have you ever tried saving them? I’ve heard of people baking the grease out of the shoes at high temp. Kind of an old school solution from when labor was cheap but parts were expensive.

just asking for sake of conversation.
for the cost, I’d just replace them.

but if you were on the road and it mattered right now …. Could be an option

 

Yes, there are ways to recover them. My brother was a mechanic at a GM dealer and he said one of the GM vans (Astro, I think) would leak seals. They would pull everything off, replace the seals, clean the snot out of the brake shoes (pads?) and slap them back on. He took the Dexter brake assemblies that we removed back home with him. He plans to clean them up and use them.

While I was on the road, I sprayed brake parts cleaner into the drums from behind the backing plate. It made a difference, for a while.

 

Good info Jim. Much appreciated.

 

my father in law used to put the oily shoes in a pan of gas and light it on fire! Me, I will just buy new ones.

 

Did this once or twice with my dad back in the day. It's actually pretty effective but not exactly safe. Gasoline is a good parts cleaner, but if you're gonna light it up make sure you stand back, and use a SHALLOW pan.

As for the question about manual vs self adjusting, yes, both are out there, both still exist, I think MOST are self adjusting today BUT they still have to be adjusted in properly...and I think they only self adjust when you're backing up (but this part I can't remember for sure).

 

The Dexter Nev-R-Adjust are forward adjusting. Old school drum brakes are backward adjusting. I manually adjusted my new brakes until they made contact. That wasn't enough. It's taken quite a few brakings to get the braking action to come close to where I want it, burnishing as I can.

Those folks that cleaned shoes by placing them in a pan of gas and lighting them weren't necessarily there for the cleaning. They were pyromaniacs! My dad used gasoline as a cleaning solvent. I have to wonder if that may have contributed to some of the health issues he now has.

 

Huh, I just assumed my electric Nev-R-Adjust brakes were backwards adjusting, so that's the way I've been doing it. Turns out they adjust both ways, according to the manual.

 

I think I just need to jack wheels up and see where they are at. I have no clue what the dealer did. I just need to get a starting point and then go from there. I really appreciate all the info. Since things changed drastically after they repacked wheel bearings, it's got to be something simple. Either out of adjustment, or grease on the shoes and if its grease, the dealer will owe me a set of shoes.

 

Update: Crawled under the 5er over the weekend. None of the brake backing plates have the rubber grommets in the brake adjustment holes. That does not seem right. The You tube videos I have looked at suggest some have them, some don't. I never got to the point of adjusting anything. I need the tool to do it. Screwdriver won't work on these. Will get that ordered and see how far out of adjustment they are. Or if they are at all. Will keep all posted. Just thought it was weird not seeing any rubber grommets.

 

The last few sets of brakes I’ve ordered did not come with the grommets.

not saying it’s normal, but not unheard of

 

Your brake issues sound just like what I went through after I had a local trailer company replace my trailer wheel bearings. The trailer brakes worked fine and were stopping the trailer appropriately when I dropped the trailer off. When I picked up the trailer after the work was done (it was after their closing time before we got it paid for and hooked up so I wasn't crawling around looking at what they did) on the way home I could tell I had little to no trailer brakes. I used the brake controller several times to test it, got no warnings from the truck so I was pretty confident all the wiring was still good. When I got home, I got under the trailer and found that none of my brake backing plates had the rubber grommet so I suspected they had loosened the brakes. I took it back the next day, voice my concerns and they put it back on jacks to investigate. They said they found no grease on the shoes but all the brakes were backed off. They adjusted the brakes and installed rubber grommets in all the holes. The trailer brakes felt mostly normal on the return trip home that day. I've since pulled it over 10K miles and have noticed that one side always runs about 10 degrees warmer than the other side regardless of where the sun is. In the morning, within the first 10 miles, both sides are the same temp. I haven't figured out yet whether this temp differential is due to the brakes on one side being tighter than the other side or maybe the bearings are tighter. I'm going to swap my tires left to right and see what I get on the next trip. Just to verify it isn't the sensors. Brakes or bearings will keep the same side warmer regardless of which wheels are on there. As a side note, 1 of the 8 grommets has fallen out again.

 

Your dealing with electric brakes that rely on voltage and amperage so a 10' difference is nothing, if your trailer is like most and the wiring goes down the left side just the wiring going to the right side through the axle could give enough voltage drop to make the temp difference. Electric brakes never apply evenly like hydraulics do because so all wheels are independent and can very because of all the mechanical parts that wear and voltage drop.

Denny

 

If the temp difference only occurred while in traffic or city driving, I would agree it could be caused by the wiring, even though an additional 9 feet isn't likely to make a measurable difference if everything is in good shape. However, my 10 degree difference occurs during all types of driving conditions. Even extended periods on the highway without touching the brakes, no downhill speed corrections, etc. My engine brake is almost always engaged when towing, so that and the transmission will handle most small speed corrections. I do agree that each hub is an independent entity and the wear that has occurred at each corner could be a contributing factor. Just seems coincidental that both wheels on the same side are running the same amount hotter.

 

Pull the caps off the hubs. Check the play in the axle nut. In my case, it was too loose and that seemed to cause that tire to run at a higher PSI (I don't get the tire temperature on my dash). I tightened it according to the Dexter manual and it was fine after that.

 

Did you do that with the trailer on the ground or jacked up?