As I mentioned in my last post, I rebuilt the front drum brakes in November. I had no idea when they were last changed out, and the previous owner didn’t seem to know anything about them either from what I remember. So I went ahead and did a full rebuild on them until I have enough time and money to swap over to disc brakes.

It wasn’t too bad of a process for the most part. Actually, it was very straight-forward. I think I had used a combination of a Chilton’s repair manual and a magazine article to guide me. Doing one side at a time to allow the use of the other side as a reference when putting things back together definitely helped out too.

The only real problem I ran into was something with the brake hose on the passenger side. I unfortunately can’t remember now exactly what happened, but I think I wound up stripping the nut on the metal brake line where it attaches to the rubber hose. I ended up cutting it or something, and then I replaced the rubber hose and also ran a new metal line to that wheel. Since I had to get it back together for work, I couldn’t order a pre-bent metal line and had to get just a pre-flared straight line with the fittings on it already and then bent it to where it’d work. It was Poly-Armor line so I was able to bend it by hand, and it wasn’t all that difficult thankfully.

I also had to reuse my old self-adjusters, as the grooves in the new ones weren’t large enough to fit over the shoes.

That was that adventure summed up eh 4 months late. It’s a little more comforting having brakes I know the condition of in the front, though I do still really want my discs. On the pictures, I neglected to take pictures of most of the passenger side reassembly, so I’ll just post some of the ones from the driver’s side.