Educate me on 4 wheel drums

[Nepagarage]

I'm about 75% done on sheet metal replacement on the 70 and now that spring is here (save for the freak snowfall today!) I'll be bringing my other car back from storage and that means getting the challenger out of the garage for now. I have the 318 out of the car but am getting it running to put back in because what would make this a breeze would be if I could have the challenger mobile and pull it in and out of the garage on a whim under its own power! Having said that, I want to get my brakes back in order!

I had plans for when this car is done to have power brakes with front discs (maybe even 4 wheel discs) but for now in the interest of getting it mobile I'm cool with just getting the 4 wheel manual drums in working order. I'm a little embarrassed to admit this but my knowledge on drum brakes is minimal. I've only worked on drums a handful of times and it was usually just changing shoes or adjusting them. Most of the stuff I've owned over the years was 4 wheel discs 
My thought for now is a new cheap master cylinder and new wheel cylinders and shoes. Probably a hardware kit too. I would think the drums I have could be used for now. I noticed when looking up wheel cylinders they give different bore sizes. I understand about bore sizing on master cylinders as I've converted cars to/from power to manual before, but for drums is the wheel cylinders supposed to match the master on bore size? The one MS I was looking at was 1" bore. Then when I looked up wheel cylinders they were 15/16th on the rear and 1.188" on the front. Any other advice?

[Rich G.]

Match what you have on the car and do one side at a time so you know where everything goes. Watch what way the adjuster goes on so you don't put it in backwards. Get the drums resurfaced if you can.

[MoparLeo]

Refer to the Factory Service Manual for brake specs and procedures. That is what is was made for.
It has the specs for the front and rear wheel cylinder bores, Master cylinder bore, shoe sizes for STD. and HD brakes and more.

[Nepagarage]

Thanks!
One other question, how do you identify whether you have 10" or 11" drums? Is it the outside diameter of the drum? Inside? Would they be the same front and rear or could you have larger on the front? Car was base model 318 with a 7.25" rear if that helps

[MoparLeo]

Inside diameter.
Did you look in the Service Manual yet ? It has this information in the brake section.

[Nepagarage]

I don't have a service manual for the car.

[Mr Cuda]

318 cars only came with 10" drums.
But please, please,  use your efforts to put front disc on now,  and skip the time and expense  of making drums work.

[JS29]

  Go to doctor diff. Than you can buy parts from a common parts store after that.   

[Wayne]

I did the same thing....I had a lot going on getting my car going.  Just used the factory 4 wheel drums but rebuilt them.  Drove those 1.5 years and now I'm upgrading them.   It was a bit unsettling and wasn't enjoyable.

[70 Challenger Lover]

I have four wheel drums without power assist on both of my 71 barracudas and I love them. Work great.

On my 69 Coronet, it came with aftermarket disc brakes up front but the calipers were sticking. Since I had a set of HD drums lying around, I put them back on and they work great.

I agree there are advantages to disc brakes but I don't race, I don't drive for a living or spend a lot time in traffic. My cars aren't police cars or taxis and they will never see rainy road conditions. For me, drums aren't so bad. You just have to drive the car keeping in mind that you have drums.

[MoparLeo]

The free downloads for Service Manuals are right here on this site. Go to the "resources" tab all the way to the right on the menu tabs.

[Nepagarage]

I did not know that! That's awesome! Thanks for the heads up!

[MoparLeo]

The FSM should be your Bible for servicing your car. These were produced by the Factory for the dealer mechanics who service the cars.

[Chryco Psycho]

Scarebird has disc upgrades using very common parts as an option to using front drums .

[70 Challenger Lover]

I would argue that bias ply tires are a far greater safety concern than drum brakes and yet many people push them for classic cars. Understandable of course since they look so good but those things are inherently dangerous at today's higher speeds. Tire manufacturers won't make them (aside from classic car market meeting a cosmetic demand) and car makers wouldn't dream of using them even if they were available yet drum brakes were still very common in the back up until recently.

And you can't really say that discs are new technology since they were found on performance cars as early as the 1950s.