Julian, thanks for the generous offer! However I can get shoes easily through the local NAPA, it's just that they'er lined with the current "safe" non-carcinogenic material. While obvious much safer for us, I suspect the original asbestos based linings would work/stop better. Looking to give it a try.
And yes, I'm aware of the risk of working with asbestos. I'm not however worried since it's one truck, not a shop full of trucks and I'll hopefully only adjust the brakes a couple times a year while taking proper precautions.
And good luck with the disk brake upgrade. My plans are; try a set of NOS shoes, then decide if I want to go to a booster and keep the rest original.
Not necessarily apples to apples, but I had a 77 Jeep CJ5 with a 304 and slightly larger wheels/tires. No brake booster. With everything working at it's best it had terrible brakes. Bough a used booster off Ebay for $20 bucks, installed and it was a night and day improvement. Don't see why you couldn't see similar results with our trucks. Others had reported they were happy with only the booster upgrade. We'll see.
RonR
