Smaller/thinner rear brake drum? Deep rear steelies won't fit!

[SCOTI]

Originally Posted by vintage_mpg

So there's a salvage yard within a mile of my house; I'll swing by there tomorrow, hopefully, to take a peek at some trucks to see if they might have a complete rear-end setup with the smaller brakes.

I have a few questions, though....

1) This rear end is a 12-bolt with a Spartan locker. I'm not sure how that works; anyone with any experience there? I looked up several youtube viddies on how to remove axles from a 10-bolt, but haven't looked up the 12-bolt yet. Are they the same? Even with the Spartan locker?

2) Will swapping from the 2 3/4" brakes to the 2" rear brakes impact any part of the rear axle fitment? Meaning.....when I remove 3/4' of the brake width (swapping from the 2 3/4" wide shoes to the 2" wide shoes), does that play into the length of the axles, brake drum, etc? Or will it all come together just fine? Or will the axles now be 3/4" strong on the ends? I'm guessing it will be fine...but this is all new for me, so I'm trying to think ahead

3) Are the rear brakes the same (meaning 2" brakes) for a 10-bolt as they are for a 12-bolt? I have a feeling I might only find the 2" brakes on 10-bolt rear ends, and the 12-bolts will all have the 2 3/4" shoes. Just an assumption on my part, but being that the 2 3/4" are heavier duty brakes, seems they'd all be found on 12-bolts....but maybe that's not true at all.

I'm going to go poke around in the salvage yard/boneyard to see what I might discover. They usually have a decent selection of old stuff....but it's getting thinner and thinner each time I go looking for older stuff. I just want to put eyes on a 2" rear brake setup, hopefully from 12-bolt rear-end. Maybe I can buy backing plates and springs/other hardware from the boneyeard, then get some new shoes and drums to complete the swap.

Thanks for all the positive input! I've never busted into my own rear diff, so this is uncharted territory for me. I wouldn't even consider it if it weren't for your comments and encouraging remarks - so THANK YOU!

The axles are the same length specific to the housing.

You can take a HD drum set-up & install it on another standard 12-bolt housing or even one of the earlier pre-70 housings. The brakes swap over as an entire set-up which requires the backing plate that have a deeper offset which provides room for the wider shoes/drums w/o impacting axle/rear housing width requirements.

As for doing the work.... Start off by helping yourself. Practice first. Take the rear wheels off & remove the drums. Take one side apart to help understand what to expect (tension/force/effort). When everything related to the brakes is apart, put that side back together. You'll be able to reference where things go by looking @ the opposite side. Make sure you can complete the diassembly/reassembly process before advancing to removing axles & brake backing plates.

Even when you do the actual swap, do one side @ a time. It'a always a benefit for the novice to have a visual reference to work with.