Advice for cleaning out rear drum brakes?

Over the weekend, I had the leaf spring squeak TSB done after waiting for nearly two months on parts that were backordered. Worked wonderfully, not a single squeak since.

Anyway, I had asked the service adviser if it was possible to have the rear drum brakes looked at due to noise I have been hearing (sounds like dragging a rock on concrete). They came back around an hour later and told me the technician could not "see through the inspection hole" of my drums because it was "so heavily impacted by mud/sand". They refused to open up the drum brakes due to the "possibility of causing damage to components and require non-warrantied parts". I'm basically left to open up the brakes myself, and clean out the debris that's trapped within.

Has anyone done this before? What is the best way to proceed?

 

Here'a a video that could help you out. It's for a 3rd Gen 4runner but there's a good chance there's some similarities.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/IJkVEBYSecs

 

Drum brakes on a 2017 are a joke and it sounds like that dealer sucks...as I'm sure most do.

 

Just pull the drum cover off. Use a shop vac to suck up the dust. Easyp

 

I've pulled the drums and washed mine with a pressure washer.

 

Yeah no chit 1900's technology.
His that his dealer is quaking about doing that.

 

Your dealer...Is his name Phil Slackmeyer by chance?

At any rate they sound like spineless money grubbers.

 

Hit the inside of the drum with a wire wheel on a die grinder. This should clean out all the crap with out using any chemicals or scrapers just make sure you wear safety glasses

 

A vehicle riding around on four wheels is over three thousand years old tech. Sometimes old tech is still good. I have no problem with rear drum brakes. Simple and effective.
Light bulbs... what' up with that old tech? We should have lasers lighting our way or glowing walls. Our cars should be flying by now. Wings on a plane? Give me a break. We have rockets we should be using. We should have small nuclear reactors at our homes by now instead of inefficient power line transmission.

My point is, even though there is newer tech, old tech works just fine in some cases. Our Tacomas stop just fine in comparable distances to other vehicles of the same weight. They also last just as long.

 

Toyota puts drum brakes on the Yaris, base Corolla....and the Tacoma. WTH? It’s laughable. They’re saving money on each truck by giving you drums.

If you think drum brakes are good or ok, then you’ve never driven a car or truck with 4 wheel drums.
They were obsolete on the front of modern vehicles 50 years ago.

Toyota puts 4 wheel disc brakes on the C-HR, RAV4, Highlander, old FJ Cruiser, 4 Runner, Sequoia, Land Cruise and Tundra and all of their other cars.

Rear drums are only effective if you have front discs to assist them in all weather conditions.
That is, they work like crap paired without discs. There’s a big reason why manufacturers stopped putting 4 wheel drums on most vehicles 45 to 50 years ago. They don’t really work when wet, submerged or driving thru several inches of water.

Toyota should be ashamed and we should shame them into putting rear discs on the Tacoma.

Drum brakes are a pain to work on if you’re a do it yourself maintenance kind of truck owner and not a brake tech.
Changing disc pads is pretty easy. On some vehicles I’ve owned you remove one bolt on the calipers, flip the calipers forward, slide in pads, flip calipers back, re-install bolt and you’re done.

My first vehicle was an old 1960s coupe with 4 wheel drums I drove in the late 1970’s and into the 80’s.
Driving in water many times on flooded streets and avenues was scary. Push on the brake pedal and nothing...you just kept moving forward, past your desired stopping point!

I did a front disc conversion on it. It was a cheap, easy and highly effective mod over crappy drum brakes. And it was then actually safe to drive and stopped quicker and without brake fade driving down the mountains in SoCal.

 

What is with the hate and anger?

Seem to work fine on both my 80,000 LB work truck and this Volvo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0myPp2NmOqo

They are paired with discs, your point?

Discs do dry faster but they do not work better when wet, submerged, or driving thru several inches of water, or any other way you can come up with describing the exact same thing. Friction when wet is wet friction, drum or disc.

If only you could have known this before purchase. We should also shame them for hiding this from you.

 

Pull off the drum and hose out the brakes. Both inside the drum and everything mounted to the backing plate. Simple.

Any pebbles or such can be removed by hand/tool if they are lodged/wedged into something. Although it's very doubtful there are any in there. You'll see why as you take it apart; tolerances are fairly close.

Wire brush the visible part of the drum and shoot with some high temp paint if you want to clean it up a bit.

Inspect all the springs making sure they are in place, the shoes or braking surface of the drum aren't too deeply scored from something and the cylinder isn't leaking.

Replace the drum and manually adjust the brake, especially if you don't use the parking brake reqularly. If the adjuster is hard to turn, remove it, clean and lightly lube the threads and reinstall.

