What's wrong with adjusting? should only need to do it every 2 years or so, maybe less if you don't drive it much. Anyway, seems if you had a 51 or up with bendix brakes you could get later model backing plates and hardware with adjusters to change yours out. I'm not sure what year they started self adjusters, but I know the shoes cover almost 2 decades of truck years. Maybe you won't even need the backing plates changed, maybe you just need the other hardware to put on shoes with small cable and arms and ////// whatever it used.
