Drum Brakes

I'm not sure if I spoke out of turn when I said the piston popped out, rather fluid splattered from the cylinder when I pumped the brakes (i.e., no active leak). I pumped the brakes, which was stupid, while the drum was off. Is possible that I caused the piston to travel further than normal, which resultied in fluid splatter with no damage to the cylinder? If I had to disassemble the cylinder, what kind of tools/parts would I need?

When I bring the adjuster all the way in, will this result in the (large) return springs to compress? Currently, the springs have a fair gap between coils.

What your saying is I should have left the wheel in question alone, and adjusted the freely rotating wheel. D'oh!

Thanks for the advice Chris, and yes, I would appreciate your high-res picture of the brake assembly.

Ryan

If the piston popped out of the cylinder, you have to clean up the fluid spill, disassemble the brakes so you can inspect the wheel cylinder to make sure the rubber boot isn't torn and reassemble everything. This is a mother of a job if you don't have the proper brake tools. The hard part is putting all the parts back together and pulling the springs far enough to clip the ends into the holes. I use a pair of long-nosed locking pliers (aka needle-nosed "Visegrips") to grab and hold the spring end and then pull it into place. You'll have to run the adjuster nut all the way "in" before disassembly, and when it's back together, put the brake drum on, and then adjust both wheels so when they spin with the tires on, you hear a slight drag and the tire turns a couple times before stopping. By adjusting the rear brakes to where they drag slightly, your pedal travel will be correct, i.e. you won't push the brake pedal farther down into it's stroke. Also, your parking brake lever will have minimal travel. The concept here is that the rears hit the drums first, then front disk brakes will engage correctly. You don't want a lot of pedal travel, but you don't want the rear brakes dragging hard. You adjust the rears through a hole in the backside of the brake assembly that is covered by a rubber plug. With the wheels on the car, jack it up off the floor about an inch. Crawl under the car, pull the plug out, put a blade screwdriver in the hole until you feel it hit something (the adjuster nut) and then crank it a few times downward, spin the wheel to see if it's slightly dragging, repeat procedure until both wheels drag the same amount. Oh, almost forgot, you'll need to bleed the air out of the lines since you opened up the wheel cylinder. Use the opposite side brake assembly if you forget how things go together since they are mirror-images of each other. If you need a photo of the assembly, I have a hi-res photo of my 94 GXE brakes I can send. (800+kbytes) Good luck.

Chris