Saved By The Torso: September 2008

Monday, September 29, 2008

Nervous Brakedown

Last Monday I started to change the rear brake shoes on my '85 Chevy C-10. I had the tools, the holy trinity (Haynes, Chilton, and even The Shop Manual) and the skills to finish the job in an hour...or so I thought.

By Thursday my ever-so-patient wife dropped the "..it's starting to look like Sanford and Son out there" bomb on me. So I finally finished the right side Friday evening but I still needed to change the shoes on the left side before I could even drive it. Even with the books and my, ahem, skills I made just about every mistake there was to make. Luckily I learn from my mistakes, and this morning I changed the left side brake shoes...in an hour and a half! That's right, ninety minutes.

So in the interest of public service I put together a "What Not To Do When Changing The Brakes On Your '85 Chevy Truck." tutorial. I hope this saves somebody some time and maybe even an ass-chewin' because your trucks been sitting in the front yard for almost a week. Enjoy!

Here's the drum itself. If you've gotten this far without your truck rolling of the jackstand or finding out your Chevy has two different size rear ends then good on ya.

Here it is. I looked all over the internet for a clear picture of the brake assembly and couldn't find one anywhere. Even my books had crappy pictures. So in case you need it, this is what everything is supposed to look like.

A view from the top. Remember, this is the left rear (drivers side), and if you're working on the right everything is ass-backwards.

Take the hold-down springs out first. Everything else will fall into place from there.

Once the hold-down springs are out, remove the actuator lever...

...and for Gods sake keep it together! Trust me, this is a bitch to piece together again.

This time I kept everything I removed sorta in the same positon, just on the ground. It sounds kinda stupid, but it worked for me.

Ahh, the good ol' parking brake lever. This was almost a deal-breaker for me on the right side, but like I said I learned from my mistakes. Really.

When you're ready to detach the parking brake lever from the shoe, remove this washer. I can't stress that enough. Just in case you missed it...

..remove this washer!

Don't ever remove the parking brake lever from this side. NEVER..NEVER..NEVER!!

I just kinda like this shot. Hey, this time I knew what I was doing..so I had time to screw around.

This is as far as you need to go. Just leave the rest of the parts on there. It'll make re-assembling everything much easier.

And that's it! The new brake shoes are on, and now I can spend the rest of the day driving around scaring old ladies and pissing off hippies in their fancy hybrids. Let me know if this helped anybody, because I sure coulda used something like this a week ago.