Did 1970 C-10 front drum brakes come with struts?

[mattfranklin]

I'm redoing the fronts on my '70. The adjusters seem to be frozen, but not much wear on the shoes. I'll focus on geting new adjusters in and adjusted properly.

KEY QUESTION: Should the fronts have struts like the rears?
The best diagram I have is this: http://www.pbase.com/nufsed/drumbrake but it's for rear drums. When I compared my fronts to this one, it matches part for part in position for position, except that the e-brake parts (obviously) are not there and the strut is missing (puzzling). My brake shoes each show a notch for the strut, but no strut. I suppose that they might use the same shoes front and rear? But I'm just not sure. And the factory manual pictures are not that clear to me.

I read that one guy on here said his '67 didn't come with struts, but I didn't know if he meant it came from the factory that way or just from the previous owner that way.


Any ideas? BTW, I'll probably eventually convert to discs, but that's not in the budget right now (at least for a year or two). I just want to have a little better braking than the single rear that always locks up all by iteself until I pump everything a lot.