(see pic) Should I replace these drum shoes? Tips on rear brake drums

07 Tacoma with 160k miles
This is my first time inspecting the rear drum brakes, thought I would do so because my brake pedal is kinda soft!

I have about 3mm on these shoes? Give or take

any advice or tips on adjusting these is appreciated. My drivers side shoes are much tighter than my passenger side

 

This is just me, if nothing else is wrong with them I'd put it back together and drive. I'm glad to see the pictures as I have about 125,000 miles on my 2010 and now I don't see any reason to worry about mine.

 

IIRC, 1mm is the minimum.

What ever you do, make sure to use an OEM spring set.
Aftermarket springs are hit and miss. If they aren’t bent correctly, they can cause issues. (Ask me how I know)

As for the shoes, take your pick.
As long as it’s a name brand shoe, it will be fine.
The rear drum setup on these truck are mediocre at best.
Most guys don’t adjust them as often as they should. (Including me)

But you’d be surprised at how much better the truck stops with properly adjusted rear brakes.

And don’t listen to the guys that say they are self adjusting. They are designed to self adjust. But in practice it doesn’t work well at all.

 

Agree. The self adjust mechanism on the rear drums should click the star automatically as the shoe wears down, but it seems like it is not guaranteed. I suspect I need to manually adjust mine but have not done it yet.

 

Those are fine.
Wash them down, lube the backing plates and adjust them……just a very slight drag. Don’t forget to clean the mating surface of the hub and drum, put a very light coat of anti seize on it.

 

So out of curiosity I took a stab at my rear drums this afternoon.

I have about 80k miles on the truck and the rear shoes still have around 3-4mm of life left, although the trailing edge of one shoe was maybe a smidge under 3mm.

Before I removed the drums, I could tell that each side had a slight drag to them, although it was lop sided. Basically as you spun the drum around, you would hear a spot maybe 4" long where you can hear the shoe rubbing against the drum. I've owned the truck since brand new and this is the first time I've even popped off the rear drums so I don't think anything is warped or damaged.. Just seems like natural tolerances.

There was plenty of dust inside there.. was it 80k worth of dust? Hard to say.

When it came to manually adjusting the adjuster.. what a pain in the ass. The principle is simple, but the problem is that there is a slight amount of natural slop in every tolerance so you aren't able to go at it like a machinist with a lathe and a micrometer. If you take off the drum, adjust it, then remove the drum, adjust it, and put it back on the variables all change each time. Plus the axle itself has a certain amount of drag with each rotation so you never quite know if you are feeling drag from the axle or the brake.

The weird thing is that sometimes it was impossible to put the drum back on, even though I had adjusted the shoe spacing to the less than when I originally started the job. It's like the drum was out of round at times, or the shoes were splayed out a few extra mm on occasion for some reason.

It was much easier to adjust the star with the drum off, although that has its own issue because you can reach a point where you cannot install the drum back on so you have to undo the star adjustment. Trying to adjust through the rear port hole was a pain in the ass too because you can't really see clearly in there and it seems to fight you, even though you are pushing the teeth in the "natural" direction where it would fall on a new detent.

Best I could do was get each side to the point where spinning the drum by hand resulted in 1 rotation (rather than 2-3 when there is zero brake drag).

Now that everything inside there is clean and dust free, and if the stupid auto adjuster actually works, hopefully it will do the rest of the work for me and auto-click to the right point.

 

Yeah, I would just grease everything that's supposed to be greased, adjust it, and keep driving. If they're not malfunctioning, replacing parts won't make these work any better.

Mine made it to 200k or so before I replaced them, and they still had a bit of life left. But I had to swap the axle seals, so I figured I'd replace all the brake stuff too. Having a little screwdriver-style spring compressor really helped. I think I used an aftermarket kit for the parts... with all the springs and a new cylinder. Maybe I got lucky there, the brakes seem to work as well as they ever did -- i.e., poorly. Drum brakes just suck.

To adjust the star things, I always have to pull one of the drums so I can see what I'm doing. Then I can usually adjust the other through the little access hole. But not really any faster.

If you do pull the brakes apart, consider also replacing the axle seals. Especially if you haven't recently changed the oil.

