Morning everyone,

Background info:
1995 Z71 Silverado K1500 5.7L V8.
I am having a very annoying problem with my rear drums. I took my truck to the mechanics to swap out the rear end (can't really do that in my apartment parking lot :] ). They finished, drive home, put in reverse, loud grinding noise. Brought it back; turns out a spring fell out (how?....unless you installed it wrong??). "Fixed", drove back, and now the rear drum shoes are dragging against the drum. I can't even move if I let my foot off the gas, and when I drove it is very obvious the shoes are dragging (brake smell, and sluggish feel).

Inspection:
Took the drum off, it was very tight. I adjusted the shoes in, put drum on, was finally able to spin drum assembly with some effort.
I then continued until they were at the right resistance (slight drag, not too much).

Things noticed:
1) The adjuster lever is not holding against the adjusting nut and can freely move in either direction without having to move the adjusting lever out of the way.
2) When engaging and disengaging the parking brake, the shoes move non-uniformly (is this normal?) and the brake cylinder shoe arms/lines are bent awkwardly and are not straight
-- disengaging the parking brake does not move the shoes back
-- this requires manually moving the shoes into the right place to fit the drum on
3) The entire shoe assembly seems to move a lot. By this I mean, if I put my hands on each shoe, I can move the assembly to the left and to the right by 1 inch or so.

Questions:
1) & 2): I know that engaging the parking brake moves the shoes outward, but when I disengage, the shoes are not returning to their 'normal' position; they stay diagonally up/to the right/down left/ what have you! and the cylinder shoe arms are bent. Could this be why my shoes are dragging? A problem with the parking brake assembly?
3): I don't think the shoes should be moving that much...but the springs look new and that's what holds them in. Confused..


Everything is 'new' (drum, shoes, springs, cylinder) except for the parking brake lever and adjuster.
I just don't know why it is dragging all the time and these were the problems found, but could they be the source?

Thank you,

- Chris

 

If anyone is curious this is what I did:
I readjusted the shoes so they were seated on 'correctly'. By this I mean I just moved them around until they were more centered and I was able to fit the drum back on.
Once this was in place the adjuster lever was tight again and kept the adjuster nut from turning in the 'loosening' direction.
I did adjust the adjuster nut so that there was slight drag on the drums, not too much.

From here on I put the tire back on and went for a test drive. I used the parking brake, drove in reverse (to activate the self-adjusting), brake very hard, went over speed bumps and other bumpy roads to try and "knock" the shoe assembly out of alignment, and so far so good *fingers crossed*
Still don't know what caused it to get out of place in the first place, that is why I was rough during the testing.
Glad to say it is holding up well.
At least the warranty is for 2 years if something happens again, I will have them re-do it.

 

Looks like you may need a new mechanic. They should have never turned it out like that but glad you have it right now. Thanks for coming back with your solution. Good luck.

 

Update:
Brakes were running great until two days ago.
Now it's the other side...
I come to a stop and the left side sort of 'sticks'. Now when I take my foot off the brake the truck won't move, but when I hit the gas they become 'unstuck' (you can hear it and feel it 'pop') and everything is fine.
I'm going to take the drums off and have a friend slightly depress the brake pedal and see if it's a problem with the brake cylinder not pushing the piston arms back in since when I originally took everything apart it was still the old brake cyli
nders.
If have anyone has any other suggestions feel free to reply

 

so im updating again since this forum doesn't offer too much help compared to other ones. interesting.

anyway, I switched out the brake cylinder because the mechanic had replaced everything but those on the old rear end. the rear passenger side one was working fine, the rear drivers side not.
I bought 2 new ones (figured might as well change both) and did first the passenger side. everything was great, no leak after bleeding and pistons work.
did the fault side, the drivers rear, and had a leak at the brake hose on the new cylinder. googled what the problem could be, they said a bad cylinder...well this is a new one.
to work out the problem that maybe I bought a faulty cylinder I put the old passenger cylinder on since I knew that one was working before. still a leak was present.
one problem leads to another haha. I made sure the threading of the brake hose was tight, but not enough because I was worried about cross threading.

so I will look up why a brake hose leaks even though it is new and made an appt with my mechanic since they changed it so it is under warranty

I will respond with more results.

 

Figured it out.
It's a hard hose, and I guess the mechanic bent the hose AFTER threading in the bolt to the brake cylinder. This made it in such a way that when trying to thread on the brake hose bolt after removing it, the brake hose was no longer flush. You need both the hose and the bolt to go in straight, but since they bent it afterwards, the hose was forced to be bent on the inside to be able to thread the bolt.
I just bent it back, but I had to take the bleeder valve screw off to get a good tight fit. tight enough without cross threading. Happy to say no more leaks.
Adjusted the drums. Took for a test drive.
Everything is good.
Fingers crossed.