How good are aluminum Buick drum brakes?

I was talking to a vendor at back to the 50s yesterday, and he said that the 12 inch finned aluminum Buick drum brakes are not much good. He says they don't have much stopping power and they have a tendency to warp.
I was planning to use them on my 31 Plymouth coupe, with some self energizing 56 Buick backing plates and 2 1/4 inch wide shoes. It will be a street/strip car with a big Hemi, so good brakes are important. I was thinking that 12 inch drums on a car that weighs under 3000 pounds would be sufficient Since they were originally designed for 4500 pound car.

Obviously a set of Willwood disks would be ideal from a performance standpoint. But I Want a traditional look. And I don't like to use fake stuff, so I'm not going to have disks inside of fake Buick drums. The front tires Will be 6.50- 15.
Does anybody have some real world feedback on these Buick drums?
Thanks, Joel

 

Mine with 48 ford backing plates have worked grear for around 4000 miles over 3 summers

 

The vendor is full of it,,granted they are not as good as the expensive Willwood disks he is hoping to sell you.

Absolutely nothing wrong with them. HRP

 

Go figure, a vender telling you that something he doesnt sell, doest work? Thats odd

They have worked for years on MUCH heavier cars.

 

The weird thing is, that the vendor does sell reproduction finned a aluminum brake drums.

 

Hell yes to what everybody is saying! Side note though, you could improve over the original early Ford brake by going to a Lincoln style baking plate with self energizing brakes, or for that matter, someone here offers a conversion to use the Buick backing plates as well. Gotta ask though, with front tires THAT big, are you planning on off-roading this thing?

 

Look at the heavy Buicks these old drums come off of. They stopped them. I have the Buick backing plates already machined out for the adapter plate and will be using the wide Buick brake shoes on a model a. If anything it may be too much stopping power.

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They stop our 1962 Electra just fine. Stops as good as any disc brake car I have

 

Not if the brakes do their job! That was a typo on the tire size. I meant 6.70 – 15

Thanks for all the helpful replies. I'm going to go ahead with the Buick brakes

 

The reason for aluminum brake drums was because aluminum throws off heat faster than iron or steel. The idea was to prevent brake fade under hard use such a descending a long hill. If you don't have a brake fade problem aluminum drums won't do you any good.

Disc brakes are more resistant to fade than even aluminum drums.

 

Lets look at Step #1. Buick aluminum drums still have a cast iron sleeve inside which is the real brake surface. Most used drums have been turned a couple a times. And will need turning to get good shoe contact. I have not heard of new replacements being available, but I did read that someone out East would grind out the remaining sleeve and recast new ones in old shells. It took me a long time to find a pair that were thick enough to be within specs. Ran them one year then switched to disks. I won't say they did not work, but the disks are better.

Buflochp

 

Buicks on my old '34. It stopped as well as my Model A does with disks, just a bigger pain in the ass to keep adjusted.



-Abone.

 

That vendor should be selling shoes instead of car parts.

Don

 

Who is this vendor? I have been looking for a source for repro Buick drums. Post reply or PM me if you want. Thanks, Jim (55willys)

 

I think it is a great fallacy that drum brakes don't work well! I have driven many 50s-60s cars with drum brakes and almost all could be made to slide all 4 wheels in a panic stop situation. What more braking power can you use? On a drag car, (OP mentioned large hemi) you go down the strip and stop once. Very little brake fade in the first stop on any type of brakes, so if the brakes will slide the tires you have more braking ability than the tires can put to the ground. Now if you are going to run at Le Mans there are better alternatives!
OBTW The real reason all the auto companies switched to disc brakes was cost reduction! Think of all the little do-dads in a drum brake assembly, they all have to be manufactured and assembled.

 

I am thinking that the vendor may be selling the drum covers that simulate the Buick drums. If I am wrong, please let us know who this vendor is as I am in need of a pair of drums.

 

I drove dirt mod. stock cars with them, we did us a diff shoe in them ,met for brake fad no good for street, if you contor the shoes to the drum they will work better.

 

Who is this that we speak of? I haven't heard of a exact repop

 

I don't think there is a source for them. Bob Wilson, Wilson Welding, has been planning to do them for years but they cost and labor to make them has stalled the project forever.

