I had the front wheels off at the beginning of the year. I adjusted the rears so they had just a bit of drag but did not inspect them. There was so little adjustment needed I figured they were ok.

[51 MERC-CT]

Considering that they are bonded shoes, they may have been internally fractured when clamped in position for bonding, due to poor fit.
The fractures may not have been visible in the beginning but due to heat expansion and contraction presented themselves later.

[V8 Bob]

Curious what the shoes and drums look like. Heat is normally what would cause lining damage as shown.

[Frank Miller]

The drms, other than being smooth are in perfect condition. I just hit them with sandpaper and there were no high spots. I looked up some more on the Internet and found it is either heat or cheap linings. It is possible I may have not had the emergency brake released all the way on a few occasions. The wheel bearing was also bad on that side so the drum may have been vibrating against the shoe.

[tubman]

That brings up a question to me; were all of the rear shoes showing this problem, or only the ones on the side with the bad bearing? If only on one side, was it the primary shoe, secondary shoe or both? When I read your original post , I assumed (there's that word again) that all of the shoes had the problem. If it's only the primary on the bad side, I think it makes some sense.

[Frank Miller]

The horizontal crack was on the bad bearing side. The verticle on the other. Both were the rearward shoe. The forward facing looked ok.