My parking brake was pretty regularly freezing this winter. Not bad enough to keep my truck from moving, but it was obviously frozen "on" until the day warmed up a little.No idea if this is related, but it's the same feel.

When I let off the gas, my truck doesn't coast like I'm used to. It slows down as though the parking brake were still just a little engaged. It's subtle, but it's there, and I've been getting 16mpg highway instead of my usual 19.

I crawled under there and checked the e-brake. It's not stuck on. I sprayed all the cables and linkages anyway. Works smoother, but didn't solve the problem.

I've brought the truck to two different shops (both tire shops who do minor repairs, not a master technician or anything), telling them I'm feeling drag and asked them to check wheel bearings and brakes. Both said everything was fine. I don't know how much I trust them to be thorough...but they have both done good repairs for me in the past.

I've been considering pulling the rear drum and spraying everything down with brake cleaner, and seeing what I can see while I'm in there. Is there any chance that could help? What I should I be looking for? What could be causing this?

Thanks!

 

Pulling the drums will give you a state of the union of your rear end.

If the drums are a bear to come off, it could be that the parking brake is still engaged slightly, or they are adjusted too tight. The latter first, if you had been using your parking brake regularly it's possible that it clicked to the next tab on the adjuster wheel and so your brakes are tight. If the cable isn't fully releasing, it's possible that the pivots on the backside of the backing plate are crudded up and not pivoting fully back to neutral.

It's possible that your axle seal is weeping slightly and causing the shoes to drag. It's possible the wheel cylinder is weeping and again causing the shoes to drag.

In any case, pull the drums and see what you're working with.

 

If nothing else, I can always use a state of the union of my rear end...

Ok, thanks!

It would be about time for the axle seals, though this isn't the historic symptom. I'm the third owner of this truck, and both previous owners are friends. Each of them had an axle seal go once. But they experienced it as the brakes kind of locking on them at slow speeds.

Weather is trending back toward spring, so I'll pull the drums in the next few days.

 

Agreed the backing plate e-brake linkage tends to seize up under the rubber boot, I think its aluminum and a metal pivot and they don't get along. Also I've had a rash of bad front calipers on the 2nd gen taco, 200,000km and I've replaced 3 or 4 now due to one of 4 the caliper pistons seizing up on one side or the other after winter is over, sometimes that drag takes out the rotor at the same time if left to long. Go to compress the caliper and they jam up in the bore, Milage was obviously down in that case, that brine they use on the roads up here does wonders to Toyotas.

 

Alright thanks. I'll definitely check it out soon. Luckily they don't use too much road chemical down here. They're starting to more and more, but still not too bad.

 

The front caliper pistons should compress completely and very easily with a small c-clamp, any resistance or incomplete compression of the piston into the bore indicates a problem as it will not function properly and hang up periodically or completely, typically driving will push the suspect piston back so it isn't dragging making it hard to diagnose without removing the caliper and checking each piston individually, braking was slightly diminished but not noticeable until fixed.

 

Hey guys.. There are inspection ports on your rear drum breaks, you should probably pop that little rubber plug out and have a look at the clearance of the shoes to the drum. That takes like seconds compared to all that other stuff..

 

Drum brakes you mean, not breaks .. The brake lining inspection plug. http://www.teamtoyota4x4.org/archivi...r/rdb/remo.pdf ,that won't get you far in this case if he had it checked already, perhaps if someone removed and played with the adjustment access, but again n this case drum removal and inspection with annual tire rotation and cleaning should and would be ideal before you attempt the adjustment for brake shoe to drum clearance.

 

Yeah a year or so ago I looked and adjusted things through that access hole, and I'm guessing that's what both shops did when they told me everything looked fine. They didn't have the truck long enough to pull the drums. This time I wanted to really look to see how everything was doing.

On the driver side, the drum was really hard to get off. Passenger side came off easy. I adjusted the driver side until I could get the drum back on without too much of a struggle. Otherwise, I didn't see any oil leaks or anything else out of the ordinary. Haven't checked anything with the front brakes yet. We'll see if that little adjustment to the rear driver side did anything.

 

Mystery solved? Maybe. Tell me what you think.

I went to another town today to drop some things off and pick up some supplies. On the way home, going 70, I start hearing bad crunchy noises. Pulled over and walked around the truck. Smelled gear oil. Stuck my head under the truck and saw a little smoke coming out the backing plate of the rear passenger tire. Then the gear oil started flowing out...

