Drum brake heads-up

[NC3100]

Still plugging away with the drum brake renewal on my 57 3100 SWB. Just thought I'd add a couple of items that I've been finding along the way.

First, when I saw how bad the rears were, I ordered drums/shoes/cylinders from the same vendor that I sourced the fronts from. Good prices, fast service/shipping, located in Missouri.

Like the front cylinders, the rears have a bit of a fit issue. These are at least US-made but the rubber sealing boots are too thick to fit cleanly between the piston-retaining ears on the backing plate. (The ears are the bent projections that come off of the plate tack-welded to the top of the backing plate. They can be seen in the photo of my front brakes below, in between the shoe web and the Italian-made RF cylinder boots).

The only way to have the mounting surface fit squarely against the backing plate is to grind off the corner of the ears. Just enough to clear the boots but leaving enough so that they will function as GM wanted them to. Not sitting squarely in the round opening would be very dangerous - the cylinder could not properly transmit the force to the shoes under heavy braking.

Secondly, I found a great German DOT4 fluid to flush and bleed with: Ate SuperBlue racing fluid (~$18.00/liter on the net). This DOT4 high-boiling point non-silicone is tinted blue making it a snap to figure out when all your old fluid has been pushed out. The next time you flush, simply push it out with regular golden fluid and so on. A nice product.