Only do one side at a time. That way if you have something broken or needs to come apart you can reference the other side for reassembly if needed. Just remember it's a mirror image.

Depending on what you find, the whole thing could take 30 minutes to a few hours for both sides (including parts run if needed, in another vehicle of course)

We now return you to the un-schedulded but highly predictable 'why don't Tacoma's have rear disc' whining crowd.

 

Is the reason your dealer would not touch it was that you would not pay? That's understandable.... if hurry musty didn't want to mess with it... that's whack.

 

My opinion is that your post is only valid if the rear disk system uses a hydraulic parking brake also. 99% of rear disks still use drum-style parking brakes. So, the complexity, cost, and unsprung weight is still there.

 

Didn't know you had front drum brakes too lol.

 

Merry Christmas to all on Tacoma World!

No anger from me! I’m sorry if you interpreted it that way.

Am I being bated here? please read my whole post!
I’m just giving old guy experience to explain car stuff to young guys.
My point is that drums aren’t as good as discs for stopping. Simple.

4 wheel discs are better than a disc and drum pairing. Also simple. That’s why all manufacturers along with Toyota place 4 wheel discs on all of their vehicles except their cheapest models.
Another point is that the Tacoma should have discs all around.

I was just explaining 4 wheel drums. If drums were good, then wouldn’t we still have four of them?
I overheated and experienced brake fade with 4 drums coming down mountains and when towing.
Discs were added to the front of most cars a long time ago.
Do any performance vehicles today have rear drums? Do any have 4 wheel drums?
Does any other modern light pickup besides Tacoma have rear drums?
Is it really anyone’s opinion that drums are better than discs on a modern light vehicle used for towing and hauling? Especially without exhaust braking or heavy transmission braking like large OTR trucks have.

My post was valid in 1978 and it’s still really valid in 2017!
The drum style parking brake on a rear disc setup is tiny! Have you ever tried using a little drum style parking brake to stop from 65 mph? Try it out and then tell us how well that works. I’ve tried that, and it doesn’t work. That’s why it’s called a parking brake or an ‘Emergency Brake’ by some.
The small parking brake shoe only operates when parking, it doesn’t activate while driving and braking.
That little drum brake works by pulling a lever with a cable connected to the drum. It’s not connected to the hydraulic system.

Disc brakes are simple. I changed out rear brake shoes many times on the old 66 Mustang rear drums in over 100,000 miles of driving it. Owned it from 100 to 200 thousand miles on odometer. Not simple or easy to do rear drum shoes.
I changed out drum brakes on the rear of my wife’s 2009 Corolla when we owned it which was also not as easy as the front disc pads. That’s a fact.

I knew the Tacoma had rear drums when I bought it, and I knew Toyota had drums back there years ago too. I’m a car guy and read all of the magazines!

My last truck was a 2016 and it had 4 wheel discs like just about every other light truck on the market built by all manufacturers. The brakes on it felt better than on the Tacoma.

No hate or anger here! Just my opinion. And I’m not going to get into a debate.
I’m 56 and have driven a lot of vehicles. Yes, I know drums work, but terribly when wet in a flooded situation.
After adding front discs to an old car I had actual stopping ability when wet after driving thru water. It was a night and day difference!

Discs are way better for stopping when wet! Water clears off immediately.
In my experience with 4 wheel drums, they don’t clear out water quickly like discs. It was a fact on a 1966 Mustang. Drums aren’t too different today.
Increased stopping distance when wet with a feeling of having lost brakes was bad.

I’m easy going and retired!
I’m a recently retired Firefighter/Paramedic. Life is great!!!
I’m very familiar with heavy Engines and Trucks. I saw 80,000 pounds of Truck and equipment on 75,000 pounds of rated tires. Yes, they were overloaded. Yes, not a good situation, but reality at one point in time.
We overheated drum brakes on Engines and Trucks often just coming down steep curvy hills in our Fire District with over 20 Stations covering a few hundred square miles.
Our heavy transporting Medic units did well with braking.
Braking was good on the Heavy and Light brush rigs.
FJ Cruiser response cars of course had no problems with braking!
I never drove a BC rig!

Happy New Year to all!

 

Jesus fuck to all you guys who see a third gen thread on brakes, the OP has a simple question, and 99% of the posts fly directly off topic in the drum vs disc, been posted 2 million times, encyclopedic bullshit.

#stopthegreat3rdgenbrakedebatemastubation

 

And merry Christmas.

 

I did just drum to disc in front.
I saw a couple of 4 wheel disc conversions back then on other Mustangs.

 

Sorry about going off topic!
Now you’ll know just to skip over my posts!
Unless of course you need some light reading to put you to sleep!