Somewhere in my travels I read that bare, rusty, cast iron has greater heat dissipation capacity than any color of any type of paint. It may have been Hot Rod magazine, to which I subscribed back when hotrods had drum brakes. If you're building a show truck that will be trailered to shows this makes sense. If you're going to drive it loaded, any paint will burn off eventually and you'll be back where you started after cooking the linings. That will happen around here anyway, where 5,000 foot mountain passes rising from sea level in 20 miles are not uncommon.
My grandpa bought a 1913 T-model Ford new. He and his brother ran it from La Grande Ore. to Pendelton over the Blue Mountains one fine summer day. Remember that Henry Ford lived in Michigan where it's flat, so he thought two-wheel external contracting brake bands were plenty. Anyway, about halfway down locally infamous Cabbage Hill the brakes had heated to the point that even using the reverse pedal no longer worked to slow the car. So grandpa found a sapling and tied it to the rear of the car with the rope they kept for horse teams to pull them out of the mud. They quickly found that he couldn't hold back the car, which got away with brother Clarence at the wheel. Around a bend and out of sight grandpa heard a loud crash and running down the road soon found Clarence sitting by the side of the road throwing rocks down at the Ford. A teamster came by and used the rope to pull the car back onto the road. The sapling was a good lever to straighten the bent fender to clear the tire. Off they went again down cabbage hill at a much slower pace. He told me this story about 50 years later when I began hauling hay over the same road with a '54 Mack semi and no jake brake. At that time there were no truck runaway ramps; lose the brakes and you're on your own. Another time on another mountain route the main airline blew off the air compressor but that's another story for another day.
