Projects My 1950 Ford Shoebox Project

Nice knobs, lol, nice work, nice shoebox. This makes me hate being so broke....

 

hey dude, nice stuff have been watchin urs for a while, keen to see the airbags go in.
des

 

so, its looking like it always does - meaning (its never easy getting low). custom headers and battery box will need to be fabricated, not to mention fabricating the tunnel and a custom exhaust. hoping i can squeeze my cokers and chromes inside without needing a narrowed rear-end or switching to 14in standards. ugh $$$ and time

 

Looking for a full rebuild brake kit (drum). Any ideas?

 

uhhh... rockauto?

edit: I don't see a "kit" there but they have wheel cylinders for like 6 bucks each, master cylinder rebuild kit for about 14 bucks I think? and an assortment of brake lines (flexible lines)

Your car has fawesomness.

Really nice.

 

haha, "fawesomeness" i love that word. shall be added to my vocab.
yea, i went to their site after i saw you post. between them, shoeboxford.com and even dennis-carpenter.com all have pieces but not really a full kit. i wish i understoof drum brakes better to know exactly what i need to get them up to par. i Would do a disc conversion but i have been reading some nasty stories about them being a bit of a pain to do correctly

 

Well the calipers do need less volume/pressure I believe. so it can be a learning curve, (can be irritating to get dialed in)

But drums are simple.

If you have good drum hats, the rest is hardware and wheel cylinders. The new wheel cylinders are so cheap I wouldn't even bother honing the old ones and replacing the seals etc. The worse part about it is probably getting the lines loose and getting the old wheel cylinders off the backing plate. Of course you fight with springs and maybe scratch your head at the little clips and pins and retainers and such. Do one side at a time and leave the other side assembled for reference on how it goes back together.

It's really not tough.

If you buy any brake cleaner make sure you buy stuff that says right on the can "non chlorinated" or "contains no chlorinated solvents"

You just don't even want that stuff in your garage, veddy bad.

 

Did you get your brakes figured out? I am in the process of converting the front to disk on my shoebox. It is alot of work to redo all the brake lines and fabing up master cylinder mount but I think it will be worth it when done. I have some pics and need to take more of my progress. PM me if your interested and I can give you info and pics.

 

actually no, not yet. how much did the disc kit cost ya if you dont mind?

 

$450 shipped, it's about the same kit that MP Brakes sells. I got it off a guy on ebay (tomsclassic) is the seller and it's a nice kit. I looked at alot of the kits out there and this seems on par with everything else out there. It uses ranger rotors, Metric GM calipers and pads. I also am changing to a dual chamber master cylinder, proportioning valve, and residual valve. I'm not sure if it will work with lowered spindles or not, I know that some kits have problems with lowered spindles. I don't have any pics of just the mounting plates but here is a pic of everything mounted. And there was no problems mounting the stock rims either. I remember reading one of the kits you had to open up the center hole of the stock rims, don't remember which one.

 

hmm, i got the lowered uprights and steering arms. wonder if that would make it a hard swap. have you tested yours out yet? is it Way better than drums?

 

Sorry, I haven't had my car on the road yet. From what I have read on here and shoebox ford it's a world of differance. I want the added safety of disks so that's why I decided to go with them. Having lowered spindles shouldn't make it any harder to install, if there isn't any clearance problems.

As far as them working with the lowered uprights, you could call or email Master Power brakes and see if there kit works with them if tomsclassic doesn't know. I'm sure that the kit is a knockoff of MP kit.

 

Nice Ride! I am trying to gain any info I can regarding airbag kits that work nice on the 1950 Ford! I am contemplating adding them to mine, but need to input! Thanks!

 

what's the link where you bought your wheels? And what size are they??

 

I get all my car and truck suspension stuff from AirBagIt.com - "ask for Tom". (they are a local AZ company for me) For the Ford i got a Universal Kit that ran a little over a grand. Then i upgraded the bags to slammers which are narrower for clearance and go a little higher than the ones that came with the kit. I took a picture of the kit the day i bought it a page back on this thread

 

Mine are 15 x 7 Reverse Offset Chrome Smoothies with Shannon Caps. Here is the link

http://www.petepaulsen.com/Catalogofwheels/Smoothie Wheels.htm

 

Looks awesome! I would paint your speaker grills white so the don't stick out so much.

 

looking real sweet

 

nice car.. sweet ride... i just chopped one of those.....

 

thanks. the carpet is actually black. so they dont look that bad. but maybe white would be better.

thanks! got a pic of the one you chopped?

thanks Kustomline54

 

car is lookin great !!! hopefully soon I will be having me one!

 

Love the way you tackle this "improvement" build. Great interior too btw. Keep up the great work.

 

thanks do good!

thanks man. this is whole build has been no easy task. thought i could tackle the suspension by myself. but my welding skills were shit. had to take it to my buddies at justplaintrick. they are doing a flawless job, but my bank account is thinning out. should be complete in about 2 weeks. ended up doing brakes, bags, chassis, fuel lines, had to redo the soundproof/carpet, electric fan, fuel gauge, battery moved to back, and the last thing that is REALLY gunna break me is the headers are touching the tire (hot rod cutout headers) so gotta do something $$$ creative to clear it without paying like $1000 for custom header build

 

So what did you end up doing for the brakes? Stock or upgrade to disks?

 

since i already had the dropped kingpin setup, i went with all new drum setup from shoeboxford

 

Did you find out that the disk kit wouldn't work with the dropped spindles or just didn't want to mess with it?

 

yea on their site it says

"***WILL NOT WORK WITH DROP SPINDLES***... "

 

Dear HAMB experienced people - NEED HELP! so i got all my drum brakes replaced. they seemed to be a little sticky. i assumed because theyt were brand new and needed to be broken in. i drove about 15 miles. pulled over for a minute, then put it in 1st and couldnt move. Fely like the brakes were all locked up. Same with reverse etc.. Made sure E-Brake wasnt stuck. Turned it off and let it cool down for about 20 minutes. Then it drove fine (still seems to drag or that the brakes are too tight) what could make this happen? Heat expanding?