Odin

So it seems like every area of my truck I look at that needs something done has been really messed up by a previous owner or mechanic, why should my drums be any different right?
My drivers side brake shoes are tight against the drum and I could hear it squealing in the cold weather. Today I tried to remove the drum and I couldn't.
I also couldn't remove the other side even though the shoes aren't tight against the drum.

1. I was going to use the holes that you can screw a bolt into to push it off but once I blew out all the dirt and looked at them I found they are stripped, there goes that idea.

2. I sprayed PB Blaster in all the stud holes and gave the area between the studs a few hits and waited a good while but had no luck.

I ran out of time and daylight so I reapplied PB Blaster and called it a day




3. My next step is to try to see if I can somehow back off the star wheel to bring the shoes back inward.

4. If that doesn't work I'll have to drill the pins out that hold the shoes in place and or unbolt the wheel cylinder.
I'd rather do this than cut the drum since pins should be pretty cheap. Obviously I'm hoping to salvage the drums and probably have them turned.




Is there anybody that can tell me how to prevent the drums from sticking again?

Will high temperature grease applied to the threaded areas of the star wheel and high temperature anti seize applied to the back of the drum prevent this?
Perhaps someone from the rust belt has some advice?

Here's a couple other people that had the same problem, I didn't have to search much to find them.

https://www.yotatech.com/forums/f116...-87-4r-281173/

https://www.yotatech.com/forums/f116...frozen-280346/

vital22re

iTrader: (2)

There are 2 things that could be happening,
1. Its all just rusted on
2. The drums may have never been machined so now there is a lip on the outer edge of the drum trapping the shoes.

I would try with two small flatheads to back off the star adjuster.

Get some heat on the drum surface around the studs and "axle hub" (center) Give it a few good whacks with a hammer.
More than likely the drum is stuck to the axle flange by rust.

When you get it apart, I'd drill/ retap the threaded holes in the drum. Wire wheel the axle flange and matching drum surface and coat the axle flange with anti seize.

Odin

Thanks for the reply



I thought about that too but I figured the shoes would allow the drums to wiggle or move a little but not fully release. In this case they won't budge

wyoming9

iTrader: (1)

Pretty much what was said.

you need to hold the lock away from the adjuster when you loosen them I am sure you know.

I do find sometimes on neglected vehicles adjusters do seize up when installing new adjusters I lube them lightly with disc brakegrease.

the drum to axle area gets never seize

Funny thing with how cheap drums and rotors are now I don`t know anyone who even turns them any more. it is the labor cost and down time.

NewToYota

From the Midwest here and 95% of the trucks I purchase or work on have this issue and it is almost always rust. I would say save the cutting as a last resort and try a heavy hammer first. Let us know if it turns out to be something more. I'm going to be doing the Tundra brake upgrade to my 4runner this weekend and I know the previous owner has neglected these brakes so expecting same issue. Good luck.

wyoming9

iTrader: (1)

Thing is unless your able to back the shoes off and they are worn into the drum .

It will be a fight no matter what way you try.

Odin

Exactly

For some reason or another none of the older American cars I've worked on had that issue. I'm definitely not saying American cars didn't have that issue, they are drum brakes after all. I have encountered this problem with a Nissan Sentra though. I ended up thinking the engineers were mentally challenged for not making the star wheel access hole larger. After my first glance at the Toyota's I'm thinking the same thing lol

wyoming9

iTrader: (1)

There is a skill to getting into the correct position .

so you can use two hands one to hold the lock away the other to turn the adjuster.

at this point it can`t hurt to spray PB blaster at the adjuster through the hole it sure can`t make it worse .

I have had some to the point I cut the drum in half with a zip disc

This is from being unable to back the shoes off not from just being rusted all those parts were replaced with new.

Expensive but gives me great peace of mind

scope103

How much does it cost to have drums turned? If the shoes have worn them so deeply the drums won't slip past them, you may be past the re-turn limit anyway.

RockAuto has replacement drums for $25-$35. (shipping will add onto that; mailing a bunch of cast-iron isn't cheap.) Combine your iffy dimensions with the stripped removal holes, and I wouldn't screw around with "saving" the drums.

Don't be too surprised by this; the foundries in India are so efficient that modern cars really aren't designed to have their rotors/drums turned anyway. The manufacturers save the weight and just assume you'll save all that labor and replace rather than re-turn. Your Toyota wasn't quite designed to that metric, but your case is special.

Odin

I haven't purchased anything from Rockauto yet. The prices always seem low but by the time you add in shipping it brings the price up near what I can get stuff for locally so most of the time I purchase local. I mostly use their site to see what's available from the aftermarket and for parts comparison.

The last time I had drums turned was quite a while ago but I remember a price of about $10-15 each. I'm dealing with an extremely limited budget but if I need new drums that's simply what I'll have to do. Maybe I can find a good pair in a salvage yard where I can get my money back (good luck with that) if they prove to be junk.

I already purchased wheel cylinders since I have to go in there and look around. I figured at a supposed 160,000 miles and the rust it's probably a good idea.
I'll deal with shoes when I get there. It still stops good and straight with no scraping or metal to metal sounds.

When I purchased the truck no warning lights were coming on but after about a month the brake light came on and it turned out to be low fluid.
I checked for leakage at the cap and around the master cylinder but there was none so I "might" have a leaking wheel cylinder but I see no fluid on the tires or on backing plates.
The pedal is high with no sponginess, who knows what I'll find.

Odin

It's been a while now and my brakes haven't shown any problems... other than the brake light lighting up. That's when I crawled under it again. This time I saw the drivers side was a leaker. I absolutely had to get those drums off when I saw that.

I squirted it all down with PB Blaster and backed off the E-Brake cable and the star wheel but the drums wouldn't budge. I heated it up with a BurnzOmatic torch and gave it a few wacks but it didn't budge.

