The brake drum on the rear is suppose to slide right off one the wheel have been removed, right? Mine appears to be rusted on, any tips on a good way to get it loose?

 

i use a rubber malet and/or hammer and tap them, to break them loose a bit, then pull.

also, make sure the e-brake is NOT engaged

 

Thanks for the really fast reply, it's in the garage right now, half hanging out, cause of the crap my parents have in there.

But yea, the e brake is not engaged, and believe me, I have taken a steel hammer to it just about as hard as I can, no movement hardly at all, I swear I think the thing is welded on. Even the mightest of all tools, the beloved WD-40 cannot budge the bastard.

 

BFH or pry bars

 

Did you turn in the adjustor? You get to it by punching out one of the slots on the back lower side and put a screw driver in there to reduce the lenghth of the adjustor so that you can slip the drum off if it has developed a lip on it.

I beleve the slot that the adjuster is behind is the one opposite the side that the emergency brake cable enters.

See pic below, you got lucky, I just did a drum to disk swap and the back plate was sitting in my garbage can.

The arrow is where the e-brake enters and the circle is one of the slots to punch out to get access to the adjuster.

I may be wrong about the slot it may be the other one.

 

Get some penetrating oil; WD-40 isn't very good at that. Try PB Blaster. You can get it at Auto Zone and places like that.

 

i had a problem with mine where one of the rivets in rear shoes backed out, and wore a groove in the drum so i had to cut it off. Just sharing, probably didn't happen to you, just sharing.

 

When my posi blew up, I had to put a junkyard axle on. One drum was frozen hard to the axleshaft, and I tried everything- PB blaster, liquid wrench, backed the adjuster/shoes off ALL the way; nothing worked.

I even noticed that the holes in the drum were a little bit larger than the wheel studs. So I screwed on two old lugnuts, held the drum with one gloved hand, and hit the lugnuts- trying to "rotate" the axleshaft inside the drum. No go.

Then I called for help here: https://www.thirdgen.org/techbb2/sho...threadid=92913

Still didn't work, so I put the tire back on and tried again next weekend- next weekend, everything came off. What a pain. So when I put the drum back on, I slobbered anti-sieze on the face of the axleshaft, and on the outside of the axleshaft hub (where it poked thru the center of the drum). I didn't want to go thru That again!

Good luck!

 

Well if it comes down to it you could pull the rear diff cover and pull the pin and remove the c-clips and pull the drum and the whole axle as one whole unit. If the breaks are not grabbing the drum then the whole thing should come out.

 

I've found this method to work quite well with stubborn drums.

Jack up the rear end of the car with both wheels off the ground. Place jackstands securily under car.

Start the car up. Release emeregency brake and alternate between forward and reverse. Make some hard brake applications while drum is rotating. Repeat several times, forwards and backwards.

Drum will eventually break loose and if you're lucky...fall off. Seems to " unscrew" itself from the shoes. Don't know why it does this....but it does. Has worked for me in even the most stibborn cases.

 

Only problem with that is if the pinion shaft's locking screw snaps, and that's a common problem. The screw is too skinny- and if it snaps, then you're in trouble, b/c the axle case prevents you from getting a "straight shot" into the screwhole with a drill/pick/etc.