Quote:
Originally Posted by dmjlambert
Hi,
If you folks have any clues to give I would appreciate it. I have a 1969 C-10 long bed pickup with rear drum brakes. It is my daily driver. Last night I was pulling into the driveway and had to give it more gas than I thought was normally necessary to get up the incline of the short driveway. As soon as I pulled to a stop I smelled something burning. I got out of the truck and the driver side rear wheel was smoking. I looked back in the truck to make sure I had not been driving with the parking brake on, and I was not. Whew. But it was just the driver side acting up. What I think may have happened is a brake shoe fell apart and wedged itself in there crooked or doubled up or something like that. I would like to know.
I chocked the front wheel and jacked up the wheel and took the rear wheel off, put the transmission in neutral. I'm trying to turn the hub and drum to line up with the adjusting hole so I can back off the adjustment, but I can't turn the drum. Any hints or tips? I have posted here a video to show that the brake is not impossibly tight, I can wiggle the drum just fine.
I tried putting my hubcap tool behind the drum and use a mallet to hammer the drum off, but it won't come off that way. I'm going to go back out there and puzzle over it a while longer while you folks may have time to soak this in and perhaps give me some homework. I appreciate it.
Drum stuck - YouTube |
I'm going all the way back to your original post on this thread. You mentioned you checked to make sure your parking brake wasn't engaged. That implies it still works. Up here in the rust belt the parking brake cables rust up. Then when you use the brake, you got leverage with the pedal but when you release it, one or more of the cables is frozen which would cause one or both sides to hang up.
Have your daughter work the parking brake while you observe. A temporary fix to a stuck parking brake cable is to remove the bar that goes horizontal across the top of the axel between the two shoes. You can leave that out and never have a parking brake or leave it out while you hunt down brake cable parts.
A solo way to see if a cable is stuck, and is something I always do after doing a drum brake job - this is hard to describe - with everything assembled and the drum still off, whack the bottom of the shoes with the lower part of each hand, back and forth. The shoes should pivot back and forth and remain in a circle. If the top of each shoe pops out when you hit the bottom, you got a stuck parking brake cable and removing that bar will fix the problem.