For a spongey pedal... check if the front pads and rotors are too thin. It turns out that wearing the pads almost down to the plates and never changing your rotors will eventually give a very spongey brake pedal. A proper blead might help too, if there's air in the system. I had to take mine to the dealership earlier this year for that... requires special equipment to bleed the ABS. Another thing to check is the brake booster. If it's the vacuum booster, then the spongey pedal is normal.

 

This ^^^. You should get at least 250k out of a set of factory rear shoes. Unless you’re extremely hard on the brakes or tow a lot.

 

2mm is the standard in many states. You have the brakes apart anyway, just get a pair of new shoes, service/grease the whole unit and you are good to go for another 160k miles.

 

The rears are adjusted (after initial by hand to specs) by using the parking brake and as such there is a pivot point (stud on shoe near where the parking brake cable attaches) to the brake shoe that often freezes/rusts solid so that needs to be freed and lubed to keep that parking brake working (lever action).

 

This is incorrect. Older brake drums did work this way.. like early 90s 4runners, but it seems any Toyota made after 2005ish uses the newer setup where the star wheel clicker only moves in relation to shoe wear.

 

2015s comment is correct that the star wheel moves in relation to shoe wear but since 2005 the parking brake is the action that activates/levers the star wheel arm.
If in doubt follow the movement when the parking brake is applied. These are not like GMs.

 

They self adjust to a bare minimum.

For reference, its rare for me to see drums adjusted when I service a Tacoma.

If you aren't sure, its probably time.

3mm is like 50-60% left, 1mm or less is toss. 4.5mm is new.

 

You are still incorrect!

This guy even made a video and posted it online because he assumed the same. In the video, he shows all the parts of the system, and then at the 4:26 timestamp he actuates the parking brake but you can see that it only moves the left shoe outward; the star adjuster has ZERO movement.

https://youtu.be/hzZ7qfZ4u8U?si=UxZFQQCjNnZXsrU5&t=193

 

I'm the guy that won't change their oil until the warning goes off and then I'm in no hurry. The guy that runs a belt for 80K miles after a tech recommends replacement. I've never changed antifreeze in my life and never will because I've never had a problem with a cooling system... and I'm seventy so I've driven a lot of miles. So I'd run those puppies... except...

You've already got the drums off. Slap a new set of shoes on and you will probably never have to take the drums off again. I tend to put a new hardware kit on at the same time but you do you. It's your brakes, right?

And after you snug up the new shoes with the star wheel so they barely touch the drums and you can still get them on, the star wheel is actuated by putting on the brakes as you stop in reverse. Do this a couple of times and as long as the shoes were slightly snug when assembled they will adjust to fit just fine.

 

Mine got loose a couple months ago. Long pedal travel. I really struggle finding the star through the hole, so tried what works on most American cars. Went to a parking lot and got to about 20 mph in reverse and slammed on the brakes. Repeated 6 times and pedal travel came back to normal. I am convinced these are just like most modern drum brakes and only adjust when braking in reverse. Most of us never brake hard in reverse and these won’t adjust when going forward. Therefore , most of us see them as non functional. Most modern drum setups will also adjust each time the parking brake is applied. Didn’t try this on mine as they are seized.

 

The adjuster arm is mounted differently on the Tacoma.
That video simply showed that when the parking brake was applied if the drum had been on the shoes were already correctly adjusted.
When they applied the brakes with the pedal and no drums that proved nothing and lucky the wheel cylinder plunger didn't poop out.
Oh well enjoy.

 

I check mine every year, just did a couple of weeks ago. I sprayed them down, re-lubed the contact points, adjusted them out and put them back together. I'm at 167,000 miles and still have about 1/8".
When I have my drums off, I put them on backwards (inside out) and put the truck in gear to let them spin at idle speed. Then with a small die grinder, I smooth the inner edge where the step develops.
If you do this, DO NOT step on the brake pedal with the drums off. I did this inadvertently on a Corolla a few years back and popped the pistons out of the cylinder. That was a mess.

 

Check front brake pads 80% of braking is done from the front....you can adjust the rear pads out....I recommend CHANGING your brake fuild as it breaks down with heat and time and 100+k ...

 

You usually get 2 sets in front for every one set in back. I replaced the the 2nd set of rears this week with 3/32 left. I get about 100K out of a set. I replaced the drums this go around because I had to really back them off to get over the ridge. At 200K miles I felt the drums didn’t owe me anything.