There's a shop less than one block from me so I decided to take a chance and I drilled the pins that hold the shoes in place and removed them, the drums still wouldn't budge. I gave it a few more wacks with no luck. It was starting to get dark so I decided to call it a night and sprayed it down with PB Blaster again and let it sit overnight.

In the morning I gave it a few more wacks and the drums weren't going anywhere. Rusted in place without a doubt. I put the wheels back on and drove to the shop so they could have a look at it. -8:20 AM- I described what was going on to the shop owner and what I had done to try and free the drums. I told him I just wanted them to get the drums off and make sure I would be able to get them back off because I was doing the brake job myself. Before I handed him the keys he was very adamant that the drums were ground down and the shoes were preventing the drums from moving... yea.. uh, no.
They were very busy and I wasn't certain if they would get to it today or I would have kept stopping by to take a look, I also didn't want to be a pest. They gave me a call at 4:10 PM and told me I needed to see what was going on before they put it back together.. yea, that's never good.

Drivers side-
Whoever did the last brake job didn't seat the lower part of the shoes behind the lower locating tab to position them properly. This pushed the shoes out further than where they are supposed to ride and their metal outer portion was so far out that it was digging into the drum and you could see the grind marks. Strange that I never heard any grinding. I suspect 99% of the damage was done before I purchased the truck. They had also messed up the placement of one brake spring.

Passenger side-
The springs were in the right spots but they had one of the shoes in front of that lower locating tab and one behind it. The misplaced shoe had ground into the drum on this side too.

The drums didn't have any deep wear marks from the friction material of the shoes. When I asked what was binding up the drum I was told it was the rust. They put the shoes and the springs in their proper spots and let me take it home at no cost, which greatly helps me out.



I'm definitely no expert by any stretch but like I mentioned when I first started posting here whoever was doing maintenance on this truck shouldn't be anywhere near a wrench.

.

wyoming9

iTrader: (1)

So that was pretty nice of them to do that.

Are you going with new drums ?/

Just going to replace the wheel cylinder and call it good.

Only because of budget problems

AKHeathen

when you beat off these thin flange drums, beat it in (basically on) on the outter corner. this will leverage against the axle flange a little bit. beating it outward pinches agains the hub, making it harder to come of. it may take a while , but once they start moving or at least break the rust bond, then beat them off.

Odin

I'm installing new shoes and a hardware kit. Other than the scrape mark from the shoes the drums don't look bad at all so I'm leaving the drums for a later date. I have two sets of e-brake adjusters and after inspecting I'll choose what looks the best and install that.

I'd like to order some Raybestos PG+ Drums (China made ) but that's not in the budget. I could also get some generic drums that are also made in... ? China/India god knows where, somewhere overseas for $28 each but I don't want to go that route. I'd rather pull some off a junk yard donor if I could find them.




Yes,
I tried all that from watching alot of vids on youtube (like I mentioned first time I've ever had this much trouble with drums), they weren't moving for me. The shop had a bigger BFH than I and I'm sure that made the difference... that and letting the PB Blaster soak in for two days.

Odin

So I got the brake parts all cleaned up and installed the drivers side shoes using a couple of parts from the NAPA (Raybestos/China) brake shoe hardware kit. I compared each spring VS. two sets of stock ones with 150,000+ miles on them. The used stock springs seemed to have more tension and I ended up only using two Raybestos springs because some of my Toyota springs were obviously stretched. I also used the new retaining pins as the stock stuff was pitted.


The paint on the Raybestos springs is quite poor and the colors they chose looks like they came off a clown car. Violet/green/blue wth? Do they have Chinese kindergartners painting these things? The spring tension proves to me once again Toyota parts are better than the stuff the auto parts stores are offering these days.


I turned my attention to cleaning up the drum and as soon as I really looked at the outside of the drum I noticed several marks from the shops BFH. Then I flipped it over and gave it a closer inspection. The drum is cracked in a few spots. I'm screwed for a while and from the feel and look of the rear diff I might be having fun with that in the future.


It's a little wet around some of the upper bolts but hasn't saturated it to the point of leaking down and showing at the bottom. Rotating the wheels shows little resistance but it feels a little notchy. There was no noise that I could detect when cruising in 5th rear. My trans does make some noise in lower gears.

AKHeathen

the different coloring is basically the part number, if you know what i mean. you could have an aqua spring, green spring, and red spring in a brake parts pile, and they all look quite similar, but are different. that is the point. some kits simply paint them all one color, and some keep the color coding. the "notchy" feeling could have just been the spider gears, i doubt there is any brinelling if it's not a locker maybe just time for some new spider cups (concave washers) it's rarely an issue in my experience. how's the gear lash and input bearings? i woud throw some threadlock on those seaping bolts. leaking means they are starting to come loose.

Odin

While the colors of the springs are ugly it's mostly the tension difference I didn't care for.


When it comes to working on transmissions and diffs I'm lost. Change their fluids or remove and replace ok. Checking backlash and bearings would be a new area for me.

AKHeathen

there's a lot of it to do with feel and experience. but basically, after checking input (pinion) bearing play, you, while it's in neutral, go back and forth with the driveline. you will ever so slightly feel the pinion gear bounce against the ring gear. estimate about 5 degrees or less as normal for an old diff not needing a bearing adjustment yet, but if it has that much and you pull it, might as well snug up the ring gear a little. proper tension springs are just as important as the length. too weak can lead to hanging up of the shoe, and possible seisures, and too stiff can lead to incorrect bias and slight kick-back in the proportion valve. most noticably during longer decels, like going downhill and on the offramp, not to mention slightly less pad life of the front discs. it may not seem that complicated, but trust me it's been engineered more tentatively than lets on.