Very expensive 1.5 hour tow home. Wheel bearing went out, and axle seal was a casualty?

 

So I'm in a tough spot with this unfortunately. I live in my camper in the summer to save money. I'm moving out of my winter house at the end of this month. So, Thursday. I was going to pull the axle and bring it to a shop to have them do the bearing and retainers, since I don't have a press, but that would save me some money on labor. But mon-thur just isn't enough time. I can get the trailer somewhere with my work truck, and use it a little for myself.

So anyway I had to bring the truck to a shop for this job. It can't be sitting on jack stands in the driveway of the house I'm moving out of while I wait for parts and for a shop to work on the axle bearing. The guy there seems really good and is highly recommended in town. He's saying he wants to pull the third member to check for contamination, and that it might very well need new bearings. What are your thoughts? He agreed that at that point, it would make more sense to look for an entire used rear end and just swap them out.

So assuming he's completely honest and some trucks are different and he just doesn't know Toyota axles well, I want to think this through. In normal circumstances, the bearing is separate from the gear oil, correct? So is there any reason a bearing that had been failing for a while would damage the differential gears? Also, the seal only started to leak badly when I pulled over. Is there any reason to think the bearing could have contaminated the gear oil? Seems more like a case of gear oil contaminating the bearing, but I don't see how it would be sloshing back & forth across the seal badly enough to contaminate the gears if it only started leaking so badly right when everything came to a head and I pulled over.

Anyway sometime early next week he plans to pull the third member. Could that be completely unnecessary? As I think about this more I'm not sure I want him to do it. Just do the bearing and seals, and I'll flush the housing as well as I can later. Eh?

If the shops I took this to, asking them to check the bearings had caught this, it would have been a long weekend job, mostly done myself. Now I'm easily going to be over $1,000 and out of a truck for a couple weeks. Lame.

 

No he doesn't need to pull the 3rd member, I'm guessing here but I think he's thinking ford or GM where you have to pull the cover for the rear diff to remove the axles and at that point its easy to inspect those vehicles rear diffs, Toyota's axles are only held in by 4 nuts on studs at the backing plate and axle tube, the 3rd member comes out the front of the rear diff, not an easy task or necessary unless your experiencing rear diff noises or issues IMO, he can check for contamination by draining the gear oil, there should be none even in the event of bearing failure or seal failure. If it was me, I would back off the rear drum brakes, don't use the e-brake, top up the rear diff and drag the trailer to your location, if its far top it off on the way, jack stand the truck and pull those axles, check the fluid, and check the rear diff breather as they like to plug up and force gear oil out the path of least resistance when the fluid expands due to heat. They must make sure they put the ABS and retainer in the exact same location or so the seal rides directly on the retainer or it will have to be done again, you will want a very good tech to perform this procedure, I had Toyota do it once for me on one side and they cut into the axle shaft to remove the retainer.., not good, you can cut the retainers and abs ring off but your not suppose to cut all the way through obv, just until it starts to change colour blue/black and then hit it and they snap off.

 

Thanks. He does know he can remove the axles without pulling the third. He just seems to think the job would be a band-aid without pulling the third to see how it looks.

I'm just going to call him Monday morning and say - band-aid or not, I just can't afford that much work, so just do the bearing/seal.

I couldn't afford the tow. Just doing the bearing/seal on top of that is getting crazy. And no reason not to do the other side too...But I figure if he does one side and gets me back on the road, I can pull the other side when it's convenient and bring that axle to him.

 

The axle leak doesn't warrant pulling a 3rd member unless you drove it dry, and even then you would check the remaining fluid for contamination. I've changed only one axle at a time as needed, its not a bandaid fix if its the only problem, heck I've even used wreckers axles, also in that case I had to use a driver side axle in the passenger side, drilled out the holes for the brake cylinder and I was good to go for years, the diff vent is commonly the culprit on all toyota axles, it needs to be checked every oil change or extended.

 

Alright, thanks. I'll talk him out of pulling the third. I hear you. I'm leaning more toward "if one bearing went bad, the others may not be far behind". But I'll admit after that tow, money is pretty short. Might wait for a couple more paychecks then do the other side, mostly myself. I'll check the vent when I get it back. My truck doesn't see much action these days that would clog the vent, but I agree it's good to check. In this case, the leak was caused by the bearing going out. I don't think it was a leaking seal contaminating the bearing. It was a really wobbly bearing causing the axle to damage the seal. I really don't think a drop of gear oil made it past the seal until I was pulled over on the highway, stranded.