I am hoping that I am being blatantly blind to an obvious solution to this, bear with me there’s a lot of info here:
Astra 1.7TDI, 2000 reg. 100k miles
Routine inspection of rear brakes inspired me to replace the shoes, since the drums were lipped and new ones were only £30 pair I decided to replace shoes and drums together. Prior to this there was no breaking noise, the hand brake functioned fine on both sides and the footbrake function was also sound, passing its MOT with ease.
Having replaced shoes on other cars before this is not my favourite part of servicing but I'm happy and confident to do it.
I stripped and cleaned down the back plate, springs etc and swiftly assembled the new shoes in place, putting everything back where it came from. The wheel cylinders look fine and dry and their pistons slide freely. With the handbrake cable slackened off I pumped the pedal, heard the adjusters ratchet to position. Spinning the wheels (both sides) resulted in a localised rub through about 20 degrees the rest of rotation freely. I expected some rubbing while they bed in, I adjusted the handbrake stop nut but didn’t tighten it all the way down to its final position so not to unduly load the brakes while they bed in
A short test drive resulted in brakes and handbrake functioning well, silently. However a longer drive of 5 miles resulted in loud pulsing ‘rubbery, squelchy’ squeak under heavy breaking conditions, from the rear brakes. This was accompanied by slight pedal sensation similar to that related to warped front discs. The brakes still function fine.
Strip down revealed nothing suspect, everything was still in place, wear was moderately uneven on the shoes but nothing unusual for new parts. There was no shiny evidence of something contacting something it shouldn’t.
Backing the adjusters off and slackening the handbrake made no difference, so as there seemed to be no detrimental fault other than the noise I decided to treat it as just needing to bed in. Having done about 50 miles including plenty of irregular braking the noise persists and still there is no evidence within the drums that anything is wrong.
I have stripped and re assembled both sides putting a spot of copper lube here and there, rubbed down the ‘high spots’ on the shoes and re adjusted everything today. No difference.
It is as though the drums are not round, or perhaps the holes not concentric so I have compared old and new, their drilling s look the same.
Someone throw me a line please…..
Astra 1.7TDI, 2000 reg. 100k miles
Routine inspection of rear brakes inspired me to replace the shoes, since the drums were lipped and new ones were only £30 pair I decided to replace shoes and drums together. Prior to this there was no breaking noise, the hand brake functioned fine on both sides and the footbrake function was also sound, passing its MOT with ease.
Having replaced shoes on other cars before this is not my favourite part of servicing but I'm happy and confident to do it.
I stripped and cleaned down the back plate, springs etc and swiftly assembled the new shoes in place, putting everything back where it came from. The wheel cylinders look fine and dry and their pistons slide freely. With the handbrake cable slackened off I pumped the pedal, heard the adjusters ratchet to position. Spinning the wheels (both sides) resulted in a localised rub through about 20 degrees the rest of rotation freely. I expected some rubbing while they bed in, I adjusted the handbrake stop nut but didn’t tighten it all the way down to its final position so not to unduly load the brakes while they bed in
A short test drive resulted in brakes and handbrake functioning well, silently. However a longer drive of 5 miles resulted in loud pulsing ‘rubbery, squelchy’ squeak under heavy breaking conditions, from the rear brakes. This was accompanied by slight pedal sensation similar to that related to warped front discs. The brakes still function fine.
Strip down revealed nothing suspect, everything was still in place, wear was moderately uneven on the shoes but nothing unusual for new parts. There was no shiny evidence of something contacting something it shouldn’t.
Backing the adjusters off and slackening the handbrake made no difference, so as there seemed to be no detrimental fault other than the noise I decided to treat it as just needing to bed in. Having done about 50 miles including plenty of irregular braking the noise persists and still there is no evidence within the drums that anything is wrong.
I have stripped and re assembled both sides putting a spot of copper lube here and there, rubbed down the ‘high spots’ on the shoes and re adjusted everything today. No difference.
It is as though the drums are not round, or perhaps the holes not concentric so I have compared old and new, their drilling s look the same.
Someone throw me a line please…..