Club 80-90 Forums

Ive had a grinding sound from the the nearside rear drum brake for a while, juist when applying brakes, and not a cyclical noise.I thought i might need new shoes, maybe they were down to the bone.  Ive opened it up with a bit of lump hammer whacking on the drum to chock it loose, and found this desposit loose in the bottom:


it looks like pieces of brake material? all springs and components inside look to be there, i dont see anything obviously broken.  But some of thoise pieces are a quite few mm in size. 

Here are the brake shoes, or al least one of them, the other looks the same:



Theres no chunks missing, but theres definitely more meat at the bottom than on the top, on both sides.  Is this normal?  or do I need new shoes? (I cant even say how old the shoes are!).  My handbrake is very poor too, and the adjuster/balance bar underneath the van is at quite an angle.

Ive put it back together and the grinding sound had almost gone- might need a bit more driving to clear anything else out.

Ive not done anything with rear brakes before, bit afraid of all the springs and adjusters!

looks like the friction material is delaminating from the steel backing plates so I'd be fitting new brake shoes and check the pistons aren't leaking as it all look a bit damp, brake fluid will contaminate the friction surfaces, you need to lift the lips seals on the pistons to check, generally they are all p poor these days, the oem ones used to last years the cheap one a year or two, but these days they all barely make the 24 month warranty period

Thanks Aidan. I'll order new shoes and probably springs. Brickworks have OEM cylinders fir £15 a pop- I suppose you'd recommend those instead of £10 aftermarket? I think handbrake cables will be good idea too.

I've lost my outside workspace due to some neighbouring construction project , so I'll have to get the mechanic

Go for the better quality slave cylinders. I fitted cheap ones a few years back , had to change them again a few months later as the seals had popped.