What impact will changing wheel cylinder size have on rear wheel braking? This is on stock 9.5 x 2 drums. I don't want to swap to bigger drums or discs, but noticed wheel cylinders are available in 7/8" or 3/4".
Any recomendation on better shoes?
BTW: This is on a Bravada AWD - same as s-10 blazer.
Thanks in advance for any help.

Jeff

Same affect as increasing piston size in a caliper, it increases the brake force to the friction. I'm sure the AWD version uses the bigger wheel cylinder anyway.

Thanks for the reply, but mine has the 3/4" now and it seems like the front wheels do ALL of the braking, and the front pads don't last long, even the performance metallics, so I wondered if the larger 7/8" would increase the rear braking, they are listed for a 5SP 2WD application.
I'm also tempted to try Raybestos superstop pads and shoes, they are supposed to be a high friction type HD metallic compiound. I tried the raybestos brute force pads and they stopped better than the carbon metallic, but they only lasted 10K compared to the 30K for the carbon metallics. Any other suggestions?

Thanks!

Jeff

The front brakes do 70% or so of the stopping, to get the rear brakes to do more work, keep them adjusted, the self adjusters seldom work very good. Do you use the park brake at all?

Thanks, Leo.
We do use the park brake, and I keep the rears adjusted when I rotate the tires every 5-10K miles. I know these brakes are a weak spot on these suv's, but if I have to replace the shoes and pads again anyway, I'm looking for any improvement I can make. If bigger wheel cylinders will add more braking from the rear, I'll try that and see what happens. I can always change back cheaply enough if it makes it feel worse. I thought maybe somebody had tried this on their chevelle, since the systems are so similar.
Thanks again.

Jeff