Rear Brake Shoe Wear

So I did changed my brake shoes, both cylinders and drums about 8,000 miles ago. Checked today on the driver side and I am seeing this wear, passenger side doesn’t have this kind of wear.

I have 35s, and separate e-brake handles (for sharper turns), but do I rarely use e-brake unless on trails.

Bad wheel bearing or something else going on? Adjusted few times in the 8000 mile of driving but it keeps wearing down on the front shoe of the driver side only. Thoughts?

 

I had an Oldsmobile years ago that had a similar issue and it turned out to be that I had installed a spring incorrectly and hooked it over the wrong groove on one of the shoes causing one to push out against the drum every so slightly. It wasn't enough to even notice when driving or spinning the wheel by hand on the jack and the brakes worked fine otherwise. No idea if that is your issue or even possible on these brakes but throughout it might be worth throwing out there.

 

Check the moving parts.

 

Also check the brake cylinder and that the pistons are returning completely. If one is hung up partly out that shoe will be partially engaged. Might be easy to measure piston depth and compare the left and right side brakes.

 

Looks like the shoe needs to hang a little higher so it's centered in drum better. How? I don't know, count me as one of the ones wondering why Toyo still uses drums.

 

" . . . the shoe needs to (be) centered in drum. . . "

What he said! The shoes should be concentric with the drum. Get another set of shoes and replace these so that the shoes are centered in/concentric with the Drum. Not sure just what - but something was not replaced properly.

 

Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and I was wrenching, most brake jobs I did were drums and sometimes we would get a shoe that wasn’t concentric. We had a machine that we could put the shoe in that had a sanding drum on it to true up the brake material to make it concentric, if it was too bad like yours, we replaced the shoe. I’d replace the shoe and monitor it every few thousand miles it see it it looks okay.

 

Back when I was a lad, I saw a lot of trailing brake shoes that wore more quickly than the leading one. I'd say yours's is normal, based upon my experiences.

 

Well the first thing I would do is check the wheel cylinder moving both sides of the piston at the same rate. Watch the wheel cylinder pistons while someone moves the brake pedal down [SLOWLY AND NOT ALL THE WAY. [BOTH SIDES SHOULD MOVE TOGETHER] Also put some lithium grease on the backing plate where the shoes are resting. A loose wheel bearing would cause this to some degree. Just lift up and down on the axle shaft while the drum is removed and check for any lateral movement. I would suspect if this were the problem you would have gear oil leaking out. Good luck..

 

I will answer that question for you, Toyota uses drum brakes in rear because they are less prone for problems where climates are bad in the winter time where salt is used. [TRUE STORY>> PARKING BRAKE ISSUES]