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How To Repair Drum Brakes

How To Repair Drum Brakes

This VideoJug clip tells you everything you need to know to repair car drum brakes. Here's our step-by-step guide to get your car back on the road!

In this video, I'm going to show you how to repair drum brakes. To start off, you have to make sure the hand brake is off. Otherwise, the drum is not going to come off.

Remove the wheel; you can use some sort of lever bar or screwdriver, preferably a big one. Push away at the edges, levering it off. When it's free, pull it off with your hands.

This is the actual drum itself. A lot of the time, the edge rim will be quite large, so repair that. We'll have to get a scurfer or angle grinder, and grind it away so that it is flat again and flush with the inside of the brake drum.

These are the brake shoes; here is the pad part of the shoe. These will need to be cleaned and emery-clothed up. The emery cloth is like sandpaper.

Rub over the edges, and make sure you take the old line off it. This gives it better grip. Another thing to do now - here is the rear brake cylinder.

It has a piston each side, with a little rubber boot over it, and inside are some seals which stop the fluid from coming out. You peel back the rubber boot (you will probably need a screwdriver like I do). Have a look inside.

If there's fluid coming out, it will need replacing, because it means the seal inside has gone. Push that back over and check the other side. That's dry, so they are okay.

There is a piston each end that pushes the brake shoes out, so push them back to check that they are moving around and are not seized. Yes, they are okay. This one only has a small lip, hardly anything at all, so I'm going to take some emery cloth and rub away anything that is there.

The next thing would be to clean the actual brakes. Best is to use a brake cleaner or clutch cleaner, which you would do by spraying and cleaning it all up. If you are fitting a new drum, or a repaired old drum, adjust the shoes out so that the drum fits.

That's a bit too loose at the moment, so what I would need to do is remove it, put your screwdriver in. It has a little dial here, push the shoe out and let the dial move around. It's gone round a few notches there.

Put the drum on again, push it on. That's a bit better, but not 100 per cent. Carry on adjusting until it goes on.

If you adjust it so far that you can't get the drum on anymore, spin the dial in the opposite direction a couple of little notches on the dial, then try putting in back on. If it goes on, it's fine. That's how to repair drum brakes. .