Front Brake Drum Rebuild (Part 2)

Clean up process and removal of the old parts

Background:

The old brake drums are in a bad way, rusted, not working, The back drum has obviously suffered a wheel cylinder failure and has been covered in good knows what. So it has had to be cleaned up as well

Process:

I took the backing plate of to one side and I will deal with that another day. For now I will concentrate on the drums and their rust issues. I decided to treat them with Granville Rust Cure to see how it worked. I have done a review of the product here, and I have posted a video to my new YouTube channel here. (“One man and his Mustang” in case you hadn’t guessed!)

The first thing is to rub down the the loose rust and get that all off. I cleaned it with a degrease agent, POR15 Marine Clean to be exact. I washed it off and then allowed it to almost dry. Then I applied the Rust Cure and see how it looked and worked. The review has more details on the process but I was please with the results.

Drum before treatment

de-rusted and dampened with a little water and almost allowed to dry

Application of Granville Rust Cure:

This has to be stirred lightly and applied in thin coats. I made sure that I worked the mixture into the heavy pitted areas. I smoothed out the bubbles and waited for the application to dry and repeated on the inside. I made sure this was not applied to the brake faces. The change in the colours was amazing to see, as I was watching it and applying it the mixture was changing colour. White, to grey, to light blue, to darkish blue, brown and then a brown black. I have never seen stuff work that fast before.

First application, bubbles showing.

2 mins later, starting to smooth out nicely

Inside, not on the brake surface though.

5 mins later

10 mins, still drying at this point , hence the lighter colour on the splines.

Second Application:

Twelve hours later I applied a second coat as recommend again in a light coating and working into the pitted areas.

Front drum single coat

Second application started

Outside completed second coat

Inside with single coat

Inside second coat

Rear Brake Drum:

As I was waiting for the second coat to dry I started on the rear brake drum. This needed cleaning as it looked like the brake fluid or oil had gone everywhere. Although this is not the front part of the brakes I have added it here for now so you can at least see what I have been up to. I will move this to the rear brakes section.

Rear drum before cleaning inside

Rear drum outside before cleaning outside

Rear drum single coat

Rear drum almost dry

rear drum touch dry

Removing the Front Brake hardware:

There are plenty of walk throughs for the brake drum refurbishment, but I have done my take on it. The worst part is getting the two top springs from the spindle in the middle. I bought a Sealey tool designed for the job. It did the task adequately, but the metal was a little to soft for my liking. This seems to be a trend with their tools, to soft. I returned a flaring tool for the same reason! Then I removed the bottom spring, the cable and the locating pins.

Removing the mounting bolts

Removing the springs with specialist tool makes life easier

Removing the cable after the second spring is released

Removing the bottom spring with another specialist tool

Removing the locating spring and pin

All springs removed last one to go

Removing the shoe with the piston

Bare backing plate

Wheel Cylinder refurbishment:

Once I removed the two bolts at the back for the wheel cylinder i then removed the Rubber gators and removed the pistons carefully making sure I didn’t rip the rubber, they moved with only the slightest of taps.