The brakes on my 379 have never been what I'd call perfect... I've always blamed the poor performance while bobtailing on that dang air valve that limits the air pressure while bobtailing. I've driven other 379's with the same issue so I simply learned to live with it.

Lately the braking has been getting pretty poor even after adjusting the brakes... the linings were still DOT legal but just barely.

Today I took my truck to my local shop to have the brakes redone... new shoes and drums. One mechanic, Brandon, pulled off the old shoes while the other, Glen, went to the parts trailer for the shoes/drums/spring kits.

So Brandon gets the new shoes on but the drums don't fit... the boss comes over and determines that someone in the past has put extended life shoes on the truck... they are thicker (more lining) and the new drums won't fit.

The problem is my Eaton axles were never made to use XL shoes... they worked only because the old drums were so worn that they would fit over the bigger shoes. But the radius of the shoes doesn't match up with drums so the whole shoe won't get good contact with the used drum.

I had these axles relined maybe four years ago and the same shop did the job. But they simply replaced the shoes with what was already on the truck and reused the old drums. So the wrong shoes worked... but not now with the new drums.

The PO of the truck had a shop in eastern WI do all of his repair work... and NOTHING they did was correct. I have owned this Pete seven years and still find things that they 'fixed' with the wrong parts and such... hard to believe.

The result of all of this work means I now have better brakes than at any time in the past seven years... they will come in handy this spring when I'm hauling seed potatoes @90K gross (or more!)...

A nice bonus to taking my biz to the local shop is I get a chance to do other stuff on the truck in a nice 75F shop. I changed my two fuel filters, the air drier cartridge, put a couple bolts on the fenders, etc. Toasty warm compared to the outside temps right now.

Can't wait for spring.