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I found out why the brakes were spongy. ZERO rear brakes. No shoe at all left. I bought new drums, shoes, hold downs, wheel cylinders and springs. The Haynes manual doesn't show a schematic of the rear drum assembly. Does anyone have a picture of one? The kits I bought have red and green springs and they are inverses of one another. The drums I'm looking at on the truck only have red springs and they're all pointing the same direction.
Do I need to remove the rear hub to install new shoes???? I didn't think so and didn't bother buying any seals or anything for the rear hubs.
What about for changing the rear wheel cylinder? I can't get it out because of the pivoting parking brake arm mounted above the wheel cylinder. I see there's a nut on the inside of the brake backing plate. Either that has to come off or the hub.
If I dive into that hub, am I going to need new o-rings, seals or anything else?
These are from a 1993 manual but they may help. You do remove the nut on the e brake actuator to get the slave cylinder out. Should be able to do everything without removing the hub. I recently did mine without doing slaves and was about 1/2hr per side.
Hope these help. Pm me if you need any more.
WEST AUSSIE 94 250, thank you! I was going to go back to work on it and give that parking brake hold down nut a try to see if that whole setup would come out so I didn't have to remove the hub, but wasn't sure. Is that a Haynes manual or Ford manual? The Haynes I have is a conglomoration of Broncos, F150's to F350's and it seems to shy away from the HDs and show pics of the LD trucks.
Is there a specific torque spec for that nut? How about the slave cylinder bolts?
The worst part was, I had to drive my stepdad's Chevy gasser home with my Ford in his shop. LOL.
Chilton Pick-ups and Broncos 76-86 including the diesel. Lucky it was on the front seat of the truck when I bought it because I'd been searching online the day before I picked it up and couldn't find one that covered the diesel. Only able to find the gassers. Part number on the book I got is 26662
ya, used is the way to go on those they are pretty spendy but like I say would love to have one they cover just about anything with much more detail and troubleshooting procedures.
Ford must use special tools to get those hold down springs attached to those hold down pins. It took forever because I cleaned up each drum brake assembly and didn't have the special tools.
Coolball, I bought that last Chilton's manual you posted for $9.99. Good deal, thanks.
There is a special tool but not particular to Ford only, all vehicles with that style brakes.... You could use a small pair of vice grips to hold the washer when installing it on the pin.
There are no washer hold downs in the Ford HD rear drum brakes. I have the washer twist tool for that style brakes. To get the hold downs to catch, I used a one foot long brass drift and pushed the hook tab of the hold down spring towards the drum backing plate and with my other hand manipulated the hold down pin in to catch the spring hook. PITA. I tried using every brake tool I had, but none of them were even close to being effective.
Here are pics of the "highly maintained" rear brakes:
No shoe left there. The drums looked turned down about 1/8" on each side. I wire wheel brushed everything in those brakes and applied a rust protective coating of grease to the parts. New shoes and install kits don't come with parts pertaining to adjustment levers and their respective assembly. I'm surprised how tight of a fit the replacement wheel cylinders are in there. And no, I didn't grease the actual shoe-to-drum surfaces.