So tackled the rear brakes over the weekend, was only going to look at the RHS but went fairly smoothly so did both in the end. Didn't have my Haynes manual to hand so was winging it for the most part, and hadn't really worked on drum brakes before now but all went well!
Wheels off, and the drums followed without too much hassle. I was faced with a mess of springs and levers I didn't really know what to do with. I made the mistake at this point of having a go on the brake pedal and handbrake to see how it all worked, which I now realise caused the shoes to self-adjust outwards as far as they would go as there was no drum to push against, meaning I couldn't get the drum back on :bang:. I wasn't too bothered though as it forced me to take it all apart and get to the bottom of things.
Just started un-clipping springs until eventually everything came apart (fairly simple after you've done it once!)
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Cleaned up the whole area with brake cleaner and a wire brush, and in the meantime prepped the brake drums for painting as I had some rust-resistant metal paint from Lidl lying around.
While the first drum was drying I tackled the other side and did the same.
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(Didn't get any more photos of me putting it all back together as I was in a bit of a rush)
Used some fine sandpaper to scuff up the surface of the shoes and drums to remove a bit of a glaze, and applied cooper grease to all the contact surfaces on the edges of the shoes and all the other moving parts (not the actual brakes!)
The springs were a bit of a barst**d to get back on but eventually got there with pliers, flathead and much grunting. I had reset the self-adjusting ratchet mechanism on the leading shoe to it's lowest setting before reinstalling them, so the drums now went back on easily.
Pressed the brake pedal repeatedly to here the clicking noise of the self-adjuster until it stopped. Had to take apart one side again as it was making scraping noises and not spinning freely, just turns out I'd not aligned the bottom of one of the shoes correctly and it was interfering with the rotating drum.
Had used a small clamp to compress the wheel cylinders so thought it best to bleed the rear brakes with the help of my dad, fluid was fairly dark brown as you'd expect.
One problem that wasn't fixed in this process was the weak hand-brake force on one side, as I could still just about move the RHS wheel by hand with the handbrake on. I did see a nut-looking thing on the end of the handbrake cable inside the brake drum assembly, is this what's used to tighten/slacken the handbrake at the wheel end?
With the car up and wheels off I had a look at the rear-trailing arm issue, but pushing and pulling in all directions didn't produce any noise or play in the assembly. Sprayed some PlusGas around the bolts just in case they need to be undone in the future.
While I was doing all this I also emptied out my oil catch can for the first time, as it had got quite full of what looked like mainly water in the fairly short time it's been installed. Behold the contents:
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This worried me slightly as I was expecting more of an oily substance, but from what I hear this can be down to condensation etc. and potentially nothing to worry about too much?
Anyway a productive day was had, took it out for a spin and no noises coming from the back end. Can't say if braking performance has improved at all, but maybe a little
As always comments & advice is welcome!