yotasinthefamily

Just a word of warning and a poll for forum readers.

My bell cranks are seized, no big deal, midwest ruck 127K, it was bound to happen. This is my first truck with drum breaks, so when I was having my warped rotors turned (a rip off to have a shop do all the work) they told me the parking break pivots were seized (duh) and said sometimes they could hit it with an air hammer to free it up. Me being to noob said ok without doing an research, my first and last mistake.

Here is the result:




I did not discover the result until Saturday night, and did not follow the excellent write up on the tundra solutions website by not having replacements available just in case. So what I thought would be a quick overnight soak in rust eater, a repaint, some anti seize and back together has turned in to a major headache in trying to get to work and coordinating kid drop offs, and getting replacements from the stealership etc.

So a word of warning: Never hit your bell cranks with an air hammer to try to free them up.

Now on to my poll:
Though I authorized the local auto shop to hit my bell cranks, they most definitely are the ones who cracked them. Would you go back to them and ask them to reimburse the cost of the new bell cranks? Or what would you do? (BTW they quoted me 300 bucks to replace them themselves) Funniest part is I am a lawyer who is anti confrontational (go figure).

BigBallsMcFalls

well, the official procedure when they are seized is replace them. no shop I know of
wants to free them up, grease them and reinstall them...so I would say it was bad advice to ask shop to recycle your old ones. not their fault they cracked.

I have removed, banged with a hammer, and reinstalled my own after 2 shops said they need to be replaced and they would not be interested in trying to make seized ones serviceable. it is a critical part in a safety system, no 'hobo fixes' should be tried IMHO

I would say the shop owes at the most...a seized bell-crank that is not cracked

yotasinthefamily

Therin lies the difference.
I never asked them to fix my parking brake, at 300 bucks the price seemed excessive.
He just mentioned that perhaps hitting it with an air brake would help, but not only did it not help, it made it worse.
Now I was forced to buy new bell crank kits from Toyota for 119.00 whereas before I would have been out nothing.

yotasinthefamily

Regardless, apparently it is pretty common to hit parking brake pivots with an air hammer, it just so happens that Toyota bell crank brackets are made of a much softer "pot metal" that will break if hit like this. So more than anything I just want people to know that this should never be attempted.

wyoming9

iTrader: (1)

i love this idea thanks for sharing

Now I know just how to break those bell crank brackets apart. I had been cutting them with cut off wheels.

I keep quite a few of those brackets on hand.

If your E-brake is not working you then need to keep adjusting your rear brakes manually which gets old after the first time with a wet sloppy mess melting on you.

Chickenman

$300 bucks? I got 2 new ones online from village Toyota shipped for $75 or something like that and I installed em and put my drums together in under an hour and a half. I was pissed about the $75 rip off, I would be livid if I were you.

yotasinthefamily

Right? That's why I decided to do it myself. I was in a bind so went to local stealership. Parts were 119 (ouch) and it took me just under 3 hours, which included grinding and polishing everything and learning how drum brakes work. My wife yelled at me for dropping so many F-Bombs when I was trying to reconnect the springs, what a joke, I will take disc brakes any day over drums.

J2F42C

If the mechanic did not charge you for the advice, then he or she owes you nothing. You engaged in repairing the bell crank on your own accord without physical aid from your mechanic.

As Big Balls stated, the bell crank is an integral part for the drums and should be replaced for one's own safety.

If you think Toyota drums are a feat to master, try working on some rusted out Ford or Chevy drums. You will run through the gamut of 4 letter cuss words by the end.

BigBallsMcFalls

a common 3 dollar drum brake spring puller at <crappy auto partz r us> makes
drum brakes a breeze to work on. easiest brake in the world to work on, IMHO

they just don't do a great job overall vs discs and have funny wear patterns on the shoe

J2F42C

The majority of domestices around here are so bad that the springs have been rusted to the anchor pin due to the rubber insert being lost for some time. Adding salt water into the equation just compounds the problem.

Whomever thought up that $10 spring tool though is living quite well today I would imagine.

aa1911

iTrader: (1)

yep. spring tools lives in my rig, paid $5 for the pusher deal and $10 for the spring calipers/prybar gizmo at O'Reilly's. well worth it.

When I discovered how easy brakes were on these suckers, I refuse to let a shop do them; napa turns rotors for $12.50 each, that plus parts is about 5 times cheaper.

My sequoia has drum on disc in the rear for the parking brake, that will be my next tackle for brakes. I'm hoping they're just as simple as our little yotas.

James Woods

iTrader: (1)

Haha, you guys should try doing drum brake shoes on semi trucks.
The drum brake system technically works better than disc brakes, it is the brake fade where the disc brakes are better, the drums have really no way to dissipate heat and so brake fade occurs. If you look at newer pickup trucks, they have all started going back to drum brake setups in the rear because they are required to hold on a hill with a load and the disc brakes couldn't get it done.

wyoming9

iTrader: (1)

A disc brake will destroy itself to save a vehicle!! Back in the eighties Disc brakes were tried on trailers I swapped quite a few back to drum brakes the pads calipers and rotors just did not hold up.

a drum brake gets hot poof gone .

Gives one interesting thoughts watching big clouds of smoke come off your brakes.