[HO455]

Great looking truck! I'm glad to hear you're going to keep such a nice survivor intact.
I know that a lot of the drum brake hating started in the years after asbestos was banned. The original shoes were designed to use asbestos linings. After asbestos was banned the replacement lining materials worked OK at best. After years of issues newer material has been formulated that provides stopping power equal to or better than the original linings.
There was a crane at work we had to scrap in the 80's due to the new friction materials for the drum brakes on the winches could not be made to do the job safely. It was a real shame it was low hours and only 10 years old. But nobody wanted it and the market was flooded with similar cranes with the same issue.
The point of the whole story is there are different lining materials available today and it may take some experimenting but you can get very good brakes on a drum set up. (As long as you stay within there operating limits. I.e. heavy loads on steep long hills should be avoided). All of our trucks in this day and age of computer controlled ABS braking systems are really substandard. It would be nice if the aftermarket would come up with an ABS set up for us.

Once again great truck and I really dig the color scheme!