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Rear brake job 'gotchas'....

A friend of mine that spent 4 hours doing one side of his rear brakes and had me help him on the other side that took me 20 minutes a couple months ago just came over today because of noises and a low pedal.

He just had a tranny rebuild and had a clunk that happened so was over last week and I nailed a bad CV joint for him. This was new and his brake pedal was dropping on him.

Well, he had put the brake together like the book 'showed' and 'just' like a photo Bill Hughes showed a bit ago with the pull cable adjusting arm cocked on the star wheel ready to fire.

When I did the other side, I pulled the arm off the star wheel to keep the cable tight while installing the drum with a fully compressed star wheel. The arm comes up into place as you do the basic adjust from the back with a screwdriver through the rubber grommet filled hole.

His cable fell of the pivot slider and the adjusting arm fell down on the brake drum, spring loaded and almost cut it in half with the groove it made.....

We checked the other side that I did and the star wheel rod already was more than 1/4" threaded out and working perfectly.

Watch out for that folks, when you do a drum brake job, make sure the cable is in the track and has pressure on it when you wiggle the drum on.

Mike

86/00 CJ7 Laredo, 33x9.5 BFG Muds, 'glass nose to tail in '00 88 Cherokee 235 BFG AT's
Reply to
Mike Romain
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You should have checked his work. 4 hours can really Fark up something which only took you 20 minutes. :) Something was too loose?

I recently did rear drum brakes myself. I normally work on my other vehicles that have disc. Well there is a Honda that does have rear drums but it doesn't need them yet. Soon.

I used a spring kit and an adjuster kit on my YJ brakes. They were FUBAR'ed by heat. The shoes fell apart when I touched them even though there was still meat on them. Dry rot or something. I think the adjust was rusted.

The star adjuster all the way in and tension on the cable should make the drum go on real nice.

Reply to
Peter Parker

Well seeing how its almost time to install the snow tires on the J**P again, I'll take a double look at the passengerside cable/adjuster again.. I generally give the brakes front and back an inspection/adjustment when I swap wheels, but this year I'll pay closer attention to the cable tension routing. Thanks Mike, hope you get better soon, until then might I recommend a fair amount of Molson's pain killer? Remember just to take any if your going to be driving or operating heavy equipment ;)

Snow...

Reply to
Snow

LOL!

I kinda like the Labatts' version, but Molson will do in a pinch. ;-)

Just gotta watch out for the prescription pain meds, they don't mix well with either of the above...

Mike

Snow wrote:

Reply to
Mike Romain

You've got me all paranoid now! ;-) I checked; mine are good.

Reply to
Cal Wheeler

Reply to
mabar

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