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Location: Rusting In New York, hello... | I picked up a '60 Windsor to part out. It's been stored outdoors for over 10 years. I expect as is often the case around here that the drums will have rusted and the shoe linings be stuck to them. Car has been parked since 1970 or so, although it was garaged for at least the first 10 years after that. When it's owners died the man who has it now ended up having to move it to the current location and it's rotted pretty badly since then.
Any tips on removal of the drums - should I even worry about them being any good, or follow one friend's advice and break them? I know a puller is needed front and rear, but I remember pulling some from a GM car that had sat and warping them - and this type normally just slides off. It was an all day job worrying them off the car.
All I really care about is getting the wheels turning, at least the fronts. If anyone has experience in a similar situation it might be helpful. I need to get the car out of the current location in a reasonable amount of time, but I haven't jacked it up to see if anything will move yet - I figure if I go that far I may as well be ready to attack them.
Thanks!
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Veteran
Posts: 156
Location: Baltimore, Maryland | Front drums do not need a puller. Just undo the spindle nut, pull the bearing out and they should slide right off. If you can't rotate the drums by hand, try backing the adjusters off and give the drum a few good wacks with a hammer to loosen things up. If you get a drum to warp by removing it with a puller, they're junk anyway. Cast iron is incredibly hard to bend, you'll break the wheel studs off before then. |
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Location: Parts Unknown | I have had the pleasure of confronting this problem hundreds of times in my wrecking yard career. First of all, do you have a drum puller? Secondly, to you have an acetylene torch?
Front drums might rust to the shoes. Heat will usually break the rust grip. Rears a a wedge fit, so they are a bear to begin with! The puller I have had for 30 years has a "hammer head" twister, that you can beat on with a sledge to reef to serious pressure. Get some pressure going with the puller, then apply the torch to the drum, heating the area around the axle. Don't get it red hot, but get it good and warm. Heat uniformly all around the center. Still no release? .. apply more pull. Then give it some more heat. This usually does not take a lot, and you will suddenly hear a metallic "ping", and the drum and puller will hop right off their perch on the axle, sometimes with so much force they will fall on the floor! I had a few I gave up on and cut apart just to get the job done, but that was very rare.
Have you tried dragging the car with a tow line? Sometimes this will work.
Good luck!  |
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Elite Veteran
Posts: 915
Location: Pau, S-W France | Take a look at a page i made some weeks ago:
http://www.ifrance.com/c-i-f/brakedrum_removal.htm
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Expert 5K+
Posts: 8947
Location: WHEELING,WV.>>>HOME OF WWVA | PHIL------that is a very very good page------it will help a lot of people-it's almost like being there------sure would be nice to have all procedures documented in the same manor------GREAT JOB !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!------later------------------------ps.what are fuel prices now in FRANCE |
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Elite Veteran
Posts: 915
Location: Pau, S-W France | 60 dart - 2004-03-31 10:28 PM (....) ps.what are fuel prices now in FRANCE
Thanks for the congratulations .. As i know that it's a recurent question i decided to make a page rather than always repeat the same advises... And pics are better than text !!
About gas price, 1 liter is around 1 Euro ( 1.20 $) soit 1 gallon = 4.50 $ !!!!! |
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Extreme Veteran
Posts: 340
Location: Tacoma, WA | Wow, I agree - Phil, that's a great page! So is your entire tech page ( http://www.ifrance.com/c-i-f/technical.htm ), and I've bookmarked it . Now I know the origin of my saved link of Gerge's Lenses. |
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Board Moderator
Posts: 3186
Location: The not-so-great, dirty-white North ( Michigan) | Phil...
Great documented procedure on how to remove the rear drums. Also, nice work in the design of your "home made" puller. Better than a lot of garbage I have seen advertised to work on the early MOPARS.
By the way....Nice touch to have a tiled garage floor. I gotta love you guys. Culture...even in the workshop and garage!
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Account Suspended (Steve Hobby Alias)
Posts: 3365
Location: North West Jorsey | Phil
That was excellent! May I add one thing from experience? If the hub is going to fight you. . . (I had one that took two days to knock off)
I agree with the safety thing of keeping the castle nut on the shaft. Except, I have done probably a hundred rear drum removals in my wrenching career with Dodge. Run the castle nut out to the end of the shaft to cover the threads while hitting the puller. This does two things. 1. It reduces the chance of the shaft end mushrooming and 2, the nut will act as a thread chase in the event it is slightly damaged. This will save you from having to dress the threads.
