Brake arcing

[Seth Swoboda]

I have a friend that wants his brake lining arced to the drums. Does anyone still have the capabilites to do this?

[cas3]

Brake and equipment, Mpls Mn.

[Willit Stop]

I used a strip of sandpaper from an automotive paint store. It measures 2 3/4X 17 and is used for a sanding board or a straight line sander. Just tape it inside the drum and slide the shoe back and fourth. A respirator would be advisable.

[51woodie]

I took a piece of maple and made a sanding block to work on my 12" drums, that I used to arc the shoes on my '46 Coupe. Stick on 80 grit sandpaper worked for me.
The extra 1/16" on the radius is to compensate for the thickness of the sandpaper

[alchemy]

^^ So, did you make four different handles? Every drum is likely to be a different diameter.

[51woodie]

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Alchemy. No, I made one size, as my drums were very close to new specs when I measures them. They looked that they had a skim cut to remove the outer and inner ridges.

[Bruce_MO]

Seth, Larry Shepard in St. Louis has the setup to do it.

[Charlie Stephens]

Ask at local Model A or Early V8 clubs. Or as an alternative go back to your source of relined shoes and follow the trail to who did the relining, they should have arcing machines.

Charlie Stephens

[T Scott]

J and G Brake Drum Relining and Refurbishing, Mchenry Illinois. www.jgrelining.com
These guys are tops. They can reline your shoes with different materials of your choice, such as semi-metalic etc. Also, can reline oversize drums back into specification. Arcing is also one of their services.

[ford38v8]

The way we baby our Fords is over the top. A lot of our cars had never had shoes arced from day one until they became “collectible”.
Backyard mechanics just installed them out of the box and took a drive around the block. A couple extra adjustments and you’re good to go.
I should say though, that’s how it would be done with the original asbestos style shoes. Today’s shoes have metallic inclusions to compensate for the lack of asbestos. The key today is to find an industrial supplier for your brake shoes rather than your auto parts store.

[Anteek29]

Originally Posted by ford38v8

The way we baby our Fords is over the top. A lot of our cars had never had shoes arced from day one until they became “collectible”.
Backyard mechanics just installed them out of the box and took a drive around the block. A couple extra adjustments and you’re good to go.

Sounds silly but it works

[Dan McEachern]

For you CA guys:

Moose Motors Obsolete Brake Parts 1050 Goodwin Ave Penngrove, CA 707-792-9985.

[Seth Swoboda]

This particular situation is the guy bought new brake drums and shoes/lining. I'm not fond of either. Reproduction drums and shoes with the glued on lining, yuk. I can imagine the ill fitment of the combination.

[Flathead Fever]

Nothing wrong with glued on shoes. I was a mechanics for 30-years and the glued-on shoes would wear down until they were paper thin, but the riveted ones would sometimes crack when they got really thin and throw off a piece of lining and then destroy the drum. On a collector car that's hardly used riveted lining is fine but at the phone company those guys were so hard on brake sometimes they didn't make it six-months. We had 400 trucks I just about did a brake job each night.

We had a Ammco brake shoe arching machine when I first started at the phone company in 1980. Sometime probably around 1984 CA made it illegal to grind shoes, we had to box up the arcing machine and get rid of it. The State would fine shops if they even found a grinding machine on the property. Fortunately, everything we had was disc brakes on the front and drums on the rear, so the vehicles still stopped straight even when the rear shoes did not fit perfectly fit until miles of driving finally wore the arc of the shoes to the diameter of the drums.

Over the years I have found two of those brake shoe arcing machines at garage sells and I bought both of them, but they need a little work. I haven't had a reason to use one yet. You could use some Gasgacinch adhesive and glue a strip of speed file sandpaper to the drum and hand work the shoe until it fits the drum. If I remember right, drums on the same axle should be within .010 of each other to keep the vehicle stopping straight. probably not that important with disc brakes but with drum brakes on all four wheels it would make it stop straighter.

[Don T]

Belt Sander