Doing The Rear Brakes

[NEK_VT_FJ60]

There seemed to be quite a few people interested in the topic of rear brakes, wheel cylinders etc. I thought I'd share how my instalation went and the steps involved.
Here is what I bought:
2 Wheel Cylinders $22 apice
1 Hardware Kit (all the springs and c-clips for one axel worth of wheels) $15
Brake shoes $30ish
Can of brake cleaner
Big bottle of Dot 3 brake fluid.

Other things my might need (esspecially if you have lots of rust):
Bolts for the wheel cylinders if you end up destroying yours or cutting them off.
Brakelines if you mangle them when removing them from the wheel cylinder.

It took me most of yesterday afternoon just to do one wheel. The hardest part is removing the bolts from the back of the wheel cylinder if you haver rust issues. They were very rusted and fairly awkward to get to.

1. Remove Wheel
2. Remove Brake Drum. If yours is tough there are threaded holes in the front of the drum you can thread bolts through to push the drum off.
3. Remove your brake shoes by undoing all of those springs with needle nose pliers. Be sure to save the pins from your original hold down springs, the ones in my hardware kit weren't long enough. Also if you don't have a picture handy to refer back to remove the hardware so that it can be replaced.
4. Spray everything down with brake cleaner.
5. Inspect and lube your e-brake components.

 

[NEK_VT_FJ60]

Continued

• Undo the brake line, 10mm wrench I think.
• Undo both of the bolts holding the back of the wheel cylinder on. If 10mm feels loose try 3/8. This could take awhile if yours are frozen in. If you anticipate having a hard time spray the bolts down with wd and wait a little while to start.
• Whack the bleed screw from behind with a rubber mallet. It should come right out.
• Fit new wheel cylinder into place and bolt it on.
• Attach brake line
• Install shoes and hardware. There are left and right shoes, the only difference being the pin for the hardware to sit on one side. Make sure you put a left with a right so you don't have to undo your work after the first wheel. I found it easiest to assemble the shoe that faces the front of the car first then fit the other shoe into place.
• Adjust the adjusting wheel until the shoes are as tight as possible but you can still remove the drum freely
• Replace the drum
• Replace the wheel
• Repeat for other wheel
• Bleed brakes, oh yeah make sure you havent run the master cylinder down while doing this

If anyone has additions please speak up!
Hope this helps people accomplish this a little bit quicker than me

 

[jesterb]

Good work soldier. I'll be doing mine in about a week. Curious about the 3/8 wrench. Were they rounded a little? After I do my rear wheels I will have a new brake system.

 

[phantom60]

nice post NEK, it would have come in handy last summer when i did my rear brakes! just wanted to add my .02 for anyone getting ready to do brakes, since it looks like you had the same problem i did. thought i just got a bad spring kit since my hold-down pins were also too short! i took my pins back to the store i got the kit and had them check another spring kit ---- all the pins are too short for the 60. i didn't want to go through all that trouble and not replace ALL the springs and pins so i did some asking around. turns out you can go to NAPA and buy hold-down pins individually. just took my old ones in and they brought a box out and asked how many i needed. cost about 15 cents per pin IIRC. seemed worth it to me.....