Don

 

This is EXACTLY the problem with drum brakes. Once you break traction, the amount of friction between the tire and the road goes DOWN. This is why they have ANTI lock brakes, so that they don't lock. The point of disks is that they can stop the car better without locking. And also dissipate more heat. That being said, for average city driving and drag passes, drums are just fine, buick drums are even better, 'cause they look cool

 

The drums will only do so much; as someone else stated, Buick drums used in conjunction with some sort of self energizing brake design will probably be better than the '39-'48 style braking system. They originally stopped Buicks that weighed in excess of 4000 pounds (and were capable of 120 mph if you kept your foot in it long enough), so I've got to believe that they can be made to do an acceptable job on a rod that weighs less than 3000 pounds.

 

They work fine. They are 12" brakes from a time when 10" brakes were common.

You probably talked to a fella who know a fella who heard about another fella who had a problem and by the time it got to the fella that you talked to it was not mentioned that the fella who had th problem didn't have the rest of the brakes up to par.

I have a pair of 90 fins that will be run on the rear of my gas roadster when the time comes. I intend to be in the 130+ range in the traps and I am not worried one iota about getting stopped before i hit the brush at the end of the shutdown area.

Here is the deal with brakes that everyone seems to overlook. Your brakes have to have good components that are properly installed and adjusted if you want them to work properly.

 

It is hard to generalize on a subject like this because there are so many variables. When I bought my old 32 pickup the previous owner had it set up with GM calipered disks in the front, and Lincoln Versailles disks in the back. Due to all the cost of everything, I left them on there until I got the truck up and running. With no power assist, you could push your guts out using a 1 1/8 inch bore master cylinder and virtually provide no stopping force what so ever. I switched to a 1 inch bore MC and the stopping force improved slightly.

By then I had decided that I didn't like the looks of the disks, and I didn't like their performance even more. I ended up using 53 Ford F-100 11 inch self energizing drums in the front, and Ford 11 inch SE drums in the back.


The old truck stops great now, very satisfied. Self energizing feature is key here when no vacuum assist is used. With disks or non-self energizing drums, the only brake force you get is from the effort you introduce to the pedal, and of coarse the mechanical advantage you get from the pedal ratio built into your system. Self energizing drums use the leading shoe to provide leverage on the rear shoe to result in lower required pedal effort.

I love my drum brakes, but there are many who look at it and are dumb founded that I would swap out disks for drums.

Again, I LOVE MY DRUM BRAKES!

 

I like well set up drum brakes, but for a Street Strip car I would lean towards performance in my braking decision and less towards traditional. I'll catch shit for saying that, but I wouldn't want to run anywhere in the12's or faster and have drums, I've done it with an OT car, braking was inconsistent and at times questionable on certain tracks.

 

+1 on this. Even 'back in the day', the teams that could afford them installed disc brakes in place of drums once they became available. Safety should trump 'tradition' if you're planning track time.

Disc brakes didn't replace drums because they're cheaper (they're not), but because they're better....

 

Big 12" drums work good but not compared to a disc.One thing many younger people may not have experienced is what happens to drum brakes after getting wet as in driving through a deep water puddle during heavy rain. O braking until they start to heat up and cook the water out.

 

If anybody cares my car stops like a bat outta hell. Every time. Over and over again. Certain people may not want it for all the "unsafe old technology" but then again that's why they can't have it.

Don't mind the sign. As you can see, oldie brakes+oldie tires does not mean unsafe.



And my C10 with factory drums stops great. Even in the rain. Just gotta arc those shoes.

 

The Buick brakes work well and do have a nostalgic appeal however with a light car and small tire contact patch it will be easy to lock them up and slide the tire. At that point you become an unguided missile. It is a lot easier and less expensive to get great braking with discs.

 

I've used them on a lot of my cars, have two cars in th shop right now that are using them. I think they work well.

 

There is a lot of truth in every comment made so far. I had Buick drums on the front of my 27 for years (until I pirated them and put them on my 23) and they stopped like gangbusters. My Wife was following me one time in her car with ABS and discs all around and the light changed, so I stopped real quick. She almost redesigned the rear of my 27 because mine stopped so much better than hers.

On the flip side, water does make them ineffective at times. When I wash my car and water gets on the shoes it takes a few stops before they start working great again. Also, when I ran my car at the strip I used up both turn off roads trying to get it down from speed.

But set up correctly and under most conditions, drum brakes can and do work just fine on a light hot rod on the street.

Don