BTW, Snap On used to have those pullers. They still have the ball joint tools available through special order. Don't know if they have the puller or not any more. |
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Veteran
Posts: 156
Location: Baltimore, Maryland | Last time I put the drums back on the 300, I lightly oiled the spindles before putting the drums back on. That little piece about breaking the axle key has me wondering now. I've driven the car for two years since then, no problems. Should I bother going through and pulling the whole thing apart again just to degrease them? It's a pretty stout piece, and I can't figure how you'd break one, oil or not, without having something assembled wrong or a defective part to begin with. Anybody had any similar experiences?
Very well written summary BTW! |
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Elite Veteran
Posts: 915
Location: Pau, S-W France | Hi,
Thanks for your messages about this page !!
(Steve) : I'll add your comments on it.
(300C) : the comments at the bottom of the page came from user's experience and i can't say if they are right or wrong. I was also astonished when i read this advise !
And as you i put some little grease on the spindle, thinking the removal would be easier later. I'll forward your message to the author. |
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Elite Veteran
Posts: 915
Location: Pau, S-W France | Here is the reply from Kenyon he sent me by email after i forwarded the topic
Hi Phillipe,
If you grease the rear axle spindle you will eventually shear off the woodruff key, the metal block that goes in perpendicular to the surface of the spindle. It's not worth it!!!
The tapered axle is NOT challenging to get drums off of if you do it the right way, as with so many things in life, it is technique that makes the difference. I used a hammer and a dogbone handle that came with my drum remover and I got nowhere. This sort of grief would prompt me to want to grease my spindles also, and in fact I did that before I heard that it's a no-no and had to go clean it off.
When I took off the dogbone part of the remover, I greased the threads on my heavy duty remover (- greased threads slide easier under load and you are fighting less internal tool friction). I then used an IMPACT WRENCH to aggressively spin the center bolt of the remover to pull the drum. Popped off in about 10 seconds on all 5 cars!!! EASY!!! "Presto-Change-O" and it's done. -I think they say "voila!" where you live.
All of that frustrating tightness that you're working against is what keeps the axle and the drum stuck together when you accelerate the car.
When you use grease on the axle, you lose some of the inherent friction and the axle is more prone to spinning inside the hole of the drum as well as being easier to pull off. Now you are loading the woodruff key and not the tapered sides, and that poor woodruff key isn't strong enough to hold back all of the horsepower when it gets told to spin the drum by iteself. Bad things happen next. The kind of bad things that are not good when you are just far enough away from home that the tow will be painfully expensive but cheaper than paying someone else to remove and replace your entire axle spindle (got a spare, by the way?) |
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Veteran
Posts: 156
Location: Baltimore, Maryland | Thanks. I didn't use grease, just a couple drops of motor oil out of the oil can that I rubbed over the axle, mostly to remove a little bit of surface rust that had started due to having the drums off for a while.
Don't know how you guys feel about them, but nobody gets within 50 ft. of my car with an impact wrench. Seen to many bad things happen. |
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Extreme Veteran
Posts: 314
Location: Fairfield County, CT | This problem sounds like it's related to the previous posts so I'm asking it here. Viola (the '59 Coronet that debuted under "Barn Fresh") is coming home. She hasn't been driven in 7-10 years and the rear brakes are locked up. I really can't operate on her til I get her home, I have to just get the car on a flatbed and go. I hate the thought of dragging the car out but if there's no quick release trick, that's what I'll have to do. Doc mentioned a tow line sometimes works. How about rocking the car? I just want to get the shoes to break loose from the drums. Anyone had any succes with a similar problem? |
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Account Suspended (Steve Hobby Alias)
Posts: 3365
Location: North West Jorsey | Ahhh
If the drums are locked, that means they were adjusted and will be a bear to break loose. Dragging, rocking is about all you can do for a quick fix. But I have to ask a stupid question. R U Sure it's not the parking brake? More likely the cable is stuck. If it has the drum parking brake, and chances are is does, the problem could be there. |
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Elite Veteran
Posts: 915
Location: Pau, S-W France | Joe Mac - 2004-04-20 8:14 PM
Viola (the '59 Coronet that debuted under "Barn Fresh") is coming home. She hasn't been driven in 7-10 years and the rear brakes are locked up. I really can't operate on her til I get her home, I have to just get the car on a flatbed and go. I hate the thought of dragging the car out but if there's no quick release trick, that's what I'll have to do. Doc mentioned a tow line sometimes works. How about rocking the car? I just want to get the shoes to break loose from the drums. Anyone had any succes with a similar problem?
