Oddly over-tight rear drum ...

Did the timing belt Monday and been driving around more the past couple days - and after a drive last night I got out and - wouldn't you know it - my driver's side rear drum was stinking like crazy and putting off WAY too much heat.

I figure it can only be a few things:

• New wheel cylinder is bad and sticking out
• Park/e- brake auto-adjuster somehow over-tightening
• Park/e- brake bell crank seized

Anybody else have any other suggestions I should look at? I replaced literally everything (including all the springs/clips/etc. hardware) with new and machined the drums, so I'm kinda surprised ...

Open to any other input I might have forgotten in the list above, thanks!

 

Have you tried backing it off a bit to see if that solves it? You can back it off through the access hole in the back.

 

Well, my guess is that will only solve it short-term. Like I said, I'll be looking at it in a few hours - but we had worked pretty hard to set this absolutely perfect, just barely some rub - and now I can't turn then wheel at ALL.

During lunch I drove it around back, chocked the front wheels, put it in neutral and turned off, then jacked up the rear diff. Passenger moved ok, just a bit of drag, but couldn't budge the driver-side by hand.

I had to get back to work so didn't have time yet to turn the adjuster - I'll need to adjust it just to get the drum off, I'm sure. But even after adjustment, I need to find out what's going on. Parking brake use shouldn't "over adjust", you know?

 

Your rear brakes have an auto-adjust feature that activates when you back up and step on the brakes. If you are aggressive in stopping while in reverse it can over tighten. Backing the adjustment off manually will solve this (if in fact this is what happened).

Dan

 

I believe our 1st Gens auto-adjust is the actual parking brake lever itself. Depression of lever sets the star adjuster accordingly.

Driving in reverse and stopping aggressively on occasion sometimes is good as it resets the shoes/springs mojo inside the drum, but does not reset the parking brake shoe auto adjuster.

Someone correct me if wrong.

 

OK - I appreciate all the updates to this thread, lots of info to lock away in the ol' memory.

After inspection (and a lot of google searching) we determined we'd start with taking all the hardware off, inspect, ensure it was properly lubricated and put back together ... While looking closer, it appears that we managed to have the star-wheel adjusters reversed... ie: driver-side adjuster was on passenger, and vice-versa. Some thinking suggests this absolutely could be the culprit, so we've put it together the right way, re-adjusted, and we'll watch it from here.

Oops. I won't say WHICH one of us (my son and I did the brake work) mounted it wrong ... but one of us who will remain nameless did that. In fairness, there's no L or R marked on it. (And, full disclosure in the event my son reads this thread ... yeah, it was me.)

For future reference:

 

Good catch. I did notice this when doing the reinstall of my drums last week. They are definitely opposite/reverse threads. The key is in the above diagram (2a) to operate the lever arm to make sure it adjusts the star properly before reinstalling the drum.

 

My youngest would have said...."you did take pics with your iPhone, right" smh

 

We actually DID take pics ... they LOOK identical, unless you're looking really, really closely AND you're aware they're different, LOL. It looked just like our phone pics, I swear. They really need to etch an "L" and "R" into these, roflmao.

It was basically a combination of lack of labeling and lack of knowledge...