First drum brake job

"yitznewton" (yitznewton)
08/15/2018 at 22:22 • Filed to: None

After two front disc jobs, I got around to doing the rear drums on our 2006 Sienna today. They’ve been squeaking and vibrating slightly for years. I watched a video a couple times beforehand, but I false-started twice on reassembling the brakes on the first wheel. Eventually I went back to the video mid-way and figured out the one right order of putting it back together. I find it’s easier for me to understand this sort of thing after I’ve worked with it myself hands-on for a bit, even when I’ve watched a video.

If you’re doing one of these Toyota drum brakes, there’s a three-piece sandwich of the parking brake lever, rear shoe, and some sort of balancing lever; the return spring goes in first, then assemble with the horseshoe clips, then you can put the sandwich around the hub and attach the return spring to the front shoe.

The second wheel went pretty quick now that I had internalized the strategy. I was ticked off to find that one of the spring pins was missing on one of the shoes I had bought, which I specifically picked out so I wouldn’t have to press out the old ones and reinstall them. But! I did, and it worked.

Smooth brakes again!

Here’s the video I used:

And the SMA reference video:

Shoes: !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!!

Drums: !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!!

Hardware kit: !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!!

DISCUSSION (4)

Deal Killer - Powered by Focus > yitznewton
08/15/2018 at 23:10

Fuck drum brakes.

Highlander-Datsuns are Forever > yitznewton
08/15/2018 at 23:13

My Subaru had disc brakes on the rear with a drum parking brake on the inside of the disc. Luckily the drum portion was easy enough to deal with and didn’t need replacement. I was a bit terrified when I pulled the rotor off to discover this.

yitznewton > Highlander-Datsuns are Forever
08/15/2018 at 23:23

Seems like that’s the typical layout. Eric from South Main Auto did a video on parking brake shoe replacement recently, and it looked much worse than regular drum brakes because of how they were tucked behind the hub.

shop-teacher > yitznewton
08/16/2018 at 07:13

Thanks for sharing this. My '06 Sierra needs brakes soon too.