Hi Joe,
I had the same problem on a wrecked '57 Imperial i bought for parts: one of the rear wheel was stuck. So with a lot of people and the winch of the trailer we could put it on the trailer (the wheel slide on the ground on 50 feet but didn't unlocked ..). At arrival, we remove the wheel, put some hard blows on the drum and installed the puller (we release the two shoes adjusting bolts but i don't remember if it was successful ..). With the right puller and another blows on the drum and on the puller while tightening, the drum came off .. No damage to the shoes or the drum. |
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Extreme Veteran
Posts: 314
Location: Fairfield County, CT | I was quite surprised to find that the rear drums on my '59 Coronet are a slip-on over a separate hub bolted to the tapered axle. I was all set to do battle with my puller to check my rear brakes. I grabbed the drum and rotated it to see how tight the shoes were and it was loose! The hub has studs with chamfered shoulders that locate the drum exactly on center. I've never seen or heard of this arrangement before and I wonder if it's an aftermarket set-up or the the creation of a clever mechanic. Either way it makes servicing the rear brakes a breeze. If I had known this was possible I probably wouldn't have put together an e-body rear for my '58. If anybody's interested, I'll take some pictures so you check this out.  |
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Expert
Posts: 2308
Location: The Bat Cave, Fairborn, OH | I have the same set-up on my 1958 DeSoto Firesweep; it has a hub mounted to the axle and separate brake drums like the later Bendix set-up (post-'62). I don't think this was a special arrangement as the rear axle looks as if it came with the car as original equipment, but maybe the factory used a different rear brake set-up on the Dodges and Dodge-based DeSotos than on the senior models. (?)  |
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| OK...having to deal with 1 or 2 froze up wheels might be a pain...but ALL 4 on charlene were frozen. Above in a prior post someone said you dont need a puller for the fronts...well in my case i sure did need one. I tried to adjust the cams on the back to move the shoes in and proceded to snap the head off the bolt! Boy we were really happy about that one. It took a good hours worth of work just to get the fronts off...hammering on the drum puller...hammering on the drum to try and break it loose...eventually they came off...and what a sad sigh to see inside those brakes after 30 years of sitting. The rear wasnt TOO bad...except the passenger side drum is STILL on the car...no matter how much pressure i put on that drum puller that sucker would NOT budge...i tried everything. So now we have decided that the frame and running gear underneath charlene are toast and plan on moving the body onto a very nice ROLLING frame from a 4 dr sdn parts car that we have. Just thought id share that little story.
Jessica |
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Extreme Veteran
Posts: 314
Location: Fairfield County, CT | Hi Jess,
You're saying your going to swap frames? Wow that's a radical solution. If the frame is toast is the body o.k. to move? It'll have to be pretty solid to stay straight during the transplant. Are you sure you wouldn't be better off swapping running gear. Just my two cents. Like the doctors say, first do no harm. Let us know how it works out. |
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Regular
Posts: 67
Location: Memphis, TN, USA | Never have seen a more thorough review of rear brake drum removal, but here is my 2 cents:
THE RIGHT puller tool, 3 prong like shown on Phil's page, can be purchased from YEAR ONE, INC- at least you could about 3 years ago. That's where I got mine and I have since removed many tapered axel drums from 57-64 mopars. The only problem I have ever had was the lug nuts stripping in one really bad case. The puller attaches via the lug studs as you know.
A COOL UPGRADE FOLLOWS: I found out that the whole 8 3/4 rear axle assembly from a 69 Chrysler Newport will bolt right under my '57 Desoto Firesweep- BY DOING THIS SWAP I now have 11" rear brakes that I can get parts for easily at the nearest store. No more drum pulling here! This swap may work for many other forward look cars. Other later model rear axles may fit as well! I got my"new" axle off of a wrecked 4 dr. Newport for 60.00 and rebuilt the brakes on it for about 30.00. The newer axle looks exactly the same as the '57 except for the axle ends which are hidden by the hubcaps. The '57 wheels went right back on, no problem. Only the the most anal of judges will ever notice the difference and you can always save the old rear end for originalities sake.
Don |
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Expert 5K+
Posts: 8947
Location: WHEELING,WV.>>>HOME OF WWVA | YEAR ONE still list them part# t-133------PRICE-$ 161.00-----------------later |
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Location: Rusting In New York, hello... | I'd burn out the backing plate or wheel cylinder bolts and shoe retainers with a torch, or unbolt the whole spindle off the car I think if it was that troublesome.
I get to wrestle through this job on a FoMoCo product shortly, not sure I want to tackle the '57 Belvedere. If I remember right from the last one, if you can get a pry bar in there it helps a lot. |
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Drum removal, since this comes up often
