Thread: Rear Drum Brake Adjustment

Firstly Am assuming the shoes are on the correct side of the car and centred up and down.

Drive the car around the block applying and releasing the brakes lightly. You may find that the heel or toe of the shoes is proud and needs to wear down a little.

Otherwise it may be that the manufacturer left a little too much glue under the shoe and it is too high, if it's still a problem after your drive, remove the drum and see if you can see evidence of high spots and with a coarse wood file shave the high spots down a little.

Seriously, I would start by removing the drums & looking for "high" spots.

Until then it's guesswork:

*Shoes too thick (look for scrapes on the shoe faces)
*Shoes too wide (look for scrapes on the drum face)
* Adjuster not going back enough ( damaged thread)
* Incorrect drums.

Is it uniformly dragging or "catching"?

I did the drive with the brake in and out a few times so I suppose next opportunity I get I will take off the drums and look for high spots.

I know the cylinders are handed and I replaced as found so that should be ok. Are you saying the shoes are handed for left and right drums? I had four shoes, two with pins that went in front facing for the adjuster and the other two went in rear facing where there is no adjuster.

Not sure if they are exactly centred up and down I just made sure the shoe ends sat well into the slots on the cylinder. Perhaps I can hammer them up and down a bit to make it sit better?

I'll give it another go and post some pictures if I still have trouble with it.

Thanks.

its a uniform drag.. both front and rear shoes appear to sit in the drum a little too snug. On one side I had to push them all the way in and then quickly put the drum on.. so they expand out and make pretty good contact.. with handbrake off the car rolls slowly out the drive but only just.

All the rear shoes are handed so only go in one place, i.e. there should be four different shoes.

There should also be two adjusters on each backing plate. Only the 10" brakes had a single adjuster.

Have a look at this thread Stage 1/county./defender/perentine brake warning

ah well that might be it then.. so how can you tell if its for left or right side of the car? I should probably compare to the old ones.. but they are so rotten! Oh and I binned them

The front ones have a pin so they can only go in one way but the rears looked pretty identical.

Its a defender 90 so only one adjuster, at least on mine anyway.

Not too familiar with the drum brake Defender 90. So if it has 10" brakes you are correct about one adjuster but the possibility of high spots remain the same.

The 11" 110 brakes are depicted above, in the last edit.

In the 10" brakes the trailing shoe is held in place by only one spring, the post on the leading shoe should align with the cam of the adjuster