11" Raybestos Front Brake Drums

Looking at removing hubs from my damaged/worn 11" front drums on my 70 roadrunner, Going to replace them with a pair of new F1938 Raybestos drums.

Anybody have experience doing this job and have any pointers?

What is the overall opinion of the Raybestos 11" drums... good? bad? 

Thanks and Happy New Year

I did the front 11s on my Challenger not too long ago. The big lesson learned for me is to keep a keen eye in the spec for the inner diameter of the drums. Most of the new ones I found were already at the discard diameter brand new. I finally found a pair that weren't. I think Napa made some that were good at the time and I believe Raybestos did too, but most were from the same Chinese manufacturer in different boxes. Just double check the specs before you use them. Also the front wheel cylinders by some suppliers don't like fitting right so double check those too before you get too deep in your project. And lastly even with the new automatic adjusters I don't get them adjusting automatically. They seemed to install and fit fine, but I've still had to get under the car a few times to tweak them. That driving in reverse and hitting the brakes hard just doesn't seem to cut it for my car but you get used to living with that eventually.

I have a pair of 10" rear ones I bought from NAPA years ago and one is warped enough that the wheel can't be tightened down all the way flat. I put it on a project car and hand tightened the lug nuts with a short wrench just so the car could be pushed around and the lug nuts on one wheel kept backing off just from pushing the car around by hand.

The drum face warpage is not visible to the naked eye, but when you lay the brake drum face up on a flat table and put a bare steel wheel on it the wheel teeter-totters on the drum face. I did not discover this fine situation until it was way past the 30 day return policy + I already painted them cast iron gray so I was stuck with them at that point. Not much you could really do to fix it short of putting it in a lathe, which I don't own, and then hope enough metal is left so it would still be safe to use.

I also noticed the center eccentric hole flare on these was pretty big. Like as in why is that needed when the factory did not. It fits tight on the axle, but it does stick out enough that it may also cause issues with steel wheels.

I had some kind of issue with them on my '68 RR and can't remember what it was. I could only at the time find OE type Raybestos drums at a Federated Auto parts store along with the correct Raybestos brake shoes. I think it had something to do the width of the brake shoes or how far the drum went on and was hitting the backing plate. I think I ended up with a .020" or so shim over the center of the hub? The part numbers are on the box labels, both from Federated.

😲

don't forget to cut the swedge off the studs before you "tap" [?] the drum off, so the hub doesn't get bent in the process.

Several years ago I bought a set of Raybestos 11" finned drums for my '89 Police car. I'd put the drums over studs, adjust the interference to the right point, and install wheel. Did this about three times and couldn't figure out why it felt like the parking brake was on. Finally realized just like Neil wrote I couldn't torque the wheel all the way down because of the drum being out of round (or whatever proper term is). Junk right out of box. I ended up going with NOS but that may not be an option.

Here's ONE for $375 https://www.hiltopautoparts.com/product/nos-mopar-front-brake-drum-11-inch-1969-72-c-body-cars/