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Brakes and hubs on 100/4

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sunbeam74

Senior Member
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I started to disassemble the brakes on an old SCCA C-Modified Healey 100/4.

I have been told the drums and backing plates are old Corvette RPO competition setup. Looking at the parts... I think they took the Corvette drums and modified them to fit the Healey hubs. Check out the photos... am I right? Are those bearings Healey 100/4?

The other thought is they simply found bearings that would fit the Chevy hub and also match to the Healey spindle.

The whole car is such a mix and match set of pieces.

b1.jpg


b2.jpg


b3.jpg


b4.jpg


b5.jpg
 
This is a VERY dangerous set up on your 100/4 - they've taken a rear brake set up (maybe from the corvette?) and put it on the front of your Healey.

This means you only have one leading shoe, and the other is a trailing shoe. For front brakes you need TWO leading shoes. This means this set up will have LESS braking efficiency than the original 100/4 set up, even if the pots and shoes are bigger and fatter.

Clearly the PO had no idea what the heck they were doing.

The bearings are not original 100 bearings.

I would trash the whole set up if I were you and just put on spindles, hubs, bearings, disc brakes and dust shields from a 3000. It will all bolt on to the king pin without modification. That's the cheapest & best way to fix this hornet's nest.

If you go original, it will cost you quite a bit of dosh to get all the stuff for your drum brake car.

Alan
 
Alan,

Bear in mind I am just trying to assess what is on the car, however, it appears to be a complete big brake Corvette competition front drum assembly. Here is an example of a rebuild on a standard Corvette front drum.

https://www.corvettemagazine.com/componen...2-corvette.html


I would guess in the late 50's, when this was implemented, it was to utilize the Corvette's Competition RPO big brake setup. Not that the corvette was a braking giant but in the late 50's this was done thinking it would provide better braking. The whole setup needs to be evaulated and understand what was changed - who knows what happened in the 50 years since it was raced.

Now the question is... given these are desirable pieces since they only made a couple of hundred of the early big brake competition setups what to do with them.

Steve
 
The number of big brake cars is actually nearer to 800, but who knows how many survived? Since you could probably sell them for big bucks to a Corvette enthusiast that would be my first option as you could realize enough $$$ to do the Healey back to stock Bob
 
I am finding out a bit more about the brakes. I believe this is one of the early styles - 1957 to 58. I am not positive but I think the backing plates are the smaller grille variety. (Overall about 800 were made but only 200 of the early style ones were made). I read where the fins wrapped further around the early drums but I have yet to see a photo of the drums side by side to tell the difference.

The hub's bearing style is the earlier setup. I still haven't been able to figure out if it is Corvette bearings (spindle turned down) or the stock Healey spindle with bearings that are sized appropriately.

The spindle measures 1.225" in diameter where the inner bearing race sits. The spindle then tapers down to .7425"

They get fairly pricey when they come up to market. There was a set on Ebay a number of months ago with a opening bid of 6k. I really didn't pay attention to the completeness of the set or condition

Steve
 
If this is a special set up, definitely sell it and use it to set your car up properly.

For normal day to day driving, having two leading shoes on your front brakes is definitely safer than having a leading and trailing shoe, even if the stuff was made for competition in the 1950's.
 
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