Well lost my brakes today, can anyone tell me if this is a difficult job to do or do any of you know how much a shop will charge? Any help wanted...

Thanks, Bo

Edit...I ment Wheel cylinder, sorry

 

good place to post not that other site. But if I were you just call around and see what it would cost, have it done right.

 

If you decide to diy, I would unbolt the cylinder from the backing plate, pull it out slightly (with brake line attached) and spin the cylinder off the brake line. Spin the new one onto the brake line, bolt it back up, and bleed.

It's opposite to what the manual says (i.e. first loosen the brake line fitting off of the cylinder). The fitting is usually rusted solid to the brake line. Screwing the fitting out like the manual says will twist and collapse the brake line (very bad). Then you are going to be stuck with cutting out the piece of collapsed line and re-flaring it (if there's enough slack). That wound turn a 30 min job into an all day experience.

 

The actual rear wheel cyclinder replacement is easy as pie. Although I hate working on the drum brakes themselves, replacing a cylinder itself is easy but requires you removes the shoes to get at it. I've also never had a problem with rusted parts, even on my 79 TA.

The way I usually look at it is, if the part I need costs 20 bucks and a shop is telling me they want 250 to do the job, I'm gonna do it myself, even if it takes a few hours or so. I once made the huge mistake of letting a shop replace my smog pump. You do NOT want to know what it cost, really. It was VERY bad. Anyway, when it went again, I bought a new one for 60 bucks and it took me all of 30 minutes to install. Then again, I got into the habit of buying the parts grabbing a manual and saying I'm not stopping till this thing is back together and fixed even if I'd never touched it before(axels, fuel injectors, etc), lol.

Check around and price the repair from a few places and then price the parts you'll need. If you're comfortable replacing rear brakes, then you should do it yourself if the cost difference is insane. If you've never done rear brakes before, you may want to let a shop handle it.

Oh, I do hope you're talking about the rear wheel cylinder and not the master cylinder. lol To recap, the wheel cyclinder itself is cake. Reinstalling those lousy shoes is a bit more hassle, (and prolly a darn good time to replace em instead of reusing the old ones.) Maybe get the drum turned too. Both sides that is. If one cylinder is gone, no sense waiting for the other to blow later on.

 

I don't even remember having to take the shoes off. I just unbolted the 2 bolts from the backing plate, then slide the cylinder out (with the brake line attached) until it cleared the shoes. I then spun the cylinder off the brake line. (total time 5 mins)

I made the mistake of turning the brake fitting to attach the new cylinder and it promptly twisted the brake line (a friend had told me about the trick because he made the same mistake earlier). After that was fixed, I just slid the new wheel cylinder back in. I used a screwdriver to pop the shoes back onto wheel cylinder (another 5 mins , not including fixing the brake line)

Bleeding the cylinder with a helper was about another 10 min.

I say it took about 30 mins total for 1 side including jacking the car up and taking off the tire.

There is one other thing (that didn't have it happen to me). Sometimes the drum gets rusted to the wheel flange and you can hammer and spray all the oil you want and it won't come loose. You can use a big gear puller to break the drum free.

 

Oh that happened to me on my 83' The biggest PITA we pounded with a hammer for hours and still did not come off

 

midas wanted $270 a side, so i am going to do it myself, thanks guys

 

Do it yourself, just have the right tools on hand to do it. I kinda walk you through it in this thread:

https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/brak...drum-rear.html

Hope this helps.

Ed

 

Got it done, but my brake light is still on, do i need to bleed the front?