Hey everyone,

I think this is my first post since my intro one The rear brake situation for my '91 pickup had been..rusty and old. There was a noise coming from the right side when I braked at slow speeds where it felt and sounded like something was shifting/rattling around inside. Sure enough, when I pulled it all apart one of the shoe retaining springs was broken and just kind of floating around. Both of my parking brake bell cranks were pretty stiff, but the right one was completely locked.

I just replaced the shoes, drums, wheel cylinders, springs and a couple of the lines for the rear brakes and removed and greased the bell cranks which now move and return freely.. Now, on the right side, I'm getting a pretty bad chatter when I brake at any speed. It sounds like something's rattling around and is pretty uncomfortable to the point where I don't feel like it's safe to drive. After pulling the drum off on that side again, you can see an uneven wear pattern on the shoes - it looks like they're skipping when I apply the brakes.

When I first put them on, I think I may have set the adjuster too tight on the right since I couldn't hear any clicking of the self adjustment mechanism when manually operating the bell crank. I've since loosened it, then used the rear entry window to tighten it as well as try to auto adjust it using the bell crank/parking brake and braking while reversing. When I drive it a few times around the block, the right drum gets really hot.

My next step was going to be switching the drums to see if the noise follows. I know this isn't a good idea due to the wear patterns but they're new drums so I figure they haven't set in yet. After that, I'm not sure where to go from here, I've had it apart a few times and the left and right look identical. Any help would be appreciated!

Edit: Reading a little more online, the only other thing I can think of is a bent backing plate. Looks to be about $100 for a toyota part. I did have a hard time removing that drum so it wouldn't be out of the question that I bent it. Is is okay to buy an aftermarket part or would folks recommend OEM?

 

I don't know about a bent backing plate, although it's certainly possible. I would definitely use OEM parts, myself. I'm a huge OEM fan. Heck the factory parts lasted this long...
If the drum was difficult to remove, it sounds like the adjustment screw was set too tight, OR the parking brake cable wasn't adjusted correctly. I would check both of those to be sure.

I'm am far from a brake expert, so the chattering situation is a new one on me, but it sounds to me like it could be a spring isn't on correctly, or maybe one of the shoes isn't in the notch on the actuator correctly. Maybe. Again, I'm NOT a brake guy. I'm decent at bleeding the system (you DID bleed the whole system before testing it, yes?? Including the LPSV?), and replacing the front pads/rotors, and so on. Drum brakes are a kind of a mystery to me, even after replacing a set of shoes in both my 87 vehicles. All the springs, and so on just blow me away.

Good luck to you! Let us know how things go...
Pat☺

 

Okay so after pulling everything off again, checking it and putting it back together, I'm still getting a rattling noise on breaking, as well as when I go over small cracks and bumps. I have a theory though. The bell crank on the right side (where the noise is coming from) has lateral movement in the guides that come out of the backing plate (i.e. the bell crank has wiggle room in the front-back direction). The left side doesn't have this play. The right bell crank was almost frozen with rust when I got started - I cleaned it up and lubed it up but now I think the slop might be causing the noise.

I'm ordering a replacement today before trying a new backing plate. Has anyone else seen this before? Some quick googling and I haven't come across other instances of the bell crank causing a noise like this.