My 65 has rock hard brake drums ... and even though they are drums i heard they should be so hard .
I basically have to jam my foot on the floor to make a streetlight stop.
And for steering , It feels like I am driving a trailer at slow speeds.

Help?

- Thanks

 

if you don't like jamming your foot all the way down to the floor to make it stop, then you may want to look into making them power brakes. I've seen kits for $275-$400, and I bet that would fix most of what your feeling. Going to disks would help too, but you'll still have a lot of pedal travel with disks until you go to power brakes.

as far as the handling, you probably need an overhaul on the steering and suspension. I know that's not a detailed answer, but there are so many things that can cause a sloppy front end that it's hard to pin point one thing.

 

If your pedal is really going to the floor, stop driving the car until you get the brakes fixed. The brake effort is higher that modern cars, but the brakes should feel normal except for the extra effort. Remember that when these cars were designed, the brakes were designed so an old lady could safely drive the car. You should not have a "rock hard pedel to the floor" feeling for a normal traffic stop.

 

hhmm ok .. old ladies must have been tough back in the day ... lol ..

well im working on doing a complete overhaul to make it V8 compatible ..

so i think that should fix all my problems.

 

After completly rebuilding the front end and power steering, I put new drums, shoes and lines on my 66 hardtop about 15 years ago. That solved a lot of stopping problems that had accumilated over many years of neglect. As the car was a part-time daily driver, it sat. The brakes got 'mushy'. Pumping them once or twice seemed to solve the immediate problem, so I let it go. Now, go back to the first sentence above and see what I missed. Yup, the master cylinder. A new one went in. Problem went away. When I took apart the old master cylinder, it had 'silt' in it. I have as much confidence in that car's drum brake system for street use as I could. Would I like front discs? Sure. I got other cars to work on first.
Jim