Grinding rear brake, the crud i found inside..

[slowcoach]

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!

[Aidan]

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

[slowcoach]

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

[Dazco]

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.